Accessible Everything

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By Craig Grimes

Tuesday 11th March 2008

As mentioned in my previous post “Traveling to Guatemala” we left home in Matagalpa, Nicaragua at about 3am with Geni (a colleague of Edurne’s) and our driver to Sébaco in order to meet our bus at 3.45am. The journey to Sébaco was uneventful and we arrived at the petrol station where the coach stops in plenty of time and unloaded our bags. After about a 20 minute wait, we saw the bus approaching and then drive straight past us at high speed! We couldn’t believe that it didn’t stop and stood shell shocked for a few seconds before quickly mobilising, throwing the bags back into the pick up truck and the chase was on!

We had to catch the bus at it’s next scheduled stop in Estelí otherwise we would have to chase it all the way to the Nicaraguan border. Our driver in the pick up put his foot down but the speeding bus was nowhere to be seen. When we got to Estelí, we managed to find the bus at the petrol station and our driver strategically parked the 4 x 4 in front of the coach so that it couldn’t escape. It turned out that there had been a problem with the travel agent and even though we had our ticket, we weren’t on the manifesto of passengers so the coach driver didn’t know he had to stop in Sébaco. After showing the driver our tickets he agreed to allow us to travel, at which point his assistant turned, looked at me and said “Is he traveling too?” in a surprised tone…..

It was decided that the best way to get me onto the “Kings Quality” bus was if I got onto someone’s back and they carried me up, a technique which, in short, didn’t work and was never repeated! After lots of fumbling and a close call, they managed to plonk me in a seat unharmed and then we were off. The trip up to Guatemala seemed to pass fairly quickly even though it was about 13 hours, I thought that I was going to see El Slavador through the window of the coach but managed to sleep through most of the country! The difference between the infrastructure of roads in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala became quickly apparent as they are much better than in Nicaragua in general. There were actually dual carriage ways and smooth road surfaces!

On arrival in Guatemala City we were supposed to be met by other delegates of the meeting that Geni and Edurne were attending to take us to Antigua, but they were nowhere to be seen. After a few phone calls it was established that there were on their way and we waited patiently until they arrived an hour later. Trying to leave Guatemala City was even worse than trying to get into it due to the evening rush hour traffic. I hadn’t been in a city for over 5 months and the whole experience was overwhelming and a bit stressful. There were cars, buses and motorbikes all over the place, beeping their horns and generally just mayhem and anarchy every way you looked. The contrast between the wealthy and the poor in Guatemala City is striking, in the suburbs there are massive Condo complexes, surrounded by high walls and barbed wire with 24 hour security, McDonald’s, Zara and Pizza Huts fill American style shopping malls which are brand-names I hadn’t seen since leaving Barcelona. Crossing the city you see the old abandoned train lines, shanty style houses made of wood and corrugated iron and people cooking on open fires within a stones-throw of the shopping malls, probably a very typical Central American capital city, of which, I have little experience.

Once in Antigua we were exhausted, the original plan was that I would look for a hotel on the day we arrived, but I ended up crashing in Geni and Edurne’s room as it was getting too late to start wandering around Antigua. It was a welcome relief, but as the shower and toilet weren’t particularly accessible, I would have to try to find another hotel the following day.

Traveling to Guatemala

By Craig Grimes

Tomorrow, well actually, at about 4.00am in the morning Edurne and I begin our trip to Guatemala. The girls (Laia and Roser) are currently in León and will be meeting us in Antigua along with another friend (Josefina) on Thursday evening. It’s a bit of strange situation as Edurne will be in Antigua for meetings for 3 days and consequently she’ll be at one hotel with the other delegates and I’ll be at another by myself. We don’t expect to see each other much, if at all, until Friday evening. This gives me plenty of time to look into general access in Antigua and specific hotels.

After Antigua, we’re planning on going to Chichicastanango - Lago Artitlan - Rio Dulce (where we’ll catch a small boat to go through Lago de Isabul and down river) - Livingston. I think this is going to be quite a tough trip, especially as we have no hotels booked and I’m not really sure what to expect.

So we’re getting up at about 3.00am and going to Sébaco and catching a very inaccessible which goes though Honduras, El Salvador and onto Guatemala City, Guatemala with no bus changes. Then we have to catch another bus from Guatemala City to Antigua. The journey in total will take about 12 hours and we should arrive at about 5.00pm. It will be interesting for me to see the differences between the countries as we travel up through Central America. For a map of Guatemala please use this Lonely Planet link.

In preparation for the trip I’ve been doing some research on the internet, mainly trying to find hotels that look cheap and relatively accessible. I mainly looked at Antigua as this is the first place I’m going and I’ll be able to go to internet cafes whilst traveling to do more research for later in the trip. I searched using Google with phrases such as “Guatemala Disabled Travel Antigua” and “Guatemala Handicapped Antigua”. The usual problems arose while trying to find information about traveling for people with disabilities.

The guide books either say that it is very hard and don’t give any information to make it any easier or they give web addresses to general web pages about travel for people with disabilities, which while some if these pages are very good, they don’t have any information about Guatemala. Another really irritating thing that some web page owners do is write the names of every country and major city in the world hidden in the design of the page. We can’t see it, but the search engines can. Then when we search, our city comes up, their web page is at the top of the list, but there isn’t any of the information you’re actually looking for. A great way to get to the top of Google Rankings but very annoying, I was surprised at how many major travel agents for people with disabilities use this technique and in my opinion it wastes everybody’s time.

Here are some of the more useful things that came up:

www.conexion.com A wheelchair accessible internet cafe in Antigua. The owner is a wheelchair user and the guide books claim he is very helpful to disabled tourist. On the website there are a couple of expensive accessible hotels listed but you have to read the descriptions of all of them to see which might have access. The site doesn’t give any information about the type of access just “adapted rooms available.” I emailed them to ask about cheap accessible hotels in Antigua and they didn’t reply.

www.transitionsfoundation.com Transitions is an ONG that works with people with disabilities and at one was point linked to Conexión, but for whatever reason they seem to have gone their separate ways. I also emailed Transitions about meeting up with them and about accessible budget accommodation in Antigua. They emailed me back about meeting up but no mention about hotels.

www.guatemalastory.com This is the most useful website I found and although there isn’t any reference to disabled access whatsoever, there are lots of pictures so you can at least take a rough guess. One of the things I like about this site is that you can mark every hotel that you like the look of in a particular location and then they send you an email with a printable map with all of your chosen hotels and their contact details. Very clever! I also emailed Guatemala Story about a specific hotel and they didn’t get back to me either!

www.alfatravelguide.com A general page about hotels which also gives the usual “adapted rooms available” but no other information. Obviously, this phrase can mean almost anything, but at least it gives you a place to start.

www.aroundantigua.com A general travel site with info and hotel listings in and around Antigua.

www.larutamayaonline.com Another general travel site with info and hotel listings in and around Antigua.

The above listings were all I found really, nothing specific, but a good start to sorting out the trip. Now all I have to do is get there in one piece and hope that the hotel that I want to go to is accessible and has vacancies (maybe I should have booked my room in advance?!) I’ll write more about the hotel in Antigua and the trip up to Guatemala later in the week.

Until then, wish me luck……

An accessible & inclusive travel blog for people with disabilities

Getting to Guatemala from Nicaragua

Traveling to Guatemala