Guatemala was a strange mixture of experiences for us. After the easy-going, take-it-or-leave-it atmosphere in Nicaragua and Honduras, we were a little overwhelmed by the often aggressive attitude of the ever present touts who made sure it was pretty much impossible to escape from the tourist trail. And we were constantly frustrated by the fact that getting from A to B always involved getting past not only the touts, but also literally hundreds of what the Guatemalans call túmulos (speed humps). The highways are full of them – meaning bus rides involve alternating bursts of acceleration and abrupt braking. This may sound like a petty complaint – but try putting up with 10 hours of it, and you will understand what we mean! ;) But on the other hand the country also offered a wonderful mixture of well-preserved colonial towns, mountain lakes and jungle-covered Mayan temples which we had great fun exploring.
Our Guatemalan
experience started in the lovely town of Antigua
– the old capital and centerpiece of the country’s tourism industry. Surrounded
by three towering volcanoes (Agua
3766m, Fuego 3763m and Acatenango 3976m), the city is a
picture-perfect mixture of brightly painted facades, elegant archways and
partially restored ruins draped with bright bougainvillea bushes. It is also
awash with hostels, restaurants, souvenir shops, bars, cafés and every other
tourist-catering establishment imaginable. We spent an enjoyable week (and too
much money) reveling in the luxury of having so many dining choices (after so
many months of rice with beans and beans with rice, this was very exciting to
us!) while Mic made the most of having a good internet access to push ahead
with his job hunt.
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| A painting of picture-prefect Antigua |
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| Colonial meets traditional life |
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| The ruins of a church - still beautiful although crumbling |
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| From the outside the crumbling innards are not visible |
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| One of our favorite restaurants in Antigua - wine, wine, and more wine :D |
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| One of the well-maintained churches in the old colonial city |
After our week of gluttony and overspending, we decided it was time for a cheap change, and we jumped on one of the many tourist shuttle buses heading to San Pedro la Laguna on Lake Atitlán. These shuttles are everywhere in Guatemala and due to the lack of a long-distance bus system, pretty much the only effective way to get around. They make life easier on the one hand, but also mean all tourists are sitting ducks for touts – more on that later. On our arrival in San Pedro, after we had managed to dodge the touts trying to drag us off to their chosen hostels, we found a very affordable room (8 US dollars a night!) with private bathroom and wonderful views over the lake. And the lake is certainly worth looking at! Surrounded by steep, forest glad volcanic slopes, the sparkling little Lake Atitlán is the essence of beauty and peacefulness. Even the almost constant presence of clouds cloaking the highest peaks and daily deluges could not dampen the loveliness of the place. The village of San Pedro itself was a very ‘interesting’ place. Around the two docks the tourist tribes have totally taken over – bar next to bar next to hostel next to restaurant. But it has a very different feel to Antigua. Whereas the colonial town had a more polished feel, San Pedro catered to a lower-paying crowd. The visitors were a strange mixture of young couples, groups of hard-drinking youngsters (mostly Israelis) new-age hippies and serious drug users. Although we liked the relaxed party atmosphere, we were a bit put off by the sort of dark vibe that seemed to buzz just under the surface. You could not walk five steps without being offered some kind of illicit substance, and as one of our friends put it – there were a lot of sketchy, sketchy people hanging around. That being said, it was easy enough to avoid those sorts of people, and as soon as you left the dock area, the real town of San Pedro began – filled with smilingly friendly, traditionally dressed locals going about their daily business, blissfully oblivious to the dodgy goings on in their midst. J I spent a fun week attending Spanish lessons with an extremely friendly local man called Nico while Mic continued his job searching activities, and thanks to the incredibly cheap accommodation and food on offer, we managed to make up for our Antigua excesses.
While we were in San Pedro two exciting events happened
– the first was slightly scary, the second lots of fun. On the 6th
of September a 6.5 magnitude earthquake hit Guatemala. Although the epicenter
was more than 150km away from us, we still felt the shockwaves strongly –
buildings swayed, plaster fell and cracks appeared in walls. It was the first
real earthquake we had experienced, and it was very strange to say the least -
like being dizzy, but there is nothing stable to hold on to steady yourself;
everything is moving. We were very slow to react, and although the quake lasted
more than half a minute, we didn’t think to run outside as many others did.
Luckily our building was stable enough to withstand the tremors, and nothing
serious happened, but it still shook us up in more ways than one. The second event that
we were witness to on the lake was Guatemalan Independence Day on the 15th
of September. The streets were full of celebrating locals, music could be heard
from every quarter, and we were regularly deafened by exploding firecrackers.
The latter seemed to be really popular around the lake, and were of the
incredibly loud variety – they sounded more like cannon fire than fireworks!
During the week leading up to Independence Day, not an hour would go by in which
we were not made to jump by a deafening explosion at close quarters. While we
were constantly getting a fright, spilling our drinks or biting our tongues
whenever one of these bombs were fired, the locals never as much as blinked an
eyelid – making us feel a bit silly ;).
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| Beautiful Largo Atitlan |
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| The view over the lake from our hostel in San Pedro |
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| The famous Indian Nose mountain towering over Lake Atitlán |
It was when we left
San Pedro to head to Lanquín that we
had the experience that tainted our opinion of Guatemala the most. We were once
again on one of the typical tourist shuttles – a mini-bus filled with 10 other
foreign visitors, a driver and our ‘helpful’ conductor, a young man called
Daniel. The drive was a long one, and we knew we would be arriving in Lanquín after dark. It did not surprise
us at all that, as usual, the conductor doubled as a tout, trying to talk us
into going to particular hotels and to sell us tours organized by his company.
What did surprise us was his general aggressiveness, which finally turned into
outright hostility when, during one of our stops he tried to force us to leave
before the food one of the other girls in the bus had ordered and paid for had
arrived. We protested, insisting that we all didn’t mind waiting five more
minutes for her, and he exploded, openly threatening us (in particular Mic, who
had spoken up in support of the other girl) by saying he could and would leave
us in the middle of the jungle in the dark if he wanted to, and that he had a
gun he was not afraid to use if we didn’t do as he said. We were all stunned,
and it became clear to all of us in the bus just how helpless we all were – in the
middle of nowhere, in the dark, with all our valuables, completely dependent
upon the shuttle driver and the conductor. We had no idea where we were, he
could have taken us anywhere. The rest of the drive was completed in shocked
silence, and it was with a huge sense of relief that we finally arrived in Lanquín. By unspoken agreement, the whole group in the
bus stuck together and decided to go to a hostel where at least one couple in
the bus had a reservation, hoping that we would all be accommodated there.
There was no way we wanted to fall into the clutches of any of Daniel’s cronies
again! Although the hostel we ended up in was quite nice, and the nearby Semuc Champey pools beautiful, our stay
in Lanquín was overshadowed by the events of the trip there. We also talked to
others who had had similar experiences with the same shuttle company – called Maya’ch Expeditions – they had been
dropped off in the night (and thus forced to stay at) at remote, expensive,
rundown hostels or aggressively pressured into booking tours. We don’t usually
bad-mouth businesses, but this really has to be said - Maya’ch Expeditions is a mafia organization!
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| The beautiful pools at Semuc Champey |
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| Semuc Champey |
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| The view from our room in Lanquín |
Despite these negative
aspects, we enjoyed our stay in Lanquín, especially due to getting to know the
people who had been in the bus with us. After going through the strange ride
together, we soon became friends and ended up travelling on to Flores with two other couples a few
days later (it was great fun with you guys!).
Arriving in pretty,
touristy Flores was a big change
after the small village atmosphere of San Pedro and Lanquín. The town is
located on an island measuring barely 200m x 200m in Lago de Petén Itzá, and it is packed with hostels, bars and
restaurants catering to the multitude of foreigners who flock to the area to
see THE Maya ruins in Guatemala – Tikal.
We managed to find an affordable hostel with a lovely view over the lake to use
as our base for exploring the ruins. And ‘exploring’ is really the appropriate
word – Tikal is a stereotypical ‘Lost
City’, an enormous complex of around 4000 structures spread out among 16 sq km
of thick, steaming jungle. Some of the ruins date back to 700 BC (!), and
during its heyday in around 700 AD the city is thought to have been home to up
to 150,000 people. Only a fraction of the ruins have been excavated, and
everywhere you look you can see pyramids, houses, temples, palaces and other
as-yet unidentified structures swathed in jungle vines. The whole site has a
spooky, mystical atmosphere to it, and we really felt we were walking through
the streets of a lost city, in the footsteps of ancient Mayan nobles. A
spectacular end to our mixed Guatemala experience.
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| Entering Tikal really early in the morning- no firearms allowed ;) |
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| One of the well preserved giant faces like the ones that originally adorned the tops of the highest pyramid temples in Tikal |
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| The view from the top of Temple IV over the hidden city of Tikal (this scene even appeared in a Star Wars movie!) |
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| The most iconic pyramid in Tikal - Temple I, the Temple of the Grand Jaguar, 44m high. King Moon Double Comb's (682-734) tomb was found under this structure - it contained several hundred kilos of jade. |
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| Temple V - the Rain Temple |
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| Tucan! One of many birds, monkeys and other animals that inhabit the jungle enveloping the ruins |
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| Ceiba, the national tree of Guatemala - they are huge and can be up to 500 years old. |
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| View from our balcony in Flores - last sunset in Guatemala |
