Bienvenidos a Guatemala!

We are now in Antigua, Guatemala, writting this from the nicest little hotel, at which we are sleeping tonight. And it is fantastic here!!!

But let me back it up af bit...

Last time we wrote we might not have been in the most positive mood. Our luggage was gone, the weather was bad and Miami turned out to be, well, disappointing. I don't know what we expected, but it's at "fancy hotel, lie on the beach, spent a lot of money" kinda place. And that is not necessarily bad, it's just not what we wanted, or could afford, anyways.
And, on top of that, when we finally got our luggage, it was wet. The bags and everything in it were simply wet. Bummer!
We did manage to find all the local white people. They were all in a mall, Aventura Mall, up north, shopping in JC Penney, Marcy's and all the other shops. So, downtown Miami is basically all Latin Americans and everybody, who is a bit well off, live up north, in Suburbia.

Well, as you maybe can imagine, we were just a bit tired of the whole thing yesterday. We wanted to leave! With out backpage and luggage - which was now relatively dry - we went looking for the public bus to the airport, where we wanted to spent the night (saving the 50 bucks for hotel). Public transportation is really not convenient, and the whole situation was really annoying, but then we met Sofie and Juire(?) from Belgium. They had the same plan as us: find the cheapest transportation to the airport, sleep there and save a good 70-80 dollars. And they were really, really nice. We had a great evening/night in the airport with them, sleeping just a few hours on the floor close to Mexicana Air's checkin counter.

And then, finally, this morning, really early, we checked our baggage in with American Airlines, and waited the last couple of hours until flight AA983 left Miami Airport. Last note on Miami: it was fun to be in The States, but we will probably go somewhere else next time!

A few hours later we landed in Paradise. Well, not excatly. We landed in Guatemala City airport. This wasn't anything special, except they have a welcome band, and already here Miami Airport was left trailing behind.

We got our luggage (which arrived this time ... Hurrah!) and got on a shuttlebus to Antigua. It was a good idea to get out of Guatemala City, because it was mostly slum (or so it seemed from the windows of the bus).

But then we got to Paradise, which in these parts bear the name Antigua (alright, we migt over-do it a bit, but it's close). Antigua is in the bottom of a valley made up of 4-5 vulcanoes, maybe more. You kind of drive down to it. And then we got to the most lovely city. We checked in at the Yellow House, a small hotel with cheap rooms, small patio on the roof, lovely little garden and free internet. We had a small walk, took a few pictures. And it's just great here.

Tomorrow we will try to make a small plan for the next couple of days, which will properly involve some Spanish lessons, because every body here speak .. well, Spanish!

Check out the update pictures from Miami and our new ones from Antigua:

http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/rgrunnet/my_photos

And take care for now.