I went to Guatemala in July and August 2010 to learn a bit more Spanish, to take an adventure trip with three old friends from Philadelphia days, and to celebrate my 65th birthday.
Mission accomplished! With much fun.
If you look up ‘color’ in the dictionary, there should be a picture of Guatemala. Everything there is color, intense color.
Bright colored flower
(Well, almost everything. The exit from airport and the drive out of the capital, Guatemala City, is undisguised industrial urban gray, with occasional bursts of commercial signage to which I was immediately drawn as I tried to decode the words and see if there were any I recognized.)
Once in the countryside, oh, emerald green is everywhere. It’s the rainy season. Gorgeous foliage—trees, vines, ferns, gardens, plowed field, flowers, coffee finkas—especially stunning to me since I was coming from the Southern California semi-desert. In fact, the name Guatemala is a Spanish corruption of ‘Quauhtlemallan,’ which means Land of Many Trees.
Then I came to the ancient ruined-and-then-revived city of Antigua. Some say it was the first capital of Guatemala, but according to my language teacher, it was the third capital (Ixinche, destroyed by the Spanish under the cruel Alvarado in 1524; Cuidad Vieja, inundated in 1541; then Antigua, destroyed by earthquake in 1773; then finally Guate—as the locals call Guatemala City).
TMI—too much information? Well, I often think of the only thing I remember from a college education course: “knowledge breeds interest and interest breeds knowledge.” That was certainly my experience with Guatemala, as I had NO interest in its history prior to my trip. Now my interest level is up to Modest.
Here’s one historic tidbit I found astonishing: For a time, all of Central America from southern Mexico to Panama was known as Guatemala, and Antigua was its capital. Today that area includes six countries—Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Who knew?
The language school my friends and I attended in Antigua is Escuela de Español San José el Viejo. One of the premier schools in that town, which has many. The site shares a wall with the ancient ruin of the church of San José el Viejo.
San Jose el Viejo Spanish School with Ruins Behind
One of the things I found intriguing, in Guatemala as well as in Spain, is that often the facade of an institution or store that faces or sits directly on the street is nondescript, even ugly. No pretty window displays or attractive logos.
But once you open the door and step over the sill, you walk into paradise: gardens, shaded tables, tile floors and walls, pretty displays, flower pots, paintings—civility, order, beauty, wealth.
We had scheduled two weeks for Spanish language lessons, six hours a day, with one-to-one teachers. From 8:00 am to 4:00 pm (with a two hour break for lunch) we sat with our teachers in small open carrels, each outfitted with a table and two chairs and a whiteboard. Occasionally mosquitoes buzzed about, and my teacher and I smashed them against the wall, keeping score who smashed the most in a day. That sounds terrible, but it wasn’t. It added levity to the lessons.
A carrel for Spanish lessons
My teacher was 38-year-old Julio, a good-looking-man-about-town, father of three daughters who lived with their mother in Guatemala City. Julio lived with his mother in a poorer part of Antigua, in a tiny cement-block house on a narrow street. He was religious, attending the Church of Ebenezer several times a week. He rode a bike to work, and a bus to the city to visit his family. Employment is hard to obtain in Guatemala now, and due to the global economy, the beautiful school wasn’t getting the number of students this year as it had previously, so he seemed grateful to have a student.
Our four teachers taught different things to each of us, depending on our level of language and interests, though there did seem to be a rough curriculum they followed. We’d compare what we learned each day, as reinforcement and a way to pick up additional info. Julio started off each morning with me with conversation in Spanish–what I did the day before, what he did, what I saw and ate, what he ate at home. He’d write new words on the board and I’d copy into my notebook the terms. I especially liked learning commonly used idioms: “Si hay lluvia no, yo…” (If it doesn’t rain, I’ll…); “tal vez” (perhaps); “igualmente” (same to you–as when someone says they’re pleased to meet you); and my favorite, “¡Yo olvido!” (I forgot). When I did remember something he taught the day before, he enthusiastically used “¡Dame los cinco! (Gimme five!)
With My Teacher Julio
The accommodations at the San Jose el Viejo school were magnificent. Three of us shared the Castle Room, the prettiest room I’ve ever slept in. One wall was huge windows with a view of Vulcan Agua; the first several days cloud cover was so heavy we hardly believed there was a volcano behind them. Then a sunny day revealed it. Oh, oh. Two other walls had tall french doors which opened onto small balconies. A breeze blew almost continuously; a unique window-within-a-door feature allowed us to view rain torrents without ever getting wet.
Volcano Agua from Our Window
In Antigua and probably in any Guatemalan town with tourists, the street peddlers are ubiquitous. Generally they are women dressed in indigenous clothing, with an armful of necklaces balancing a huge stack of brightly colored fabrics–scarves, table covers, placemats, small purses, spreads, and so forth. Their wares are gorgeous: brilliant red, vermillion, gold, mustard, indigo, shocking blue often woven with a zigzag pattern easily recognizable as Guatemalan.
If I even glance at the women, they hold up a piece and say, If you buy it now, I give you good price.
No, gracias no, I say. They speak to me in broken English while I speak to them in crippled Spanish.
How much you want to pay? is the next question.
No, no gracias. No quiero. I don’t want it.
Very beautiful. I give you good price. What you want to pay?
Then I say an absurdly low price: 50 quetzales.
She looks appalled. No, no, 200 quetzales. It’s handmade in my village.
And then we’re off in the negotiations for what I didn’t want in the first place.
Depending on my fortitude, I may or may not end up with a purchase. The same dialogue could take place in a small booth in the mercado, with often identical of products. The pierce-your-eyes-with-color products are everywhere and choosing becomes very difficult.
Here’s a picture of a vendor selling güipils (prounounced wee-peels), the traditional heavily embroidered blouse that indigenous women wear.
Woman in Mercado Selling Guipils
In Antigua one can walk just about anywhere. It’s a very small town, filled with ruins of Spanish-conquistidor-built churches, restaurants, stores, offices. The streets are cobbled, with very narrow sidewalks, and obnoxiously smelly diesel-fueled cars passing frequently. But there’s no horn honking (it’s outlawed, I believe), a sweet relief in such a city.
My traveling companions were food-ies, interested in exotic, expensive, often European, cuisine, so with them I visited the interiors of Antigua’s finest restaurants. No doubt the ex-presidents of many countries had eaten in the same ones we did. This culinary interest of my friends led to endless conversations about which restaurant to sample next and whether it would rain before we walked to it. One member of our group was vegetarian, so we’d read posted menus carefully before entering to make sure she would also be able to eat. Had I been traveling alone or with others on a similar budget, I would have had rice and beans and tortillas much more frequently. And I would have liked that just fine, too. To tell the truth, after eating out twice a day for several weeks, even the most beautiful restaurants become tiresome and one wishes for a hot plate on which to cook one’s own simple food.
Speaking of food, the Guatemalan avocados deserve special mention. It was the season for them; they grow prolifically on huge trees, almost wild. One of our favorite restaurants was Panza Verde, in a hotel of the same name, with French chefs, museum-level artifacts in its lobby, and evening concerts: it’s name means ‘green stomach.’ In honor of the ubiquitous, soft, delicious fruit.
Besides wonderful restaurants, in Antigua, one can also see plenty of third-world poverty. Julio took me and Len and his teacher on a walking trip to a very small school, really more like a day-care center, staffed by two poorly paid teachers and some volunteers. It was a place for the children of the mercado (public market) workers, the men and women who cook the street food, vend home-farm-grown vegetables or firewood or cast-off clothing from the US, or try to attract buyers of homemade good. There seems to be no government paid provision for educating these children (they work in the market in the afternoons), so socially conscious people do what they can. Julio was a friend of one of the teachers and he produced a list of things the school needed; we stopped along our route to buy them to present as a visitors’ gift: powdered milk, a jar of nutritional supplement, toilet paper, pencils and writing paper, dish soap–such basics.
Children at Nino Obrero
But of course, Guatemala also has its politically committed individuals and institutions, determined to preserve and pass on to future generations the treasures of their ancient Mayan past—the musical instruments, the folk art, the old ways of doing things. We saw an excellent music museum attached to a working coffee finka. Generally, the indigenous people are private; they wear their beautiful clothing proudly and often do not like to be photographed. (It works to purchase something, then ask the indigenously dressed vendor if you may take a photo. Usually they are agreeable then.)
Woman Shopowner with Children
After our two weeks in school in Antigua, we took a two-hour van ride to Panajachel, a small busy town on the banks of Lake Atitlan—the most beautiful lake in the world, according to Aldous Huxley, because it is surrounded by pristine volcanic mountains. The tourist industry has made the most of this town–it’s filled with small hotels and restaurants; its main street is wall-to-wall shops. Took-tooks, brightly painted motorized three-wheeled vehicles, buzz about; they’re cheap and safe, it appears, if you don’t mind feeling you’ll be overturned when they round a corner.
One of the best things for me on this trip was being included in various invitations because my traveling companions knew native Guatemalans: Paula’s daughter-in-law grew up there and her grandchildren visit for the summer; Hannah was long involved in adoptions there and knew lawyers and orphanage staff. I felt privileged and grateful to have several meals in homes, to get to see how people decorate their space and serve food. Most of the middle-class families have household help—young women to buy and cook the food and to clean. It would be almost impossible to function otherwise.
In Panajachel, we rented a small two-bedroom house in a resort community right on the lake; what a beautiful place to relax, to watch the sunset, to have privacy and even an evening pot-luck party. Shared among several people, it was certainly affordable.
And twice we visited other lakeside villages: Santa Catarina, known for its blue fabrics, and San Juan la Laguna, known for its progressive community organizations, artists, and women’s weaving cooperative. In the latter town, a guide met our boat and took us to a presentation in the home of the woman who revived the ancient way to dye and weave native cotton–which she learned from her grandmother and passed on to her children.
This was fascinating, and obviously a frequently told story, as her little workshop home and her visual aids were ready whenever a viewer arrived. Here are pictures of the natural materials used to dye and make color-fast the thread. I couldn’t resist buying a beautiful heavy shawl.
Natural Products Used for Dye--San Juan la Laguna
Our time was up after the week in Panajachel. We took a van to the airport about three hours away, traversing a highway with many landslides, for the rainfall that week had been frequently furious. But in Guatemala, the locals know how to deal with that. With both hand tools and bulldozers, they clear obstructions. Traffic must go through; people’s livelihood depend in transport.
Would I go back to Guatemala? Probably. Now I’d like to see the Aztec pyramids in the North and more of the ruins. It would be fun to live with a family next time for the genuinely Spanish-language immersion experience. And I’d take more money, buy more fabrics, and carry my purse more carefully.
Oh, did I tell you about the pickpocket experience? Or my birthday party?
So many stories, so little time…. Viva Guatemala!
Esther at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala
