Guatemala City

Hung out at venice beach for my 10 hour stop in LAX in USA


These surfers are crazy going in and out of these poles on the wharf

Continental Airways was a really sweet ride to Guatemala from the states


The best customs guard in Honduras who pulled out a fold up bed so I could sleep at the border when it closed.


Honduarian/Guatemalian border


3 September 2009

It was a long trip via the states to Central America with a long stop over in LAX where I went to venice beach for the day.

Guatemala city is chaos. It took a little used to the guards with guns at every shoe store, bank and even at the front of every bus. I was warned to stay out of the city centre by a police woman I meet on the plane and again by my couch surfing host who had been robbed at knife and gunpoint four times in the last year. I luckily was picked up by some university students I had meet through couch surfing who were really awesome and drove me around town and showed me some of the sights in the city. I soon saw how hard life is for these guys when I stayed at there house that night. Poverty swaps this country with shanty towns in every corner with locals doing everything and anything to make a quick dollar.

I got completely lost on a chicken packed local bus the next day trying to get out of the city and ended up in some strange suburb I have no idea where I was. With my broken Spanish and my lonely planet bible I somehow managed to get to the tourist office without being mugged and onto a bus headed for Roatan where I was to meet Karen. By sunset local bus after local bus I made it several hundred kms down the road to El Flores, where the Guatemalan/Hondurian border was. I was in the middle of nowhere, with no connecting buses this late, no hotels, food, or anyone who spoke English. After clearing customs, there was a power cut and it was clear I there for the night, the nice customs officer pulled out a fold up bed right in no mans land.

After a few more buses, random police checks and stops I followed the instructions of the lonely planet and found a hotel for the night in la ceiba. It was so nice to be n a smaller town, less hectic but a huge jump in temperature to 30+ degrees and loads of mosquitos. I finally caught a ferry in the morning to Roatan.