We spent 3 days in Antigua, the first Spanish capital of Guatemala, so it is a lovely 15th century town with lots of churches (quite a lot in ruins due to almost constant earthquakes), cobbled streets all set in a natural bowl surrounded by 4 volcanoes, of which one is active, the smoke and lava being a bit of a give away. A very picturesque spot, consequently lots of tourist thus lots of nice little hotels in old Spanish manor houses as well as lots good shops, coffee bars & posh restaurants – none of which of course Louise was allowed to patronise.
However, we did go on an official walking tour and learnt interesting facts both old & new such as Coca Cola paid for all the street wiring to be sited underground in return for a very discrete logo on each lamppost and making the town look even more picturesque. We also spent a few hours in the textile museum learning more about the weaving which the Guatemalan highlands are famous for. Each village in the Highlands weave their own distinctive cloth varying in design, colour, embroidery from which they make their own skirts and bodices and so at one glance you can determine which village they are from. So from then on we kept trying to remember who wore what & what it meant! All in all about 80% of women, young and old, seem to wear traditional dress but we only spotted a few men apart from the hat which most men seem to favour particularly the cowboy hat.
Antigua is famous for its Semana Santa (Easter to the non-left footers) festivities and during our wanderings on the 2nd Sunday in Lent, we came across a procession. It seems that each Sunday during Lent a local village process by foot to Antigua carrying their saints on altars, walking over these flower carpets accompanied by lots of followers in purple ‘Arab type’ outfits with lots of smells & their own band – quite a spectacle.
Then on by bus to Lake Atilan, which is also surrounded by volcanoes (bit of a theme here) - a strikingly beautiful place.
On arrival in Pana the main town we took a ‘lancha’ across the lake and spent a night in Santa Cruz in a guest house with lovely gardens running down to the shore of the lake. We wandered around the lake for a day and then headed back to the main town so that we could catch a very early morning Chicken Bus (ie local bus not the superior tourist bus) to the market the next day.
During our very windy bus journey, sitting 4 to 5 on a seat built for 2 US school children, Mark’s involuntary cries of fear were fairly audible, luckily Louise just took her glasses off and felt perfectly safe.
We did eventually arrive safely in Chichicastenago where there is a celebrated street market which takes over the whole town. The market was fascinating but one doesn’t really want to buy Guatemalan skirt material, even if it did take 2 months to weave by hand. We did buy a few things but gave up when it became apparent that the concept of barter and negotiation was clearly way beyond Louise - nodding enthusiastically and saying that’s just what she wanted was not really how to get the best deal.
The most interesting thing about the place was the Roman Catholic church where the locals, although converted to Catholicism, quite happily run God alongside their own Mayan beliefs so the church not only is acknowledged by a genuflect but also a Mayan sacrifices happening on the front steps and all sorts of strange effigies and odd rituals going on inside – not really what the Vatican has in mind.
Chi-chi (as the locals say) is a place that tourist arrive for a day trip only so by 4.30pm there was hardly a gringo to be seen. We found a Mayan restaurant and, as our hotel was on the gloomy side, we tried to spin out the evening by going for a drink first, so by the time we arrived back at the restaurant we where the only guests and it was only about 7.15pm. We ordered our supper and wine and although our Spanish is limited the owner did seem very surprised that we wanted a whole bottle, so much that the whole family supervised the bottle opening ceremony!
Feeling like regulars we jumped on another chicken bus and headed to Guatemala City, quite a scary city, armed guards seemed to be everywhere. We had made sure the ‘zona’ we where staying in was one that you were safe to go out at night, as some apparently are not. We had great supper in a large courtyard with fountain, candles and braziers, all very ritzy it seemed to be inhabited by the ‘Guatemalan city boys’ celebrating Friday night, we could have so easily been in Madrid. It was an enormous contrast to our supper the night before in fact the waiters seemed disappointed that we only ordered 1 bottle of wine as all around us tables were littered with bottles of whiskey & vodka!
Our next leg of the journey took us towards the Belize border visiting the Mayan temple at Tikal on the way. We opted for the tourist easy route, so rather than the 10 hour bus journey we took a small plane. Mark was happy as a sand boy once he discovered the flight was delayed and had to spend an hour on the private jet side of the airport, plane spotting. We had decided to stay within Tikal national park so that we could spend more time at the site. An early night was had so that we could see the sunrise over the jungle. We set off with a small group at 4.45am including armed guards and walked through the jungle in the dark to one of the largest temples. After far too many steps to count we settled down on east side of Temple IV to watch the sun rise over the jungle canopy. It was truly ‘awesome’ to listen to the jungle waking up, howler monkeys screaming, toucans and parrots screeching and through the gloom (obviously it was cloudy) seeing the stone tips of the other temples emerge from the jungle. A large cooked breakfast was had back at the hotel and we then set off for a 4 hour guided tour of Tikal – we felt we had truly done Mayan Temples after this!
Our last night was spent in Flores on a lake, no volcanoes this time, then another early morning start back on Chicken buses to the border of Guatemala and Belize. After several changes & many bum numbing hours of buses we arrived back in Cucumber marina outside Belize City but could not see Jem tied up anywhere – slight panic ensued. But after several hours of Mark’s nervous pacing around the marina, Jem eventually appeared on the horizon and the Sheed / Barbis combo was seen approaching – hurrah! We were reunited with Jem. | 