Santa Cruz la Laguna

On the shores of Lake Atitlan are several small towns. Santa Cruz is one of the smaller of these towns. At water level there are a few hotels, restaurants and one large, active and very nice hostel. La Iguana Perdida ( the lost iguana) has much to offer. First I have to report that the Lonely Planet has this place all wrong. Local rumors (Guatemala has more rumors per capita than any other place on the planet) is that the writer for the Lonely Planet never actually visited the place due to some financial problems with the home office. The LP has reported through more than one issue that the Iguana has no hot water. I am pleased to give a personal report that the Iguana has hot showers and cold beer which fits my view of how life should be on the road.

The Iguana is almost a village itself. Dozens of room types to choose from - big dorms, small dorms, privates, cottages, etc. They have scuba lessons and gear + lots of hikes and other ways to interact with this beautiful place.

Jacaranda

Also down at water level is the restaurant Jacaranda - great food on the water with a perfect ambience. The prices are very reasonable. Definitely worth your visit if you are on the lake.

However just visiting the Iguana and environs at lake level really isn't getting to see Santa Cruz. You should visit the church in the town square. It has dozens of carved figures that date back centuries. All lined up along one of the church walls makes you feel you are in an eternal procession.

The Amigos de Santa Cruz, a local non profit are building a new school that will have a commercial kitchen + local, historically accurate crafts store just off the square. I visited the place while still under construction and it will have the best view of the lake from any location. It is truely breath-taking. Check it out sometime in 2010.

Antigua

Antigua Guatemala is one of my favorite places on earth. Relatively small (population ~30k), picturesque and relatively safe. The Guatemalan gov't has provided "Tourist Police" for Antigua for a few years now and it shows. If you look back at travel guides from the late 1990s and back to the 1970s, Antigua had a pretty bad rap as an unsafe place where pickpockets and worse out numbered the locals. Not anymore.

La Antigua Guatemala is a city in the central highlands of Guatemala, about 45 minutes from the Guatemala City airport. Antigua is famous for its well-preserved Spanish Plateresque architecture as well as a number of spectacular ruined churches. Antigua is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

La Antigua Guatemala means the "Old Guatemala" . It has an incredible number of historic buildings and ruins from the colonial era.

The rap on Antigua is that it looks like Disney designed a Latin American town. The buildings are painted in a limited palette of ochers and reds (ok, a few exceptions) and the climate is “eternal spring”. I’ve been there in the rainy season and dry times and frankly I like the rain – it washes the streets a bit in the afternoons.

Central Park (Parque Central) is the heart of the city. The reconstructed fountain there is a popular gathering spot. Hawkers offer shoe shines and trinkets, but they are not too pushy. Just a few blocks from Parque Central is the Arco de Santa Catalina which just may be the most photographed structure in all of Guatemala. Antigua is noted for its very elaborate religious celebrations during Lent (Cuaresma), leading up to Holy Week (Semana Santa) and Easter. If you are planning on being in Antigua for Semana Santa, book your reservations well ahead – half a year ahead is not too early.

There are many Spanish language schools located in Antigua, because "the Spanish is spoken with an extremely pure accent making it easy to be understood throughout Latin America" http://www.nurimaruschool.com

We stayed at the Black Cat Hostel our first night in Antigua, and the Black Cat has much to recommend it if you are a youthful backpacker type. The Black Cat has a great breakfast that comes free with your stay. However we found having to elbow your way through the popular bar/restaurant to get to your room was a bit much, especially when we had traveled all day by Chicken Bus and were drop dead tired when we got there.

We moved over to our most extravagant digs of the trip, el Posada Don Valentino for our last 4 nights in Guatemala. Don Valentino has a great internet cafe in the courtyard, and clean rooms, cable TV and private baths for a very reasonable price. (less than a Motel 6). We had budgeted about $7.00 - $10.00 per person per night for our trip and by the time we got to Antigua we were under budget. Our stay at Don Valentino put us over budget but not by much.

If you stay at Don Valentino, the building next door has an ice house that provides ice for street vendors. In the early AM they saw ice into blocks for the vendors, which is pretty loud. You might not hear this if your room is located on the first floor. The second floor courtyard rooms were pretty loud. The noise only lasted for a half an hour or so, but it was way too early for this traveler.

Since our summer trip I have stayed at Los Nazerenos, which I recommend highly. It has very nice staff and a quiet picturesque courtyard around which all the rooms are arranged. Also Casa Rustica is nice, very close in to el Parque Central.

More on Guatemala after our next visit in summer 2008.

Check Out: Casa Rustica

The Black Cat

Los Nazerenos

Don Valentino

Prices have changed recently due to the US dollar fluctuations so please check prices with an online booking agent or directly with a hotel / hostel via email.

jsb

Tikal

Tik’al is the largest of the ancient ruined cities of the Maya civilization. It is located in the El Petén department of Guatemala. The ruins are part of Guatemala's Tik’al National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a popular tourist spot. The closest large towns are Flores and Santa Elena, about 30 kilometers away. For our first night we chose to stay in Flores, an island town linked by a bridge to the mainland.

The next night chose to stay overnight at the Jaguar Inn, a hotel in the Tik'al National Park ($75.00 per night, which was more than our budget). Power in the park is turned off at 10:00 pm every night, and back on at 6:00 am. The restaurant at the Jaguar Inn serves good traditional Guatemalan food as well as many American style dishes.

Across the parking lot from the Jaguar Inn is a restaurant under a grass roof that is less expensive. We had a meal there which was very good.

From Wikipedia:

Tik’al was one of the major cultural and population centers of the Maya civilization. Though monumental architecture at the site dates to the 4th century BC, Tik’al reached its apogee during the Classic Period, ca. 200 AD to 900 AD, during which time the site dominated the Maya region politically, economically, and militarily while interacting with areas throughout Mesoamerica, such as central Mexican center of Teotihuacan. There is also evidence that Tik’al was conquered by Teotihuacan in the 4th century A.D. Following the end of the Late Classic Period, no new major monuments were built at Tik’al and there is evidence that elite palaces were burned. These events were coupled with a gradual population decline, culminating with the site’s abandonment by the end of the 10th century.

I recommend having a guided tour of the park one day, staying overnight and then returning to see areas of particular interest as soon as the park opens on the second day.

On to Flores and Tikal

Flores is an island town on Lake Petén Itzá. Flores is the staging ground for trips to the spectacular Mayan ruins in Tikal. There are several nice places to stay, we found La Casa Del Lacandon, across from Dona Goya, on the water with a balcony overlooking the lake. 140Q per night for a triple, or about $6.25 per person per night, well within our $7.00 per night budget.



Restaurant Las Puertas was particularly nice, we talked with owner Carlos Salizar about the history of Flores and his small wildlife preserve on the north side of the lake near Francis Copola's property. Las Puertas feels like a european restaurant to me, the food is first rate

Xela Who?

Xela is a great city. Xela is the second largest city in Guatemala and it has the feel of being a "real" city (Antigua for example is wonderful but it seems a bit too touristy).

The Parque Central is beautiful, surrounded by historic buildings. This part of Xela compares to Antigua, only the historic area is smaller in relation to the rest of the city.

There are tons of restaurants, bars, salsa lessons, Spanish schools etc. The real problem arises when you try to sort out where to go and what to do among so many cool choices. First you should check out the website Xelapages.com. This site has lots of good info on schools, doctors, hospitals and more. Xelapages is the serious website that gives lots of good information. The publication Xela Who? on the other hand is irreverent and it has quality info for finding where the hot spots are in the area. Xela Who is available at many local restaurants, bookstores and language schools to help you make decisions. The small, probably xeroxed publication is full of interesting reviews of cultural life in Xela (and now San Pedro too!). It also has some humorous articles to keep you reading.

Example:

CHICKEN BUS DRIVER FIRED FOR DRIVING TOO SLOWLY, SOBER

By Chris Perras

Chicken bus driver Juan Lentemente was fired this weekend amidst charges of driving too slowly and without the influence of alcohol. Initially, bus company officials had called for the suspension of Lentemente’s license, but upon learning that he never had a license and was only thirteen years old, decided they had to let him go. Lentemente issued an apology, adding "I neglected my responsibility to the Guatemalan public to drive as fast as the laws of physics allow to get my passengers to their intended destination, and just before reaching it, to stop inexplicably for an extended period of time." We interviewed Alvaro Siemprespacio, the president of Xelaju Chicken Buses, Inc., to find out more about the firing. "The difference between arriving in Chichicastenango at 6:15 am and arriving at 6:19 am may only be the sale of one goat," he remarked, "but when that difference is multiplied by the number of people who can fit in one of our buses, that's a whole lot of goats." Siemprespacio pointed out that these were neither Lentemente's first, nor only violations. He has also been cited for failing to stop for passengers on the roadside when the bus was, as he put it, "full." "We at Xelaju Chicken Buses, Inc. believe that when there's no room, it's our job to make it" commented Siemprespacio. The company was kind enough to share with us the formula it uses for bus capacity: (C = 4N + X), with C representing capacity, N the number of benches and X the number of additional people on the roadside who want a ride - generally somewhere between 8 and a gajillion. Siemprespacio explained that filling each bus to capacity helps create a family atmosphere. He added, "If sitting on the lap of a campesino while simultaneously helping diagnose an oozing rash on a nearby passenger and breastfeed a Quiche baby isn't an ice-breaker, I don't know what is." Siemprespacio also responded to criticisms of his company's mandatory alcohol requirement. "Tossing back a few Gallos before driving is a crucial aspect of the job," he replied. "How can one make blind passes on twisting, steep mountain roads without an artificially-inflated set of huevos?" We at XelaWho can't help but agree. As the saying in Guatemala goes, 'he who hesitates is (knocked off of a cliff by an oncoming 16-wheeler and subsequently) lost.'

contact us: xelawho@gmail.com

Xela Teco

I had a work related project in Xela. This isn't a pro-blog about my work so I will just give a short overview of what I was doing.

Background:

Over 2.1 billion people live without electricity. Most of these people use kerosene lamps to provide light at night. The price of kerosene, like gas, is going up. It costs a family in Africa (or Guate) about $75.00 per year to light their houses. Cheaper and better is to use photovoltaics and LED, (light emitting diodes) lights. A house can be outfitted with a 20 watt PV panel, good quality nickel metal hydride batteries and (3) room lights using LEDs for less per year than the cost of kerosene. And that includes the cost of borrowing money at typical market rates. (This is a business opportunity for any eco-entrepreneurs out there!)

I was working with the Xela Teco workshop in Xela to make some prototype LED circuit boards. The big idea is this: LED lights are still pretty expensive, about $25.00 just for an LED replacement for a light bulb. If you make your own LED circuit on a pre made circuit board the cost is relatively small, about $2.50 - 3.50 per LED circuit board. The catch is that you have to design the circuit board and install all of the parts.

A NGO who provides services in very rural parts of the world can set up a workshop to make LED lights on pre-printed circuit boards, sell the service - light - and provide maintenance of the lights and photovoltaics as a profit making venture, given the right circumstances.

I, or we, (The Appropriate Technology Design Collaborative) are working on the design of a universal LED circuit board. It will work with almost any photovoltaic system and when made in a host country where rural use of kerosene lamps is common, it will cost less than kerosene.

The design of the LED circuit board will be published for anyone to use. Better, we expect to make thousands of the circuit boards and instructions available to any NGO who wants / needs to use them.

Anyway, I was trying to be short winded about this but as you may guess by now, I'm pretty excited about the project.

The Xela Teco workshop has engineers and the ability to prototype electronic circuits (+about anything you can imagine). Working with them was a pleasure. Plus I find it much more interesting to travel with some sort of project in mind VS travel just to be somewhere different.

At Xela Teco we worked out some of the potential bugs in the circuit board design, although much work needs to be done. My partner at Xela was Jose Ordonez who has a much deeper knowledge of electronics than I, and he was fun to work with. We started the project speaking mostly English but at the end I'd say we were speaking half English and half Spanish.

I have to catch the bus home, I will add more to this soon.

Also: After Xela, on to Tikal and Peten.

Xela

Our trip from San Pedro to Quetzaltenango (Known as Xela, pronounced Shay-la) was by Chicken Bus. We first had to catch a bus headed toward Guatemala City and get out at "148" or some number. The location is just a mile marker on the main highway. We were assured that a bus headed toward Xela would be along shortly. We waited about 10 min. and sure enough, a very full Chicken Bus with "Xela" written in the front window stopped and picked us up.

I'm just shy of 6'=0" tall and a little over 200 lbs. I'm not huge by US standards but when sitting 3 to a seat on an old school bus, things get really tight. I had to remind myself that the trip was only a couple of hours.

One reason for our trip to Xela was to go to language school. We chose Celas Maya online and were very happy with the school, the teachers and facilities. Their main program consists of 5 hours of one on one Spanish every morning and living with a Guatemalan family so you have to practice your Spanish at meal times and in your daily interactions with your host family.

I wish I had a photo of our family (single mom with kids moved out), but the last day when I planned on taking photos, a new father and daughter from the US. overlapped with us and I missed out. If anyone out there has a photo of Doris, (I will add her last name), she is the only Doris family that is connected with Celas Maya school - if you could please forward me her photo I would appreciate it very much.

Thanks in advance,

Next: More on things to do while in Xela.