Day 1 – Traveling to Guatemala

Carmen and I are off on another trip.  This time we are heading to Guatemala for a tour around the country and to visit a couple of the Mayan sites.  We will visit both the Quirigua and Tikal Mayan archaeological locations and hope to see, and show, some nice ancient buildings.  As you can see from the map below, we will also visit a coffee plantation and hope to bring some coffee back home.  

During our time in Guatemala, we will stay at four hotels, with the one in Guatemala City at the beginning and end of the trip.  I think the hotel at Lake Atitlan overlooks the lake; I'm in hopes that we are facing west so I can get several lake sunset pictures.















Our trip will begin when we will fly out of Orlando.  But to fly south, we first have to go north to Atlanta to get our flight to Guatemala City.  Of course, if you have been through the Atlanta airport, you usually fly into concourse A or B, at the end of the gates, and have to go to concourse T, also at the end of the concourse.  We had 35 minutes, to get there, with a bathroom break in between.  We just made it as they were calling our zone number for boarding.

According to the things I've read, we made sure that we packed plenty of mosquito spray; after all we will be in the rain forest.  

After arriving in Guatemala City, we made through the immigration line to enter the country.  I swear I think all passport control officers attend the same training, no smiling. 

We go to get our luggage and we are directed to get into a certain line.  When we get to the front of the line, we had to press a button.  Either a red or green light turns on; if it is green, go to the line that ignores the screening and scanning, red get in line.  We turned red, but wait is this the line to get our luggage?  No, it is over there.  We leave this line to go get our bags and this time on our return, Carmen presses the button.  Yea, it is green and we skip the screening. 

  

Through customs we have to wait for others who are also on the same tour and going to the same hotel, the Barcelo, to get through customs.  After checking in and getting to our room, I get a picture of our view, before taking a nap from the long flight; since I did not sleep on the plane and instead watched a movie. 

Here is the view from our eighth floor balcony at night before going to bed.  We are here for two nights and tomorrow we will explore Guatemala City looking forward to the museums.