Guatemala and Belize!: No volcaNO!

Well well I thought I’d drop a little update…

The weekend: we skipped the volcano due to some thunderstorm activity in the area. Instead, Javier and I left for Antigua on Saturday morning. Antigua is an old, very European Spanish city. It was once the capital of Guatemala, and is now the most “European” you will find in all of Guatemala. There is little here of the Mayan culture which defines much of the country. Instead, there are fantastic ruins of the catholic/Christian faith. The city itself sits amongst distant volcanoes which were cloaked in clouds when we visited.

We pretty much spent the day wandering, eating, and enjoying quality coffees. Interestingly, there was an outdoor photography exhibit discussing the state of water problems throughout the world. These ranged from water pollution in India, to damn constructions in China causing massive population relocations with little to no compensations, to the privatization of the Bolivian water system in the late 90’s by Suez (which made it illegal to even collect rainwater), the Rio Negro incidents in Guatemala leaving hundreds murdered and executed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%ADo_Negro_Massacre), and many, many more. It is refreshing and hope-inducing to see that the knowledge of the coming world water crisis and the power that people have to prevent water from becoming a business commodity. I encourage whoever is reading this blog to look into these and other water issues throughout the world. And, if you can spare the $3.99 and an hour of your time, watch the documentary Flow: For the love of water which show us examples of the problems with water becoming a business commodity. Yes, this even affects you Canadians in North America, since water is our largest natural resource.

Anyhow, other than that we stayed at a hostel named the Black Cat. For anyone that travels here, I highly recommend NOT staying there unless you wanna wake up in the middle of the night being bit by little bed bug friends…. It was, for lack of a better term, fucking terrible. But the next day, we wandered around the artisans market in Antigua, which is pretty huge, and hit up the local regular market where they sell everything from chocolcate covered pineapple pieces on a stick to rip off Raybans and t-shirts. Indeed, a tavellers paradise if bargains are what you’re looking for.

Signing off! Until soon!