Other than the fact that Sarah and the kids didn't come this time, in many ways this trip was even better than our first one, or at least different in some fun ways. Sarah had good reasons for not coming, the most obvious being that she is pregnant and the bus ride to get to Guatemala City from Teguc can be challenging even for people who are allowed to go on the Space Mountain ride at Disneyland. We crossed over into Guatemala past Puerto Cortes, as opposed to last year when we went through Copan. The roads may not have been as good, but the scenery was nice and different, the border crossing seemed somewhat safer, and we arrived two hours earlier than we did last year.
The biggest difference this time around was that we ventured out a little. Though the main purposes of our trip were still to visit the temple and spend time with good friends from our church congregation, we took a few hours each day to get away and experience Guatemala. Thursday we found a taxi to take us into downtown Guatemala City. Our taxi driver's name was Mario and he looked a lot like Mario from the Nintendo video games. He also drove a lot like Mario drives in the Mario Kart racing video games. Somehow we made it downtown unscathed. He took us to a nice local restaurant where we tried our hand at making tortillas and feasted on local cuisine.
After dinner, we walked out of the restaurant and waited for Mario to go get the car. Several vendors came up to us selling their wares. I wanted to get Sarah something nice and so I responded to a man that came up to us selling Jade necklaces. We haggled over the price for a while. After agreeing on what I thought was a fair price, I gave him a bill expecting some change back. Matt and I turned around for a split second and the dude was gone without giving me back my change. That's closest I've come to getting robbed in Central America.
We proceeded to a beautiful, spacious central square, with a pretty, large cathedral and an even bigger old parliament building, turned museum. We walked through the cathedral and took a guided tour of the museum. Strolling through the square, we felt very vulnerable and standout-ish. Our surroundings reminded us of Budapest, Hungary and made me feel like we were in a Bourne identity movie. We made it safely through the square snapping a few pictures and proceeded quickly to the market where we picked up a few local treasures.We decided to spend the first part of Friday in Antigua, a small tourist town less than an hour away from Guatemala City. We called Mario again, to take us to the bus, but somehow he talked us into letting him take us all the way to Antigua and back, which ended up working out fine, other than him almost getting us killed with his driving a few times. Antigua was pretty and interesting. Shewing away the tour guides that we were warned were more like scam artists, we bought a little tour book and followed one of its recommended walking guides. There were a ton of old Catholic cathedrals, convents, monistaries, etc. We poked our heads into several craft shops and perused more markets discovering many inexpensive treasures. But the highlight of Antigua was having lunch at a restaurant that we've been meaning to go to since we arrived in Central America called Ni-Fu Ni-Fa. It's an Argintinian steak house chain. We've seen several of them since we've been here and there's one just a few minutes from our house. The atmosphere was gorgeous and the food was delicious. With a large, bottomless salad bar, a nice selection of higher quality meats, and an excellent selection of deserts, we will definitely be visiting this restaurant again when we get back to Teguc.
