From Mexico City to Antigua (Guatemala)

So, what did I do the last  days?

I spent some wonderful last days in Mexico City. Especially the last night out with Paty, Carlos, Dani and Alex was really great. We went to a nice restaurant, had great food and a bottle of Tequila.

On Wednesday then I had to catch my plane to Viallhermosa and then the bus to Palenque. And there (in Palenque) it was so hot, I just had forgotten about that. On Thursday I of course first thing went to the ruins of Palenque. They were great as ever and i am quite sure, I will come back again, as I will definitely come back to Mexico.

Here are some pics of Palenque Ruins:

The Plan was to go directly from Palenque to Antigua. But I had to realize that this was impossible. There is just no way around San Cristobal de las Casas. So I went there again, the third time now. Good, that it's just a lovely small city in Chiapas.

So I bought a ticket for the bus on Friday morning at 9. Of course I was at the bus station on time (a little past 8) in order not to miss the bus. At the bus station I met a nice german couple who also wanted to go to San Cristobal. 10 min before 9 I was trying to find out if our bus was already there... well, I was told that there was a little problem and the bus would not come at all. But there is another one, which should leave at 9:10, buuut... this one is late and is supposed to come betwenn 9:30 and 10:00 a.m. So we waited and waited and chatted and so on. At some point there was a lady going round the busstation asking all the people where they wanted to go. We told her our destination, but no reaction at all.

At 10, I tried to find out about this other bus. The lady at the counter told me that she would tell me when it arrived. Okay for us. Suddenly this other lady who was asking about our destination told us, that there was a bus leaving at 10, but there were only 2 seats left, so we can't go.

I followed her to tell her that I can also travel alone and would really like to be on the bus... so I got a place and left for San Cristobal 1 hour late.

The journey was 5 hours, which I tried to sleep most of the time in order not to get sick of the driving style.

Arriving at the bus station in San Cristobal I went to the very first travel agency I saw and got my ticket to Antigua for the next day (Saturday). This travel angency "happened" to work together with a hostel and as it was a cheap and supposedly nice one I decided to take this hostel (especially as they were even paying me the taxi to the hostel). So using this blog, if you ever travel to San Cristobal, I just can recomment Planet Hostel. It's not very far from the Zocala, it's cheap and clean and Alex, the guy who is working in the travel agency is really nice.

I did a little bit of "sight-seeing", but I did know the city already, so there was nothing new to see. I spent the evening watching THE royal wedding with some other girls and - of course - meeting some German people in the hostel.

At the next morning (Saturday now) I was picked up at my hostel a little past 8 by the van and the journey to Antigua began. I was told that it would take 9-10 hours...well that wasn't exactly the truth. The journey took 12 hours and I arrived in Antigua at 7 p.m. As Guatemala is not using daylight-saving-time, I am now 8 hours behind Germany and it was already totally dark when we arrived.

The bus driver stopped at the Convent Santa Catalina and we all had to leave the bus. I asked him if he could tell me where my hostel is and help me get a taxi. He was very "helpful" and told me that it's muy lejos (far away) and that a Taxi would cost me 30 Quetzales (3 €) and that he would take me there for 25.

Well, today I was walking through Antigua a lot, and I realized that my hostel is only 10 minutes walking distance from the convent. So he made good money with me (ums auf Deutsch zu sagen, er hat mich voll abezockt).

My hostel is really nice, i have private room, but shared bathroom. Still the bathrooms are really clean and spacious and have real hot water. But the best thing about it is the rooftop terrace with its bar. The view there is just great and I just don't want to miss it. That's why I decided to stay there for the next 2 weeks - if they change my matress. Daniella, who runs the hostel promised me to change it tomorrow. We will see.

The mission for today was finding a language school to start my spanish lessons. The bad thing was that it's May 1st today - labour day even in Guatemala so most of the schools I wanted to see were closed. But one was open, the people running it are really nice and they promised me, that they will have a suitabel teacher for me. So starting tomorrow at 8 a.m. I will be a student again doing some serious studying.  I will have 6 hours of studying every day and 2 hours of activities (like seeing the sights in and around Antigua, going to a macadamia nuts farm, coffee farm, learning to make tortillas...) we will see if I like them or not.

So the day was pretty good today. The only bad thing - I got my first sunburn. Until today I was pretty careful about using sunscreen and avoiding too much sun, but today... I burnt my shoulders and the top of my nose... looks a bit funny. I didn't realize it until I was back at the hostel. So I hope it's not too bad.

And I bought a sombrero - Panama style, to describe it. I'll try and post a picture of it soon.

So the next days will be pretty busy for me learning spanish and getting to know Antigua. It's a really small place so I guess I will see every single part of it. My objective is, to make many great pictures of the well known and also not so well known places of Antigua.