My first taste of Guatemala

Well after all that build up I am finally here, and smiling! The trip got off to a less than promising start when i managed to leave my passport and tickets at my mates house (thanks for finding them before I got to the tube Harnish, I owe you a rather large drink or two) but after that things went swimmingly with a fab flight (despite the best efforts of the air stewards), a window seat and, shock of my life, my bag being the first off the carosel!

Then had my one bit of luxury for the trip with a pre-arranged lovely taxi man who picked me up and drove me to Antigua and my posh hotel (well, posher than the rest are going to be!) This also gave me my first chance to practice my spanish and whilst its fair to say that as I was knackered and he was a talkative soul he did most of the talking, I did at least manage to understand most of it and utter the odd sentence which he was kind enough to pretend he understood. Actually getting loads of chances to practice my english as the people here dont have that irritating habit common in spaniards of answering my rather rubbish attempts at spanish with perfect english. So have to struggle through and so far am just about coping.

So, minor disaster of mosquito repellant lotion exploding inside my toiletry bag aside(that stuff is impossible to remove, especially after a transatlantic journey and with a brain that isn´t working at its fastest), I am loving it here. Weather is gorgeous, town is beautiful and surrounded by amazing volcanoes and have been drinking lovely fresh OJ like its going out of fashion!! Its a funny little place as all the houses are one story so every thing seems really little (except the pavements which are about 1m from the road, an adventure every time you haev to cross the road) and despite loads of spanish schools, the place still feels very guatemalan (or at least, not over run by foreigners). Its also really wierd as there are christmas lights everywhere (not sure why, but i didn´t expect them!) and have even seen one house with a santa and sleigh on its roof, seems not even guatemala is safe from cheesy christmas-related adornments! They are also really proud of their nativity scenes so went to look at a couple. Not sure why they are proud but made suitable appreciative noises and told the guard i thought they were great when he asked (figured its always a good idea to compliment things to people with guns!). My last interesting(ish) observation for today is that on random curbs here there is a slopey bit with this teeny sign right at ground level (which i can only imagine is directed at rats) with a picture of a wheelchair and what i think says Antigua without barriers. This is a great idea, but made somewhat pointless by the fact that the roads that are cobbled, the pavements have holes everywhere and aren´t wide enough for wheelchairs and that only random crossings have slopes. So would seem that there Antigua does indeed lack barriers, but only for one particular route!

Anyway, off to copan in honduras tomorrow (at 4am - urgh - couldn´t find a later bus however hard I tried - seems to be some law against buses at normal times here) so joyous 6 hr bus ride in store. Thank god for my ipod.