Guatemala - Take 1

Hi All! I have been trying to write a blog giving you my first impressions of Guatemala. It turned out to be a ‘first this, then this’ kind of thing. In other words: long and boring. You’ll be happy to hear I deleted it in favor of a tour of the highlights. So here it is!
At the border between Belize and Guatemala as we were waiting for the rest of our group to arrive from Belize City we heard two shots. The kids are a little wild eyed so I was explaining to them how it was a bus backfiring when two army guys with guns drawn ran past us into the bush. So much for the backfiring bus theory. Turns out someone tried to sneak over the border. Word to the wise – if you are going to try and sneak over a border of any sort, probably the actual border crossing is a bad choice of location!

The actual getting through from Belize to Guatemala was surprisingly painless. Basically we were just waved through. Getting through the men trying to get you to exchange money with them or hire them to drive you or whatever was much more difficult. I did OK exchanging money but Brynn managed to get us 50 Quetzals for $20 Belize (the exchange is x3). Whatever. If crossing the border was painless, the trip from there to Guatemala City made up for it! There were 27 of us in a bus that sat 29 if all the aisle jump seats were used. Crowded and uncomfortable – for 13 hours!!!

Beautiful countryside, though. Guatemala City is a thoroughly modern city of about 12,000,000 people. Lots of highrises and glass buildings, McDonald’s, Burger Kings, Pizza Huts, you get the idea. The traffic is unreal! Think of Edmonton at rush hour and then take out all traffic controls. That’s right – no traffic controls. Word to the wise #2 – when in Guatemala City, don’t drive, take a cab! Guatemala is not the safest country for tourists and Guatemala City is less safe than the rest of the country so we were surrounded by safety measures. On the bus, someone ‘phoned every 15 minutes to make sure we were OK and find out where we were. Now, is it just me or does this seem to be a rather lame safety measure? I think it was more of a ‘find the bodies fast so it doesn’t scare the other tourists’ measure! We stayed in the church MTC compound in the church guesthouse. Security here was somewhat more reassuring. It was gated, locked and guarded by church members with guns. I chose to believe said church members knew what they were doing as far as the guns were concerned. The temple is gorgeous! Unfortunately it is too big and the grounds too small to get a decent picture.

The grounds are fenced and armed guards patrol the fence line outside the grounds. I took Brynn, Kori and another young woman from our branch (Juana) to do baptisms and they joined up with a group of youth from Honduras. These youth were great! They just swallowed up our girls and made them part of the group. The language barrier was totally ignored and they were immediate friends. It was so nice for our kids. The trip home was unreal: we got on the bus at 4:30 am and got home at 9:30 pm. Traffic was bad and there was a bad accident on the highway held us up for 2 hours. Definitely not a trip I want to take every week but a great experience none the less.