16/2/10 - day 69.

up at 7, making sure i had time to have breakfast ahead of a beast of an 8 hour bus journey to antigua. the journey was a lengthy one but didnt drag as much as id thought it might. some good scenery along the way, as is often the case in guatemala, other than that it was very uneventful. i have been trying to avoid the shuttle minibuses that they do but this was a good deal. only worked out to be less than 3 bucks than taking chicken buses and i didnt have to change, so we left at 8am and got there about half 4.

upon arrival i had no intended destination for a hostel, but antigua is like tourist central and there are hostels, hotels, on every street almost. after a few minutes wandering, a local asked me what i was looking for, i said cheap hostel and he took me to one closeby that id read about in the lonely planet. he spoke perfect english, and said about how he wasnt even gonna bother asking for his commission from the hostel! after showering, i went off in search of food. headed towards the market, presuming this is where you usually find good, cheap, local fare but everything was closing down so my options were limited. i bumped into the belgian dude id met the night before and we found somewhere to eat (quesadillas).

antigua is a smallish town of about 50,000 people. its got lots of old churches, all colonial buildings, cobblestone streets, a few volcanoes loom over it in the background wherever you look up, and there's a huge tourist population. lots of people also come here to learn spanish. on every street there are agencies selling tours to just about every destination in guatemala. they say its not the 'real guatemala' and id agree. that said, its a very place and attracts so many people for a reason. it was actually quite nice being in a town that wasnt covered in litter, that actually had bins, no stray dogs everywhere you look and just generally well looked after.

after dinner, i headed back to the hostel where i abused their free internet and roughly planned my final couple weeks. the hostel was having some problems with its water works in that they had none. at all. this meant i had to go for a 10 minute walk to find somewhere (a BK) that i could sneak into unnoticed and use their lav.

when i got back there was a american dude and 2 german girls in the dorm, and we hung out on the roof top terrace for a bit. they had also had a long day travelling and all of us were in bed by about half 9.