Holy Guacamole, Batman! (Mar 8) – Greg and Mandy's Travels

The Big Guacamole

Had to check out of our plush Guatemala City hotel, but first we just had time to go down into the city centre and do a walking tour of the historical precinct. Guatemala is frequently shaken by earthquakes, and there have been a couple of very large ones that have destroyed swathes of the country. Wayback in 1773 there was a very large earthquake in Antigua, which was then the capital, and the government took the decision to relocate the capital to a more stable location in the what has now become known as Guatemala City. Unfortunately, Guatemala City itself has endured two very large earthquakes in the 20th century, the biggest being in 1976 when 23,000 people died. Most of the city was destroyed, and only a few buildings survived, and these are the ones that featured on our tour today.

We started at the central square of the city which, like most Spanish towns, has the president’s offices or palace on one side, the cathedral on another side, the city government on the third side, and shops and commerce on the fourth. Started at the Cathedral of Guatemala City which is a very ornate building and stands on one side of the square. Many of the large churches and cathedrals are decked out in purple for Lent. On another side of the square was the ‘Big Guacamole’, more officially known as the National Palace of Culture, though when it was built it was the president’s palace. He painted it and decked it out in green as it was his wife’s favourite colour.

We saw a number of churches, including San Miguel de Cappuccino (my Spanish is bad) whose priests obviously had good taste, the central post office building which is now a postal and telegraph museum, as well as the usual markets and other significant buildings.

Headed into McDonald’s to use the free Wi-Fi to summon an Uber back to the hotel, and emerged only to find that, being national women’s day, there was a huge march going on around the square and traffic had been halted in all directions. It took 30 minutes for the parade to pass so that our Uber could arrive, and let’s just say that the driver was not impressed with us. Headed back to the hotel, picked up our luggage, and took another Uber to the airport arriving just as Brendan was emerging from his flight from Boston. It was lovely to see him.

We had organised a private shuttle to take us from the airport to our next destination of Antigua, the old capital mentioned before, and the most popular tourist town in the country, so we summoned it and piled in.

Checked into our Casa in Antigua, then headed off down the street for a very late lunch, or early dinner if you prefer, sitting on the rooftop overlooking some of the historic ruins of the city.

On our walk we saw lots of local foods, including one called Taco Chino (Chinese tacos) which, of course, turned out to be spring rolls.