Puerto Quetzal – Guatemala

We arrived into Puerto Quetzal at about 8:00 a.m. this morning. Once we disembarked we hopped on a tour bus to travel to the city of Antigua.
The bus ride was about an hour and a half. The road for the first part was a 2 lane freeway and was fairly busy, especially where it came to exits and or turnarounds for sugar fields and the processing factory. Once we left the freeway we started to climb up towards the backside of Volcano Agua where the town of Antiqua is located.
Antiqua is located at around 1400 meters so the road got quite steep in spots.

As we got closer Antiqua we had to pass through a small village and the roads were quite narrow, it is obvious that they were never designed for larger tour buses to pass through.
As we entered Antiqua the road system narrowed up even more and in order to enter the town we had to go up a one way street the wrong way with the help of a local police official.

After this we arrived at the tour bus stop which is located at the jade factory and museum.
Once in Antigua we were on our own for about three hours to explore the city. The streets were all cobblestones and rocks placed there from the time of the Spanish, so it was very rough to drive on and difficult to walk on. The sidewalks were narrow and for the most part quite uneven; the tour brochure said this was not a place to visit if you had mobility issues and they were right about that.
We visited the local tourism office and went to the second floor to get a good view of the city, then toured through a few churches, wandered around the street checking out the Spanish architecture. We then visited El Mercado which is the local shopping market; El Mercado was an explosion of colour which included many local and imported handicrafts from the region.
In addition to El Mercado there was lots and lots of street vendors selling blankets, serapes, flutes, jewellery and many other handmade local handicrafts. Some of the sellers were very persistent and the average response of “No Gracias” did not stop their attempt to sell you their wares.
Finally around 2:30 p.m. we boarded the bus for the ride back to the ship.
Evening dinner was casual dress and then we attended the evening show which was a re-visit to the “Rat Pack days of Las Vegas”.