Guatemala City

The cathedral of Guatemala City

And so on to Central America for us to the next part of our adventure. After a half hour stop over in Panama City, only enough time to queue for the loo and brush our teeth, we were back on another plane to Guatemala City.

Most tourists bypass Guatemala City, preferring to only land there and go straight to the nearby colonial city of La Antigua Guatemala. We like exploring capital cities, they always seem to encapsulate so much varied life and drama of the living and dead that you don’t get elsewhere, so we decided to stay for a couple of days.The gated community where we stayed.

We stayed in a family-run hostel in a leafy suburb as we had heard the centre is pretty dodgy, particularly at night. In fact we had read that most of the city is dangerous but, while we did stick to the safer areas, we found everyone we met to be friendly and helpful; such as the man at the airport who lent us his mobile phone to call the hostel or the bar owner who invited us in to shelter from the heavy rain. When we were wandering around the centre, it was striking and a little alarming just how many shops, cafes and bars have private security guards with double-barrelled shotguns. The bars that don’t, bolt an iron gate and open it to invite in potential punters. In the main square, the Parque Central, in front of the government building. A pigeon is fleeing from the gunlike pigeon disperser which went off regularly, and there is a union protest against workers unfair dismissals from a big water company for joining a union.

Guate, as the locals call it, is the largest city in Central America (that’s not including Mexico of course) and is at about 1500m above sea-level, surrounded by tree covered volcanoes. In a swanky, American-style mall in the richer part of town. A department store with a fine name (Si-man) in the background.

The city itself is not so pretty with little greenery to break up the concrete sprawl. In the richer areas American fast food chains are dotted about amongst apartments and hotels and most people travel in cars or on the colourful buses which make their way here after they are deemed unsuitable to continue their previous life, ferrying children to school in the States. The bus routes are confusing to say the least (but at 1 quetzal, or 7p, a ride they were certainly a bargain) so we ended up in taxis several times. Apparently there were some nice museums in the city and the one we went to (Modern Art) was in a nice building with a few interesting pieces of work but really not worth the £4 each entry fee. Some bright spark in the city had decided that foreigners should pay at least this for all the museums instead of the 30p locals pay, which on a travelling budget meant just the one for us. The centre had a lively market and some nice historic buildings spreading out from a large square. We found a nice little gallery opposite a cultural centre with an exhibition of work by people with psychiatric disorders. Overall however, there didn’t seem to be too much going on culturally for a city of its size, possibly due to the clear split of the population into the American influenced rich and those more concerned with where their next meal is coming from. Journeying out of the city is when you get an idea of the scale of the poverty in Guatemala, as the ramshackle shantytowns stretch for miles, clinging hopefully to steep-sided hills.

To sum it up, we’re glad we spent a bit of time here but can understand why it isn’t a top tourist destination.Guatemala's underwhelming version of the Eiffel Tower, the Torre de Reformador.