After a great weekend in the city that everyone had scared me of.... but thanks to CS (www.couchsurfing.com) I had a fantastic time there..!!
Wooww.... where do I start to write about this weekend...??Everybody that I had talked to about Guatemala and travelling there had totally warned and scared me of the capital - GUATE city.... so I ahd very very mixed feelings when Lucy had invited me to come over to her place there and stay with her on SAT night...
after we had actually been in the same places in Antigua on SAT night - SIN VENTURA and LA SALSA - but failed to recognise each other, we finally met in the Central Park of Antigua on SAT morning and went for a coffee with Maryanne, another CS friend.... both really nice girls, and then I decided to go and see for myself what GUATE city is really like and went back there with Lucy in the afternoon...
we took the chicken bus from Antigua to the bus terminal there which takes about 80mins and was an adventure in itself....even though Lucy said we did actually have a pretty luxurious ride with a seat for each of us.... and the guy next to me who was falling asleep and leaning on me half of the way was apparantly nothing compared to other people she had next to her on the bus before...
her house in GUATE is about 15 mins walk from the bus terminal via a weekend market and past some of the government buildings...she lives in a pretty nice area between Zones 4 and 5 with lotsa little bars, cafe, shops and restaurants nearby....
when we got back to her place, her friend Estuardo was just finishing to polish his super-cool Suzuki bike outside their house.... and then I was lucky enough to go for a little ride around their neighbourhood with him....great...!!
then one of their friends - Denise - came over for coffee and we were just hanging out and chatting at Lucy´s place for a few hours until her friends Noelle and Tita came to pick us up.... really nice girls who are both pretty tall for Guatemaltecans, which was great and made me feel less foreign.... ;) I actually found that generally the Guatemaltecans that I saw in the capital were lot more wordly, better-looking and better-dressed thatn the ones in Antigua...
so then we went to the Jazz Bar (Blue Note) about 10mins from Lucy´s house where Noelle´s cousin had a fundraising gig with his band cause they´re going to participate in a Jazz Festival in Atlanta, GA, next weekend.... and even though it was pretty close by we went there with Noelle´s car and everything was very safe....
nice place and the music was great.... I loved it....they were playing a mix of Flamenco, Jazz and Latin-American folk music.. just 3 guys with guitars and one percussionist, but it was just amazing.... beautiful music...
later Lucy´s friend Byron joined us there....she had called him cause he likes salsa as well and she did just everything in her powers to get me to dance salsa in her city as well...soooo sweet... but by the time we left from Blue Note is was already 11.30pm, so we only got to EL CLAVE aournd midnight, and same as in Antigua - everything in the capital closes at 1.00am
so we had another 40 minutes of Merengue and Reggaeton there, and then one more salsa song before they closed.... was a really great and fun night though, and we´re probably gonna go back there next SAT, just a bit earlier...
at her place we were just chatting with Estuardo - who had met us at EL CLAVE as well - for a while until I almost fell asleep on her sofa and went to bed instead.... her housemate was still on vacation in Canada, so I had her big bed to myself....great...
on SUN morning Estuardo cooked a great breakfast with pancakes and Pitaya - the pinkest fruit I´d ever seen !!! - for us.... super-good....
and then I was lucky enough that he wanted to go back to Antigua himself to catch up with Maryanne, and I got a ride with him on his great bike....aaahhhh - it was just amazing and soooooo much fun...!!! loved it...!!
he drove me back to Marta Julia´s house in about 50mins and since he couldn´t get a hold of Maryanne on her phone, he decided to come with Alex and me.... we had planned to walk up a little hill at the edge of Antigua from where you have a beautiful view over the city and also the volcano Agua.... I actually thought it would would take us about 2 hours or so to get up there, but it´s much much much closer than I expected and we got to the top in about 30mins.....enjoyed the view for a while, walked around up there for a bit and then back down to the city centre where we had some food, bumped into one of Alex´s high-school friends from back home (Johannisberg), and then I also had some ice cream.... it was great - Coco, Dulce de Delche and Guanaba - but maybe I should have had it cause I felt a bit sick this morning.... oh well....
then Estuardo went to meet Maryanne at her cousin´s place in Santa Ana, Alex went home and I did too....met the new girl in our house, from DC, who´s gonna be there for 2 weeks I think, had a quick shower and then had to rush to meet everyone again at 5.45pm to go to the quiz night at REILLY´s (Irish Pub here in Antigua).... Yeah, very British thing to do - but I hadn´t been to a pub quiz for ages and it was actually lots of fun, even though we - Lucy, Estuardo, Jeremish, Maryanne, her sister Shelley, Alex, Lisa and myself - didn´t really do too well in the end....
then Lucy and Estuardo went back to GUATE city, Maryanne and Shelley back to Santa Ana....Alex and I walked Lisa back home and stopped by a few shops and movie places on the way back to our houses and saw the last part of Kill Bill II in English with Spanish subtitles....
great night, amazing weekend...!!! and most of it wouldn´t have happened if it wasn´t for CS...!! Thanks again Casey, Seb and co. !!
posted by Astrid @ 11:43 AM
1 Comments:
hi sounds like you are having a great time there. Stay safe
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