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Sacatapequez, Guatemala
Welcome! I'm currently a medical student at Universidad de Francisco Marroquin, Guatemala, Guatemala. In my blog, you'll hear about all my random adventures and challenges of studying medicine in a second language.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Navigating Uncharted Territory In Guatemala City

For Semana Santa, I was mostly in Antigua, watching the festivities involved in all the religious stuff I know nothing about. It started off in the capital taking care of visa stuff (see previous blog) then a few days of relaxation. Relaxation, in the sense of thousand of people crowded into tiny spaces, at least.

Yesterday, however, we decided to get out of the big city and go visit Wendy's sister. For someone that hasn't done it before, it was quite an adventure. Because I had such a difficult time finding anything on the internet and, as usual, got different answers from different people, I thought I'd put in my blog some of what I had gleaned out of the experience.

While I don't know about all the chicken buses, the one we took brought us directly to the transmetro (http://transmetro.muniguate.com/). So far, there are two lines, soon to be more. From Transmetro, you can take it south to the bus terminal -- Centra Sur is listed on the maps, but it is called Cenma by most people. Depending on your Spanish, it can sound like different things, such as Segma, Sema, etc, which is what confused me. Googling it spelled correctly gets a plethora of results. From here, there are chicken buses departing for all different parts of the country. Esquintla, Amatitlan, Primavera/Villa Nueva (where we went), the coast, and others.




















Cenma




Going the other direction will get you to Zona 1 on the transmetro. Plaza Barrios will get you to the first class bus terminals that go to Coban, Peten, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico and Plaza Municipal lets you off in near the Palacio de Justicia, for those of you running around authenticating authenticated official documents issued by the government (no redundancy here). Plaza Municipal will also get you on the other transmetro line that can get you down to Zonas, 4, 9, 10 and 13. At one quetzal/ride, it's very cheap and very impressive, given the price.

As someone who had an irrational fear of the capital until this week, I highly recommend exploring on the transmetro (assuming you have destinations and have a least a general idea of your way around and where you're going) because it's a giant city and not ALL bad.


Finally, here's me Joshin' with Jesus my last day in Antigua:


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