Antigua, Guatemala

After taking a quick plunge into the Lago de Peten-Iza at Flores we decided to take the nightbus to Guatemala city, and then catch a connection to Antigua, the old colonial capital of all of Central America.

Well, the night bus turned out to not be such a great idea, cuz neither me nor charles slept more than 20 minutes out of the 7 hour trip. And this was on the superluxury top-of-the-line buses. Most of those 7 hours was spent trying to filter out the dying screams and marching music of the movie ¨Conan the Barbarian¨, which they were so kind as to put at full volume, and the other half was spent (unsuccesfully) trying to find a position to sleep in. In the end, (and about 20 min before we arrived) I resorted to hanging my head down in front of me and hoping that the bumps wouldnt dislocate it from my shoulders.

Changing buses in the not-as-grimey-as-advertised capital of Guatemala City was a breeze and soon we were on our favorite (and so overcrowded that people were hanging off the outside of the door) chicken bus to Antigua.

We reached Antigua by 8am, hungry and dead-tired. We quickly found a guesthouse, had breakfast in a panaderia on the road and went straight to sleep till noon. And so the 2nd best siesta of my life (after Tulum, that is) was over all too soon, and at noon we got around to seeing the sights of this cobble-stoned little town.

Antugua used to be the capital of all of Central America for some time until a massive earthquake hit in 1773 which pretty much descimated most of the city. They took this opportunity to move the new capital to Guatemala City, and Antigua is now completely rebuilt, except for the few very visible church carcasses littered around town.

The great thing about this town is that it has the massive Volcan de Antigua looming over every street of the town, making almost every street extremely picturesque. We spent most of the afternoon walking around and admiring the scenery, as well as visiting some ruins of the many local churches.

We wanted to go to a promontory on a hill to see the sunset but everybody keeps warning us about ladrones here and ladrones there. Well, our whole trip through Guatemala passed without incident and the closest we got to the ladrones were the ubiquitous warnings.