Antigua, Guatemala

I’m sitting here in a park in Antigua, Guatemala, admiring that I have “5G”, but it takes 2 minutes to load this blog entry with no photos. (Update: I have some wifi)

So instead you’ll have to deal with my poor vocabulary of adjectives to describe this beautiful town. The streets are literally cobblestone, all of them, and the maximum speed a car is able to drive over them is 20kph — any faster and the car is disassembled faster than any car “chop shop” on the planet.

There’s a rather large conical volcano that dominates the view from pretty much anywhere here. Look south and there it is. It becomes very clear to me how Pompeii happened.

The town itself has a Spanish Colonial/South American blend (unsurprisingly), with a regrettable modern west influence — I’ve seen a Starbucks, a Subway, and a Wendy’s. At least they have the common decency to keep with the local aesthetics and not plaster gaudy neon lights and glass windows everywhere. 

The hotel I’m staying at is quite lovely, it reminds me of some in Nepal.

This afternoon I meet my group and find out what the plans for the next two weeks. In the meantime I’m going to continue to explore, and keep an eye out for pyroclastic flows.