A Bit of Geographical Perspective

Sometimes Guatemala feels so big, and sometimes it seems so small! As a Canadian, I'm used to endless expanses of fields and forests, so when I'm on a chicken bus touring across Guatemala, it just seems normal to see miles of pretty much nothing. What's not so normal is how damn LONG it takes to get anywhere here! And that's even with the crazy speed-demon bus drivers. :)

To give a bit of perspective, I used a program called MapFrappe to compare the size of Guatemala to other places in the world. Take a look!

Guatemala on the left and the outline of the entire country overlaid on England. Wow!

One side of Guate to the other is pretty much the distance from Toronto to Ottawa.
Of course, both Guatemalans and Canadians know that "as the crow flies" is a joke!

For my American readers. Does this put Guatemala in perspective for you? Crazy, eh?

Head over to MapFrappe to make your own outline. It's easy. Navigate the left-hand map to where you want to make an outline. Click a few times on the map to make your outline (dots will show up if it's working) and then click "END" to close the loop. Your outline will show on the right-hand map. Scroll around and see where it fits!

You can also do this for straight lines, say, if you're trying to figure out how far it would be to walk or drive from one place to another in comparison to where you live now. I did this when I first was planning my trip to visualize how big Panajachel was in comparison to Barrie. Neat!