Shay-La

• Joegoldston's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Quetzaltenango

Trip Start Dec 30, 2010 Previous
Entry Trip End Ongoing Next
Entry

  Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
Sunday, January 30, 2011

Sunday morning in WayWay transforms itself into a street fair across from our hotel and so when we went through the doors into the street in search of breakfast it took a few minutes to get our bearings. But quickly enough, there were the chicken buses with their big chrome hoods and colorful paint jobs eagerly waiting for a few more poor souls to cram on board. Maybe it makes economic sense for the passengers. You can ride for about one dollar US per hour of travel. But with 60 people on it at any one time and two employees and gas at $4 a gallon???
Oh well....not for me to judge by my US standards of comfort and decorum. The hillsides between WayWay and Xela were much less forested.  Mostly pine with much more open farm land even though the plots were very steep in places. As we neared, Xela we began to catch glimpses of volcano Santa Maria a nearly perfectly conical sarape and clearly the dominant figure on the landscape at 3770 meters high. It is all covered by hardwoods so it doesn't appear to have been active for some time. There is supposed to be an active one somewhere nearby and I believe it flattened Xela in the early 1900's so the Greek architectural of their central Parque dates from that. It seems a bit out of place here; but that is the town theme. We had a nice lunch at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the plaza and then had coffee and a chocolate milkshake in a Bavarian themed shop that serves really good coffee and food. While we were there we played a dice game and Sharon beat me handily so she is really riding high now . By dark the plaza had pretty much emptied out in contrast to the zocalos in Mexico where the music would just be getting started and the people would be pouring in. Our hotel wasn't far which was nice since it always feels less secure to walk along empty streets in a strange place and streetlights are less abundant than in the US. I have found reference to a birding preserve nearby so tomorrow we will try to make arrangements to go there.

Slideshow Share

Previous Entry Next Entry