Don't dare go there they said. Very dangerous for backpackers... looks like it's been bombed, they said. Avoid it at all costs.

I kinda like Guatemala City. Not exactly where I'd chose to spend a vacation, but sort of a miniature version of what I imagine Mexico City to be like. Except for the unfailingly appalling architecture, it could be a big city in the US. I'm spending my first two nights in the Howard Johnson, over my budget but I reserved online so I'd have a definite place to stay when I got off the bus.

"There'd been a shooting."
Today I had my complimentary breakfast at the hotel... quite nice to be in a typical American hotel room... and boarded a giant city bus to the center. You know those kind that look like two buses hooked together with a huge accordion? I read in the paper that there'd been a shooting on one of Guatemala City's buses a few weeks ago... but still. Even if someone got shot every day on a bus, there are hundreds of them... and

Sculpture Remembering the 1996 Peace Accords

then you'd have to get on at just the wrong time. These are the same things I tell myself when worrying about a plane crash or terrorist attack.

The trip here from Antigua nearly had some real excitement. We stopped and picked up some people and then turned around and headed back for Antigua. I was sitting with a guy from the UK and we were wondering what was going on. Then he says he heard someone say we had to take a guy to the hospital. How fun, I thought. An emergency bus/ambulance trip. The driver did seem rather intent on getting wherever he was going in a hurry, but I didn't see the expected excitement around an afflicted person. Turns out we were still headed to Guatemala City and there was never a medical emergency on board. Maybe next time. I just hope I'm not the medical emergency.

"You see some white faces from time to time."
So I walked around the center for a little while this morning. There are no tourists here. I think I may have seen two but I'm not sure. You see some white faces from time to time, but they're most likely employees of the American companies with offices here or the embassy. The embassy, by the way, is huge. I walked by it yesterday. It's like the size of a three story Home Depot or something... except that it's the typical 1950's government architecture. Makes you think that if we maintain this kind of facility in Guatemala, we're spending some serious money keeping embassies in most every country in the world. Maybe we should toss a few more nations into Bush's axis of evil so we can shut down the embassies and save some money.

I also happened by the Ministry of Education. And just as I'm typing this I'm making sense of what I saw there. There were seriously 43 armed police officers guarding the place. I wondered if it was because of the strike going on in the city or if they always have that kind of security. Now I just realized... it's the teachers who are on strike and it's the Education Ministry. Duh.

"They know how to get attention."
Teachers in the US, by the way, might learn something from these guys. They think they're underpaid...

Guatemala City Makes Way for Pedestrians

just like teachers at home. So they walk out of the schools, shut them down for a month, and hold protests that close parts of the capital, the main airport, the country's biggest tourist attraction at Tikal. They know how to get attention. I think it's actually illegal for teachers to strike in most US states, but it'd be an interesting thing to see. Imagine your high school faculty marching on Washington or O'Hare airport.

I'm hanging around here till Monday, when I'll check on my package one more time. I don't hold out much hope, but we'll see. If it's not here I'm off to Copan, the ruins just across the border in Honduras. I'll do that for a couple of days and come back here later in the week if the package shows up.