guatemala in...7 days?!

At the end of this trip, I did what I despise doing: I rushed. I ended up spending alot of time in places I wasn't planning on traveling to - Livingston, Rio Dulce; El Salvador made the list somehow as well - but no matter what I still had to make some kind of a loop back to Belize City by the 19th. I would have loved to stay in Antigua for a few more days! And I would have loved to have at least one day to chill out at Lake Atitlan. But you can't always get what you want, and I flew through both of those towns. I did consider skipping them and spending more time elsewhere - but that would only result in some type of excruciating 20 hour trek from San Salvador to Belize on an expensive bus, and that didn't sound as appealing as actually getting to see something in between those two places. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed those days I spent in Guatemala.


From the lake, after the crossdressing party, I went up to Chichicastenango (Chichi for short) to the crazy market that happens up there twice a week. The market was packed full of touristy masks, jewelry, colorful fabrics, and the like. But on the outskirts of the market there were Maya selling chickens (adults and chicks), turkeys, puppies, pigs, you name it. One section was solely devoted to buying meat...and there is nothing quite like smelling stall after stall of raw red meat hanging in the window with flies buzzing about. The market is overwhelming - so many people, so may things, so little space. The beginning of the day was quieter, but as the sun grew hotter, the crowds flooded the place. Pretty soon every stall I walked passed would call out to me, "hola amiga, special price!" "hola amiga, adelante!" "hola amiga, tela por la mesa, hamaca!" Luckily I was there to buy a few things, and its amazing to see how much they mark up the price for things. Take my hammock, for example. The first stall started at 225 quetzales (around $30). I should also mention that I was traveling with a French guy named Clement who has been studying in Argentina and is fluent in Spanish, so he handled a majority of the negotiating for me. She went down to 140q ($17.50) but no lower. The woman in the next stall over started at the same price, 225q, but went down to 125q! That's about $15...half of where we started. And that is exactly how every thing is priced in the market. All are up for negotiation: all are priced double. The trick is to show minimal interest in the item, ask the price, decline, and begin to walk away. They will, most of the time, pull you back and drop the price. The longer you don't respond, the lower they seem to go. And if they ask what your "best price" is, always say half of what they initially started at. Crazy. so after buying only a few items, I was exhausted from having to haggle! I'm glad I went, it was fun to see the hustle and bustle of a typical Guatemalan market.


Back to Clement: He was a blast to hang out with. It was strange, but totally rad, that our only shared language was Spanish. He, being from Avignon, France, and I, a true-blooded American who knows no French, only could speak to each other in Spanish. I could understand him wonderfully, and apparently I got by pretty well! It was great because that area is awash in english-speakers. It would have been very easy for me to get by without speaking much spanish the whole time I was in Antigua and at the lake. But thanks to him, I had 5 days of speaking mainly spanish day in and day out. He and I traveled with two great ladies from Norway as well, who don't speak much spanish. So I was going back and forth quite a bit for those few days! He had to use the English that he did learn in school to communicate with them, so it was a language stretch for all of us! Add into the mix the guy from Poland, and we were quite the international quintet.

After the market and crashing super early...it was game time. I bid that quintet adieu and booked an overnight ticket all the way to Flores, in northern Guatemala, in order to see the mother of all Maya ruins: Tikal. I left the lake at 4pm, arrived in Flores the next morning at 6. Got off the bus, still half asleep, and jumped straight into a colectivo headed toward Tikal. Only once I was halfway to the ruins did I realize what I left in the bus: my beloved hammock. Oh man I was so bummed! I should've known better than to have detached it from my backpack...I looked for it later, but it was gone.

Tikal was incredible - its crazy to think about the fact that it used to be void of all jungle and that hundreds of thousands lived there. It was a modern day metropolis of its time. Had a blast climbing up and down tons of temples, around old housing structures, and searching out the extremely loud howler monkey.