Guatemala City

Monday, September 17^th 

I caught the chicken bus to Guatemala City at 4:30am with Alice so that I could get my visa situation situated at the Immigration Office. US citizens can only stay in Guatemala for 90 days before they have to leave the country and come back or apply for an extension of another 90 days at the Immigration Office. Once I got to the city, I had to get passport photos made as well as a bunch of copies of my passport and my credit card. I got everything done, but learned that the office was closed due to Independence Day. We were told that the government took Friday off, so we thought that Monday would be fine. However, they decided to take Monday off as well, but didn't announce it to the public. I was soooooo annoyed!   

Alice and I momentarily freaked out because we thought we made a 4 hour bus ride for nothing. We weren’t sure if we should go back to Hawaii and come up another day or if we should spend the night. Alice remembered she had a rich doctor friend that lives in the city, so she called him and he said we could spend the night. After we figured out what our plan was, we headed to the mall to burn time while we were waiting for the doctor to get off work. We walked around for awhile and then we got a Starbucks. We were curious to see if it would taste different here, but it tasted exactly the same. For lunch, we grabbed sausage sandwiches off the street. The sandwich was SO good, but it made my stomach kind of gassy.

Next, we headed to Walmart. It was so weird to see first world goods again. Here in Guatemala only rich people shop at Walmart, which is completely the opposite of the US. I think the weirdest thing that I saw was tamales in a bag. The packaging said it would last a year in the bag….I’m not sure how good a year old tamale would be. I got some food items that you can’t find in Hawaii and I got Paco some dog treats as well. I’m so excited to give him treats for the first time!

 

 Learning that you can get just about anything in Guatemala in a bag...

After we were done shopping, we took a taxi to the doctor’s house. We were just in time for dinner, which was beans, bread pastries, and carrot soup. It was simple, but delicious! The doctor and son were so nice and I loved their house. It was gated with a security guard, so it was probably one of the safest places to stay in the city. It was so weird to go from rural Hawaii to the skyscrapers of the city. I don’t know what I think of the city…everything seems so extreme in it.