Guatemala

After a long and tiring journey across Central America, I arrived last night in Antigua. I travelled with my friend Brian, who I met at a Thanksgiving dinner at the Casa Ben Linder in Managua. Our bus left Managua at 2:30am. We crossed the Honduran border at sunrise, and soon after crossed into El Salvador where we wound through the mountains, past amazing vistas of green rolling valleys, sparse trees, villages nestled in between and layers of peaks in the background, the farthest ones looking like purplish-blue shadows. Crossing over to Guatemala, the mountains seemed to grow larger. We saw more indigenous people on the roadsides dressed in the colorful fabrics that you see in import stores in the states. Guatemala City seemed enormous... It reminded me of LA, encircled by mountains. The city has more tall buildings than Managua, and much of it reminded me of run down business districts of US cities. We drove by one of the markets, some municipal buildings with fountains and stone-etchings that resembled Mayan iconography, and this huge reflective glass shopping center-office building bedecked with Christmas lights spelling out FELIZ NAVIDAD. I was exhausted by the time we got to Antigua, but the first impressions I got from the dark were the cobblestone streets, little artisan´s workshops, and brightly colored houses a la Granada. Today we ate breakfast in this little Bohemian cafe where I had granola yogurt honey bananas and raisins. We then wandered around looking at the ruins. It´s really beautiful here and there´s tons of gringos... very relaxing, but tomorrow I´ll be moving on to either Lake Atitlán or Maya Pedal (www.mayapedal.org). Will keep you posted!!