After a 1 hour shuttle from Granada, Nicaragua, an 18 hour bus ride from Managua across the Nicaragua/Honduras border and then the El Salvador/Guatemala border we arrived in Guatemala City at 10 p.m on December 30th and got a great nights rest and a delicious breakfast at the Hotel Biltmore. We headed mid morning the next day for Antigua to enjoy New Years Eve. After locating a hostel with a nice rooftop deck we started exploring. We found the cobblestone streets, and mix of very old and just old buildings of various bright colors quite beautiful and there is lots of great food everywhere in this city. Of course, the first food item we found was an iced soy latte at the Cafe Barista on the Central Plaza. No Starbuck's here yet but I do think this was a Guatemalan chain. You could feel the excitement building in the city as more and more local and international traveler's arrived in the city. We had happy hour on our hostel deck and a beautiful sunset as we watched the sun set behind Volcan Pacaya and watch the colors change on Volcan Agua. You can see in the video I posted how gorgeous the volcanoes and mountains surrounding the city are. Once the sun set fireworks started going off all over the city. It seems as if every other person here had there own personal fireworks to set off. Lots of noise and lots of color everywhere. After a late dinner, we made our way to the Central Plaza to see the new year in. The streets were full of people and no one was really waiting to light fireworks off until midnight cause on every corner you nearly tripped over someone setting something off- kids, adults, people of all ages. It was quite a contrast to our highly legislated, highly controlled but quite spectacular fireworks off the Space Needle in Seattle. I always enjoy that show but I feel quite disconnected from the experience. Here we felt truly right in middle of the fireworks. In fact, if you weren't careful they would hit you. There was lots of drinking on the streets as well. ...and as we approached midnight the amount of colorful fireworks and loudness of fireworks being set off heightened. It began to feel like street corners were in competition with each other and folks in the square whistled and screamed in applause of the fireworks they liked. Even amidst all the excitement, Carol and I had to keep walking around the square to stay awake since we have been on a fairly early to rise, early to bed schedule here in Central America to maximize our time in the sun. Shortly after midnight we went back to our hostel to try to get some sleep. That proved to be a tall order since the parties in the city and the fireworks continued through the early morning. On New Years day we really enjoyed just exploring the city on foot and checking out all the old churches and exploring some fascinating art galleries. Being a colonial style city, there are lots of building with wonderful courtyards and beautiful gardens in the courtyards. We enjoyed sunset on the deck and went for a late dinner at La Merced where all the street food vendors line up to sell tortillas with salsa, guacomole, cheese....and there's meat too if you like that sort of thing:) ...we found the freshly made tortillas with guacamole and salsa quite delicious. We left bright and early on January 2nd for Lago de Atitlan and this is some video I caught of sunrise over Antigua...quite stunning!
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