This morning, we met with our Caravan Tour Director, Oscar Valiente and our entire group of 23 travellers. The 8 AM information session allowed us to introduce ourselves and learn more details about the trip. We are the only Canadians on the tour with all other guests being American - but others spoke of their home originally being in Venezuela, El Salvador and one was born in Guatemala!
We hopped onto our bus at 9:30 AM. It is a lovely comfortable Volvo coach (that seats 60 people) and is capably driven by our driver, Herber de la Cruz.
We did a driving tour of Guatemala City (GC) today. The city was founded in 1776 and now has a population of 4 million. The city land area is comprised of 2,000 square kilometres.
GC has a history of two or three earthquakes every century. The last one was in 1976. Of course building standards are continually improving so buildings can no longer be built higher than 105 meters.
I felt very safe in Guatemala City (GC), but like any city it has its more dangerous sections. The hotels are in zone 9 so the Barcelo GC is safe and situated less than 10 minutes drive from the airport. The hotel is gated and has security monitoring who drives in and out of the parking lot.
Oscar explained that the current president of Guatemala is cracking down on crime. Many people drive vehicles and motorcycles without a license and insurance. President Bernardo Arevalo was elected in 2024 and he is pushing for officials to ticket for these driving infractions. As such, a demonstration was expected downtown to protest the enforcement of license and insurance requirements to drive on the road. Caravan Tours adjusted our schedule to accommodate the scheduled demonstration and visited the city centre this morning. And that is why we appreciate hiring companies with expertise and knowledge of what is going on locally when visiting a country new to us! We wouldn’t have been aware of the local politics at all!
This is the square where the demonstration was to be held this afternoon.
J and I are standing in that same city square with the Federal Government building behind us. The building is made with tuff - a stone that has a green hue in it.
We saw an area Oscar called shantyville - a slum so to speak but people were provided with water and electricity and education. This was positioned right across from a huge football (we would call it soccer) stadium.
The shantyville described above.
We returned to the hotel and enjoyed a buffet lunch and a little relaxation time before we headed out to visit the National Museum of Archeology and Ethnology. We were greeted by a 9 piece marimba band when we walked through the door!
This museum featured Mayan rocks, pottery and jewellery from the pre-classic (2000 BC - 250 AD), the classic (250 AD - 950 AD) and post classic (950 AD - 1492 AD) eras.
The museum recently spent 2.6 million quetzals (about 500,000 CAD) renovating to excavate, clean and restore the monuments and create iron bases, covered in wood to safely display them.
This photo shows some of the restoration effort.
Finished product here with J standing to show you the size and scale!
When we returned to the hotel, we went for a refreshing swim in the pool.
We enjoyed supper with new friends from the Caravan tour, Allen and Lynn from New Jersey.
We are to have our bags outside the hotel room door at 8 AM tomorrow and be on the bus at 8:30 AM. Must get myself organized for our departure tomorrow!
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