{"id":2964,"date":"2012-03-18T02:22:38","date_gmt":"2012-03-18T02:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johnpedroza.com\/blog1\/?p=2964"},"modified":"2018-08-21T02:59:13","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T02:59:13","slug":"the-aurora-guatemala-city-airport-is-confusing-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnpedroza.com\/blog1\/the-aurora-guatemala-city-airport-is-confusing-place\/","title":{"rendered":"The Aurora, Guatemala City, Airport is Confusing Place"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I never thought it would be that hard to get Guatemalan money.<\/p><\/div>\n

So we arrived today in Guatemala City. I am happy to report so far we are safe and sound. We did however have a few bumps on the road getting here today. We arrived via the Aurora Airport in Guatemala City. Immigration was very easy. I saw all these money exchange places on the way to immigration and I was afraid that I was going to be charged for entering the country, but I wasn’t. So that was good.
\nWhat wasn’t good was the fact that the person I thought was going to be at the airport for us wasn’t there. My hotel reservation was mysteriously evaporated in the Internet and the hotel was now full. I didn’t fret, I had plenty of US dollars\u00a0with and even though I didn’t like the exchange rate they were giving at the airport I thought I could easily change some US dollars to quetzales and I would soon be on my way. I tried going back in the airport the way I came out, wrong, that was only an exit. So then I told Denise to watch our stuff and I would go upstairs to the entrance. I get upstairs to the entrance and I was told you can’t enter unless you show us your passport. That was weird but I went with the flow and went back downstairs to where Denise was, got my passport, and then went upstairs. The guy let me in and I went to the money exchange place.<\/p>\n

Strangely, all the money exchange places inside the airport were from the same company (and they all had a really bad exchange rate). I gave the guy 100 dollars and he told me if changed 200 dollars I would get a better rate (that still would have been a really bad rate). I told him I only needed $100 dollars and then he asked me for my departing pass. I told him I just got to the country and if I was about to leave I wouldn’t need any quetzales. He asked me when was I going to leave. I told him next week. He then said if I came back next week he would be able to change my money. All I can hope for is that he isn’t there again next week.<\/p>\n

Luckily we were able to find a guy off the street who happened to be a licensed tour guide and he called a taxi from the center of the city who agreed to be paid in US dollars who then took us to a different hotel that we read about in a book we had. The hotel also took dollars and then the receptionist sent us to the pharmacy where I was able to use my ATM card to get quetzales (at a fair rate). I know that different countries do things differently, but I have to say a pharmacy would have to be the last place I would of thought of\u00a0to get an honest exchange rate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So we arrived today in Guatemala City. I am happy to report so far we are safe and sound. We did however have a few bumps on the road getting here today. We arrived via the Aurora Airport in Guatemala …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,1492,31],"tags":[100,328,391,392,683],"class_list":["post-2964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel-tips","category-world-capitols","category-world-travel","tag-aurora-airport","tag-exchange-rate","tag-guatemala","tag-guatemala-city","tag-quetzales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpedroza.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpedroza.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpedroza.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpedroza.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpedroza.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpedroza.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12506,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpedroza.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964\/revisions\/12506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpedroza.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpedroza.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpedroza.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}