And now it's a Guatemala blog...

Buenos Dias!

I woke up before breakfast is availible so I guess I'll put up my thoughts on Guatemela City before I move on.

My guide book is pretty frank in noting that Guatemala City (or just Guatemala, or Guate, for short) is unattractive, very dangeous, not charming, and aside from a few museums, devoid of things to see. Well, perhaps I'm just not you typical "rough guide" traveler. I certainly didn't see everything yesteday. I didn't even make it up to the "old city" where the older government buildings and chuches are. I stuck to zones 9 and 10, which are supposed to be fairly safe (I didn't have even bus fare to venture out, and didn't want to pay for a cab). Zone 10, where my hostel is (Xamanex, www.mayaworld.net) is called the Zona Viva, and is full of all the night clubs, shopping malls, and nice food places that I didn't bother with. Zone 9 is just a little seedyer, and more had the feeling of business people just going about their business. While I wondered around for several hours yesterday and didn't see much in the way of "sighseeing" things, I think I got a feel for the place, which was more impotant to me. It's gritty, but not dity, if that makes sense. It's actually the cleanest city trash wise I've been outside of Europe and USA/ Canada, although I ended the day with some dirt in my eyes and exaust in all of my pores. So much car exhaust! Certainly more advanced than Belize, and years ahead of Accra (I could have had a Frosty, Big Mac, Whopper, Subway, or Quiznoes if I'd' wanted, if you call that more advanced...). I totally get why most people skip it. In a stunningly beautiful country, this would be the bottom of most lists. However, I like cities, and I like places that are rougher around the edges. My favoite parts of yesterday were mundane seeming things- I bought some sort of street food for dinner, walked up and down ave. la Refoma and looked at decaying concrete monuments to independence, costa rica (why?), the first CA nobel in literature (one of my favorites) and an interesting speach by Simon Bolivar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim%C3%B3n_Bol%C3%ADvar) that no one payed attention to after their unveiling. Finially, I sat underneath the Torre de Reformador duing the evening rush hour (see photo). All in all, I think I like the place, and would like to spend one more day here to see the rest of the things I would enjoy, but I'm off to San Pedro today. Maybe I'll be back, but probnably not, since there are so many more peaceful, beautiful places to see.

My hostel is great- super friendly women greeted me, and we had most of a conversation in Spanish (as with the tourist office woman, and the taxi driver, and the cell phone vender, and the dinner guy- I'd say most conversations have been 60/40 Spanish/English) I'd read it was maybe a crazy party spot, but thankfully it was pretty chill on a Monday (we watched HBO in Spanish with subtitles and read our books or tooled around on netbooks, which it seems every taveler but myself brought).

Ok, time to get off the computer. Later!