Pages 3,4,5,6,7,8,10, 12 and 13 of the Guatemalan newspaper I bought this morning are filled with accounts of gun-related murders across the country, a quite significant proportion of the days news considering pages 1 and 2 are about a helicopter crash, and pages 9 and 11 are full page advertisements.
Of course, my own interaction with the local Guatemalans in Flores paint a completely different picture to this gloomy trigger-happy image of the country, and I am already finding them a friendly and inquisitive people. In Mexico, a lot of the locals avoided all eye contact with me, whereas here in Guatemala, almost everybody wants to talk, or at the very least bid me a good morning / afternoon / evening. It goes without saying that I also want to talk to them as well, particularly since the conversations I have already had has confirmed that the Guatemalan Spanish is a fairly ´pure´ Spanish, with the added bonus that the locals talk quite slowly so I get to understand more of what is said.
This evening brings to an end my time in Flores, as I am catching an overnight bus down to Guatemala City to meet a couple of people, see some of the surrounding area and climb a volcano, before heading north through Mexico and up to meet some amigos in San Francisco.
GUN CRIME FOOTNOTE
I wonder if the gun crime could in any way be related to shops such as EL CUERVO on the main street into Flores, whose owner told me, after informing me that I couldn´t buy a gun as I am an extranjero, that any Guatemalan can buy a gun as long as they are 18 years old and have the papers to prove it.
