Paul and I left SF for Guatemala late Tuesday night. We had a fairly taxing itinerary that did not allow for much sleep, so we arrived in Guatemala City on Wednesday morning and were ready to pass out. After meeting up with his parents, we headed off towards Chichicastenango. This is a fairly small town in the mountains, famous for its large markets on Thursdays and Sundays. We stayed in the very beautiful Mayan Inn:
At the hotel we were doted upon by workers dressed in traditional indigenous garb. An attendant was specifically assigned to each room to ensure a good experience.
The hotel courtyard had lots of beautiful flowers and also some parrots (though they don't live their naturally. Other parts of Guatemala have them, though!) They also had someone playing the marimba, which is the national instrument:
After a nice night's sleep, we ventured out to the famous market in the morning. It reminded me a lot of some of the Turkish markets I went to, filled both with locals and tourists:
Chichi also has a very cool historic church called the Church of Santo Tomas, which is both pagan (Mayan rituals) and Catholic:
After buying lots of stuff in the market, we packed up our stuff and headed off to Lake Atitlan, which I will continue with in the next post.
Random observations:
-The weather is beautiful! It's the kind of temperature that you don't even notice. Most buildings are partially outside and you can't even tell. It has rained a tiny bit so far, but otherwise it's been perfect
-Food is delicious, and I'm not sick yet! We've been eating at pretty reputable places and I've avoided the tap water, of course.
-My Spanish isn't great, but I can understand people here pretty well. Guatemalan Spanish is considered one of the "cleanest" in the world. In the smaller villages, Spanish is a second language for many people (they have local languages in the indigenous tribes), so their accents are sometimes hard to understand.
That's all for right now, but I'll post more soon. Adios!
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