Guatemala IV – Lago de Atitlan

After an adventure packed couple of weeks with hiking and caving, we felt due for a bit of a change of pace. I’m not one for believing in esoteric things, but I really do think Lake Atitlan has some sort of magnetic and calming quality. It’s a huge lake covering an area 12kms by 5kms, sitting at 1,563m above sea level, with mountains and three volcanoes (San Pedro, Atitlan and Toliman) surrounding it and Mayan villages of varying sizes nestled along the shores.

From left to right: Volcanoes Toliman, Atitlan and San Pedro – almost permanently covered by clouds!

Transport between the villages is most often by boat, although tuktuks go to neighbouring villages also.

We arrived first in San Pedro, the most “backpacker” of the towns, after a full day of transport from Semuc Champey. It seemed like a nice but fairly average town full of Spanish schools, restaurants, bars and hostels until we ventured up the steep hill to the area where the locals live.

There we found an awesome stall on the edge of the fruit/vege/meat market with local ladies selling hot cereal drinks called atoles (think rice & milk, oats, wheat, banana etc) and sandwiches or tortas (big crispy corn discs) with loads of veggie fillings/toppings for less than $0.50. For a week I think we were their best customers!!

Atoles served in old candle glasses

Xavi also found a local barbershop, which had a mix of pictures on the walls from soccer players with designs razored in to 70s styles for a $2 haircut (in case you were wondering, the beard was not harmed in the process).

Our favourite breakfast spot!

We wanted to get a good view of the whole lake so we signed up for a 4am hike to “The Indian Nose” for sunrise. We walked through corn and coffee plantations in the dark to arrive at the lookout to watch the sun peek through the clouds and light up the lake and volcanoes. Our guide Juan told us all about the Tz’utijil Mayan warrior tribe, who fought against the Spanish invasion with “submersible warriors” in the lake. The Spanish Armada was severely punished by skin-divers who teased their enemies with gold and then drowned them by holding them underwater for up to 5min. Obviously, this doesn’t come in the history books.

The Indian Nose

Sunrise over the lake

Another cool feature is the old town submerged in the middle of the lake at a depth of  80m. It was built when the Mayans arrived, before the lake had formed. Unfortunately it’s too deep to dive there unless you have technical training and equipment.

Lake and volcanoes Toliman & Atitlan from the Indian Nose

On the way back from the Indian Nose, we got a tuktuk to San Marcos, a chilled out place which has made it’s name as a spiritual retreat, now full of yoga and meditation schools. The highlight for us was a visit to Cerro Tzankujil, a small natural park on the lake, with a lookout and a platform to jump into the lake. It used to be 12m high, but the rising level of the lake has reduced that to 8m in the last few years. Still, it’s been the best views while cliff jumping so far!

Local football league game in San Marcos

Santiago is the largest of the towns on the lake and had a much more commercial tourism feel, with lots of typical souvenir shops and touts trying to get us to go to different places. After visiting the church, we were approached by several local men offering us (as if it were an underground secret) to visit Maximón, a local deity that is housed in a different brotherhood member’s house each year. Apparently locals visit with traditional offerings of cigarettes and rum to worship and ask it for blessings. It seemed like a rort to get tourists to donate entry fee, alcohol and cigarettes to the family so we gave it a miss.

However a local story that had taken our interest…El Paso Misterioso (the Mysterious Pass), several people in different villages had mentioned to us the existence of a strange road where you can stop a car going up the hill, turn off the engine and the car goes up by itself! So we set off to find the road with its own laws of gravity in a chicken bus. The bus dropped us off on the road in the middle of nowhere indicating we were there and zoomed off on its way. We walked along the road a little, trying to figure out which way the slope was going and then tried placing the water bottle down to see which way it would roll.

El Paso Misterioso

Just as we were getting a bit frustrated by our stationary bottle (to be fair it had been a but dinged up so wasn’t perfect for rolling), a ute with locals driving by saw us and our disbelief and stopped. The driver, annoyed at how sceptical we were, turned off his engine and his car did in fact roll backwards up the very slight slope. He also got us to pour water on the road to see which way it ran…success even if it was just an optical illusion!!

He then offered us a ride back to town in the back of the ute. During a short stop at a local coffee plantation on the way, we learnt that they were agronomists working with the coffee farmers to try and solve issues with “la roya” (rust), a fungus affecting much of Central America’s coffee crop.

Lake from Panajachel

The last of the lake towns we visited were Panajachel and Sta. Cruz. Panajachel was the most touristy of them all, in both the quantity of tourist restaurants, souvenir shops and the prices for everything, but it was nice for a change; and Sta Cruz, was the opposite, with just locals around but some of the best lake views from the steep road going up to the residential area.

Bat-Tuktuk

PE lessons in Santa Cruz

Before we even noticed it, 6 days were gone, so we made our way to the first city in our trip. Coming soon, Quetzaltenango!

 

Guatemala II – Welcome to the Jungle

We came to Petén, the northern most department of Guatemala, sharing borders with Mexico and Belize, to explore the Jungle and some of the more important Mayan ruins.

Templo del Jaguar

Tikal was in its heyday around 200 to 900 AD, the city was one of the largest in Mesoamerica and dominated much of the Mayan region. Due to a supposed combination of aggressive farming techniques (log a forest, burn, plant crops, harvest and repeat – not so sustainable with only a shallow layer of topsoil), overpopulation and maybe a meteorological drought Tikal was eventually abandoned and left for the forest to reclaim.

These days, apart from being an important historical site, it was made famous by George Lucas in the Star Wars episode IV movie.

One for the Star Wars fans..

Tikal is one of the most touristy Mayan sites around, however, for good reason. You walk through dense jungle paths spotting wildlife like venado (a type of deer), coatimundi and spider monkeys, and then come upon clearings with pyramids and temples that tower above the jungle.

Coatimundi

The Maya temples and pyramids are said to have been constructed using always steps in multiples of 13, because they believed in 13 levels of heaven. They also believed in 9 levels of the inframundo (underworld) which were connected with heaven by the sacred Ceiba Tree which is now Guatemala’s national tree.

The Ceiba tree is the only in the world whose 4 main roots mark the 4 cardinal points.

Quite the developed mathematicians, the Mayans used a vigesimal numeral system which uses 20 (count all fingers & toes) as a base instead of 10 as in the decimal system we use. This combined with the number 13 also links back to the Mayan calendar that we mentioned in the last post…interesting but very confusing!

Xavi checking the multiples of 13..

Temple V, steep stairs closed for climbing after a few fatal accidents.

After Tikal and some excellent reports from fellow travellers (thanks Mike & Ana!), we signed up to a 60km trek in the jungle over 5 days to see a much less visited site, El Mirador, just 6kms from the Mexican border. It predates Tikal, with occupation recorded between 900BC and 150AD and is the site of the tallest pyramid in Mayan history. We started off with a 4hr chicken bus ride from Flores to Carmelita, the village closest to the ruins. It was the first of many fun chicken bus journeys on this trip, complete with cramped seats made for Mayan sized legs, lots of stops, a bumpy, potholed dirt road and beautiful scenery!

Our first chicken bus!

Carmelita is a small village, in the national park, that subsists mainly thanks to the tourism & logging contracts. There is a co-operative of guides, cooks, arrieros (mule handlers) who lead treks out to see the ruin sites and ensure the tourism $ is shared across the families of the cooperative and community. The government have plans to build a train out to El Mirador, which is of great concern to the co-op members. The last time the government tried to push the plans, the locals threatened to burn the jungle down – a scary thought!

The trek was a great way to get a bit off the well beaten tourist trail and see a site in a state more similar to how it was when re-discovered in the 20^th century. Walking through the jungle, we saw howler and spider monkeys, toucans, pisotes, coches (wild pigs), wild turkeys, moths & butterflies, snakes, a scorpion and lots of small mounds which were Mayan burial tombs retaken by the jungle.

Spider Monkey – they peed or threw things at us from above when we got too close.

Sadly all the tombs have trenches dug into them by local tomb raiders who stole the jade, obsidian and other articles of value.

We also learnt loads about about the local flora which included Chicle trees (whose sap is boiled to make the base of chewing gum), Oak trees, Copal tree (its sap is burnt for incense in religious ceremonies) and Ramon trees whose nutricious seeds are used in smoothies and made into cookies, ice-cream etc and its leaves which were the mules favourite food. We also ate Sapodilla fruit found along the way and prepared a tea from the allspice plant (apparently good for the upset stomach!).

José, our guide and the love tree that strangles and takes over existing trees.

Each night we got used to quick pond water bucket showers, and climbing pyramids to get views the jungle and sunsets. In the mornings, Howler monkeys took the place of kookaburras as alarm clocks, with a scary cry/cough starting around 4am that sounded a bit like something from Jurassic Park!!

This is how a Mayan pyramid looks like before it’s uncovered

A recent exploratory dig at El Tintal, showing evidence of la calzada Maya, the ancient Mayan causeway that connected cities.

The American archaeologist Richard Hansen, leads the excavation project at the El Mirador site, but due to the logistical difficulties of the area, they are only working at the site during the wet season, July-Sept, when there is enough water for the 300+ workers.

The archaeologists base camp in the middle of the jungle is pretty well prepared

Only approximately 25% of El Mirador has been uncovered so it required a fair amount of imagination, however it was really cool to see the dig in progress. In another 10 years or so it will probably be the next Tikal or Machu Picchu (specially if the train goes ahead!).

Interesting parts of the ruins are mid-excavation, with black tarps or full-on roof structures to cover depending on the time of discovery & importance.

 

The legend says that the Maya hero twins rescued their grandfather’s head from the inframundo

Panel in the “Garras de Jaguar”

Temple in El Tigre complex

Highlights were La Muerta, a multi-layered temple used as tomb, el Tigre complex for monkey and toucan spotting and La Danta, the tallest Pyramid ever constructed by the Mayans at 72m high.

La Muerta from above

We entered La Muerta with headlight to find tight tunnels and lots of bats!

Mayans were reaaally short

The crew on top of La Danta!! Mel Gibson filmed parts of his movie Apocalyto here in 2005/6. He’s now a main sponsor of the ruins to try and make up for making apparent stuff ups in his representations of the Maya people.

Next up, there’s plenty more action to come from Guatemala as we start heading south.

Guatemala I – Livingston to Flores

The 45min boat ride from Punta Gorda (Belize) to Livingston (Guatemala) has been the most interesting border crossing so far. The tiny boat – called tiburoneta – was carrying 4 tourists, a local lady who gave us plenty of information, and a case of whisky that our skipper bought at the duty free. Who or what would have been saved in case of an emergency we’ll leave for you to imagine.

The blue stripes represent the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The motto reads “Libertad 15 Septiembre de 1821”, which is when Guatemala became independent from Spain, and the Quetzal is the national bird.

After all, the ride was quite pleasant and we set foot in steaming hot Livingston in late April. Livingston is located on the Caribbean coast of Guatemala and it can only be reached by boat.

Welcome to Guatemala!

We spent the rest of the day walking around town, trying the local dishes (keep an eye for our gastronomy section coming up soon!) and watching the locals socialising and playing sports at night time (too hot otherwise).

We thought that Belize couldn’t get more multicultural and that we would understand everything that the Chapines (people from Guatemala) would say… but we couldn’t have been further from the truth. Guatemala is home to the 3rd largest indigenous community in the world (behind Mexico and Bolivia, with more than 1/3 of its 14 million population) and around 20+ different languages spoken, Spanish being the second language.

As far as safety is concerned, the different gangs of ‘Los Maras‘ were our main concern. However, they’re mainly based in the city and don’t tend to come out anymore as the people are quite violent towards them.

I think they get it…

7 Altares is a nice excursion from Livingston. After a nice walk crossing a maya settlement and a rainforest you get to the natural pools that helped us to cool down. It was a shame that the rainy season hadn’t started yet so the waterfalls were a bit dry (we were only 8 hours early but of course no one knew that!).

The big thunderstorm and blackout met us as we were transferring photos to dropbox… but despite the annoyance, the rain was really welcome as we were able to sleep fresh.

The next day we took another tiburonera into Río Dulce (the only way to get to the rest of Guatemala) and we spent a couple of days in a hostel by the river.

Rio Dulce is supposed to be the best spot for boats to hide from the hurricaines that hit Central America

Our English&Dutch hosts told us a lot of interesting stories about the river, being the highway for narcos to transport drugs up north. In fact, they claimed that 95% of the cocaine that is later sold in the States has passed up the river.

Cliffs surrounding the river

Far from stressing them, they’re actually quite ‘thankful’ to the narcos as they keep the area safe and out of the TV news, which at the end brings them more tourists and less attention from the police! As you can imagine, keeping the area clean requires some bad-asses to do the job… Once every four years or so they run a cleaning spree…the last ended up with over 160 dead. Among them, robbers, criminals, rapists and assassins. We felt really safe at all times and it was really interesting to understand the different perspectives about drug traffickers of the people who actually live there.

Staying by the river was a great experience and we had plenty to do, from going kayaking…

… to exploring the local communities living by the river, swimming in natural hot springs, caving, clearing our pores in a natural sauna or swimming in phosphorescence at night. Every stroke filled the water with magic sparkles!

The only thing we missed was spotting the manatees…  but the early morning was beautiful as the fog invaded the river and the birds awoke.

Another boat ride finally set us on Guatemala mainland, in a tiny town consisting of a busy street packed with market stalls and chicken buses connecting the river to the other spots in the country.

Most of the tourists go straight to the Tikal ruins, but we decided to spend a couple of days in a Finca, half-way to the ruins. The little stopover was well worth it as we were able to meet some great people there: Adri & Lani, 2 volunteers working in the finca in exchange for accommodation and meals, and Ana & Mike, a Spanish-Irish couple that we’ve been sharing our journey with over the last week.

The finca also employs lots of locals in all sorts of activities, from farming, guiding tours and running the comedor. We were lucky enough to join Adri & Lani, Harry, Edgarcito (a straight mulleted 9 year old who wants to become a guide and would be quite suited to it since he never shut up) and Fifi…who would you believe was a great dane, on a walk to the caves in the farm.

Cueva Ixobel

The finca also runs a nice bar at night where we had the chance to meet some locals and some American soldiers from the special forces who were working in a base nearby. Funnily enough, when asked about what sort of work they were doing there, they got a bit awkward and gave different versions each time..

After sharing lots of travelling tips with our new friends, playing lots of card games (rainy season means quiet afternoons and finally, using blankets), ping pong and some blogging, we caught the next shuttle to Flores.

Flores is the base for visiting the Tikal ruins (coming in the next post), but also a tourist trap type town disguised with pretty buildings and clean streets…some of them flooding…

the water level rises every 50 years flooding the streets.

The nice thing is that Flores is surrounded by a lake and we were spoilt with some beautiful sunsets before exploring the ruins.

This is a summary of our quiet first week in Guatemala, stay tuned for 3 action-packed weeks coming soon!

Hugs,
Sal & Xavi