Guatemala 2025 - Days Zero Through Three - Getting There, The City, And A Volcano Or Four

Sunday - 02/09 - Getting there.

We had a very early flight out of Omaha.  Our Uber arrived at 3:45am and dropped us off a couple hours before our flight to Houston.  Our original connecting flight departure in Houston was too close to our arrival time so we changed it to a later flight a week or so before we traveled.  While we waited in Houston we got a call from the tour company in Guatemala asking where we were.  Apparently our travel agent didn't tell them about the change.

We arrived in Guatemala and breezed through immigration and didn't even have to wait for our bags.  Our driver, who had wasted a lot of time on us took us to our hotel and got a sizable tip from us.  I recognized a few things along the way but I could see things like traffic patterns and the number of big buildings were drastically different from when I lived there.

Our hotel was the Camino Real which was a nice hotel back in the 70s when I lived in Guatemala.  It is still a nice hotel.  Strangely enough the orientation of the hotel was turned 90° from what I remember - another quirk of my faulty memory.

Monday - 02/10 - Exploring my old stomping grounds.

Today was a free day for us with no tours scheduled.  We stopped at the front desk after breakfast and asked how safe it would be to walk to my old neighborhood.  They assured us that it would be safe as long as we didn't make ourselves obvious targets and we should watch for pickpockets and people on motorcycles snatching bags.  This hadn't changed much in the forty-eight years since I lived there.

Simon Bolivar.

We left the hotel with nothing but our phones and some carefully stashed cash/cards in case we needed to buy anything.  I used to live in zone 14 not far from the hotel in zone 10.  We passed what used to be a large congested traffic circle that now included an underpass and a drastic change/improvement in traffic flow.

From the traffic interchange I started to look for landmarks that would help me navigate.  The building where my dentist was was still there.  The sports fields where my brother used to play pickup basketball games was still there (but larger and with a fence I didn't remember.  Our grocery store was replaced by a multi-story shopping center with a theater.  The Hardees, the first fast food joint to open in Guatemala, was gone ... replaced with a Burger King.  [When I left Guatemala in 1981 there were only two fast food places - Hardees and a KFC.  Now there are fast food places everywhere.]  Overall there were so many more tall buildings in zone 14.

I was a bit lost until I saw a Shell station.  It was across from a former traffic circle (no longer open to traffic) with a monument that looked familiar.  It was where my school bus dropped us off at the end of each school day.  This told me I'd missed my turn by a block or so.  We backtracked a little and walked through a church's parking lot and arrived at the entrance to my neighborhood ... now blocked by a gate.  It turns out my old neighborhood is now a gated community.  We talked to a couple of guards.  I explained I once lived here and wanted to show my house to the Wife but their response was "No es permitido" - It is not permitted.  I guess you can't go home again, as they say.

We returned to the main drag and crossed to the wide-park like median separating the boulevard and walked back along the statues and monuments built along the Avenida de Las Americas.

After returned to the hotel we went to the pool.  The Wife would make many visits to the pool.  I only made one serious visit where I took a dip in the pool and read my book under the shade of an umbrella.  Despite this shade my face and the top of my feet and my shins were burnt to a lobster red.

We realized the tour(s) we were on didn't include a tour of the city so we arranged for a city tour on a second free day we had.

The lesson for this day was that Guatemala City has changed a lot since I lived here.  It was a lot cleaner than I remember.  Things were built up a lot more.  Traffic was just as heavy as it was before but it flowed better ... sometimes.  US brands were everywhere.  Walmart was even here.  While I would say a lot of this growth was good for the city, the foreign capitalism probably wasn't that great.

Tuesday - 02/11 - Visiting the Pacaya Volcano.

When I was a kid we joined the neighbors and went to see the Pacaya volcano.  I have some pretty cool memories of that day but no photos.  We climbed up an inactive cone and looked down into the shorter active cone seeing molten lava and feeling gravel rain down (yeah, it was probably not very safe for us to be where we were).  Today we went on a tour to see how my memories held up.

The big three volcanoes - From right to left - Agua, Acatenango, and Fuego.

We were picked up at the hotel (along with a lady from Argentina working in Guatemala) and driven up to a small town not far from the volcano.  From there we started a 1.9 mile (3 km) hike up.  The Wife opted to ride a horse up the trail.  It was a steep hike and I was a bit pooped when we reached the top.  The altitude didn't help.

Along the way we had views of other volcanoes like Agua (dormant) and Fuego (very active) - there are thirty-seven volcanoes in Guatemala.  The Wife was amazed at how 'volcano-like' they looked.  She had seen volcanoes before - namely the Hawaii ones - but those didn't have the classic truncated cone shaped peak of most of the Guatemalan volcanoes.

The trail ended at an overlook where you could see Pacaya.  It had changed a lot since I saw it in the 70s.  There was only one cone now - I assume the active cone grew and merged with the dormant cone we had climbed.  There was a wisp of gases and smoke coming out of the cone as we took pictures.  As you can see, the weather was perfect.  The days before and after were overcast - our one day of weather luck.

Pacaya volcano.

We started the return trip on another trail.  We stopped briefly to roast multi-colored marshmallows over a steam vent near the volcano's base.

The drive back to the hotel was longer as we had to divert to Antigua (which we would visit at the end of the week) to bypass a traffic incident on the main highway.  Traffic hasn't changed at all.

The Wife went back to the pool while I chilled in the room - I didn't need to be any redder.

Wednesday - 02/12 - A Guatemala City Tour.

 On our second free day we were picked up for a short tour of Guatemala City.  There really isn't much to see in the city.  We visited an overview (with no views today because of the low clouds but with pieces of the Berlin Wall), the National Palace, the Basilica of Santiago, and the 'new' market (the original was destroyed by the 1976 earthquake - I was there but I don't remember the market being damaged).

The (former) National Palace.

After a few hours of walking around the old downtown you realize there weren't that many old buildings mostly because of the 1976 earthquake.  The result is a rather ordinary downtown area.  While Guatemala City is the biggest capital city in Central America, it doesn't have very much to see while you're there.  The interesting stuff is outside of the city which is where we would go next.  We were both ready to leave the city and see the countryside.

Pictures can be found in my 2025-02 Guatemala Google Photos album.