this is a travel blog

I'm going to try to reconstruct the past few weeks - hopefully it will still seem as intense as it was even though I've now settled in..

I flew into Guatemala City and met up with Anna Maria and Kelly from Xelateco (AIDG's workshop in Xela), and we caught a camioneta (chicken bus) to Antigua and stayed there for the night.

Antigua. I was there for less than 24 hours, but it's something of an odd fixture in what now seems to me to be an anarchic place. It is really low scale (maybe two stories high all over), and it's an UNESCO World Heritage Site. What I've been able to gather from other Sites that I've visited around the world is that this breeds a steady and expected tourist industry that tends to be manipulated by foreigners who have the capital to realize the economic opportunity. Lots of upscale shops and guest houses, lots of machine gun-toting policemen on patrol at night, a sense of safety probably not felt in the rest of the country. Certainly not in Xela. (Antigua, along with Panajachel and Tikal, has its own apparently-uncorrupted 'tourist police force')

It was, however, beautiful with the parque central lit up at night. And clean. With more time, maybe I'd have been more greatly impressed.