Central America 2026: Part Two - Antigua to Antigua

 

Thursday 23rd April (Day 14)

Luxury of a lie in until 8 am. It’s only about 21c but feels warm because of the humidity. Unfortunately, it’s overcast and you can’t see the surrounding volcanoes.

Antigua’s peaceful until about 9 am, then comes the relentless chug of traffic - cars, mopeds, tuk-tuks and elaborate ‘chicken’ buses. There are no designated crossings, but it’s not a problem because cars can’t go fast on rutted cobbles, you wait for them to bisect one another, or they just politely stop.

The local tribes descend from the hills to hawk their stuff, but nobody hassles you. If ever any of the tiny people tried there are tourist police everywhere and guards with machine guns at the ATMs. Yes, Antigua is very touristy and every other building in the centre is a bar, restaurant, coffee shop, gift shop or massage parlour. These mainly lead to lovely courtyards and roof-top terraces but you have to be careful as some are Starbucks, McDonalds, Subway, Dunkin Donuts etc… which are not allowed to display their garish signage.

Claire manages to sniff out the most expensive place in the city for breakfast where I spend an hour and a half on a support chat with a certain Milo to get my universal SIM to work. He tells me how to do a screen shot on an iPhone and I have to show him everything I do with photos as obviously I’m an old idiot.

We do our day of culture. First the free Museo Nacional de Arte de Guatemala (MUNAG) set in an old colonial palace. They write down our passport numbers in case we nick anything. At first, I’m a bit whelmed and there’s no particular order in which to sample stuff, a bit like yesterday’s beer flight, but it’s nice and there are some good paintings and monuments to the evil conquistadors. Renovation of the pre-Columbian artefacts can be a bit band-aid.

Outside we bump into Ann who insists on walking us half way across the city to a French bakery she’s discovered where we buy nothing. Then back another way via a third coffee shop to the ruins of the old Cathedral. Claire baulks at visiting the more promising ruins of the Santa Clara Convent because the entrance fee is the same price as a craft beer. So, we walk back through the traffic, the stench of exhaust everywhere, to have one of these.

Antigua is one of the oldest Spanish towns in Central America, the capital of the Knights of Guatemala from 1527. After being destroyed in various ways by volcanoes and earthquakes in 1541, 1565, 1575, 1577, 1585, 1717, 1751, 1773 the authorities got the message and moved the capital to nearby Guatemala City. All buildings that remain have been built since 1773 and few are more than two stories high. The last earthquake was in 2014.

Oh, where were we? Been in the flight park since 2pm, it’s now 17:15, many of the Familia have joined us. Soon we will be meeting someone called Juan, and possibly a nueva familia, although five of the original will be joining us. So buenas noches temprano por ahora.

Friday 24th April (Day 15)

Last night we said sad goodbyes to Bertrand and Michelle, Matt and Niamh, and Kevan. This leaves us with Abi, Pam and John from New Zealand, Ann and the peerless Karen.

Juan is an energetic Guatemalan in his mid-thirties. He speaks English very quickly and without punctuation, describing everything we’re doing over the next few days in less than a minute. There are two new members of the Pequena Familia as I'm going to call it - Bev and Gill from England - but nobody’s told them they’re meant to eat with us, so they just have. Abi also declines as she's not been feeling well, and Karen decides to go for a wander, leaving five for dinner plus Juan. It appears that all Guatemalan food consumed up to now was inauthentic and I get a huge bowl of what I can only describe as stew.

The night is very unfortunate. I had no idea that the human body contained so much water. The absence of it, and the inability to take on more without it gurgling through you like a throat to tail enema, is somewhat concerning. I take three loritax and they are so ineffective I have to google to check they’re not laxatives. I’ve run out of water and I’m desperately waiting for Claire to wake up and buy something, but the night just crawls. When she finally does come to life, there’s no need to persuade her of my ailment for once.

Could it have been the Guatemalan stew or the chorizo, eggs and potatoes I had for breakfast? Could I have imbibed a parasite? Or was it the large cappuccinos followed by three litres of beer?

I’m considering not going on the next stage at all but the loritax proves it can be trusted enough to not cause an embarrassing incident.

The minivan is the least comfortable yet, but I’m in and out of consciousness so couldn’t really say how far or long we travelled. We visit the Temple of San Simon in San Andres Itzapa. San Simon, also known as Maximon, is a Mayan deity. They managed to continue worshiping him around the time of the Spanish Inquisition by depicting him as a gringo and declaring him a saint. Okay, how do I describe this?

The Temple is a recently-built building, in front of which is a tall covered structure like an open barn. Worshippers prepare their offerings e.g. candles, rose petals, chocolate bars, eggs, soft drinks, beer cans, tobacco and spirits. These are carefully positioned in a circle, a bank of ash is built around and then, with the help of paraffin, the circle is set alight. The worshippers, men and women of all ages, sit in front of these bonfires and breathe in the smoke. An effigy of San Simon, a small man in a dark suit and hat with a gaucho moustache, is placed before the bonfire and people with unusually fat cigars breathe smoke or spit alcohol on him.

Indoors, it almost looks like a wedding, but instead there’s a couple sipping some spirit and then spraying it over each other’s faces. This is accompanied by a mariachi band. If you thought this was a show for the tourists you’d be wrong. The same thing is happening around the side of the Temple and here they throw firecrackers into the bonfires.

We stop for baños where there’s a chemist and I stock up on more rehydration drugs than the average person uses in a lifetime. Then there’s a lunch stop, where I’m able to manage a few spoons or rice, a plantain and, at Claire’s insistence, half a boiled egg.

All this time we’ve been climbing to our destination Quetzaltenango, also known as Xela, which has an altitude of 2,330m and a population of about 200,000. The hills are pretty, the town is not - a cross between Slough and Batman, Türkiye. There’s a steep road up to the hotel car park. The hotel is huge with great panoramas of ugly buildings. We’re told to lug our hand baggage down to reception on the 1st floor, and given keys for the 5th floor from whence we have just came. It would remind me of the Overlook Hotel in the Shining, were it not for the rave going on in the swimming pool.

The room is huge and, as always in Central America, there is an absence of plug points. The balcony is a cage 40 x 90 cm high above the street which, if this wasn’t secure enough, has razor wire across the top. It’s 11c and I have to put on thermals.

I can’t tell you anything else because I hit bed as soon as I can, about 3:30 pm, and slept through until bedtime.

Saturday 25th April (Day 16)

I’m up at 4:30, although time has become a bit irrelevant, and we’re off at 5:30. I’m feeling adequate. I realise that the hotel is not up some obscure mountain but in the Main Square which is modestly attractive. There appears to be something going on as everything is being systematically covered in flowers.

We walk through ugly, dusty streets rimmed with litter and dog poo, exhaust fumes misting the air. ‘Chicken’ buses are old US school buses which are retired to Central America and decorated by their new owners. In Antigua we saw ones lavishly pimped, some transforming into mobile discos. Today’s trip was marked by Intrepid as one of the highlights of the tour. We wait 20 minutes for one to arrive and, inside, it’s just a bus.

It struggles up a mountain and then down another, and in 15 minutes we’re at Almolonga. I had expected the main vegetable market for Quetzaltenango to be a spacious hub in the suburbs with good vehicle access, but it’s the most congested part of whatever town we’re in at the moment. It starts at midnight when farmers from the hills bring in their produce in their tractors and trailers. This is bought by the wholesalers in the main market who then sell to the retailers, who set up their stalls about 4 am. The retailers process the vegetables e.g. taking the husks of corn, podding peas etc… and sell to the restaurants, small supermarkets and general public. When we get there, 6:30-ish, it’s beginning to wind down.

It’s not touristy - we’re the only foreigners there - and someone from the local newsletter starts to film us. But it’s hard not to be in the way as cars are constantly moving, their places quickly taken by pop-up stall holders, men are running with stacked boxes and everywhere there are women with elaborate aprons and bunches of flowers or coriander tied to their heads.

I feel like Dorothy in the Land of the Munchkins.

I do love pictures of produce and here does not disappoint. Guatemala is said to be the vegetable garden of Central America and in Almolonga the biggest are to be found. Some say this is because the region is blessed by God, others that they use unfeasible amounts of fertiliser. The locals here are arguably even more interesting than the carrots but I do overhear Juan saying the phrase ‘stab with a knife,’ which I take to mean taking a photo without permission, although it could have been an unrelated comment. Anyway, I concentrate on the fruit and vegetables and hope they don’t mind.

We’re back to the hotel for breakfast, everyone’s tired and there are frequent awkward silences until Juan feels he has to give us a lecture on the history of everything. I go back to bed because I’m still far from being okay and I’m awoken by the sound of loud marimba muzak and a craving for nicotine.

Claire’s joins me for a quiet cigarette by taking me to the middle of the square which has now become a jostling scrum of brightly-coloured, dressed-up, happy Lilliputians queuing to have their pictures taken beside sponsored floral-arches or behind the wheels of kit-cars. It transpires that today is the Festival of the Flowers and it’s only going to get busier.

Juan has recommended a place to buy beans for our youngest coffee-mad son. It’s a nice haven on a corner amidst the gridlock traffic and heavy pollution, partially caused by seemingly random one-sided street closures. The care he takes in packing the coffee - picking out the subprime beans as he weighs them 50g at a time, sealing the packet with a vacuum, hand signing the label, is almost worth the price itself. Then it’s up a hill for my traffic-free escape to the hotel and we’re lured down a street of shops, restaurants and people dressed to the nines, and a jigsaw competition, where we realise that actually, Xela is quite charming. In the beer hall which used to be the main coffee trading market you can buy two litre steins of Gallo or Carbo, which we don’t.

The crowds and thump thump thump of techno are only to get worse, but we’re persuaded to go on a guided tour at 3:30. The guide only speaks Spanish, so Juan has to translate, which is fine because I can’t hear either of them above the noise. We visit a number of buildings that are barely older than my own home and I learn a couple of new things: (a) Xela is older than Antigua; (b) the Spanish left Xela for Antigua because it was too cold, so Germans, Italians and Belgians stepped in to exploit the farmers and workers.

But there are only so many mock-Greek temples that look like that church by the Oval, and dingy statues of Guatemalan ex-dictators that you can take, wherever they were born, and other than questioning the chronology on the inscription for poets of the year (why does 1922 come between 1974 and 1976 - nobody ever asked that before), I’m not able to probe on ‘what’s that they’re smoking?’ and ‘why’s she the only one wearing a bikini?’ Indeed, the little people are infinitely more interesting than the history. They are utterly FASCINATING.

Slight delay going for dinner at 7:00 pm because Miss Quetzaltenango 2025 just walked through the hotel door (Ann for her vlog: ‘Hi Folks, here I am with Miss Quetzaltenango’) and a marimba super-group is on the stage. Juan leads us through the Fiesta crowd to the only restaurant in town that will accept a booking for seven, and with good reason because it’s terrible. We’re the only diners in a huge hall and the fireworks are outside.

In Antigua I would estimate than about one in three people are tourists. Here, it’s about one in two thousand. Xela may not be a pretty place, but it has a throbbing heart all of its own.

 

Sunday 26th April (Day 17)

It’s a beautiful chilly morning in Xela. We wait for Juan to instruct us to help ourselves to the breakfast buffet, but we’re given the same crap we had yesterday. Ann is the third of us to succumb to the Mayan Curse after Abi and I. We’ve not eaten the same food, we’ve not drunk the water, it must be a bug.

We climb from Xela, beautiful views of the volcanos above the valley, close to Santiaguito which erupted last week, forcing illegal dipshit climbers to flee. The locals are queuing out of the door of the churches. The road keeps climbing to over 3,000 metres where we reach a viewpoint where you can see seven different volcanos. It’s littered with plastic bottles and condoms, but Claire declares the soil where someone is attempting to grow maize the best she has ever seen.

We’re off to Chichicastenango. This involves a steep descent down twisty roads and we pass through a town where there’s a large bustling market full of happy, small, people and I assume this must be it, but it’s not. Then it’s up some terrifying twisty one in threes, a bus broken down on a hairpin. Then, as we enter the town, it’s gridlock. We finally get through to the safety of an unlikely plush hotel in the centre.

It has lavish gardens within a courtyard and parrots on perches, but these have had feathers removed so they can’t escape, you have to obtain a ticket for the toilet and, if this wasn’t enough of a tourist trap already, a big coach load of (always) French people walk in.

The market itself, Guatemala’s most historic and one of the largest in Latin America, begins across the road. Juan gives us an orientation walk should we get lost - pointing out the Catholic and Mayan churches which border the area, both of which seem to be devoted to our friend San Simon, him of the chain-smoking spirit-chugging countenance.

In between, yes it’s a large market, not as big as the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, or the one in Fez, or that one I forget the name of in Bangkok, but pretty large all the same. It’s hot, but would be far worse if not for the altitude and it’s very crowded, chains of tiny women and children skilfully dodging past. They’re selling textiles mainly, but also religious artefacts, plastic toys, underwear, football shirts, mobile phone covers - every kind of crap you can think of, like a giant East Street. There’s an adventure playground, places to eat and it even adjoins a kind of shopping mall. It’s not really for tourists, but I would estimate that one in 200 are.

The smaller alleys are almost impassable so we fight our way into the horrendous traffic for a cigarette. There we see a guy with a tattered Venezuela flag asking for money from the drivers of the stationary cars. We give him 25 Quetzal and Claire probes on whether he’s fleeing or returning. His wife and daughter are curled up on the curb in the choking pollution. He and his wife escaped Venezuela three years ago because they were broke, they made it as far as Mexico. Their daughter was born on the way. They didn’t have enough money to bribe their way into the US. Somebody told them it was safe to return to Venezuela again.

There’s nothing I want to buy in the market except a small effigy of San Simon and the only ones I can find are either too large or look like Elvis.

We’re supposed to have lunch in the hotel, a buffet costing £15 where you have to pay more for seconds, but I refuse as a point of principle and eat Claire’s dessert.

The not so hairy descents are the now hairy ascents as we return to the main highway to Guatemala City, which we turn off from towards the crater lake - Lake Atitlan - which in my imagination may or may not have been formed by a meteor. It’s stunning, so I’m told, and no doubt I’ll know this tomorrow when the cloud might have cleared. We descend into it as one might come down from the Alps to Como or Guardia, except they only require a drop in elevation of a few hundred metres and ours is almost a kilometre.

The hotel reminds me of Michael Corleone’s house in the first scene of the Godfather Part II and, aptly, there is a big, loud party going on - the coming of age for a 15-year-old girl. We lose Juan and the rest in our orientation walk and end up by the lakefront where there are numerous stalls selling soft and alcoholic drinks. They are cheap, have owners with character and warm beer, no toilets and flies. Further down there are bars which turn up the music as you walk by and it’s a case of trying to find the least obnoxious one. The Main Street is little better - loads of empty bars and restaurants playing loud music, many liquor stores. It’s grubby, mopeds, tuk-tuks and cars race down the pedestrianised areas and the pollution is odious.

We finally find a nice but smelly spot by the lake for a margarita at 6:30 in order to watch the clouds disappear behind the clouds, then Juan takes us out for a meal in an old house that’s a living museum. Humaya is located in the historic Casa Cakchiquel which, until fifty-odd years’ ago, was the only building in this part of the town. On the walls and across the lovely courtyard are photographs and posters of old Guatemala, including many dedicated to the movement which resisted the barbaric US-sponsored junta. They use local and natural produce and the food is exquisite. I just order a burger, wary that the bread in Guatemala is usually processed and awful – but this bun is made from an indigenous form of maize, milled and baked by the restaurant. It’s delicious, the best food of the trip so far.

But, although there is a distant sound of thumping, everyone else seems to have gone to bed at 9:30. I’m writing this sitting on the lakefront sipping a half-bottle of 12-year-old Botran ‘ron,’ and they’ve kept the lights on for me. I can hear the 15-year-olds giggling in the shadows.

Monday 27th April (Day 18)

Down to the lake at dawn for a breathtaking view of the volcanoes and to listen to the sounds of social flycatchers, great-tailed grackles, yellow-bellied elaenias etc… (Claire recommended the Merlin app - it’s addictive, like collecting Pokémon). As most of you have short attention spans I’ve listed all the birdz at the end for the nerds.

By 6:30 all you can hear is the great sound of boat.

I neglected to mention that we’re staying in the tourist town of Panajachel and that Lake Atitlan is 300m deep and one of the most beautiful in the world, according to Condé Nast.

The boat leaves at 8:30 and speeds across to Santiago Atitlan, the largest town on the lake and the least visited. The only cloud in the sky is smoke from a distant volcano.

We’re given a Spanish-speaking guide for no reason other than those are the rules and we speed away in a convoy of tuk-tuks like the minis in the Italian Job. These race uphill, through a vibrant market with the usual exotic vegetables and very small unrefrigerated fish and prawns. This is another one of those trips where nobody has a clue what’s going on.

We park in an alley and are led down a path to a house where there is yet another shrine to San Simon Maximon, but not any old one, because this is the town where he was supposedly born. Every year the most eminent families take it in turns to host his full-sized effigy and people keep him company 24/7, 365 days a year, because the poor guy gets knackered from his frequent trips back and forth to the underworld. This involves at least one person drinking or smoking, preferably both, at all times. There’s a fridge full of cold beer outside, the litre bottles for the longer shifts. We help out by gifting a small bottle of Quetzalteca (like white rum) which only Juan and I swig, although to be fair it is 9:30 in the morning. Maximon is then propped up, also given a snifter which disappears somewhere, and a lit fag is put in his mouth and I swear that, for once, I’m not making this up.

We’re then dispatched at a worrying speed to a building site, beneath which is a museum/art gallery/gift shop. We’re given a very slick presentation in English by a young woman and her companion on how Guatemalan women weave clothes, and how both genders wear these traditional garbs. We’re invited to try on the costumes, which I decline in no uncertain terms, having already completed my group activity of the day. The quality of the clothes is obvious, they take months to make, and subsequently they are justifiably expensive, but I don’t think there were any takers.

 

We’re then taken to the main square, which is also the school playground, where there’s an old cathedral. It’s here that the heart of the Bishop of Oklahoma Stanley Rother is buried, without his family’s permission, murdered by the CIA-backed militia in 1981.

Juan is the tour leader and doesn’t linger on recent Guatemalan history because he doesn’t want to spoil anybody’s day, and nor do I. It’s grim. Instead, Juan recommends a book that will explain everything because he’s 37, he grew up amidst it and he would like everyone to understand. In a nutshell, since WWII every time the Guatemalans elected a democratic leader and there was a feeling of hope in the country, the USA would sponsor a military coup, complete with death squads and genocide of the Maya, all at the behest of the United Fruit Company who wanted to keep paying slave-wages to boost their profits. The so-called Guatemalan Civil War lasted until 1996.

But still, even after 30 years of relative stability, 60% of perhaps over 20 million Guatemalans live on less than $1 a day, and this in a country which is rich in both minerals and agriculture. Because corruption is still rife and the super-rich steal the public land. Guatemala is one of the few ‘super-diverse’ countries in the world and tourism is an obvious quick-fix to prosperity, but nobody’s in any hurry to repair the roads, provide clean sanitation, protect the lakes or clear up the litter and there’s little chance that the profits will filter down to the masses. The authorities introduced big fish into the lake, but the locals don’t have the means to catch them. The big fish eat the other fish and all that are left are the very small fish.

Who knows? In two years maybe Guatemala will be the new Vietnam and you’ll all have been there. For the moment there’s a lot of work that needs doing.

There are some wonderful murals as we walk back to our boat on the lake.

For no good reason Intrepid don’t include San Juan La Laguna in its itinerary and we all have to pay £15 extra, although that does include an hour’s weaving demonstration which I refuse to attend. I guess this is some kind of statement of super-ecology, a tourist tax to be paid to the women’s co-operative. Which I don’t mind, so long as I don’t have to watch weaving, because the said co-op has created a remarkable town that resists the foreign property developers, the Main Street being on most Guatemala tourist brochures you’ll see.

The moment you step off the boat you realise that this part of San Juan is ten times nicer, cleaner and healthier than Panajachel. The main draw is Umbrella Street which stretches a couple of hundred metres up a very steep hill containing mainly tourist shops - what a simple but utterly brilliant idea!? And if there are other umbrella streets in the world (somebody said Camden) surely this was the first. What the others in our group don’t realise, because they’re not with someone hunting for a rare type of tobacco that doesn’t exist anywhere other than the place she first bought it, is that above Umbrella Street is Larger Umbrella Street, Canopy Street and Hat Street.

 

Behind this tranquil oasis is Guatemala, with its heinous traffic, noise and pollution.

Also, to the right of the Port just before where we ate a very good lunch, is Wendy’s. Not the franchise burger place, which would have particularly bad publicity were it to pursue a copyright infringement, but a restaurant where the celebrity owner and chef has Down’s syndrome. She also has a clothing range and we saw her performing karaoke out front. I say celebrity - I remember her from a cooking programme on Amazon Prime and Juan has never heard of her.

More margaritas in the evening, not as good as yesterday. Juan wants to know if he should make a booking at the Circus Bar which was a local institution when he was a kid, but it sounds like the kind of place which might have entertainment so we decline. Given the lack of other choice, we end up going there anyway. The vegetarian pizza we share is topped with giant carrots.

Birdz…

Melodious BLACKBIRD, Bronzed COWBIRD, White-winged DOVE, Yellow-bellied ELAENIA, Boat-billed FLYCATCHER, Social FLYCATCHER, Great-tailed GRACKLE (bloody grackles everywhere, noisy bastards), Tropical MOCKINGBIRD, Cinnamon-bellied SALTATOR,
Morelet’s SEEDEATER, House SPARROW, Rufous-collared SPARROW, Northern rough-winged SWALLOW, Clay-coloured THRUSH, Swainson’s THRUSH, Southern house WREN, Common YELLOWTHROAT.

Tuesday 28th April (Day 19)

In the Jardines del Lago they’ve put six huge pillows on each bed. I manage to stuff nine of these in the wardrobe, but the next day they’re back. Despite it being mild at night, the room is stuffy and hot. There’s a huge fan the size of a lorry’s wheel which adds nothing and, obviously, all the plug points are in stupid places. The glasses are so flimsy you only need to look at them for them to fall into the sink and smash.

Breakfast is in a tent on the lawn rather than in the restaurant for some reason and they cook your eggs and tortillas to order in front of you. I’m sitting with Karen, a perfect view of a volcano across a lake and I’m suddenly struck by imposter syndrome. What happened to the world that made it so easy for me to be here?

It’s back up the mountains that surround the crater and two and a half hours to Antigua, a short escape to the heart of Guatemala and back. We’re in the same hotel, even the same room, and I’m not sure how I feel about this given it was the location of one of the worst recent nights of my life. As we missed Toño's original orientation tour we go with Juan.

Juan takes us for lunch, this being the tour guide lazy option to waste an hour. Having had breakfast recently, Claire and I do not partake. Outside for a cigarette, Juan beckons me across the road to the Cafe No Se, a dark pirate’s cave which is one of only five establishments in Guatemala where it’s permissible to buy booze without food being served. It was a speakeasy only 30 years ago when mezcal was banned, and there’s a little hidden door to a back room where the drinkers used to sip in silence. Within this is a sanctuary to San Simon.

We go to a Franciscan Monastery, some other place and generally stand in the sun a lot. The final stop is the Nim Po’t craft emporium/souvenir shop. ‘Here you can find San Simon,’ says Juan to my annoyance, as I previously asked him whether they’d have his effigy in this shop that we're more than familiar with and he’d said ‘no,’ although I may have pronounced it wrongly. So, I ignore his lecture on linen and go directly to the San Simon aisle.

They’re too large and expensive, starting at £34. Disappointed, I see that Juan is delivering another speech beside a San Simon shrine. There’s a statue within about the right size. Juan asks a lady whether they have any more like this but they don’t. ‘How about this one?’ she asks in Spanish.

I swear it wasn’t there before. It’s old, unloved and slightly worn, it’s perfect - my San Simon. The label indicates it costs a fiver. There’s no point trying to find your own San Simon - he will find you.

A beer and bird-listening expedition in the park later, we’re off to a restaurant that looks like a KFC but has the best mezcal margaritas and pork dumplings in town – the third very good meal of the trip. Antigua might not be the most interesting place for you to read about because it’s westernised and comfortable, but it does have some of the best affordable bars and restaurants, if you know where to go. You could spend days here, which we are because this is where the Intrepid tours link up.

After a late night mezcal in a cool bar playing early Talking Heads and Human League, me buying a round in a show of drunken bravado, we say goodbye to Abi who has an early flight. At times she looked as if she’d gone on holiday by mistake, but she’s only 18 for goodness sake. She’s been sharing a room with Ann who’s 50 years her senior and the next youngest person on this stage of the tour might even be me.

There’s also an emotional farewell with Karen until it’s pointed out that we can meet tomorrow night.

Stumbling back to the hotel, I have to buy water and go it alone. I almost get lost, but luckily remember that the hotel is at the junction of Una Via and Doble Via.