Guatemala Side trip

I took a solo side trip to Guatemala from Costa Rica on an all inclusive package deal. I flew from San Jose to Managua Nicaragua and had to change planes to fly to Guatemala City. The flight was perfect with good weather and no problems. I had a good time with the flight attendants. The Central American women seem to like slightly gray haired men I found. We joked around all the way to Guatemala City. I went through customs and immigration without a hitch and was promptly met by my sign carrying driver that took me to my hotel.

I asked him to take the long way to get to the hotel so that I could see some of the city. He was very reluctant to go off the shortest route and I asked him why. He started to explain that many parts of the City are not "good" areas. In other words it was not safe and he was not allowed to do it. He did make a few circles around the part of town near my hotel so that I could have some idea of the neighborhood I was in. We had to go through a guarded gate on the road to get into this secure area of town for tourists. There was a fence around the area as far as I could see. Instead of putting the criminals in prison here in Guatemala it appears to me that they put the tourists in one.

The hotel was very nice and the people working it it were friendly and helpful. I got a couple of free welcoming drink coupons to use at the bar. I went up to my room and got cleaned up then went down to the bar for a before dinner drink or two. There were about a dozen tourists at the bar when I arrived. I stood next to a small mixed group of young Americans and ordered my drink. It turns out the group were all American Coast Guard personnel on leave or something. I told them I had seen their cutters and air support many times while I was out fishing in Costa Rica, Panama and Mexico. They told me they like to keep a low profile so they don't like to hear that I had seen them working. I am sure that they had seen and heard much more of me than I had of them. They pretty much have surveillance that listens and watches everything that moves on the water including fishing boats. Mostly they use the information to find drug smugglers and then they tell the local coast guards where to go make the stop and arrests. The American Coast Guard even pays the local governments for the fuel to go arrest the suspects. These kids looked to be around 19 or 20 years old. We had a good time talking about fishing in Central America but they would not talk about their work at all. They explained the secure area that we were in at the moment. Guatemala is controlled by various drug lords and different parts of the city are controlled by different drug lords. There are also a lot of criminals and gangs working in Guatemala City and country. The easiest way to protect tourists was to make this fenced in area around some hotels, bars, clubs and restaurants and guard it well. The rest of the city was more or less controlled by the drug lords and gangs. It was a very dangerous place outside of the security zone. The hotel staff warned me not to leave the area or I might be killed or kidnapped or just robbed.

There was a big shoot out on the streets of Guatemala City while I was there. Some foreign officials from El Salvador were murdered in an elaborate movie style ambush. It was basically a retaliatory drug turf war killing according to the news reports. Four of the shooters were caught however. They were arrested and taken to the maximum security prison. The shooters were high ranking police and they were murdered in prison when men armed with machine guns entered the prison and murdered them in another Hollywood style execution. The newspapers were eating up the stories with diagrams and arrows on pictures of the scenes and how the planning was done and who the suspects were. The televisions had re-enactments and lots of commentary about the state of the country and the drug wars. I was cracking up watching the locals watch these stories on the television and everything. Everybody was acting scared but apparently loving it at the same time. (for details see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6396051.stm)

The bartender told me a lot about the country and its problems and the young Coasties filled me in on some facts also. I was impressed by the amount of violence. Especially the violence against women. Thousands of young women just disappear, kidnapped off the streets and first gang raped then murdered, mostly by street gangs. They told me six thousand women a year go missing. I could not find accurate numbers anywhere about this. In fact I could find very little information about it but all the locals I talked to verified that thousands of girls disappear every year. The day I was there the first twelve pages of the newspaper were just the listing of the murders from the night before. All the stores and even little tiny shops have armed guards with sawed off shotguns at the ready. All the delivery trucks are also heavily armed and guarded. Quatemala is like a war zone.

Yet life goes on. Ironically to me, all the people I met were some of the nicest people I had met anywhere. They were sweet, friendly, and helpful. I like them a lot. So why all the violence? Some of the people told me it is because the military trains all the young men with compulsory service and then releases them a couple of years later as trained killers with no jobs so they go out and form gangs to make a living or work for the drug lord armies.

The next morning I was picked up by a small van to take me to Antigua. The van had an armed guard of course and the driver was trained in avoidance he told us. We also had a very specific route we were to take with out any stops that were not authorized. The highway bandits frequently act like police or military before they shoot and rob you I was told.

The roads were good concrete roads but maybe a bit too narrow for my taste. We made it safely to Antigua and went straight to the four seasons hotel to check in. The hotel was very nice. I asked about security and they told me that I would be safe as long as I did not get drunk or stoned or do stupid things. Antigua is a big tourist mecca and the police crack down hard on crime here they said.

I walked around town and made some friends in a street cafe drinking a few beers. I also did my prepaid tour around town. All the tours seem the same to me after doing so many of them. We did the cathedral and the town square and the big shopping mall and the little shopping complex owned by the tour operator of course. Then some lunch at another restaurant owned by an uncle of the bus driver. Then a drive around town to see the views of the volcanoes and we went to a nearby town to see a crafts fair and a jade mask factory. Pretty typical. Sorry about my lack of enthusiasm for these tours. I would never actually pay for one but when it is included in my tour I do it to get a feel for the area. I don't buy souvenirs but I enjoy talking to the people that make them.

After the tour I had dinner back at the hotel and went back out on the town with the friends I had met earlier. I ended up not even using my fancy hotel room that night. I met a girl from Texas that I hooked up with for the night instead. She was taking Spanish classes in Antigua. The Spanish schools all seem to be the same all over Central and South America--they are basically just party central with about a three or four to one ratio of girls to boys in the classes. Single guys should be signing up for classes just for the good odds.

My three days in Antigua went fast. The cobblestone streets and friendly people made it into a nice quaint little city. There was lots of good food and drink around but not much to do unless you like looking at cathedrals built around the sixteenth century. There are lots of old indian ruins around the country and I checked some out on my tours. Then I took my armed escort back to my hotel in Guatemala City for a night and then flew back to San Jose.