Time to Travel: Guatemala - land of temples, touts and tumulos

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.

A painting of picture-prefect Antigua

Colonial meets traditional life

The ruins of a church - still beautiful although crumbling

From the outside the crumbling innards are not visible

One of our favorite restaurants in Antigua - wine, wine, and more wine :D

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 6^th 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 15^th 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 ;).

Beautiful Largo Atitlan

The view over the lake from our hostel in San Pedro

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!

The beautiful pools at Semuc Champey

Semuc Champey

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.

Entering Tikal really early in the morning- no firearms allowed ;)

One of the well preserved giant faces like the ones that originally adorned the tops of the highest pyramid temples in Tikal

The view from the top of Temple IV over the hidden city of Tikal (this scene even appeared in a Star Wars movie!)

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.