Day 9 - Guatemala City – June 16th

Today was mostly a travel day. We left Honduras at 8:00 a.m. and drove to Guatemala City. It took about 5 hours. Along the highway at one point, we saw a bunch of obsidian on the canyon walls and chunks just lying on the ground. I wish our driver would have stopped and let us get some. Our first stop in Guatemala City was to the relief map. It is a model of Guatemala, and it sits in a park. It is about half a block big, and shows the different elevations and cities and ruins in the county. It’s quite interesting. We then stopped at the Guatemala temple. We arrived just as a bunch of new missionaries arrived. They had just finished their 6 weeks training at the MTC, and will be shipped out to different areas all over Central America. It was fun to talk with them. We then went to the ruins here called Kaminaljuya. They are nothing spectacular like what we’ve seen. But the cool part about it is that there is a temple, just like Solomon’s temple, built in 570 B.C., the same time and place Nephi built the temple. We then went to our hotel, the Grand Tikal Futura. It is a very fancy place. The first thing we did after we put our bags in our room was to go to the mall under the hotel and eat at the food court. We were very hungry. John told us about this place to eat in the food court that is one of his favorite places to eat in the world. So we tried it. It’s actually a Chinese place, Guatemalan style. Mike ordered some spicy chicken on fried noodles. I had some rice with fajita style beef, onions and peppers. They were both really good. John also told us to try the ice cream place, but we were so full, that we decided to go back later. They also had a taco Bell, so Mike wants to try the taco bell and see if it’s the same as at home. And there is free wifi here too, so he is downstairs in the lobby checking it out. I’ll meet him there in awhile to go back for ice cream.