Month: June 2019

Lake Atitlan offers something for everybody. With its many little towns surrounding the lake, we got to have a very special time.

After seeing enough of Guatemala City, it was time to move on to Antigua. A one hour chicken bus ride and 10 Quetzales ($1.50) is what it takes. The bus leaves at the eastern bus terminal in Guatemala City and ends its journey by the big, open market in Antigua.

Chicken bus culture is quite different from El Salvador, it costs a little bit more with clean looking and better maintained buses. With more bus stops, we added more passengers as a 3rd person squeezed onto 2 person seat row, with their 1/4 butt support from each seat. I had a young man almost sitting on my lap and leaning on my shoulder. The entire bus was at least 50% over capacity. I finally got the idea of what travel by “chicken bus” means.

Getting off the bus, I noticed the air extremely fresh and sweet with a gentle breeze, 73 degree makes perfect sense of the mountain city with 2500 altitude. I feel we are back to Kunming in China, Luzern in Switzerland. Walking toward the center, we are as curious and amazed as children in a wonderland, filled with hundreds of years of historical architectures and cathedrals with colors, scratchy paint and broken bricks, yet standing still greeting thousand of tourists with admiration.

Do not be disappointed by Old Town structure, you will find many of modern coffee shops, beer brewing companies and franchise like McDonald with Antigua version. McCafe cappuccino tastes as good as any other country we traveled, which I have not seen many in the US towns.

I found women are beautiful either native Mayan or Spanish heritage, or mixed, they are exotic, colorful and dressed in natural woven fabric. These skirts are just simple pieces of fabric wrap up from waste to ankle secured by a belt either sleek looking leather or fabric with embroidery, that saves labor sewing work. Young mothers carry their small child in the front of their chest by a soft yet thick fabric, their back are straight, and the hair sleek and tied up above their neck, and their face and body look so relaxed without economic stress.

As this is tourist town, souvenir can be purchased in shops or walking individuals. With good negotiation skill you can bargain many goodie taking home.

Antigua offers wide range of food selection from street food to high end Westernized Italian steakhouse. Local vendors offer Guatemalan tray with rice, salad with option of shrimp, fish or chicken, it cost $2.5, however they usually hide the food in basket with towel covered.

we like xxx cost 30Q including good size of quarter wood fire chicken, beef or pork with two side dish options of potato, salad or rice, additionally complementary cold sweet drink with refill.

We are neither vegan nor vegetarian however we love the xxxx with simple restaurant offer $3 dollar glass of wine. We sat with many fascinating young european with their mother languages.

When you walk into these local bars, you will find many of them with contemporary design and artistic walls, tables and patios. We enjoy the xxx beer brewing company with the roof top open for bar, where you join local working class and tourists social life. Many romantic young kissing lovers, middle age couple holding hands and sipping a glass of red wine, fun colleagues and business groups after work hang out with their joyful laughters or group selfi. With soft American 70s and 80s music this top corner oversees the whole town.

Without much knowledge of local chicken bus operations at the moment, we followed the local travel agency advice, and started our next voyage with a scheduled shuttle to Panajachel, a key port villages of the Lake Attitlan. The shuttle took us 4 hours to get into the town while pouring rain with muddy road. Our Airbnb host picked us up from the restaurant called La Palapa.

We skipped Santa Cruz as the local port guide advised that the village is small size with limited restaurants. Directly fairy to San Marcos in rain with panga. Through the rain I see a beautiful scenery with huge straight rock in green plant, green water reflect xxx, remind me Mildford Sound in New Zealand.

Guatemala City offers modern, shopping, coffee shops and restaurants, as well as traditional old style city life. Walking around town seemed quite save if one does not wander too much into unknown territory. With just a little intuition and common sense, we felt immediately at unease once approaching a suspicious area. We loved the busy, open market in Guatemala City.