We walked down to the zocalo where the Spanish arches surround the green square with it’s undramatic lazy fountains. We got breakfast enroute for Q1.5 Guatemalan Quetzals by the market. We ignored a money changer on the corner who was offering Q2.45 Guatemalan Quetzals to the American Dollar and went into Lloyds Bank where the rate was Q2.50 Guatemalan Quetzals to the American Dollar.
In the bank there were three armed soldiers in camouflaged uniforms provided security and a huddle, rather than a queue of gringos, waiting for one woman to fill in the necessary forms for the cashiers to issue the cash. A gringo (male) or gringa (female) is someone considered a foreigner from the perspective of Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries in Latin America.
Gringo usually refers to a foreigner, especially from the United States or (to a lesser extent) Canada. Although it is considered an offensive term in some Spanish-speaking countries, in most Spanish-speaking countries and in Brazilian Portuguese, the term simply means "foreign".
In English it often carries a derogatory connotation, and sometimes does so in Spanish and Portuguese. Possible other connotations may include monolingualism, a lack of understanding of Hispanic culture, and blond hair with white skin.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use in English comes from John Woodhouse Audubon's Western Journal of 1849–1850, in which Audubon reports that his party was hooted and shouted at and called "Gringoes" while passing through the town of Cerro Gordo, Veracruz in Mexico.
We picked up a bottle of orange juice on the way back to counter the dehydrating effects of last night’s shanting (drinking alcohol). A huge queue of indigenous Indians, the men in tall extended Panama hats, waited at the Banco de Guatemala. Many of the women had blankets and boxes on their heads.
We got our books. I was reading “Whirlwind “, which is a novel by James Clavell, first published in 1986. It forms part of The Asian Saga and is chronologically the last book in the series. Set in Iran in early 1979, it follows the fortunes of a group of Struan’s (also called the Noble House) helicopter pilots, Iranian officials and oil men and their families in the turmoil surrounding the fall of the Iranian monarchy and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
We went to a park a block north of our hotel to bask in the sun and read. It was very quiet with only a few locals in evidence and none of the pedlars of the main zocalo. We spent the afternoon catching up on lost sleep in our room.
At 18:30 hrs. we went to Emilio’s on 4 Calle for a Chow Mein. Chow Mein are Chinese stir-fried noodles with vegetables and sometimes meat or tofu; the name is a romanization of the Taishanese chāu-mèn. The dish is popular throughout the Chinese diaspora and appears on the menus of most Chinese restaurants abroad. It is particularly popular in India, Nepal, the UK, and the US.
Emilio’s was a grubby but pleasant and cheap place patronised by the locals, which was a good sign. It was also a bar and behind the counter was lined with bottles of spirits. The young barman had severely cropped hair apart from a square on top of his head, a trendy hairstyle sported by several youths here.
We ordered a litro of Cabro (goat) cerveza (beer) and shared it, as it seemed the local thing to do. Cabro is another beer from the national brewery, Cervecería Centro Americana, S.A. in Guatemala City, brewed in the northern city of Quetzaltenango. It uses the same recipe as Gallo, but the water gives it a stronger and more complex taste.
The locals shared their beer from a big bottle, pouring meticulously to ensure that they all got the same amount, both men and women. The juke box played an assortment of Spanish and Western records.
We went on to spend the rest of the night in Mio Cid’s watching the movie “Missing in Action” without sound on cable TV and drinking Cuba Libres and beer. We saw Colonel Braddock (Chuck Norris) launch a mission deep into the jungles of Vietnam to find the POW camp that he escaped from and free the Americans still held captive there.
We chatted to John, an Irish journalist with John Denver glasses, about Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Later on, the TV showed a porno film, much to the waiters delight and most of the predominately male customers.
At 23:30 hrs. we walked back along the wide deserted streets to our room at the Pension.
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