Just like that, it’s time to say goodbye to Guatemala, country number eight (we’re not counting passing through El Salvador or Honduras!). We’re heading scarily close to the end of our Latin-American adventures, and the half-way point of our whole trip. This has meant having to speed our way through this wonderful country, but we think we’ve made a good go of it with the time we had left.
Guatemala has been an absolute delight and surprise for us both. Sure, the shuttles have been painful and long, but what’s rewarded us after each stop has been totally worth it. The prices here have met our expectations and have seemed fair, sometimes on the more expensive side in the most touristy of locations, but that’s to be expected. We’ve managed to stay on budget with a balance of a meals out and a few meals of super-noodles. There’s still plenty more we could have enjoyed here, and it’s the first country since Argentina that we’ve felt we could happily come back to and spend more time in.
You’ll no doubt be pleased to read there’s no ‘how the USA screwed up Guatemala’ post. However, that’s not because they didn’t (they really, really did!), it’s just because we didn’t have the time to get more exposure to the political history of the country like we have elsewhere. You’re off the hook!
Instead we get to enjoy the Guatemala of today. Beautiful, unbelievably friendly, green, majestic, safe (at least on the gringo trail), still battling its past demons, but embracing their culture and everything this wonderful country has to offer with pride.
Rule of Three
Highlights (Alex) – Antigua, all of it (especially the chocolate making!), just loved this beautiful city, clean, friendly, safe, easy, calm, bliss. Semuc Champey, beautiful and relaxing to just explore as you please, bopping in and out of the water pools. Tikal, wandering and clambering around this largely-still-undiscovered site but still relatively in tact.
Highlights (James) – Volcano hike, the views, the hike itself and campfire dinner. The chocolate making experience, I didn’t know I would enjoy it so much! Semuc Champey, swimming in those natural pools.
Lowlights (Alex) – Such long shuttle rides, the long bus-cama rides of South America now seem like a dream! Having to book and plan so much in advance that meant not being able to fully absorb the present, everywhere in Central has required so much more pre-booking than we had to do in South, it’s exhausting. Being harassed and felt like we were getting scammed in Lanquin (even though we weren’t).
Lowlights (James) – sickness – health – sickness again. Long and uncomfortable shuttles. Admin and planning feeling like it was taking over the enjoyment in some parts.
Takeaways (Alex) – I can’t believe how wonderful Guatemala is and it was totally off my radar, I wonder how many other countries are too! Planning sucks, so I’m really grateful to share that with James to half the burden. The realisation we’re leaving Latin America soon has made me realise how sad I’ll be to leave it.
Takeaways (James) – So much litter, it’s sad that some humans care so little for the environment they can’t even be bothered not to litter. What I imagined Central America to be like, hot, green, beautiful ruins and friendly people. Don’t take everyone’s opinions as fact, we loved some places others seemed really disappointed by such as Rainbow mountain back in Peru; some warned us that Lake Atitlán was full of trash and sewage which was not true at all in our experience.
Description (Alex) – Beautiful. Historical (the Maya culture is still beautifully alive and well). Green.
Description (James) – Fun, lots to do. Worth the money. Chilled out.
Entertainment
TV & Film: All Quiet On the Western Front, Justified – Primeval, Geography Now (YouTube channel, brilliant!)
Books: Red Dragon
Podcasts: Off-Menu, More Or Less, A Short History Of…, Today Explained, The World Wanderers, Many Roads Travelled (a solo female traveller in her 50s with bad knees and a blood disease charming her way across Central), Song Exploder, The Infinite Monkey Cage, Criminal, This Is Love
Where We Stayed
Hostel Antigueño (Antigua): 4.5 ⭐️, fantastic communal areas, big enough kitchen, lovely staff, just needed an extra sink.
Base Camp (Acatenango volcano): 2 ⭐️, campfire, thick mats, warmth and a toilet seat on the side of a volcano were surprising and appreciated. Tents squashed so close together I was touching the man (not James) next to me was not. Also, no view from the hut and nowhere to sit without being smoked out, plus balancing on rocks to be able to sit on said toilet.
Hostel Antigueño (Antigua): 4 ⭐️, super thin walls on our second stay taking off some points.
Casa Tribu (Lake Atitlan): 4 ⭐️, lovely room, amazing setting, I kind of wanted to help tidy up the garden haha, but no fridge meant dealing with flies a lot
Casa Esperanza (Panajachel): 3 ⭐️, decent room for the price and kitchen a bonus, but no windows in room so quite dark
Vista Verde (Lanquin): 3 ⭐️, amazing setting and facilities, but overpriced breakfasts, our room having no privacy and sounding like it was going to collapse every time someone walked around, took points off, that and the dreaded green walls that plague my Latin America stays
Hostel Macarena (Flores): 4 ⭐️ cute hostel, dorm beds all with privacy curtains and own lamp and shelf, bathroom with hot water, and nice communal areas. Points off for the lamps being too bright so anyone staying up illuminated the whole room rather than just their bed, and them also forgetting to book our tour.
Cutting Room Floor
- Driving passed wildfires on our way to Antigua, James totally missing it at first captivated by his phone, until I realised the glowing and twinkling orange in the dark wasn’t leftover Christmas lights but the smouldering embers of the shrubbery next to us
- Pines next to palms, so weird! Never thought these plants would grow in the same climate but it seems they do
- People carrying furniture on their backs, including up the dusty, sandy route up the side of Acatenango. Could use mules, but again, is this a way for them to make money they wouldn’t otherwise?
- Our first negative Australians, with negative comments of places we loved, critical of everything, had a drone (that we thankfully never saw), getting the impression they were just trying to one-up others on tik-tok (maybe why they didn’t enjoy places as much!)
- Liability Man from the USA who showed up to this incredibly hard two-day hike hungover from tequila the night before, wearing casual clothes and flat-soled sneakers that meant he couldn’t control himself going up or down the sandy/gravelly/rocky terrain, almost wiping James out because of it, and being a pretty obnoxious personality to boot where he would just talk at you
- Who is littering? Someone on our tour said he saw the porters doing it, and I saw a local just throw his wrapper out the back of the truck. In all the countries we’ve been, this has been the saddest amount in such beautiful surroundings. It’s hard to understand how and why anyone do such a thing, especially if your culture is to respect pachamama, so who is doing it and why?
- Antigua reminded us a lot of a nicer Arequipa, and we really liked Arequipa
- Very impressive chicken buses with lights like a christmas fair, just called camionetas in spanish
- Lots of yellow buildings because of the importance of this colour maya culture in honouring/resembling corn
- Kids driving tuk-tuks and motorbikes
- There’s no mail system here, if you want to post something, you have to use something like UPS
- The various styling of the mayan fashion. I loved the straight-down wrap-around skirts in Lake Atitlan, but then the more we went east, the more they resembled the skirts in the altiplano, big and puffy and layered. I assume the colours and styles indicate which community you are from and would love to have learnt more about them
- Comments that lake atitlan would be full of rubbish to the point we considered cancelling, but it was actually fine where we were. Perhaps in other villages but thankfully not where we were
- Apparently this is because the state choses to no longer collect rubbish so it just gets thrown and dumped in the river (citation needed)
- Lisa, the lovely lady in San Antonio who got chatting to us and telling us to tell our friends and family to come to San Antonio and buy their traditional pottery (each village around the lake has its own speciality)
- Staying somewhere without a fridge, food did survive fairly well and made us question how dependent we are on these giant energy-sappers, but it did mean adjusting cooking plans and dealing with swarms of tiny flies whenever the ‘coolbox’ was opened
- Our hosts Miki and Javi having a fairly idyllic life of just chilling out at the house, keeping it going and managing changeover days but getting to live in a relative paradise
- Seeing people running around lake atitlan, not gringos, and those hills were STEEP! Not sure if they were locals or what but fair play to them!
- Seeing some people on bikes trying to get around lake atitlan and looking up to the hill we’d just ourselves tried to run/walk up and them turning back
- Eduardo sorting out our transport in Lanquin, wandering around as we wait, keeping us on our toes, but eventually we do make it onto a van
- Kids, maybe no bigger than Mattie, carrying breeze blocks one at a time, with the strap around their foreheads like many of the older people we’ve seen
- Instead of cockerels or dogs serenading us to sleep, it was a cow in Vista Verde
- So many kids not in school, but does school even matter out here when you work on the farm and sell your wares within your own community?
The Photos
Not my picture, but the fashion around Lake Atitlan:
What I thought were some kind of plastic-chili-style-Christmas lights until one fell off and James pointed out they were actually flowers:
Our view from our room in Casa Tribu:
Some of the ridiculously huge and adorned lake-side houses with no way to get there than by boat:
Soot sprites on cables:
A McDonalds in a huge old casona with a lovely garden that you’d never know that’s what it was were it not for the golden arches:
James with his favourite volcano:
A coffee tree in the beer garden in Antigua showing all the different stages of the bean:
A beautiful rose in the same garden:
Shots from the road, seen through the most smashed windscreen ever that brought out Final Destination thoughts:
No minimum speed for cows on the carriageway:
Bus boat. Standard. This time we stayed on the shuttle as we boated across:
This was in a petrol station/rest stop, I would love to know what transpired from the games of whatever Naipe is to warrant banning a card game!:
Does exactly what it says on the tin. Although we were in the literal middle of nowhere, so I can only imagine the pool of “sexi ladies” to choose from:
So many little piglets in a tiny pen for sale, sadness:
A tapir in the Tapir National Park (that is where all the Tikal monuments are):
The Tikal temple map showing all there was to see, huge site:
Friendly hostel doggy:
Catering to a certain audience:
1 Comment
Great blog, glad your feeling better now 😊. You’ve definitely seen some of the most beautiful places on the world. It’s a real bug bear to me about the litter, it really annoys me how people are happy to detract from this beautiful world, by the careless toss of a wrapper or something, sad 😔. Sounds like you both really enjoyed Guatemala apart from the sickness/litter and odd idiot 🤣. Brilliant. Look forward to the next blog 😉 Xx