Guatemala Day 2 August 11, 2018

Today was the first day of our group tour. I am a little disappointed that the tour company doesn’t use a brightly colored, chrome encrusted, Guatemalan Chicken Bus for transportation. We have a plain white minibus, but I am pleased to tell you that our luggage is tied to the chickenless roof.

After observing the mountains and volcano in the distance from our hotel balcony, we knew without a doubt it was definately going to be a double Dramamine day. (thetwinsontour love alliteration!). After a lot of twisting, turning, winding, up and down roads we arrived at our first stop of the day–Antigua, a cute little colonial town. We went to an old monastary that has been turned into a hotel and mini museum (I think we mostly went there to pee. We stopped at a lot of hotels for potty breaks. I guess that’s what happens when McDonald’s are mostly in the big cities.) Antigua was beautiful, but I don’t think I have any interesting facts to share with you. I’m pretty sure our guide didn’t tell us much about it. Or maybe I just tuned him out after the 20 minute explanation of the scientific name of the national tree of Guatemala. I mean, a person can only take so much!

We walked around town for a little while, went to a cathedral (much like Sri Lanka where you can’t take pictures of Buddha, you can’t take pictures of the insides of churches in Guatemala. It’s most distressing.), watched the little old men play marimba for the tourists while all of the locals sat around and ate economical ice cream cones (truly, the cart called it “helados economicos”). Alas, our guide didn’t recommend that we try that local delicacy which is more the pity because everyone knows the twinsontour love an economical deal almost as much as they love ice cream.

The rest of the afternoon went by in a blur. Literally because we slept most of the rest of the journey on the bus, lulled to sleep by the bus twisting and turning through the verdant mountains of Guatemala.

I do want to mention that once again our guide recommended we eat dinner at the hotel. They always do that, but that is for boring people with delicate constitutions and no sense of adventure! Not for thetwinsontour who travel with Pepto and prescriptions for travellers diahrea (which we have never had to use, but we are always prepared)! We braved the streets along with a fellow traveller and ate at the first restaurant we found less than 2 blocks from the hotel. We had a delicious typical Guatemalan dish called Pepian chicken. It was chicken on the bone–maybe someday I will figure out how to eat this. It was smothered in Pepian sauce which isn’t spicy and is quite tasty.