Thewesternprovinceblog

This bar is actually in Panajachel

I didn’t take any pictures on the Antigua Bar Crawl

Hola todos! Just settled into Antigua and boy what an absolutely amazing, stonking start I had to this place! Let me pull up a pew and tell you all about it!

So I arrive into Antigua about half 3 in the afternoon. Didn’t take many pics on the bus ride up as kind of nodded off for a good chunk of it. I get in get to my Hostel all ok then see hostelworld chat is buzzing quite a lot and turns out lots of newcomers are looking for things to do and it’s Wednesday and the Antigua bar crawl is on. From the outset it’s got 5 stars on Google maps saying it’s a great place for solo travellers to have a mingle and go check out cool places in town with free drinks for the first 2 hours. I have my reservations about this not being settled in & on my own but decide to go to it thinking that if the vibe ain’t vibing I can fuck off any time I want. So I pay my $20 USD and head over there for 6pm when the free drinks start.

Get there and the event is run by a big Aussie roider who gives you the welcome says here’s the choices of free drinks, tequila and orange juice, rum and coke and some vodka tonic. Can I just grab a beer? “Nah mate ya gotta get fucked!!” Okay then this is gunna be fun. So I opt for the tequila orange and take it real slow. The others show up and in the end there’s about 25 blokes and 5 girls. The majority of the blokes being typical “bro” types i.e young, dumb & full of cum and obviously never been in a situation where the entire room has wanted to murder them!

Anyways off we go & we play some stupid drinking game bouncing a ball into a cup. Lucky I don’t get screwed over on this and only end up doing 2 shots. It breaks and people have a chat & I make a point of chatting with whoever not to get roped into another round of this shit. Call me a bitch but I’m on my own, nobody is coming to bail me out if I mess up badly here. I chat to a few of the fellow travelers, nothing hugely interesting apart from one Swiss guy who was alright & told me about his sketchy experience in Guatemala City a few days earlier. Nothing happened but lots of young guys with pistols wandering about so avoid that place. Note taken.

This goes on a bit and I’m trying to make conversations with people and keep getting accosted by this Irish lad who’s getting up in everyone’s faces shouting at them “BRO YOU GOTTA DRINK MORE!!” “IF YOU DON’T WANNA THROW UP YOU GOTTA GET YOUR ASS IN THE CIRCLE!!” Get the Fuck out of my face and watch your language there Butty Boy! Had to be real smooth but by the time we left bar 1 he was wobbling about to the point where he’d probably go down in one if he did try something.

Off we go to bar 2 – some karaoke joint where the few girls in the group decide to have a good sing song. At least I could get a beer & sit at the bar on the side here so wasn’t too bad. We finish there then on to bar 3.

Bar 3 was a hostel bar. You get your welcome shot then you go to the bar and it’s spin the wheel and all the things you can get are down more shots take off your clothes and all this shit. I’m feeling nervous and not happy. I pause for a few minutes and then decided to take a quick trip to the WC and decide yeah fk this I’m bailing and quietly show myself out of there and ditch my wristband. Good fucking riddance!!!

I have a wander and find a decent whiskey and wine bar and decide to have a few copas of the house red and wind down from this. I stay there till they close at 11.30 then head back and call it a night.

So not a great start. Was it them or me? I stuck it out for a good 4 hours so can’t blame this one on the Agoraphobia. This is the sort of thing where glad I have it a try just not for me. Think it would have been a better experience if there were more girls and I had somebody with me to watch my back. Too many hot headed blokes you couldn’t trust on this. If you visit Antigua don’t not do this but don’t do it on your first night and have someone with you who can watch your back is my tip for that one.

Tomorrow I think I will do a walking tour of the city and get the lay of the land properly then think I am going to get an Airbnb on the outskirts for a few days downtime – Need a break from Hostel World after this one.

Here’s some pictures of Antigua before the crawl started plus the whiskey and vino place I was in at the end.