The Truth About Guatemala : It sucks.

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The Truth About Guatemala : It sucks.

It's not a matter of oppinion, it's a matter of fact. If the world was a living organism, Guatemala would be an inflamed hemorrhoid. There's plenty of self proclaimed travel-savvy idiots out there who count Guatemala as a travel destination. It is a travel destination in the sense Sing Sing is an amusement park. Sure it can be amusing. Like for instance when you hear the guy who used to fuck your wife on the quiet got sent there. If anyone advises you to go to Guatemala, you may venture a guess as to the state of affairs between Mr. and Ms. I don't know why he's suspecting you, but I'm sure there's a reason for it.

By now you probably imagine the issue with this chunk of scat inconveniently stuck right in between Mexico and such great places as Nicaragua has to do with safety and security. Guatemala is a sort of Nicaragua, without the spectacular sights, fascinating tropical forests and abundance of life, but with the same gang and drug problems. That is all true, but that's not really the problem with the place. At least not the biggest one.

Consider this : walking in the streets, you will soon enough notice that every other person walking is actually looking in the opposite direction. That means only half of all guatemalans look where they're walking. If they did it randomly it would come out the same. The reason you will notice all this soon enough is because they will walk right into you. If they won't, they will suddenly stop, turn around and start running, right into a pole if you manage to duck in time. And of course the sidewalks are 14 inches wide at their widest, and proudly carry the entire city garbage dump, from small bits and pieces to one foot wide piles of metal that in the deluded minds of the locals constitute vendor stands.

But that's still not the biggest problem with the place. Nor the fact that it's made up of a single city with a single airport (ok, ok, they have four or five air strips in other villages, that they insist to call airports and towns), which come to think about it, isn't really an airport. For instance, consider this image.

Now, pray tell the seasoned traveller, who has seen maybe fourscore airports all over the world, which fucking way ? Check in counters are to the right, but which way for the gate ? Note that salida means exit. Except you just came in the other way. Do you need to go upstairs ? That's the food court. Well ?

Let me tell you then. See those frosted glass panels ? You have to go through there. Why ? Because that's what the intelligent guatemalans decided. Where does it say that's the right way ? Mmmyeah.

So, you go through there and you find a dead end. Doh. But wait, there's this stairwell reminescent of a middle ages castle tower. It doesn't say anything, therefore it must be the way to the gates. Right ? You are starting to get the hang of this. So, congrats Larry, here's the next room :

What's with all the people ? They are waiting in line. Why ? BECAUSE THERE IS A SINGLE GATE. I am not kidding, whether your ticket says boarding at 13:30, gate 2 like this girl I was exchanging impressions with or 14:50, gate 7, you still go through their one and only gate. In principle, you could miss your flight because a lot of people boarding half hour later decided to clog it up. You have to wait in line after people who are flying half hour to a full hour after you. Isn't that brilliant. One would think this is precisely the reason they have gates in the first place. But if one were from Guatemala, one wouldn't think anyway.

So, you sit in line, and in a while you meet the reason why there's a line at all : there's this idiot checking your boarding pass. Weee. So I show him my boarding pass, my tickets, my baggage claim checks (which, remarkably enough, clearly state : "This is not the baggage check described in article 4 of the Warsaw Convention", in spite of being the thing they issue when they take your bags. Why ? Because in their monumental stupidity, Guatemalan authorities figure they can squeeze their way out of paying you damages if they manage to lose your bags, not realising that such disclaimers are not permitted and no court would uphold. I just chuckle and move on), my passport, yet there's a problem and he won't let me pass, but he can't explain what the problem is either, not in english, not in spanish and not in any idiom known to man. Who hires customer contact personel with a speech impediment to work in an airport ? Guatemalans. I show the guy the finger, since it's all he hasn't seen so far. Eventually some well meaning Australians explain I must go pay the fee.

So where does one pay this "fee", not that it's legal to require foreigners to pay fees when leaving your god forsaken shithole. You go through the entire food court, and up on the left, well camouflaged with potted plants and dumbass advertisements to shitty airlines, there's this office. You need to pay about 3 dollars for "Airport Security". That's right folks, they expect me to go about 500 yards out of my way in a wild goose chase just so I can pay them 3 bucks for airport security. It's not like they could take it out of the ticket prices or anything. Firstly, the 20 minutes it took me to find the respective office, and the other 30 minutes I got stuck with waiting in line at their Sole Gate (tm) because of it cost, on the average, about 50 times that. Normally, it would take half that to book a flight and pay the ticket, except I had the misfortune to use a Guatemalan travel agency, and they took about 6 hours to process a card. Obviously. Secondly, the fact that they got me pissed off enough to share these things with you, along with the entire host of dirty little secrets and sordid details about their shitty country will cost them that much more. All in all, a very guatemalan move.

This was the only airport I have ever been where it honestly took me 3 hours from getting off the taxi to sitting down in my plane seat. It rarely takes over an hour, unless there's a fight or a bomb threat or anything like that. So, if you are considering flying to Guatemala, bear in mind that you will have to put up with the world's most disfunctional airport, ran by the world's most disfunctional people, and it took me 3 hours in a good day, with no incidents, to get through. It will probably take you 6, and pray that nobody looses it and whacks a helpfull employee. You might be there for days.

And the above is typical for all Guatemala. It appears to the outside eye like a country where average ten year olds decided to copy the adults. They made themselves an airport, except it's really an air strip, and while replete with ads it has no usable signs. They made themselves a town, that really needs to be called Guatemala City, because otherwise you'd never guess it's supposed to be a city. It looks more like a random deposit of discarded materials that some mentally chalenged apes piled up in a strange fashion, very vaguely reminescent of housing.

Then there's the town of Antigua, which is supposed to be this wonderfull place, except it's really a collection of spanish ruins drowned in a sea of slums. They have taxis, a total of ten of them, and they charge five dollars a mile. They actually use cobblestone roads. You can't flush toilet paper. And if you want to rent an appartment, they will show you either a 5x6 feet room with a bed in it and explain you can use the kitchen, which is really this 50 year old stove that looks as if it exploded 3 or 4 times in it's lifespan, for which slice of eden the rent is 350$ or so, or a real apartment with a shared courtyard, for which the rent is 1k or so. Somehow this collection of barbarians expects you to put up with Manhattan rents and Harlem living conditions for the privilege of living in their stinking non-town, conveniently forgetting that there's about five million towns all over central and south america, and about a dozen or so countries you can pick from. A well.

So, to sum it up. If you want to spend a truckload of money for no services delivered by people who are too stupid to realise just how stupid they are, while enjoying the same exact attractions as all over the bay coast, book for Guatemala today. If you'd rather have a real vacation tho, find something else.

Guatemala lost 99.9 % of it's tourist trade because of this article.

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