After my visit to Flores I had to take a flight to Guatemala City which took more or less 30 minutes. I arrived at 12 and my flight to San Salvador was at 7. This gave me a lot of time to be around the airport and I had some time to kill. I heard about a street food that hails from Guatemala City, known as a ‘shuco’ which is slang for dirty. It is Guatemala’s own style of hot dog accompanied with different kinds of ingredients such as guacamole and instead of being in a bun, it is between toasted bread.
Trying the ‘Shuco’
I found that a ten minute walk from the airport, there was a place that served shucos called Shucos y Chelas, if you don’t know, chela is slang for beer. I highly recommend this place as they take card and their service is quick. I wasn’t in the mood for beer as it was only 2 in the afternoon, I opted for a coke in a glass bottle instead.
I asked the waiter what shuco he recommends and I ordered what he recommended. 5 minutes later, the shuco came and I ate it very quickly, the shuco is a great creation and I recommend getting one if you find yourself in Guatemala City, it was only £2 which is a fair price for Guatemala.
However once I left to get to the departure area of the airport, I didn’t know where to go, the entrance I had been taken to before was only accessible by car. I walked a little further along and asked a security guard where the entrance was, he responded in English and told me that I had to walk right round. I used Google Maps to try to find the entrance to the airport and I ended up walking for an hour, with my backpack on my back and being in the humid heat of Guatemala City, it was far from fun.
Getting Lost
Furthermore, after walking for an hour to find the entrance of the airport, I ended up in an extremely dodgy neighbourhood, Guatemala City can be characterised as seeing private security guards casually holding shotguns and houses lined with barbed wire fences. I ended up in a run down area and I was thinking to myself where the hell this entrance was. This place looked rundown and not the kind of place I had any business being in as a tourist.
Thankfully, I spotted a taxi and flagged it down, I explained that I only had 10 quetzales left in cash, but offered to to also pay in dollars which I had. We agreed that the fare would be 2 dollars and 10 quetzales. It turns out that you can only enter the airport by car which is very considerate for the environment.
I got my flight to San Salvador without any problems, however had to pay extra to put my bag in the hold as my bag was too big for the overhead storage on the small plane. Guatemala City in my opinion is totally not worth visiting, the traffic is chaotic and Guatemala has so many other amazing places.