Go West Young Men

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So after a wonderful day at Tikal and another lazy afternoon in El Remate we once again hit the open road for a new destination. Today´s destination is the beautiful colonial city of Antigua Guatemala. Quick history lesson. Antigua was founded on March 10th, 1543. It served as the capital of the Spanish colony of Guatemala (encompassing much of Central America from the Chiapas in Mexico down to Costa Rica) for two centuries. In 1773 it was destroyed by a two major earthquakes and the Spanish crown decided to relocate the capital to the more stable location that is the present day site of Guatemala City in 1776 (other stuff happened this year?). See kids, blogs can be fun and informative!

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves lets jump back to the beginning of the day. So it was another early morning with the alarms going off at 6:00 AM. I hate to wake up this early even when I need to go to work, so it is especially painful during vacation. But Jose made a convincing argument about getting an early start so we can get to Antigua early or something like that, I wasn´t really paying attention. All the same we were on the open road by 7:00 AM. Today with a new driver as well. Alexey has been welcomed fully into the fold and was up to the challenge of driving the entire length today. There were a few interesting moments, but we arrived safely and feces free! Well done Senor Salamini.

The drive was long, but very beautiful. It took us through some amazing mountain ranges of former volcanos that were nearly conicaly perfect and draped in clouds. We stopped for a little breakfast at a gas station and I got my favorite convenience morning food, Bimbo brand vanilla muffins. Delicioso! Jose was then lucky enough to find his favorite morning food, freshly squeezed sugar cane juice. I haven´t tried it yet, but he swears by it. We then drove for awhile more rather uneventfully and stopped for some tasty empenadas at Restaurante Yolanda in a town whose name I forget. From there things progressed slowly. We ran into some nasty traffic getting into Guatemala City. It was by far the worst traffic we have seen on the trip as we had been fairly lucky up to this point. Alexey and Jose battled through though while Greg and I studied our Spanish. It took so long we decided to skip Guatemala City (or perhaps hit it on another day) and headed straight to Antigua.

We got into Antigua in the early afternoon and found a great little hotel called Posada Ruiz 2. Not sure where the first one is, but it could have very well went out of business seeing as they only charged us 70 quetzales (<$10 US) for a room with four beds and off street parking. We think the management may not be the most experienced. In fact we think the management may actually be an adorable little four year old girl. When Goyo went in to negotiate the room the woman he was talking to apparently went to check with her little daughter to determine the rate. Luckily the little girl must have liked the look of Greg, as most little girls tend to. Although we were a little worried as she said something to us about the car after Alexey peeled out driving into the courtyard to park the car. We thought the little girl was saying deal is off no car, but Jose told us she was just saying it was a neat car. So we are still in the good graces of the management. Hopefully Greg won´t break her little heart.

The rest of the evening was spent napping, making arrangements for next week´s Spanish classes and plans for a trip to a volcano tomorrow. In addition we explored a little bit of the city although it had already gotten dark. Tomorrow we´ll take on the rest. We did make one great discovery by finding a little restaurant around the corner from the hotel with huge burritos for 12 quetzales ($1.60). This works out to a total of roughly $5 spent per person for food and lodging. I´m beginning to really enjoy Guatemala. The people tend to be really nice, it is pretty inexpensive, has great historical sites to visit and is naturally beautiful. What more could one ask for? Off to bed for now, we need to be on a bus at 6:00 AM for the Volcano trip tomorrow.









I almost forgot one of the highlights from the first day in Antigua. So while we were sitting around the hotel we discovered that they sell Gallo, the finest of all Guatemala beers. The only thing is they only sell it in litre bottles, not that I´m complaining. So Greg bought two bottles from the management (yes in Guatemala 4 year old girls are allowed to sell beer) and we got a few glasses to split it up four ways. Per usual with four guys and beer this quickly turned into a chugging contest, although we are all wusses when it comes to drinking beer (and most other things) and therefore the chugging contest was only with 8 ounce glasses. Jose proved his value on this trip yet again with an enviable time of 2.41 seconds. He attributed his success for a disgust for the taste of beer and thus a necessity to drink it fast. I put up the worst performance of the group with somewhere around 4 seconds and I ended up wearing a portion of it. I attribute my failures to a love of beer that runs deep in the Ruddick family. I can clearly recall my younger brother Jared taking sips from my dad´s beers on those sweltering Oklahoma afternoons. I hope this post doesn´t get my parents in trouble with child services. Whoops!!!

Quick side note on comments. It appears that we have been infiltrated by spam comments (as if spam e-mail isn´t bad enough, get a life spammers). That was one of the reasons we asked people to even sign anonymous posts (I assumed anonymous just meant you were too lazy to open a blogger account to post a comment, not some secret admirer), to ensure that we don´t delete any real comments. Secondly get a room Julissa and Muoi. Our comment section isn´t for you to discuss what I can only assume is pornographic poetry.