Guatemala city - I almost could not leave Guatemala

As you probably know, I went to Guatemala where I was volunteering. I was living in Santiago Atitlán – a small village right next to a huge lake which is called in the same way: Lago de Santiago Atiitlán. I was supposed to fly to Canada after the volunteering where I was invited to a wedding.

There is an airport in the capital city of Guatemala (Guatemala City), so I decided to go there two days before the flight. I wanted to get to know the city. I had no idea what was about to come yet.

Guatemala City

Oh, even reaching the destination could be another story for the whole article! Seriously, travelling in Guatemala was always a huge adventure. I will skip the arriving part for now and I will tell you what happened directly in the city.

I was hosted by one gentleman through Couchusurfing. When I saw his profile, I knew we could get on really well. Those expectations were correct. When we met, I felt really comfortable and we started to chat immediately.

Picture: Guatemala City is the capital city of Guatemala.

Is this a shopping mall?

He took me to one part of the city where a huge shopping mall is. Though, that shopping mall does not look like a mall, yet like another town. There are streets, there are many houses, there is a park... I had never seen anything like that in my entire life before. As I arrived quite late, we did not have much time for exploring more that day.

Picture: I know this looks like a town. But it is a part of the shopping mall complex!

Getting to the centre

I woke up in the morning and my plan was going to the city centre. It was quite easy to get there. I did not have any working SIM card, which means I had no data, but I still managed to get there. My host had explained perfectly how to get to the city centre before he left for work.

I enjoyed the transportation system in the capital city. One way ticket cost only 1 Quetzal, which is like 12 cents. There was another thing as well which made me smile. There are normal buses, but they call them a metro(an underground). I do not understand it till today, in fact, but it caught my attention in a nice way.

Picture: Bus which is called a metro.

What to do there

Anywhere you are in Guatemala, you will find some handmade products. There was a huge market with these products. I find it interesting. So even if I did not want to buy anything, I would go there.

Next, I went to the same market, but to the department of food. There were plenty of vegetables, passion fruit, pastry. But what I enjoyed the most was a market buffet. I loved tasting new meals which I would probably never taste at home. To give you an example, there was a dessert: a tortilla made of banana which was filled with beans. You may say that it seems disgusting, but it was very tasty.

Of course, I was also walking around the city, doing some sightseeing. Honestly, it was nice, but I thought there was not much to see. Though, I saw a man who was pasturing his goats right next to the main squareof the capital city! Would you believe? And when his animals needed to do number two, he just kicked into the brown balls, so it did not make a huge heap!

Picture: Goats in the capital city.

Why I got stressed

The day was almost finishing, so I went back “home”. William – my host – was already at home, so I prepared a dinner and we started to chat and eat. He was a really easy-going person. So we kept talking till midnight. Then I said I still needed to do a check-in for my flight, so I should better go to get all of my things organized.

However, when I tried to do the check-in, I got stopped. I could not do it as I did not have a visa for my stop-over destination in the United States of America!

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