"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness… Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime" – Mark Twain
We only had a few hours in Antigua before we left for Lake Atitlán, so we went to Santo Domingo which was an old monastery ruin that was destroyed in the 1773 earthquake and has now been converted to a 5 star hotel with restaurants and museums. We walked around the courtyards and the museum, and had some coffee and breakfast at the restaurant. It was a really lovely way to spend a morning in Antigua, and we wish we had been able to stay longer.
But alas, we had to go back to the hotel to pack up our stuff, and our driver picked us up to take us on to the lake. Once we started getting closer to the lake, we had some pretty views of the highlands. We also saw tons of indigenous Mayans walking along the road, hard at work. We stopped in Pana to get our first good view of the lake and were completely blown away. I had seen pictures of the lake before the trip, but seeing it in person was so amazing.
Lake Atitlán is a crater lake, set between three different volcanoes. It is big and open, and 1100 ft deep in parts (isn’t that crazy?!). There are several different villages around the lake, some of which are only reachable by boat.
We stopped at a couple markets and a grocery store before heading to the boat dock to catch a boat shuttle to our house outside of San Marcos. There were a couple young kids who were so eager to help carry our luggage to the private boat, and one stayed on the shuttle with us to help when we arrived as well. The shuttle took around half an hour, of which we spent taking a million pictures of the same views over and over again.
We arrived at our private dock, and the young boy on our boat, and the property’s gardener took our luggage up to the house (which is like 100 steps from the dock) while we paid the boat captain.
The owner showed us around the house, and I was giddy with excitement. It is the nicest place we have ever stayed up to this point which is amazing for the price we paid for it.
The views of the lake and volcanoes were even better. Every room has a wall of windows offering amazing views.
We were quite content to spend the evening there rather than going exploring, so the owners had their chef come to the house to fix us an absolutely delicious arrival meal. She was a young Mayan woman from the village of San Marcos nearby and was very sweet and a fantastic cook. Her sister and baby nephew came to visit with her while she was cleaning up, and if you have never seen a Mayan baby, they are the cutest babies on earth with their giant brown eyes.
We spent some time outside on our terrace after dinner, and once the evening chill started kicking in, we went back in and started a fire.
You could still see the outline of the volcanoes across from us, and the lights from the village across the water allowed us to barely see the waves below us. We sat there, listening to music and drinking wine by the fire until we were ready to go to bed.
We have several villages around the lake we’d like to visit. I’m really thinking 5 days here won’t be enough.
Our wonderful driver picked us up at the Guate City airport Sunday night to take us to Antigua. I was so happy to finally meet him, after sending 60 emails back and forth coming up to this trip- I could not have planned it all without his help and patience in answering all my questions. If anyone decides to go to Guatemala, try and hire Alfredo Garcia for transportation.
We made it to our hotel, about a 10 minute walk from the city center, after 10:00 that night. The owner was there to greet us and show us up to our room which is absolutely beautiful. We were especially excited to have hot water at any time of day (I know, we’re spoiled).
We went to bed and woke up early since this was our only full day in Antigua. When I walked outside the room, I got to really notice all we had missed out on in the dark the night before. Everywhere you looked, there were plants and flowers.
We had a beautiful terrace with a hammock surrounded by greenery, looking down at the courtyard.
There were steps that went further up as well, leading to a rooftop terrace with great views of the volcanoes. While we were up looking around, one of the volcanoes started erupting, sending ash up into the sky. This was our first time witnessing something like that.
Once we were done watching, we went on down to the courtyard to eat breakfast and do some blogging. The owner of the hotel came over to talk with us for awhile, her adorable Shih Tsu “Mimosa” coming to greet us as well. The owner gave us a map of Antigua, pointing out some places she thought we should check out. Realizing there was a lot to see that day, we went and grabbed our go bag and started walking to the central plaza.
The park was really enjoyable in itself. We would sit on a bench and people watch for quite awhile. You do get a little bit used to saying “No gracias” non-stop with all the little kids wanting to shine shoes (we weren’t wearing shoes that were shine-able, though), the beautiful Mayan women coming around trying to sell their gorgeously made scarves and shawls, and different men wanting to sell musical instruments, necklaces, or cigarettes…but you can’t blame them for trying, and it was interesting seeing the different aspects of the culture. I figure I will buy a scarf or two at some point before the trip is over.
We went walking around town, checking out the different cathedrals and ruins. They were absolutely beautiful, each in their different way.
We also stopped at some markets, amazed by all the color everywhere.
We walked down different streets, and eventually came across the beautiful arch, which I had to get a picture of at every angle.
We stopped and drank some local coffee and some local beer and hung out for a bit, and then decided it was time to find a restaurant for lunch. We searched for awhile, but we found Cafe Sky on the outskirts of town which had a fantastic terrace with views of Antigua and the surrounding volcanoes.
We found another cathedral, ruin, and market all in the same area, so we walked around there for awhile before heading back to the park.
Giving our feet a rest, we sat there enjoying all the goings-on around us. Dogs were happily running around, parents were setting their little children up on horses for pictures, a man was trying to teach a kid to juggle, and a teenage boy next to us- who had been anxiously waiting while holding flowers and an adorable love letter glued to some colorful paper- finally found his girl, making her blush and smile real big.
We got some more coffee and waited for a friend of Anthony’s from high school to come meet up with us for dinner. She is currently living in Guatemala City, teaching English to different age groups, so it was great hearing a little about her time here. She was also the one who had previously reassured me that we would be perfectly safe coming to Guatemala, so we appreciated that she had saved us from ditching our plans of coming here. So if you’re reading this, Kristen, thank you!
After dinner, we stopped by a store on our way back to the hotel, and spent the rest of the evening on our terrace, looking forward to our upcoming stay at the lake.
We did finally make it to Flores Friday night at 11:00 PM. Our hotel sent a taxi to pick us up, and we checked into our hotel and went up to our room. Apparently there was a club right next door, blasting reggaeton music. While this kept us up for a little while, we were so exhausted that we eventually crashed, waking up to the sound of wildlife outside and our alarm going off. We gathered our things and caught our shuttle to Tikal.
After a little over an hour, we arrived at Tikal Inn within Tikal National Park. We checked in and were shown to our pool-side bungalow. I was extremely impressed with the place. I knew beforehand that we would only have electricity (and hot water and wifi) a few hours a day, so I was expecting the most basic of accommodations, but the setting was beautiful, the bed comfortable, the pool extremely clean, and the wildlife surrounding it all was so unique. Not to mention, it was 75 degrees and humid, which is pretty much my ideal weather. We dropped our stuff off and got some coffee at the restaurant.
Then we started our trek to see the ruins! Tikal is an ancient Mayan city that was found deep in the jungle of Guatemala back in the 1800s. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is an absolutely amazing place to see. The park is huge, so it takes a day or two to walk through and see all of the temples and pyramids and shrines, but we got a good head start on it before lunch Saturday, making it to see the Grand Plaza and Temple V, along with a few smaller ones along the way.
Our first view of a templeA section of the Grand PlazaTemple V
This was my first experience with ancient ruins, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I loved every minute of it. It is crazy to think that a people who lived from 600 BC to 900 AD built these massive, amazing temples, the tallest of which stands 212 ft (64.6 meters) jetting out high above the trees.
After awhile, we were getting hungry, so we walked back to the hotel and ate lunch. We took a nap, got in the pool, and I took a cold shower. We also snapped some pictures of birds and took advantage of the short span of time with electricity and wifi to charge our gadgets and try to get in touch with the rest of civilization, and ate some dinner at the hotel. We tucked in nice and early, so that we would be rested for our tour that started at 4:00AM.
We woke up at 3:30AM, surprisingly rested and excited and grabbed our flashlights to meet up with the rest of the group.
We walked in silence through the jungle until we got to the Grand Plaza. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the temples in the plaza at this time to show how magical they looked with the only light being that from the stars above shining down on them. Our guide showed us how the sound of his clapping bounced off the stairs of the temple, sounding like the call of a quetzal.
We continued on our way, stopping only to look at a trail of leafcutter ants (which, according to Wikipedia, “next to humans, leafcutter ants form the largest and most complex animal societies on Earth) carrying their leaves to their nest.
When we arrived at the base of Temple IV, which is where we were to wait for the sunrise, it was still pitch black outside, so I had no idea how many stairs we were about to climb. I could only see a small stretch at a time with my flashlight through the fog. But apparently, it was a whole hell of a lot of stairs. I was panting about halfway up (and you’d think I’d be all in shape after that run through the Houston airport the other day, right?!). Finally we made it up, the first ones there. We climbed the temple steps to the highest part we could get to, and sat down. It was complete silence.
We saw above all of the trees and could hear it raining below us. We sat there for close to an hour, and the sun started rising about halfway through, though we couldn’t see it through all the mist. The sunrise isn’t what actually makes the sunrise tour so special though. The special part is hearing the jungle wake up. For quite awhile, I was afraid we weren’t going to hear it. Everything was silent. I started thinking maybe the animals didn’t know it was time to wake up with all the fog and rain below us. Then suddenly, we heard the call of a quetzal, as though it were telling the rest of the jungle “It’s time to get up!” After a while of that, some other birds started joining in. And a while after that, the howler monkeys started roaring. We all sat there listening for awhile, enjoying the peace of sitting above the trees with nothing but ancient ruins and the sound of wildlife and rain below us.
After we came back down, we started the actual guided tour. Our guide gave us a kind of behind-the-scenes look at the restoration process. Only a fraction of the structures in Tikal have been excavated so far, so it is an on-going process. The process itself is very slow and laborious. It was fascinating learning about it.
Shortly after that, we came across a complex of ruins with a shrine at the start. Our guide explained the different symbolism within the shrine as well as what the hieroglyphs meant.
We then ventured on to the “Lost World” portion of the park, a group of pyramids and temples set within the wilderness of the jungle. Our guide told us that at the time Tikal was built and inhabited, the jungle was not there. Seeing the place, it was so hard to believe that instead of the lush rainforest there now, there were cornfields.
He then took us back to the grand plaza to explore for awhile before heading back. Anthony and I had already explored most of it Saturday, but this time, we climbed up to the residential complex that ancient Mayan royalty lived in. We walked into the “bedrooms” and took in the views.
At last, our tour was over, about 4.5 hours after it started, and we walked back to the hotel to eat our free breakfast. The rest of the day was spent wasting time until our shuttle came, and then wasting more time at the airport for our flight that was delayed only one hour this time, and then shuttling to the beautiful colonial city of Antigua, which I will discuss next time!
