guatemala has been great and awful. let’s start with the bad:
-the border town sucks. why have both border towns thus far been so bad? you’d think that the government would want to put a nice and friendly welcome mat. these are my first impressions of guatemala from the border town of la mesilla: at the first place, i paid $4 USD and got a receipt…i’m still not sure if it was legitimate or a scam. there are no banks or atm’s (and they don’t accept credit cards), so you have to exchange with people on the street who give you bad deals. the automatic sliding door at one of the government buildings is run by a man…it’s cheaper to hire a person full time than to repair a door. the private security guard has a belt with bullets…one of the slots is missing a bullet. behind the counter to process my car is a young man, who seems to smart to be working there…but there aren’t many opportunities. the
-guatemala has thrown the first punch against the sentra…in the form of a 1 foot diameter rock in the middle of the road, which dented the oil tank and split my exhaust pipe…hopefully some glue will work, or mmaybe i can pay someone $5 to weld it back up.

now the good: -guatemala is so much prettier than the mexico i saw. except for huehetenango (which is crazy busy, polluted with cars & noise) the countryside is incredible. beautiful tree covered hills with birds chirping. best of all, instead of little shitty pueblos every 15 minutes like in mexico, farmers live throughout the countryside. so, instead of looking at a town filled with dirt & garbage, you see small houses surrounded by small farms. plus, these small houses reside on hills and have incredible views. my picture can’t do it justice. -chichi (i forget the full name) is a nice little town about 1hr from the capital….i’;l let you know how it is tomorrow. so far, so good.