Guatemala Date

Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

Whenever I fly internationally I run through a quick checklist in my head - passport, wallet, phone, laptop. As long as I don't lose one of those, everything else is easily replaceable.

Dyan had never been on a plane or left Costa Rica. So she made a list of about 30 items she had to remember to bring. It was cute.

At the airport she was wide-eyed and grinning as we wandered around the near-empty terminal. We were taking a weekday night flight to Guatemala, which is apparently not a hot draw.

She had heard about sinus pressure problems during flight and asked me for equalization techniques. I'm a one-trick pony on that one - squeeze your nose with your fingers and blow out. But I gave her all the other ones too. Yawn. Swallow. Chew gum. But we didn't have any gum!

During the flight I read and we cuddled. It was the first time during my travels I had crossed a border with somebody I knew. It was a nice change of pace.

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Dyan had indulged me and agreed to visit Xela (which is short for Quetzaltenango and pronounced SHAY-luh), because I had visited most of the other destinations in Guatemala already.

Xela isn't your prototypical getaway locale. It's a chilly city up in the mountains. On top of that, we learned on our arrival that Tropical Storm Selma was projected to hit over the weekend.

So we spent a lot of time in Xela having sex and watching Stranger Things (not at the same time). Which was pretty awesome and in my estimation a step up from lying on a beach and watching water.

Selma was ultimately more interested in Nicaragua than Guatemala, so we were able to trek out to some local hot springs.

The trip out there was an exciting bumpy ride via a local chicken bus (retired school bus painted up in bright colors a la a chicken) and Tuktuk (dinky 3-wheel taxi that tops out at 20-25mph). The road was bumpy, foggy, and ran alongside a cliff the entire way.

The hot springs themselves were pretty crowded, and we were something of a novelty. I was the only white guy, and she was the only black lady. Out of like 200 people. So we got a lot of ogles. Also compliments. According to the middle-aged women of Las Fuentes Georginas we made a lovely couple.

The only other touristy adventure we took in Xela was to explore the city's giant aboveground cemetery. It covered 40 city blocks and was filled with headless statues, padlocked mausoleums, and revolutionary epitaphs to martyrs of failed uprisings.

So that was my big romantic idea. Netflix and corpses. Worked out pretty well.

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On the way back to the capital we also stayed a night in Antigua. This was my fourth time arriving in Antigua, and the familiarity felt strange.

Antigua is of course much more oriented towards tourism than Xela, filled with restaurants, bars, and hotels. We wandered the city admiring the colonial ruins and hiked Cerro de la Cruz for the views and the selfies. In the evening we bought fancy steaks, had sex in a sauna, and then went out for ice cream. And then it was time to leave.

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So, probably one of my wilder ideas in recent memory - to fly into a tropical storm in Guatemala with a woman I barely knew. But in the final analysis one of my best ideas as well.

Go on a date to Guatemala already. It's great.