We planned to stay at Pablo’s house for our last week in Antigua and maybe continue with another week of school. However on the Sunday night after watching a movie (Apocalypto – bit of Mel Gibson Mayan history, if you have seen the movie the fat guy at the start actually lives in Antigua) with us Pablo lost it and decided to trash his house. He broke his coffe table and then put one of the smashed pieces of wood through his television, smashed his computers and went a little crazy (we were upstairs in our room whilst this was happening) and after counselling him for a while and hearing that he had a gun in the house we both agreed we had been there too long and did a runner at our first opportunity. We stayed the night at a hotel nearby and were then picked up by Karla’s family the following day to go and stay at their place as we no longer felt completely safe in Antigua. We are still not sure what happened to Pablo as we both thought he may have been suicidal. Karla’s family once again outdid themselves with their hospitality and we were really well looked after.
Rodriguez and Karla took us to the centre of Guatemala City and we were able to stand at zero kilometre (all of the roads around Guatemala have signs along the way saying km 136, km 80, etc. these are all marked from zero). The centre of Guatemala City resembles a small Paris, St Mark’s square I think with all the pigeons and a small cathedral which was based on the big one in France as well! We toured the main building (name escapes me) where the president of Guatemala greets all of his guests, more recently George W. himself. During the tour we were able to see where the peace treaty lay, until 1996 Guatemala was in a civil war and the Guerilla forces and the President finally came to an agreement and there is a memorial statue in the main building. Each day at 11am a new white rose is placed on the statue (which resembles to left hands shaking and underneath is a mass of arms hugging) to resemble the peace that is now present in Guatemala.
We decided to take a 3 day trip to Chichicastenanga and Panajachel on the Thursday and were treated to the local markets and a beautiful hotel in Pana that overlooked the Volcanic lake Atitlan which is surrounded by volcanoes. We used this time to refresh ourselves and relax before a couple of hectic days of travelling on our way to Peru, Machu Pichu and the Manu jungle.
If Karla and her family read this we are very grateful for your hospitality and we hope to see you down under when we return in 2009.
