Guatemala

June – July 2002

Wednesday 19 June, 2002

After shutting down the boat, we got a fairly early start to San Salvador.  The usual bus routine got us to the city center.    From there Bill made a quick dash into a bank for money, then we walked off to the Tica Bus office and purchased tickets for the first-class bus to Guatemala City, leaving at 6:00 AM the next morning.  Another bus ride got us to the shopping area of Metro Sur, where the first order of business was to eat lunch.  We found a nice Mexican restaurant which served real Mexican food.   We enjoyed a leisurely meal and then made the short walk up the hill to Roberto and Amanda’s place of business.  Amanda was at her desk and on seeing us arrive, jumped up to greet us.  We sure felt welcome!!! There we met their son, Fernando, and several other relatives.  Roberto visited with us while Amanda ran off to get a relative's car, one that Roberto likes to drive.  Roberto was gracious enough to take us shopping for a new outboard motor and in the process ran a few errands of his own.  After visiting several stores we finally found one that was willing to order us the short-shaft version that we need.  We ordered a 8 hp Mercury that should arrive in San Salvador in early September. 

We returned to the office for a short time before Roberto took us off the their home.  It is a wonderfully bright and airy place, located higher up on the hill.  They have a small, well manicured yard with a table in the garden, where we sat and enjoyed a lemonade while we visited.  Amanda showed up a short time later with great dinner plans to go out for pupusas, the local food, and our first try of them.  They are fat tortillas formed around meat and/or beans and/or cheese and then cooked: very yummy!! 

After dinner Fernando and a friend took us around town to see various night sites finally ending at a coffee spot for an "almost" Holstein's cup of coffee.  Very definitely an international city.  Fernando is learning English - and does quite well - so we conversed in a mixture of English and Spanish.  It was late when we returned to Roberto and Amanda’s and were soon asleep after another short visit.

Thursday 20 June, 2002  -  To Antigua

Roberto was up early to drive us to the Tika Bus terminal.  There we met up with Jutta and Ferdy (from Pipe Dream) traveling on the same bus, but going all the way to Tapachula, Mexico.  It was a nice comfortable bus and we arrived in the big city of Guatemala by 11:00 AM.  After some tracking about, we found the proper set of buses to get us to Antigua in local style.  The bus to Antigua was packed with 6-across seating and no isle space left.  The center two persons were only half on seats but squeezed against each other to keep from falling off.  We arrived in Antigua, along with an afternoon rain storm, but the sun was coming out by the time we found the hotel recommended to us by other cruisers.  We had a nice room for 100 Quetzales per night ($12.50 US) with a hot water shower and a great view.  After settling in we took off for the central plaza where we found both working a ATM machine and lunch. 

A visit to the tourist office after lunch gave us too much information on language schools.  We decided to check out the ones near our hotel first.  The first one we stopped into seemed great, so we not only signed up for classes for the following week but signed up to live with a local family for the week.  We also were told about the school's outing for the following morning and we were invited to attend.   The school has its own staff tour guide.

Friday 21 June, 2002

We enjoyed a wonderful breakfast of fruit, yogurt and granola early enough to be at the school for the 9 AM excursion.  The trip for the day was by  “chicken bus" to the small town of San Andres Itzapa to view the temple of the local Indian saint, San Simon.  The patio outside the saint’s temple contained many sacrificial fires; whose purpose, we were told, was mostly to provide success to business ventures.  Inside there were large tables full of burning candles: offerings for other needs or wants.  Lots of alcohol was consumed and cigars smoked by the sacerdotes (priests) during their offerings.  Very interesting, but definitely not my idea of religious. 

After our return, we moved in with our “family for the week” and enjoyed our first meal with them.  They are an older couple, but actually only the man is at home, as his wife is in Seattle, Washington visiting their daughter who recently delivered them a grandchild.   There was plenty of table conversation though as friends were invited over to help keep it lively, all in Spanish of course.

After lunch the school provided a second excursion.  This time we went to the nearby town of San Antonio Aguas Calientes to receive a presentation of native clothing which is still worn by many of the local women.  It was a wonderful demonstration, with the proprietress dressing me up in the woman’s attire as she explained each piece of clothing, then dressing Bill up in the man’s.  Most of the women cling to their traditional dress but the men have converted to jeans and western shirts, except for ceremonial occasions such as weddings.

Saturday 22 June, 2002  -  Volcán Pacaya

In the morning we walked back into town to track down a tour to visit Volcán Pacaya and a trip to Chichicastenango for Sunday. 

The trip to see the volcano was to leave at 1:00 PM but ended up not leaving until almost 2:00.  It was about an hour and a half bus ride.  First we traveled divided highways, then two-lane country road and finally - the last half hour - on a dirt road up the mountain.   We passed through two good size villages on the mountain road before reaching the trail head at another small village. 

When we signed up for the trip we just thought we were going to "see" the volcano, but we were advised at our school that we would really "climb" the volcano and we absolutely needed flashlights. We climbed up for over two hours over a fairly steep trail, especially near the top, to reach the caldera.  The caldera was belching an acid steam but the wind kept it mostly away from us.  The trip down was shorter but the last part was in the dark and slow going.  We did get good night views of Guatemala City and nearby Volcán Fuego, with its red lava flow.

We did not arrive back in Antigua until after 9:30 PM.  Then it was off for a quick dinner before returning “home” for a short night’s sleep.

Sunday  23 June, 2002  -  Chichicastenango

A very early morning alarm woke us up at 5:30 AM.  We hurriedly got dressed and were off to the travel agency to catch our ride to the town of Chichicastenango.  We had coffee and sweet rolls at the bakery in the same building as the agency, while we where waiting for the rest of the folks to gather and for the van to arrive.   It was a 2 ½ hour drive to Chichi and we made a stop midway for coffee, so we arrived at the market just before 10 AM.  Sunday Market at Chichicastenango is so huge and colorful as to be overwhelming.  We spent the first hour just wandering through the stalls gawking and taking photos.  The market contained some of the freshest produce that I have seen in a long time.  We found a small museum at one edge of the market and we took time off to visit it.  Then we spent about another hour making purchases.  We were quite selective and only picked up a few items, as whatever we purchase now has to be carried with us the rest of the trip.   We left Chichi just after 2:00 PM and were back in Antigua by 5:00 PM.  Totally exhausted, we found a quiet restaurant and enjoyed an East European style meal, very yummy, before returning to our “home” for an early-to-bed night. 

Monday  24 June, 2002

This was our first day of Spanish language school.  Bill spent three hours in the morning at the internet café downloading 3 months worth of eMail.  Then it was back to our host's for almuerzo, lunch, and off to an afternoon of one-on-one lessons; all students get an individual teacher.  We did lots of talking and copied lists of verb conjugations.  Today was present tense and there are lots of irregular verbs.

Wednesday 26 June, 2002

Yesterday was another afternoon of verb conjugations.  In the morning we visited the ruins of the original Cathedral in Guatemala.  It was destroyed in 1723 and again in 1976 by earthquakes but by then the Cathedral had moved to the new Guatemala City, so only two remaining chapels have been repaired to serve as a parish church.

This morning the school had another tour.  This time we visited a macadamia nut plantation.  It is an experimental station, growing the trees and designing ways to process the nuts so that the local indigenous population can raise them as a cash crop, instead of using the slash-and-burn farming that is still practiced in Central America as it has been for thousands of years. 

Four hours of intense Spanish class in the afternoon is sure leaving us tired!   We have decided to call it quits on the classes after this week and move on to Las Flores to visit the Mayan ruins of Tikal.  We may return for another week of classes after that or even later in the summer. 

Friday 28 June, 2002

Yesterday, after a short session at the internet café, we visited the ruins of the ex-Convent of La Merced where a tourist fair was going on.  We enjoyed visiting with the many vendors and picked up some info especially for the Petén area of the country (the northern part, where we are headed).  In class we covered the last of the verb conjugations, future tense.  After class was the weekly fiesta dinner at the school.  We enjoyed a wonderful dinner - that we even helped to create - while we practiced conversing in Spanish. 

Our last day of classes was today and after lunch we moved out of our host's home and back into a favorite hotel,  near the school.

Today's class was mostly just talking and listening, practicing what we had learned.  After class Bill and I walked around town and found a Mexican restaurant for dinner.  We have been missing the Mexican cuisine with its wonderful spices.  

Saturday 29 June, 2002

We got a later than usual start this morning, although you could not really call it sleeping-in, as we were off to breakfast shortly after 8:00 AM.  Bill spent the rest of the morning surfing the web as this may be his last chance for a good connection for some time.  The internet café he is using here is set up so that he can attach our laptop in through its network card.  Bill can therefore download goodies to our computer for later use.

After Bill finished “surfing” we walked to the Jade Museum.  We had been handed a brochure for the museum and it looked interesting.  The museum was as wonderful as it advertised.  It was part of a working jade factory and contained recreations of some beautiful jade pieces found in the Mayan Ruins of Copan, Calakmul, Palenque and Tikal. 

By the time we finished at the museum, it was mid-afternoon so we stopped by the cookie factory for a lunch of pizza, cookies and muffins.  Then it was off toward the hotel with a stop at the native arts and textile market, that is arranged like a museum.  It contained Huipiles, colorful blouses, from many of the various native villages (even some from villages in Mexico), as well as carved wooden pieces and some pottery.  I spent some time sitting with two women that were spinning - by hand - the brown cotton that is a specialty of the area. 

For dinner we found a restaurant serving local cuisine, where we ate stuffed chiles, pupusas, rice, beans and the local favorite: pickled cabbage. 

Sunday 30 June, 2002  -  To Las Flores

A day of travel that started before daylight at 4:00 AM.   We were to be picked up at the hotel by minibus and transported to the bus terminal in Guatemala City; so we hopped on a minibus that stopped by the hotel.  It turned out to be the wrong one, as another couple from the hotel was heading to the airport at the same time we were heading to the bus terminal.  We, thankfully, noted our mistake before we were out of Antigua and a return to the hotel to change vehicles got us back on the right track.  Off to the bus station where we were in for a big suprise!  We had paid for and supposedly booked passage on a primo first class bus to Las Flores.  What we discovered when we got to the station was an economy class bus without even air-conditioning.  Not much we could do about it as the first class bus did not leave for 4- ½ hours and we were not in a part of town where we wanted to wait.    Although not as comfortable as the primo bus would have been, we still got to Las Flores by 3:00 in the afternoon and only part of the trip was so hot and humid as to be really uncomfortable; but still we spent the first part of the trip frustrated at being taken.  The trip was through pretty country and we even passed through the small town of Rio Dulce where some of our friends have been on their boats in the past.  There were plenty of sailboats around, but I expect mostly in the storage state, as this was at the most uncomfortable part of the journey. 

We walked down our first street in Las Flores and a boy on a bike attached himself to us hoping to get a commission by leading us to one of “his“ hotels.  We even ducked into an open travel agency to try to ditch him, but to no avail.   We did find a nice hotel at the next corner with air-conditioning, a nice balcony and cable TV.  We made good use of the TV each evening to watch the news and mostly, the Discovery channel in Spanish.  A big help to our understanding of the language.  We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant only to discover that not only was the service poor, but the food was nothing spectacular either.  We ended up breakfasting each day at a hotel further down the street with great breakfasts and super service. 

Monday 1 July, 2002

We slept a little later and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before hitting the narrow circular streets of Las Flores.  The town covers a small island in Lake Petén Itza which is almost completely covered with buildings and narrow streets.  We first walked up hill to the central plaza and visited the tourist office located nearby.  We wanted to check on the possibility of visiting other ruin sites than just Tikal, especially El Mirrador up near the Mexican border.  We did find a tour that included El Mirador, but it was a 5 day horseback ride and hike through the jungle.  Since it is the rainy season the jungle trails are all but impassable; not a recommended tour for this time of year.  We did pick up a brochure for a two-day tour by river to visit two newly opened Mayan sites.

We then walked back across the causeway to the business town of Santa Elena to find an ATM.  None were available since the banks were all closed; but we did purchase bus tickets to go to Tikal in the morning.  We then found a breezy shoreside restaurant where we ate lunch before re-crossing the causeway back to Las Flores.

Tuesday 2 July, 2002

Today we visited the marvelous Mayan site of Tikal.  We started the day early with a walk to the bus terminal in Santa Elena.  The bus was late so it was a long wait there but finally the Tikal minibus arrived and we were off on the hour-long drive to the ruins.  We arrived at the site about 10:00 AM and spent 5 hours in the jungle exploring the ruins.  The way the ruins just appeared out of the jungle was most interesting.  The ground's crew really have their hands full keeping the jungle from retaking the entire site.  The Plaza Mayor area has been kept the most vegetation-free, but I expect that all the tourist traffic helps here. 

We started our exploration with areas Q and R and then took a long jungle trail - complete with the daily rainstorm - ending up at Temple IV, one of the larger pyramids.  Only the upper part of this pyramid has been excavated; the bottom 2/3 is still covered with jungle, but they have constructed a stairway to the top and this we climbed.  The view from on top was spectacular, with five other temples poking above the surrounding green jungle. 

We continued to follow the main-looking path, visiting sites along the way, some excavated, some just jungle-covered mounds.  Most of the time we did not know exactly where we were, but we did find the names of two sites that we passed through, Mundo Perdido (Lost World), and Plaza of Seven Temples.  We also passed Temple V, one of the larger pyramids but it was ribboned-off and is being actively excavated.  Our walk eventually brought us past the ball court and into Plaza Mayor.  We took over an hour to explore this plaza and the North Acropolis to the north and the Central Acropolis to the south.  Temple I, the most photographed one, is not open for climbing and we chose not to climb Temple II opposite it on the plaza, but we did climb around in the two acropolises, or high places, on either side of the plaza.  The North Acropolis had two areas where the archeologists have excavated down into pyramids older and lower in the stack.  There they had exposed monster masks decorating the older structure.  (The Mayans rebuilt their pyramids, with new temples on top, every 52 years as their calendar recycled.  Later the Aztecs in Mexico would do the same.)

After exploring the main plaza, we were too tired for much else, so followed the path to the exit where we collapsed in the restaurant for a time.  We then had gathered enough energy to explore the small museum. 

Wednesday  3 July, 2002

After breakfast we visited a tourist agent to schedule a trip to Ciebal and Aguateca.  It is to be a two-day trip, much by river,  with a night spent at a lodge somewhere near Sayaxché.  Then it was off to find a bank where we could get some badly needed Quetzales.  There are only two ATMs in town and they would only accept Visa (not MasterCard - a situation we find common here in Central America) so we used our one Visa card to get about $250 US equivalent in Quetzales.  Not quite enough to cover everything, so we used our MasterCard to pay for the tour and another night in the hotel, leaving the cash for meals and other miscellaneous expenses.   The rest of the day was spent recovering from our Tikal visit, including getting some laundry done. 

Thursday 4 July, 2002  -  Jungle River Trip

Another up-early morning as the tour picked us up at the hotel at 8 AM.  The hotel kept our bags with most of our things for our return on Friday, and we carried only Bill’s daypack with a few overnight items.  Our tour group consisted of Bill and I and a family of four from Austin, Texas, with their guide.

The drive to Sayaxché was over an hour and part of the road is still dirt.  The country is working hard at paving many of the more used roads that are out away from the main city areas.  The main town of Sayaxché is on the opposite side of the Pasión River from where our minibus left us.  There is a ferry that connects the city to the end of the road.   Here we met up with the small boat that would be our transportation for the next two days.  We are very much at the edge of civilization.

The site of Ceibal was about an hour up the river.  It was an interesting ride as we passed by slash-and-burn farm areas, homes constructed in the native style, a very major oil pipeline, and even some groups of women doing laundry in the river, before reaching the protected rain forest with its dense plant life.   The boat was beached near the site of Ceibal where we were greeted by swarms of mosquitoes.  The trek to the site was up hill with the ever-present mosquitoes surrounding us like a cloud.  The site itself has been surveyed and a model is available for a view of what they think will be found, but only one of the many structures has been excavated and reconstructed.  Some stele have also been stood up and covered with palm roofs for protection.    Next year a group from Harvard is scheduled to begin excavations at the site. This will be a huge site, someday.

We returned down river to Sayaxché and were given an hour to find a lunch before the boat would take us again up another fork of the river to our lodges for the night.  Not much was open in the town this time of the year and the guide's favorite restaurants were all closed.  Bill and I finally found a small café where we ordered tacos. 

The trip up the Petexbatún River lead us to Lake Petexbatún and we continued on, weaving among the many islands in the shallow water to our lodge for the night, above the lakeshore.  We stayed at the Petexbatún Lodge an Eco-Lodge hidden in the rainforest.  The family of four was transported up the lake a little further to a newer,  more exclusive - and much more expensive - lodge.  We were the only guests at our lodge, except for our boat driver.  The lodge is run by four older men who do a great job.  They fixed us a wonderful chicken dinner, showed us the local howler monkey family hidden up in a tall tree and let us look around the otherwise empty site. 

Friday 5 July, 2002

Another early day and another site to visit.  Today it was off by launch to visit Aquateca, a Mayan site on the lake not far from our lodges.  We stopped to pick up the rest of the group at their lodge and were given a tour of the place.  It is on a small island formed by the Mayans for defense from a peninsula that extended out into the lake.  The lodge had several archeologists as their only other guests.  The restaurant at "our" lodge is much better.

The site of Aguateca was particularly interesting for us, as it is being actively excavated and we got a chance to visit with the archaeologists.  They had recently discovered an altar hidden under a tree and entangled within its roots.  The tree had been cut down (yesterday?) and they were carefully removing roots to extract the altar.  There were also several stele, with the originals still laying on the ground and the reconstructed ones standing nearby.  This site contains several excavated plazas with what look like the platforms of living structures around them.  The nearby trees had both howler monkeys and spider monkeys in them.

We did not take the direct route to the Mayan site but a round-about pathway that led through a large deep fissure in the rock formation that forms the cliffs on the river side of the site.   From the trail we had some great views back to the lake and the cleft was an interesting natural structure.  We were accompanied by the ever-present mosquitoes, but they were not nearly as bad as yesterday’s horde. 

The trip back down river was uneventful.  We made a stop at the lodge to clean up and eat lunch before the ride back to Sayaxché. There the minibus met us for the ride back to Las Flores.  We picked up our bags and checked back into the hotel before hunting down a dinner and collapsing for the night.

Sunday 7 July, 2002

Yesterday, besides recuperating from our grand adventure, we purchased air-plane tickets to return to Guatemala City.  Bill found a internet café where he could connect his own laptop to the network so did a little net surfing.  I went swimming in the lake and in the small pool at the hotel, then found some other hotel guests to visit with. 

Today, with the plane leaving in the late afternoon, we had time for some last minute explorations around Las Flores.  We then took one of the local buses to the airport.  The plane was small - about 30 passengers - and detoured around several big afternoon thunderheads so the ride was relatively calm.  We had a great aerial view of Lake Petexbatún and the little island/peninsula where one of the lodges was, before we were socked in by clouds.  The arrival in Guatemala City was interesting, as we de-planed, not at the main terminal as we had expected, but at a hanger area at the far end of the runway!  Thankfully there were taxis and two minibuses waiting on the street side of the hanger.  We found passage on one of the minibuses back to Antigua and checked into the same hotel that we had used previously, Santa Lucia #3 near La Merced.   What a difference in temperature!  In Las Flores we slept under a fan with the air-conditioner going; here we slept under a wool blanket.

Monday  8 July, 2002

Bill did some more last minute web surfing and we did some more exploring around the town.  We finally made it to Iglesia de San Francisco.  The church was ruined in one of the major earthquakes in 1776 and only one chapel is in use today - and it was only restored in 1992.  It contains the remains of Hermano Pedro, a historic priest to the locals, who will canonized as a Saint by the Pope on his visit to Guatemala later this month.  The ruins behind the functioning church were quite extensive and interesting to walk through.  It had been the center of the Spanish Franciscan mission in Central America before it was destroyed. 

In the evening we sat in the central plaza and ended up having a nice visit with some of the vendors that were ending their day of selling to the tourists.  They wore their native clothing and were very friendly.  Several were as interested in our lifestyle as we were in theirs.  Although many of the vendors spoke some English, our speaking Spanish sure helped with communicating; they spoke to each other in the local Mayan dialect.

Tuesday  9 July, 2002

The daily first-class Tika Bus leaves Guatemala City for San Salvador at 1:00 PM, so we scheduled the 10:00AM minibus to pick us up at our hotel.  The bus ride was uneventful; although the bus was almost full, mostly traveling youth from Europe.  We arrived in back San Salvador around 7:00 PM.  Bill called our friend Roberto to see if they were at home or still at work, as they had insisted - and we had promised - to visit upon our return.  Roberto was home and drove to the bus station to pick us up and take us back to his home.  We spent a delightful evening with Roberto, Amanda and Fernando. 

Wednesday 10 July, 2002

Roberto drove us to the San Marcos bus station where we caught the local bus to the Costa del Sol area .  Before getting on the bus we made a quick trip to the local mercado and purchased some fresh vegetables to take home with us.   It is always good to be back home again!