Guatemala: Where The Tourist Things Are

Entry by Steve, November 29th, 2011

People who have neither lived in nor traveled through Central America could be forgiven for not being able to tell Nicaragua and Guatemala apart. Both are fairly large Central American countries, grow a lot of the same crops (coffee, corn, beans), were rather violent places in the 70's and 80's, speak Spanish, sound vaguely like they could be located in Africa (like Nigeria or Guinea, perhaps?); I could go on.

But for us, the differences have been really apparent, and surprising. We've spent the last week or so in and around two places, Antigua:


and Lake Atitlan:


Antigua is the most touristy city in Guatemala, much like Granada in Nicaragua, both mainly drawing on their historic churches and pretty scenery, around which modern development in the form of hotels/bars/restaurants has sprung up.

To us, though, Antigua seems like what Granada wishes it was. There are over 300 hotels, probably more restaurants, and just as many tour agencies, which set up private shuttle rides and trip packages for tourists to the other frequently visited destinations in Guatemala. The hotels almost universally offer wireless internet and hot water, two rarities in Nicaragua. Almost all the restaurants that we visited during our five days there offered not just good but excellent, and in some cases gourmet-quality food. And almost everyone, from the tour agency operators to the waiters to the hotel curators to the women selling crafts in the market seemed to speak at least some English, and in many cases fluent English, which was an extreme rarity in Nicaragua.

This all has made Antigua much more accessible for different kinds of tourists than Nicaragua can currently attract. The young, 20-something used-to-roughing-it backpacker/surfer is pretty much the only type of tourist that makes it to Nicaragua; older tourists are a rarity outside of Granada, service groups, and awesome parents (and grandparents!!!) who come to visit their PCV daughters. In Guatemala, by contrast, we've seen a ton of older tourists, tourists with young kids, and tourists who speak very little or no Spanish at all. Nicaragua sadly just doesn't have the infrastructure to accommodate large numbers of these kinds of people yet, despite having a lot of natural beauty and charming towns of its own.

We've also seen the downsides of this development in Guatemala. It's been sad to see all the women and small children begging/hawking extremely similar-looking handicrafts in the busy areas of the towns we've been in. It was disturbing when we were followed by a flock of three 10-or-11-year-old kids down the narrow path that led from the highway to our hotel in San Marcos (a town on Lake Atitlan), who were talking at us in a mix of English and Spanish, trying to get us to pay them for "showing" us to our hotel, then hanging around outside our room and peeping through a crack in the door frame when we declined to pay for this non-service. It gets really old when people are constantly coming up to you trying to sell you the same stuff, like people did in both Panajachel (on the lake) and Chichicastenango (home to the biggest Guatemalan handicrafts market, which was a total disappointment for us, since most of the stuff ended up being too big, too similar or too shoddy-looking to buy). Panajachel is a great example of how development can get ugly, and turn what was probably once a nice lakeside town into a grimy, tacky, clogged and sprawling tourist trap.

And yet, despite the turn-offs, we've found a lot of cool stuff to do. We took a walking tour of Antigua, and saw a lot of interesting old buildings and art museums:

(The Royal Palace, which is in the process of being restored, off of Antigua's Central Park)

(This is what the palace looks like behind the scenes, where a crew is hard at work restoring it)

Toured a coffee farm just outside of Antigua run by the awesome NGO As Green As It Gets:

(We saw the whole process of making coffee, from the plant...)

(.... to the cup!)

Had a real Thanksgiving dinner at a hotel on a mountain overlooking Antigua:

(The view...)

(... and the dinner!)

Went paragliding above Panajachel:

(There goes Donna!)

(There I am, in the air! :)

And found a cute town on the lake, San Pedro, where we bought a lot of gifts from non-pushy art dealers and a women's co-op, and went kayaking on the beautiful lake:

(Donna, kayaking in front of me!)

(The view of San Pedro from our kayak)

Postscript, December 3rd, 2011:

Donna and I both enjoyed taking a bit of a break and enjoying the fantastic food and nice places to stay in Antigua and Lake Atitlan. However, we've both been glad to be on the road again, first visiting the underwater caverns of Semuc Champey and then the famous Mayan ruins of Tikal over the past couple of days. Tomorrow we're passing through Belize into Mexico, where we will spend the final two weeks of our trip. More updates to come from there!

Here's the link to all of our Guatemala photos we've got up so far: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.614009383442.2090377.33102005&type=1&l=685dc64285