We had a bit of a plan when we arrived in Antigua. We were going to look for a place to rent for a week. We figured it would be cheaper than paying a daily price for a week. We had lunch of Fish & Chips to try to recover from the bus ride. The fish wasn’t even breaded, I’m not sure if that is proper. We left the restaurant feeling fine and walked to the tourist office, we only got turned around once. The fellow that I spoke to there said to try real estate offices. He also named a couple restaurants that may have flyers. We saw many places with flyers for housing in Xela. Jill was ready to stop but I convinced her to walk to the Doña Luisa’s restaurant a block away. When we arrived there we saw a few rooms for rent. None of the prices listed were very cheap though.
Discouraged, we started walking down the street to find a hostel for the night. I began to realize that lugging all of our bags around was no longer fun. I didn’t feel well at all. My heart was racing and I was a little short of breath. Jill was walking in front of me and I called to her that maybe we should slow down. When we said to each other “you look really flushed,” I decided that maybe we needed to stop and take stock of what was going on.
We found an ice cream shop and got a little gelato. I felt really weak and both Jill and I had splotchy red flushing all over. Jill thought maybe the odd Fish & Chips poisoned us but both of us felt normal digestively. It started to dawn on me that we had heat exhaustion. So I went to the nearest store and got some water. We got about 2 liters of cold water in each of us and we began to feel human.
After we left the ice cream shop we caught a taxi to another hotel. The only problem was the place had no rooms. So, there we were literally sick and tired, stuck blocks from the town center. Luckily, you can’t spit in Antigua without hitting a some kind of accommodation. Half a block later we found two more full hotels and the end of our ropes.
I didn’t fancy sleeping on the sidewalk, so, in true fashion the third time was the charm. The third hotel in 3 blocks had a room. We barely noticed the peeling paint and lack of a front desk before falling into a 2 hour slumber.
We’re both fine now and a little wiser. The temperature was only 74 F. We had only walked a little more than a mile. I suppose it was a combination of those factors and that we’ve been more used to cool temperatures lately. To say the least, I’ve been showing more skin since then and we’re staying hydrated.