Guatemala photos - Part 4...

  ... are here.

Our last days in Guatemala

After a rather sad last day with the kids of Nuevos Horizontes, we did some more excursions in the area surrounding Quetzaltenango (Xela).

We visited the sacred (for the Maya communities) volcano lake of Chicabal, and went to see the bright yellow painted church in the village of San Andrés Xecul, for which our Guatemalan friend Minor was our excellent guide. In this village we also saw the figure of San Simón a.k.a. Maximón.

We passed our last few days in Guatemala back at Lago Atitlán, where we first spent a couple of days in Panajachel, enjoying the hospitality of Fernando and Germán, two Argentinian friends which we met in Xela, and the last day in Santa Cruz La Laguna at Isla Verde. The view over the lake from the little cabaña we had there was amazing, as is the truly beautiful garden of the property, but unfortunately we didn't get much sleep as during the night a family of rather loud mice tried to eat their way through the walls and roof. The pretty large spiders invading our room via the splits in the wooden floor didn't help either. So although we spent a relaxing day at Isla Verde (siesta in the hammock included), it was not exactly the way we imagined our last night in Guatemala, for which we splashed out a little more than in the usual cheap hostels.

Thus, rather tired we passed the 9 hours in the bus to Mexico (where we are now, in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas) on the following day. Somehow, we are now really looking forward to a new country.

Guatemala photos - Part 3...

... are here.

Boiling hot water and colourful textiles

Our last weekend break consisted of two little day trips, the first of which was a visit to Fuentes Georginas, very hot hot-springs with supposedly health-giving properties in a picturesque tropical setting. We didn't spend much time in the water (it was simply too hot to stay inside for more than five minutes at a time) but nonetheless arrived back in Xela really relaxed.

The second one - Sunday - was a journey to the famous (and therefore very touristy) indigenous market town of Chichicastenango, in the Quiché area. Thursday and Sunday are market days, and the village, chaotic but full with beautiful textiles and artesanía, gets as colourful as any village could possibly get. Incense is burnt in front of the simple but beautiful 16th-century church, giving the tiny square in front of it a mystical atmosphere. It was in this mystical atmosphere that one of those "how small is the world?"-experiences happened: Tere bumped into Belen Calzadilla's (a friend from Oviedo) family: her brother Alfonso, who is living in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Mari Carmen, their mother.

Trying to come up with entertaining activities for children

The experience with the children is being very rewarding. Although they lack basic discipline and sometimes are hyperactive, they are very cute and love to hug us. We are mostly working on afternoons and have made some fun activities with the kids.

We made playdough (plastilina) out of flour, water and salt and used pieces of wood and coloured paper to built barriletes (kites) which last wednesday were inaugurated on our excursion with the children to the nearby hill. The children only leave the shelter about once a month and are very happy to be able to run around a field with the kites.

They also love to dance which is why we organized a dancing competition which left them sweating and smiling. This week we are planning to build snow flakes using paper and scissors, and then use them to make "Guirnaldas"....

Second batch of Guatemala photos

Click here (Part 1) or here (Part 2) for Guatemala photos.

Discovering the Loma Linda community

This Saturday we went on an excursion to a community a couple of hours outside Xela, called "Loma Linda" (pretty hill). This is a collection of little farms who until recently were relying exclusively on coffee production, and are now trying to diversify their economy by attempting to attract tourism. As a promotional launch, we (together with 40 other travellers and residents) were invited to discover their community.

They gave us a tour around the local flora&fauna, and an insight into the coffee-making-process.

For the "tourism committee", it was the first time they saw a tourist bus enter their village, and you could feel a very special emotional mix of nervousness, pride, and hospitality in the air. They truly made sincere efforts of making us all feel like at home, and give a good impression of their community.

Kayaking on Lago Atitlán

Photo by Andreas

For our first weekend break from Xela, we headed to the spectacular Lake Atitlán. We met up here with Andreas and Kerstin, who we became friends with in Utila, Honduras. It was Día de los Muertos (1st of November) so a visit to the colourful cemetery, where the families were painting the graves of their relatives, children playing, and where the atmosphere struck us as being overall rather cheerful - a strong contrast to the serious, sad ambiance on European cemeteries on this day.

San Pedro is a little village with many tiny little streets, and some steep cobblestone streets. It counts with many foreign residents, often backpackers or hippies who got stuck here, and decided to postpone their departure date to an indefinite day in the future.

We rented kayaks and went for a little paddle around the lake, which in some sense reminded us of the lakes in Switzerland - but then again, at the same time being in Guatemala is something like the very opposite of being in Switzerland...