Guatemala Day 1 - La Capital July 29-30

We have a goal to take all of the kids to Guatemala at some point to see where their ancestry is from. This time around it was Cee Ryle's turn. And the has many cousins his age so it became a large group. Including Casey and I, Kailee, my parents, Derick and Brianna, Julio and Cedric, and Kalina, Zildy and Jonas and Shayden. So a total of 14 people. In a third world country this is major accomplishment.

The flights from Salt Lake were a lot more expensive so we drove to Las Vegas and flew out of there. 

We got there at night. We were the last group to arrive but we were so excited to be there!

We rented a house through Airbnb that would sleep all of us. It wasn't the fanciest house but it sure was functional and perfect for 14 people. We got up in the morning and went to Paiz (the main grocery store in Guatemala). We took a nice little walk over while the kids got ready at the house.

Here we are having our breakfast in the house. Little table and lots of people but hey when we all are together everything is fun!

Some of the decorations in the house? Interesting decorating!

This is what the house was called.

Here we are taking off for the day! It takes a long time to get 14 people ready and out the door!

This is from the inside of the Van. Our Chauffeur was Derick and my dad was the co-pilot. Derick is an amazing driver in all the craziness and he stays pretty calm through it all. Casey was the google navigator.

Here is the other side of the van behind the drivers. Doesn't it look so fun?! It would take us 5 minutes just to load or unload. 

Our first visit was in Guatemala City (la capital). This picture behind the kids is the Palacio Nacional (the national palace). Because it was Saturday we coudn't go on the tour so we just got to see the outside. We kept talking that we wanted to just blend in and not look like tourists but that was pretty much impossible. How do you fit in when you have 14 people most of them speaking English. But the funny thing here was that there was some type of race going on and when we walked by the announcer said something like "welcome to all the tourists." It was funny!

The Guatemala flag flying over the palace

We went to the Mercado Central. This is the market in the city. They sell everything from traditional Guatemalan clothing, shoes, accessories, etc. to regular market stuff like fruit. Ahh all of the fruit is soooo good! We were a little scared to eat food on the street cause we didn't want to get sick so we bought some mangos and a knife so we could cut them ourselves. Well our mango wasn't great and Zildy gave in to buying fruit from vendors so we did also. Crossing our fingers that we wouldn't get sick.

El Mercado Central

I took a lot of random pictures and I will post them randomly. This guy is hanging of the edge of this truck holding on to some sound system stuff. Not dangerous at all???

This must be a Pinata Superstore?

After spending some time downtown we went to see El Hipodromo. It's a park that has an elevated map of Guatemala. People can go up these towers to be see the entire map from above. Kind of like google maps :) As a child we would come here often. 

The cousins were having a blast exploring this Guatemala for the first time together!

This is our tour bus or the van that we rented for the week.

The Guatemala City Temple. Beautiful!

I love how these sisters are at the temple wearing their traditional Guatemalan clothing (traje). 

The kids enjoying the peace and beauty that is felt around the temple.

One of the few pictures we have of our entire group. At the temple for a few reasons... Families can be together forever and because it was the only place where we trusted someone with our camera to take a picture.

This is our house in Guatemala. You can't really see the house because it's behind this wall. This is the way many houses are in Guatemala because of the crime. They have tall walls with barbwire on top to prevent thieves for getting into the house. We were victims of people breaking into our house and robbing us when we lived there a few times so the wall came up. That's not a great memory but I do have many good memories from this house growing up. 

Derick and I dressed up for something but this is a picture of our house when we were little.

We didn't know where to go eat dinner so where do we end up? At the mall! It's so Americanized we can't even tell that we are in Guatemala.

This is a picture of Casey and I with my Tio Chepe y Tia Hileana. Chepe is my mom's brother. They are the closest family that we still have in Guatemala everyone else have moved to the United States or Canada. It was so good to seem them.

Another random picture. This one in the house that we stayed in for the first few nights.

A slideshow of some of the pictures of the day made by google.