After 20+ hours of traveling I finally made it to Guatemala. The flights were fine and fairly on time. I then arrived at Guatemala City airport around 22.00. The airport was pretty much deserted and there were also only about twenty people on my plane.
I walked over to customs and found an ATM machine, so I could get some Quetzales, the Guatemalan currency. Unfortunately both my MasterCard and my Maestro card didn’t work, The machine told me the cards couldn’t be read. I thought I’d be able to find another one, but it turned out to be the only ATM at the whole airport. Thankfully I brought some Euro’s from home which I could exchange against a very bad rate, but at least I had some local currency now.
I grabbed a taxi and went over to the hostel where I had booked my bed. I got there around 23.15 together with a German backpacker who was on my flight from Panama too. The receptionist told him there were no beds available. I was happy I had a reservation, but it turned out also my bed was gone. The only option he gave us was to sleep on the couch outside. I didn’t have much other choice, so I decided to crash on the couch. The guy assured me there would be a bed available the next day.
The next day I was woken up early by the cleaning lady to let me know my bed was ready. I wasn’t really happy so woke me up just to tell me that. I moved to my bed and slept another two hours. Afterwards I had a shower and went to look for an ATM, so I could get money. I ended up trying about 15 different ATM machines and banks, but none worked with my cards.
I asked inside the bank whether they knew which ATM machine would actually work with my card. The employee took my card and walked away with it. Ten minutes later he came back and told me to go into an office. There I found another bank employee with my card. He was browsing the yellow pages to find a phone number to get more information. After trying a lot of phone numbers he finally found out that the BAC bank would probably work. He also told me the bank was pretty far.
That night I had some food and drinks with a few people in the hostel. They were cool people and we had a fun time.
The next day I woke up and grabbed some breakfast. I decided to go and check out the city and try to finally find an atm that would work. The two American boys joined me. We first went to the bank where I thought my card would work, but it didn’t unfortunately. We then decided to go to the central market for some food.
On the way to the market I saw a bank that i hadn’t tried yet, and it finally worked and gave me money. I took out a big amount of money, so I wouldn’t have this problem all the time. brought the money back to the hostel and from there we went to have food at the central market.
The Central Market in Guatemala City is very big and it is underground. It has three levels, one with souvenirs, one with food and one with clothes. We sat down at one of the kitchens in the market and ordered food. The food is a mixture of Mexican food and South American food. It consists of taco’s, but also different kinds of soup with patatoe.
After lunch we walked a little bit through the center. I then decided to head back to the hostel and relax a little bit. Especially cause I wasn’t sure what time Jannik would arrive. I relaxed in the hostel for a while. Then the American boys came back and told me there was a circus in town. They asked me whether I wanted to come with them to the circus. I decided to join.
Unfortunately the guys werent sure anymore where the circus was at, so we walked through the city searching for the circus. Meanwhile it was getting dark, but thankfully we were in a big group, so we were kind of all right. After half an hour of walking we found the circus. We had a quick meal and then went to see the acts.
The circus was an interesting experience. It had some acrobats and clowns. Even Spiderman did an act fllying through the tent with ropes. A girl also did an act pretending to be Michael Jackson. It turned out to be a weird experience, the tent was also fairly old. The handful of kids in the tent were loving it. It was interesting to see how children in Gutatemala enjoyed something like a circus. The entrance was very cheap at 10 Quetzales (1,20 euro).
After the circus we arrived back at the hostel. Around 23.00 o’clock Jannik arrived from the airport in the hostel. It was good to see him again after all this time, at the other side of the world. We had a few beers and then went to bed.
Jan 14th 2015 – Jan 17th 2015
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