Bags Can´t Run - Blogabond

So we made it. Hardly surprisingly though, our bags didn´t. At first I thought my baggage label hadn´t made it either but I found it just before panic set in and managed to log my claim with the charmingly apologetic men at American Airlines. (Thank god, I thought, I had had the foresight to put the address and phone number of the Spanish School in my hand luggage.) They assured me that the problem was probably purely due to our rushed connection in Miami and that there was another flight tomorrow which would hopefully come bearing our stuff.

So I headed out to arrivals and was greeted by Sergio, the driver from the school. Thanks to another essential hand luggage inclusion (phrase book and dictionary, thanks Davey!) I greeted him in return and together we lamented my "equipaje perdido". Despite being only 6.45ish pm it was almost totally dark, so my impression of Guatemala City as we set off in our little mini bus was fleeting. A powerful smell of rubber on the warm night air as we passed the landing strip. Colonial stone arches. Palm trees.

As we headed out of the city the smell of fast food drifted in, not McDonalds-like, but exactly the smell of food at funfares, which seemed simultaneously familiar and very exotic! This was swiftly followed by the overwhelmingly disgusting smoke from throngs of the old American school buses which have been adopted as public transport. And so, amid the chaotic 1 / 2 / 3 lane traffic, accompanied by the whistles of traffic police all but invisible in the darkness, optimistically waving tiny torches, we aimed for Antigua.

written by

Alex Kent on August 16, 2007 from Guatemala, Guatemala

from the travel blog: On the Varieties of Nature

Send a Compliment

You are a great Travel Writer, I almost feel as though I have been there!

Keep us posted - can't wait for the next installment - and the very best of luck on your great adventure.

Love Uncle Charlie.

written by Charles Kent on August 24, 2007

comment on this...