…where did I leave off? That’s right. Guatemala.
I don’t even know where to start. Antigua was high on my list of places to see and worth the long drive somewhat out of our way to get there. Little did I know that Guatemala City would be the adventure it is. What city of 1M people exists without street signs? How in the hell do people get anywhere? Well we got somewhere. Only had to ask 37 different people what road we should take. Seriously, how can 12 Zonas be a strategy for organization? Ben and I referred to the stretch between Rio Hondo (Piston Honda, okay now I need to go off on a real tangent, it was really ben’s idea but we ran with it for a few hours and I think it will be implemented in various aspects from here on out. If you are trying to come up with criteria for evaluating multiple and disparate items trying using characters from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out as your scale. No I’m not kidding. Try it.) and Antigua as the Racimo. I assume it means the same in Spanish as English. Regardless after seeing pretty much every road in Guatemala City I can say I have no desire to go back. Well maybe to get back to Antigua.
Antigua was everything the guidebooks and recommendations made it out to be. Charming. Historic. Diverse. Beautiful. We even forked out big bucks, $35 a piece, for a hotel that would have been $200 had it been in Sedona or Palm Springs. Food was great and cheap. Souvenirs were overpriced and poor quality. So I guess I have to go back to the Racimo because Antigua is a town that deserves more time. Unfortunately we didn’t have the time we needed.
After a late breakfast we set out to the Honduran border. I’ve already covered our friend Ginny and the lengthy crossing as well as the Futbol match so not a ton left to say about Honduras. Yep I can wrap up and entire country in two sentences. Come to think of it already talked about most of Nicaragua as well.
One of the things that still intrigues me after hours of thought (yep I’m that dumb) and discussion with Ben is the diversity of each country, literally at the border. Okay not at the border. Every border town is dusty, impoverished and full of people looking to get money from you. But the people, the topography, the forests, the architecture are vastly different country to country. Were the borders established because of the differences or were the disparities the genesis of the borders. At this point I think I assign people from a line up to their respective country. Almost like and IQ test question. Ben made the comment that he used to think everyone south of Texas was the same. Although identifying similarities is easy, identifying differences is even less difficult.
That brings up the Nicaraguan/Costa Rican border. Aware of the conflict between Nic and CR we were hoping somehow that a couple of touristas from the US might get a bit more courtesy than the rival nationalities. Nope. 4 hours. 3.5 of which were sitting and doing nothing. Just sitting and doing nothing. And doing nothing and sitting. Fun. Again there are far worse things to do in life than wait to enter a beautiful country like Costa Rica. Once over the border it was a long dark drive to San Jose. Ben flew out early on Saturday morning.
Having Ben along was more than just a help with the language (although I now know how far I need to go and am looking at immersion schools for next week) it made for a very entertaining week. There is always a bit of fear going into 10 straight days with someone no matter how well you know them. Well after about 4 hours we started laughing and didn’t stop until he left. For two virtual strangers it was one hell of a good time. Thanks benji. Next time we’ll take more time.
Dave Connors
Lead - Expedition Americas
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