Budget Nomad: Guatemala City

Showing posts with label Guatemala City. Show all posts

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Three Countries in 24 Hours

All vacations have to come to an end. Some should end sooner than others. This vacation was just right. I was ready to return to Europe, not to say that I didn't appreciate all that we did or didn't do. We had to take a taxi to Belize City to the airport, another capital that has a high crime rate.

The check in process is fostered by electronic machines to print out boarding passes, though the airport is not tremendously large. What angered me once we brought our luggage to be checked was the fact that it would only be checked as far as Miami. We would have to pick it up, go through Customs and then recheck it. WHY?? The reasoning given was this was our first port of entry into the US, but what flummoxes me is that we did not need to do this going. Our luggage was checked through to Guatemala City.

American Airlines is on my Do Not Fly list unless absolutely necessary. The flight from Belize to Miami is a short couple of hours. Miami's airport is horridly huge and though we had 3 hours between flights, it took 138 minutes to get from one flight to the next leaving only28 minutes to shovel down a lunch before the next part of the journey when our boarding had started. The flight from Miami to Madrid was again one of those hideous planes with community theater experiences, not back of the seat view your own. We both skipped the movies because the sound quality was that of scratched record played on an antique record player. They don't even serve a drink of beer or booze without whipping out the credit card reader with charges that start at $6.00.

Turbulence was beyond the control of anyone but Mother Nature and she must have been having a bout of PMS. We shook, rattled, and rolled like an old television commercial for Shake and Bake chicken. Needless to say, if you are reading this, we made it to Madrid safely and early. Not that this was provident in our case, as check-in to our hotel was not until 2pm.

We left our suitcases, and sleep deprived, wandered the city that has now been stripped of any sign of Christmas cheer, but had a blanket of early morning fog and winter chill one never associates with Spain. By noon, the hotel felt sorry for us and opened the room early. After a cold shower as there was no hot water, we napped before returning to the hot chocolate and churro cafe. Dinner was at the mini sandwich shop we had discovered in December on our walking tour. Then it was an early night, for tomorrow, we will wander the streets again before our final flight to Budapest.

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Friday, December 30, 2011

If You Don't Hear From Me Again...

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For some reason, we had to do one last tour of the town before leaving, but of course this included visiting another coffee shop we had not yet tried out. They make the best espresso drinks here. Ron suggested we look at the other dock, the one where boats go to the different villages than the ones we had been to. It was much smaller and less congested, but there were still multiple men trying to get us on boats.

I have this thing about checking our room multiple times to make sure we don’t miss a thing. As we were leaving, we ran into the guys next door as they were swinging in the hammocks. We said good-bye, but that is as involved as the conversation went. All of our bags were now downstairs waiting for the shuttle to arrive at noon. Standing there waiting, the three amigos came out and were standing around also. They never uttered a syllable.

The shuttle arrived on the dot in this time zone, 10 minutes late. It was empty so we thought we hit the jackpot on seat choices, but the driver told us he needed to put all of the luggage on the roof rack; he had other things to collect that needed the back space. Something new to worry about: our luggage hurling at sixty miles an hour over some cliff somewhere as we hit a pothole in the road. We climb into the van, followed by guess who? The three amigos climbed into the van too. Only because we asked, they said they were going to Guatemala City too. All during the 3 hour ride, they each played with their iPhone, ignoring each other and us as well. It turned out they were going to the airport to return home. Two of them are going to Mexico City and the other is continuing on to San Antonio, TX.

Another half hour and we were at our hotel. OMG, the neighborhood was enough to give me the heebie jeebies. Every hotel we have stayed at thus far has locked front doors. You have to ring a bell to get in; no keys are supplied for self access once you check in. That alone is telling. Once inside, the hotel is outstanding. As they claim they have over 300 Mayan artifacts, making them a true museum, part of their business name. Someone has great taste when they decorated the place; it is exceptional. Too bad the city is not. Ron said there were two differing comments in the travel guide regarding Guatemala City: big, dirty, dangerous, and fascinating or big, dirty, dangerous, and forgettable.

Just as in Cape Town the advice is to take a taxi if going out or returning once it is dark out. A difference being there is a sign posted in the lobby here, stating do not wear any jewelry outside, be cautious, etc. etc. There was a young man sitting in the lobby when we arrived. While Ron was checking in, I quizzed him about the place. He was only meeting someone here, not staying, but said that his tour book listed only 3 hotels in Zone 1 as being safe. This was number 1 for safety within this zone. Zone 1 in the city is where the museums and government buildings are, but also the bus stations where gangs and drug dealers congregate along side of the red light district. One stop shopping for all of your vice needs.

Out we went while it was still light out. Neither of us took our shoulder bag nor did we take cameras. It was a shame as there were some good shots that we missed. I would hate to have my $800 camera become someone’s New Year’s present. Finding the central square, it was filled with people, but not glorious or glamorous buildings. We stopped for a beer, then chicken at their version of KFC.

Finally on the way back, we stopped at a deli that offered freshly made tamales. We bought four for breakfast, because we couldn’t remember if we had the breakfast plan or not. The alternative was to pay $7.00 US for the basic breakfast, 9.00 for the upgrade and 11.00 for the superior. Other meals are on offer too, but the prices are way different than the outer regions. There really isn’t much in this city to be a draw that can demand those kinds of prices within a small hotel. The four tamales only cost us 1.85 Euros a piece and they are huge.

When I asked if they had WiFi, I was given the pass code with the notation at the bottom that it cost $5.00 US a day. Fortunately for me, there is an unsecured WiFi connection that is costing me nothing. The thought did cross our mind to move our travel plans up a day, but this is paid for and there is little running on New Year’s Day, which is the reason Ron planned our departure for January 2nd. Keep us in your positive thoughts, we are going to need them.

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Thursday, December 29, 2011

No More Pana Mañana

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As hard as it may seem, this was an even greater kick back day than the others. What slugs we are becoming. Tomorrow, we leave for Guatemala City, so we need to get those pesky last minute things out of the way, like shopping, laundry, and getting money. Breakfast is included at the hotel, but the coffee is less than spectacular. Guatemalan coffee is supposed to be so excellent, but breakfast coffee tastes like Nescafé.

There is a coffee and pastry shop down the street that we have discovered. Their lattes and cappuccinos are excellent. Ron has taken a liking to their desserts, though I have to admit their cheesecake is pretty good. Ron had cake with his java; I refrained for once. Right near there is the bookstore where I found the 3rd book in the Steig Larrson series. I had only brought the first two at Ron’s advice due to their weight. The first book The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was 624 pages, but I finished it in the first week. The second book The Girl Who Played With Fire ran a grandiose 728 pages and that was completed early today. Now I need to read through the third and last book filled with 824 pages. Quite a lot of words. Fortunately, the book is only 7.20 Euros, so I feel like I can buy a copy even if one is sitting at home. I have been giving books away as we read them so the load is lightened and makes space and weight reductions for buying things.

I did buy one other book, but took notes of titles from books that were just too heavy to consider. They are now on my Amazon Wish List for future reference. This store also had really divine photo frames; the outer edges were all hand woven by indigenous women. We found reasons to buy six of them. They are light.

Back to the hotel to drop off our spoils, we picked up our dirty laundry and set out the Laundromat. Dropping it off for a wash, dry and fold for over ten pounds will cost us 55 quetzals, 5.5 Euros. Can we take this woman home with us? It will be ready in 2 hours, so we take off again.

We quizzed an ex-pat from the US who now runs a second hand bookstore about which ATM machine was safe to use. He gave us a map and showed us one that is in a Mercado with the advice that the Mercado is owned by Walmart and no on screws with Walmart, not even the Colombians. That is where we head since our next stop is Guatemala City, which is supposedly dangerous on a daily basis just in general without using an ATM. On the way to the Mercado, we found the Women’s Free Trade Collective, a place where women can sell their craft work and receive all of the money they sell it for. It is called Thirteen Threads and was started by a woman from the US.

There were mats that I really liked, but the weight made me think “Airline Alert”, so I passed them by. A woman came rushing in as we were browsing and started through the same mats. Had I overcome my luggage limit phobia, there was one that I especially liked. This woman had it spread on the floor and then placed it on the counter. Darn her!! Turns out she is from California and is here to teach Yoga for 8 months. We chatted about the mats. I had in mind a Welcome mat, but she intends it to be a bath mat, another great idea. I never did get the chance to ask her how or why they needed to import her to teach Yoga for 8 months. Are Guatemalans so desperate to learn the downward facing dog or one-legged king pigeon that they had to import someone from California to twist and turn them? Ron bought some bookmarkers, but the airline scale phobia was as overwhelming as having a scale in our bathroom, so I let them go.

One last stop before the ATM was the hunt for a restaurant with a used bookstore inside run by a Canadian. We went up and down the street, but could not find it. What we did find was a concrete park with patches of wonderful flowering plants in small squares of non-cemented soil. Across the street was stand after stand selling fireworks of more sizes and varieties than I thought possible.

Finally, we made it the “ugly gray building that serves as a Mercado” just like the US American said and the ATM was a non-descript machine inside with an armed guard. Hoping that no one really does screw with Walmart, we withdraw the maximum of 2,000 quetzals. I hope to the smoking god that we don’t find our account cleaned out when we return home. Paranoid with having money, 200 Euros in our possession, we head back to the hotel to drop it off and then head out again.

There are no Hard Rock Cafés in Guatemala or Belize, but in Pana there is a PanaRock Café. They have a similar logo as their name sake, so it is kind of cute. We stopped in for a beer, but being extra thirsty, I ordered a liter. By the time we were done, I really wanted a nap more than I wanted to pick up our clothes at the laundry.

All of the time we have been here, in the room next to us has been 3 amigos. Initially, I hadn’t given the first guy a thought, but when I finally saw the other 2, I realized they were Friends of Dorothy or to put it other ways, they walked with a light step or they were part of the ‘family’. Although they responded when spoken to, they never initiated a greeting or engaged in any conversation when we would see them on the balcony. Two of them were Caucasian and one was definitely Hispanic looking. All three were speaking fluent English. Just like the people we met on the boat trip, we ran into these guys around the town quite often also. My guess is that they are in their 30’s so it was surprising how early they returned to the room and didn’t leave again. Their door squeaked terribly, so it was easy to keep tabs on them.

Our farewell dinner was at a steak house we had eaten at before, but we broke with tradition by ordering pizzas. We were both quite pleasantly surprised that the pizzas were excellent. The crust was wonderful. After dinner, we tried doing a little exercise stroll, but it was more like a roll. We both felt like balloons. Tomorrow, we are out of here on the 12 noon shuttle to Guatemala City. Pray for our safety!

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

American Airlines - 2 Thumbs Down

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After three poor nights of sleeping due to noise, we are moving onward. The circles under my eyes looked like hillside tiered gardening. If there were a inevitable harvest, I wouldn’t mind, but it is ruining the last of the good looks that I am desperately trying to hold on to. Getting to the airport was a snap. The metro station is almost outside our hotel door and under it is the station for the train. One train ride for one stop and then on to the metro connection and we are at the airport within twenty minutes.

American Airlines has a self-check in process in Madrid Airport. We could have printed our boarding passes at the hotel if they had a printer we could use, but there are also machines in the airport to do it for you. You punch in the reservation number, scan your passport, put in the number of pieces of luggage you intend to take and then gasp in all of the O2 when you see the additional cost if you have 2 pieces. One piece is free; a second is an additional hefty charge. Carry-on is limited to one piece, but the instructions are unclear whether this means in addition to a purse or briefcase or if this is the one piece. With boarding passes in hand, all we had to do was drop off our luggage at the designated drop off desk. It seemed like a simple task, but it turned out to be lengthy, making us miss any chance of using the Diners Club lounge.

Before shedding ourselves of the luggage, we had to go through a series of security questions, but the woman would not allow both of us to be there at once. Only family members are allowed to be joined at the hip. I corrected her and after a moment’s hesitation, she proceeded. Spain allows same sex marriage and all the rights therewith, so why should we be excluded? The list of questions was the usual, “Who owns these suitcases?; Who packed them?; “Has anyone given you any gifts?”, but the differences were she genuinely seemed interested in the answers.

Once she put our clearance stickers on the bags, we had to drop them off at the counter. Although this was supposed to be a drop off only, the line was slow and tedious, because people are arguing over what they intend to check and what is a carry-on. It took us over thirty minutes after we had already printed out our boarding passes. Then we were told we had to be at the gate 1 hour before boarding or they would unload our luggage, plus there was a warning that the travel time to the gate from where we were standing was thirty minutes away.

It took moving escalators, moving sidewalks, elevators, and an airport sky train to get close to our gate; the balance of the distance was old-fashioned walking. When we were in the gate area, there was a lounge nearby, but they were not the Diners Club lounge. We were informed there was another lounge upstairs, but she wasn’t certain who they catered to. Being paranoid about time, we went to our gate.

The flight from Madrid to Miami is 9 hours and 40 minutes. One would think that in this day and age, a modern plane would be flying this route. It wasn’t. We were held up when the back-up generator failed. They had to complete the paperwork, but there wasn’t a word about fixing it on this old 767 equipped with a single row of monitors running down the center row of seats. Passengers not only did not receive any choices in entertainment for this long flight, but those who were stuck on the sides had to stretch their necks to view the videos. Although we had center seats, I skipped over the poor choices of entertainment and read my book instead. When drink service started, they announced that beer and wine would be available for $6.00. After hearing that, I tuned out on the cost of liquor. It was incomprehensible that a major airline would charge for the first drink on an international flight when one considers the cost of the ticket. Meal service was typical airline meals, but they service of the staff was excellent. The steward who gave me my meal asked if I wanted a bottle of wine gratis. I was not sure why, but I seem to think it was because I wanted chicken, but they only had pasta left.

Going through Miami was another nightmare. We were transiting through, but still had to go through Passport Control and Customs. Why are we wasting resources on that when we were already in a secured zone? This took up a good 45 minutes of the 2 1/2 hours we had to spare between flights. Then we had to do the security thing all over again. They wanted to put me in that XRay machine where there is a see all-tell all view of your nakedness. I don’t even like seeing my naked body; I am certainly not going to parade it for strangers in Miami. Well, what a hullabaloo that was. I had to stand aside and wait for someone to be available to give me an hand examination. I waited so long, I felt like it was punishment for not getting the photo shoot done and over with. Ron went the same route, but his exam was faster. Not having been to the US since January 2003, it really irked me to have to deal with all of this. I had hoped that being a transit passenger, we could just slip by unnoticed and unharassed.

American was the airline from Miami to Guatemala City. People were jamming with their carry-on luggage. How they managed to get as far as the boarding gate without being stopped by someone, is beyond me. There were full sized suitcases that would not have fit in an overhead bin during the most generous days of flying. Airline personnel were waiting at the gate, and stripping these people of their luggage and handing them an ID tag to pick it up in the luggage area when we arrived. This may have been smart, because I am not certain how the airline could then charge them for excess luggage once they made it to the door of the plane.

Flying time is 2 hours and 40 minutes. They had video monitors on this plane too and video service. If you wanted to watch the television shows they played, it would cost you $2 for earphones. If you had your own, they still wanted the $2. If you want anything other than soda, coffee or tea, there is a charge. One guy behind us ordered a couple of scotches. $26. The person on the other side of the aisle got some potato chips in a can. $3.29. If I were the flight attendants, I would be humiliated to ask for the money.

We arrived in Guatemala City, but we are staying in Antigua. Ron had arranged a taxi to meet us. Sure enough, there was a guy with a sign, which I pointed out to Ron. After we drove for an hour, I had this horrible thought. Having been traveling at that point for 26 hours, I was not certain I had read the driver’s sign correctly. I did see Ron Sc, but you know those visual tricks where your mind fills in what you think should follow. There was never a word spoken with the driver, making me hope for the best. Fortunately, we did arrive in Antigua after 1 ½ hours and he did drop us off where we had reservations. Time for a long winter’s nap or at least until 10am tomorrow.