On Thursday, May 2, I landed in Guatemala. This is the 20th country I have been in and my first in Central America. I came here to visit my friend Kyle Huwa, who has been here since January, with the main purpose of learning Spanish. He has stayed with a host family in Antigua, as well as at an Airbnb. At the point of my arrival he was living at a small apartment he has leased in Zone 16 in Guatemala City, the capital city and where the international airport is located.
Guatemala City is divided into different zones, which I find interesting that’s where people identify with questions like, “What zone are you staying in?” The city center is Zone 1 and while they don’t go out in perfect symmetry, the higher number zones seem to be further from the city center. Guatemala City is the largest city in Central America with about 1 million people in the city proper, but maybe around 2 million in the “metro” area. The country has over 17 million people, making it the largest country in Central America. For geographic purposes, we are not counting Mexico as Central America, even though it is the immediate westward neighbor of Guatemala and in some regions share some similar culture, including Mayan origins.
Anyway, back to my experience. I took a short nonstop flight (3 hours gate-to-gate) on Spirit Airlines from Orlando to Guatemala City, leaving Orlando at 3:30pm ET and arriving at 4:30pm Guatemala time. This time of the year there is a 2-hour time difference due to the U.S. participating in Daylight Savings Time. There are only a handful of U.S. cities that have a nonstop flight here and Orlando is one of them. I believe you can also take nonstop flights here from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, and Los Angeles, but probably nowhere else from the U.S.
As I landed, my first glimpse of Guatemala was of a mountainous terrain away from the city and then as we approached the city I was really amazed at the high density of the population and the amount of buildings. “Whoa! Big city!,” I thought.
Kyle was kind enough to meet me at the airport and we took an Uber back to his place through rush hour traffic. Things are very inexpensive here. This Uber across town from the airport to Zone 16 was less than $10 even though it took about 45 minutes in traffic.
That evening, we then took another Uber down to Zone 1 to walk around the Central Plaza, where we saw the National Palace and the Cathedral of Guatemala City (consecrated in 1815) around two adjacent sides of the plaza. Unfortunately, they were both closed as we arrived there a little bit past 6pm. But I’ve been in enough churches and palaces in my travels that I wasn’t heartbroken. It was nice to at least get a glimpse and experience this part of the city. And strangely enough, the palace is under renovation, so most of the facade is covered, as this is the 100th anniversary since the first stone was placed here in 1919.
After walking around the area for about a half hour, we took an Uber and hopped over to nearby Zone 4, where we started the night at La Esquina for dinner. This was a neat venue in that it was sort of like a food court, with many offerings (we had tacos and chips and guac), and everyone sitting in a central area. But from the outside it looked more like one restaurant. We then walked over to El Ochavo, where Kyle’s friend Rossmary met up with us. They work together at an NGO called Guatemala Prospera, which teaches the leadership training of John Maxwell. I had no idea where exactly Kyle was working until I arrived, but I knew who John Maxwell is. I once read his book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, which I highly recommend.
At El Ochavo, Rossmary ordered some dinner, while Kyle and I dived into dessert. We had crepes – I had the one with guayabo. Yum. And, of course, I tried some of the local beers during dinner at La Esquina and dessert at El Ochavo. From there, we walked down the street to Trova Jazz, and listened to some great live music in a very lively venue, where many of the people were singing along to the cover songs of Spanish music that I did not know (but sounded great!). The music was really, really great.
I always think that the best way to experience new places is to take in the local cuisine and, if possible, the local music. Or, as my friend Andrew Bulovsky once told me about visiting new places: “Eat their food, drink their beer, and talk to their people.” That’s another reason I jump at opportunities to visit friends in places I haven’t been to yet. I enjoy getting the local view of a place. Kyle isn’t exactly a local, but he’s been here long enough to learn from the locals, including his friend Rossmary.
We had a great first night, but we didn’t stay out too late because Kyle and I had a 7:30 AM meeting with Gabriel Calzada, the President of Universidad Francisco Marroquin (UFM), and his team. One member of that team, Pablo Pedro Velazquez was kind enough to pick us up from Kyle’s apartment at 7:00 AM and drive us to campus. It was about a 30-minute ride in the rush hour traffic. One thing Pablo told me ahead of time is that Guatemalans wake up early and get to work. He wasn’t kidding. I saw this first hand. And my few days in this country made me observe that these appear to be very hard-working people. Another thing I observed is depending on the time of the day, Guatemalans tend to always greet you with a “Buenos dias” or a “Buenos tardes.” Everyone does this all day. I usually would greet someone with “Hola” but after a while I realized the common first greeting was “Buenos dias,” etc. Over three days I slowly adapted.
I was really impressed with UFM. This is a university dedicated “to teach and disseminate the ethical, legal, and economic principles of a society of free and responsible persons” located in the heart of Guatemala City. This meeting was set up by my friend Rodolfo Milani in Miami who serves on the board of UFM’s nonprofit foundation, Friends of UFM. Given this university’s mission, they of course welcomed a visit by someone from National Review Institute, where I work. In fact, once there I realized perhaps another reason why. One of our NRI Fellows, Jay Nordlinger, wrote a series of articles about them in 2016, including one that was in the print issue of National Review. You can read the initial piece here, “Freedom U, Part 1.”
About the name. Francisco Marroquin was founded in 1971 and is named for the first bishop of Guatemala, who was born in Spain 14 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue and educated in the free market philosophy of the Salamanca school. When you walk around UFM, you see all sorts of places named for great economists including Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, and many others. If you’re looking for a refuge of freedom in Latin America, look no further than Francisco Marroquin University! The university is also dedicated to history and preservation. We were privileged to get a private tour of the Museo Popol Vuh, which is on campus. It is a museum that features a vast collection of pre-Columbian Maya art. After experiencing this guided tour, I really had to sit back and appreciate this amazing civilization that goes back over 3,000 years before Europeans came to the Americas.
I had not even been in Guatemala City for 24 hours and yet I felt like I was already immersed with many locals and connected with some really great people. Once we ended our time there, we had a private driver pick us up at the campus and drive us a little over an hour to Antigua, for a total of about $45. We later learned taking an Uber would be less expensive, but this was still quite the deal for that distance. And, our new friends at UFM were not to be done with us yet. They knew we were going to be in Antigua on the weekend and told us they would be over there Saturday afternoon and invited us to join them for lunch and a private tour of some landmarks in the Old City. We had a lot to look forward to in Antigua – more on that in the next post about our Sunrise Hike of Guatemala’s Pacaya Volcano.
Great story