On a Labor Day weekend, I decided to leave boring Houston for a weekend trip to Guatemala, which had been on my radar after having visited fellow Central American nations Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Belize.

The flight was cheap and the arrival was at Guatemala City, which isn’t much of a haven for tourists, so I had the hotel I was staying at in Antigua, Good Hotel, arrange a driver to pick me up. The immigration line was lengthy and took more than an hour to clear. There was a disturbing number of hipsters that were simply visiting to attend rave parties. In retrospect I should have flown in the night before and stayed at a hotel next to the airport, as much of this day was lost to travel (flight plus drive to Antigua). Another option is to combine Guatemala with El Salvador, as Antigua is only a four hour drive from San Salvador.

Antigua is the colonial city that is the usually the base for tourists in Guatemala. After arriving, I went for a walk and admired the architecture. The arch is called Arco de Santa Catalina.

Arco de Santa Catalina

Arco de Santa Catalina

As in all Latin American countries, there is a large church in the central area. The Catedral de Antigua is the one in this city.

Catedral de Antigua

There was also some architecture in somewhat of a ruined state, which I find fascinating. This reminded me of Leon, Nicaragua.

On day two, the hotel provided a driver that would take us around for a day. First, he took us to a location overlooking the magnificent Lake Atitlán. The view was simply spellbinding.

Lake Atitlán

Lake Atitlán

Lake Atitlán

From there, I went to the lake itself and took a short boat ride. Once again, a spectacular panorama.

On the way back to Antigua, the driver stopped at a waterfall.

The last stop before the hotel was Cerro De La Cruz, which is a cross on top of a hill that gives a view of the city. There is a staircase that leads up to it but there are reports of robberies on the climb so we took advantage of having transport to avoid that possibility.

Cerro de la Cruz

Then it was back to Antigua, where I decided to have a traditional Guatemalan dinner for my last meal in the country.

Before calling it a night, I couldn’t help but take one last picture, as there is no better time for capturing images than sundown.

Guatemala was a good weekend jaunt, and left only two Central American countries left to visit, El Salvador and Honduras, the former which I visited and will have a post about shortly.