Advertisement
Published: April 3rd 2008
Edit Blog Post
With our guests Grammy, Brett, Christy and baby Charlotte, we decided to take a road trip out to Lake Atitlán, but included, for the first time, a side trip to Chichicastenango since we had never been there ourselves. (Our strategy for hosting guests usually includes taking them someplace that we ourselves have never been, to increase our opportunities to see more of the country!)
Chichicastenango, or Chi-Chi for short, is a highland town about an hour's drive from the highway exit leading to Sololá on the way to Lake Atitlán, or about 3½ hours from Antigua. It is most known for its markets on Thursdays and Sundays, so on a sunny Sunday morning we set off in our rented minibus with Steve looking very much like the fearless tour guide. En route we were easily entertained by the charms of Charlotte strapped to her car seat, which in itself is a rarity in Guatemala. (We love to watch people pile in cars or the backs of pickup trucks. Our kids ride to school every day in a Ford Econoliner with 23 people in seats/aisles designed for 12. So infant car seats are obviously not common; heck, you could fit 3
The steps leading up to Santo Tomás
Non-Mayans are not allowed on these steps, a little-known fact to visitors, including these German gals on the steps. people in the space of that one car seat!)
Our rented minibus was a really great vehicle except for its teeny weeny engine that was struggling to attain 50mph on the highway, laden as it was with 8 gringos. The road we were using is the CA-1, or Central American Highway, and is a major trucking route for any North-South transit. So here we are, happy and laughing in our minibus as Steve would downshift to 2nd or even 1st gear to make it up the many hills we were climbing, while vehicles of all stripes would go to crazy lengths to pass us. The most crazy and ruthless drivers are the chicken busses, which are typically crammed full to the gills and whose drivers are often unlicensed and drunk. I got a photo of a chicken bus and a pickup passing us (and the cement bag-laden truck ahead of us) ON A BLIND CURVE. Double-blind, if you consider that the pickup behind the bus can’t even see what potential horrors lie ahead. (Right after the shot was taken, an oncoming chicken bus squealed around the corner - if it had been 10 seconds earlier they would have crashed.)
Getting out to push our disabled car
Grammy (head down), Christy, Oscar (red hat), Brett and Lucas push our car. Definitely not a place for chickens.
As we finally managed the last hour of hilly downshifting and curves, we arrived into Chi-Chi and were swept into a one-way street which was totally jammed with slow moving, honking traffic. (Guatemalans love to use their horns! Honking really loooooooooong seems best, especially when there is gridlock and no way to move forward. That’s the best time to just
lean on that car horn.) We spot a man dressed in the familiar Inguat vest, which means he is licensed by the national tourist board, and, since we have absolutely no clue where our hotel is located and could really use a guide right now, we open the sliding door and invite him in. We know he is going to want to be paid for his time, but it’s pretty chaotic and noisy and Steve is getting pretty stressed about getting our large vehicle through these tiny streets. We move on a few meters and the noise gets only worse as we are trying to explain to our guide that we need his help getting us to our hotel. In fact, there is this one car alarm that just won’t stop; it’s one
Oscar the guide, and Sonja
who is wearing her Mayan headdress (which is now a decoration hanging in our home) of those that sort of escalates in noise and pitch. The guide is talking to Steve, Steve is trying to understand him as well as drive this car down the right road, and that durned car alarm is simply not helping the stress level.
And then, our car completely dies.
With that shrill car alarm still sounding, Steve frantically tries to figure out why the car has died. He looks at the fuel gauge and is shocked to see that it reads empty. We should have had plenty of gas, but maybe those hills just guzzled it up. Our guide looks at a Steve with a look of concern, as if to say, “dude, what sort of group do you operate?” Several of our gang, including Oscar the Guide, jump out and begin to push the car towards the gas station which is mercifully right next to us. Except for that big pickup truck that just scootched up to us in order to gain, oh, 8 inches on his journey and is now effectively blocking us from making the turn. Thanks, helpful guy! Several other cars, whose path we are now blocking, add to the din with their
horns, because nothing clears up a dead automobile in the street better than a loud round of car horn blasts.
Suddenly I shout “it’s
our car alarm!” because I’ve finally figured out the problem: when Oscar climbed in our car, it triggered the sequence for the car alarm to go off. You have about 30 seconds from opening the car door to re-set the alarm. Well, we forgot about that part (it’s not our car, after all), so the next sequence is the alarm itself. It was OUR car alarm that had been making this racket the whole time! After 2 minutes, the alarm will then shut down the entire car, including electrical systems such as the fuel gauge.
So Steve quickly re-sets the alarm and we all pile back in the car (not without the parting honks of our neighboring cars) and resume our exciting little journey to the Mayan Inn, which we accessed only by going the wrong way down a one-way street (Oscar the Guide: “I know a short cut.”) and finally easing our vehicle inside the little oasis of a tiny car park.
The rest of our stay was way calmer than our
Mural on the municpal building
Showing the story of the civil war from the Mayan perspective. Note the military helicopters and the men burning in a fire. entrance. We hired Oscar to give us a tour of the fabulous Santo Tomás church, which was built atop a pre-Columbian Mayan platform and is an amazing fusion of Catholic and Mayan traditions, including the 18 steps (one for each month of the Mayan calendar) leading up to the church that only Mayans are allowed to use. (Some German tourists apparently didn’t know this and sat on them for lunch.) There is a special set of tiles right in the middle up the aisle of the church which are not to be stepped upon, for they represent various altars upon which Mayans have places flowers and candles and have sprinkled with rum. Right in the middle of a Catholic church! The Santo Tomás church is over 400 years old and, aside from the bustle and excitement of the market, is the main attraction here.
The Mayan culture is still very much alive in this down. Just down the path from the church we saw a confradia (shayman) making his way from the church, incense and banners held aloft by his helpers. He had on a robe and colorful feathers and was speaking Quiché, a local Mayan language. Our guide
Oscar was also Quiché and was really good at explaining all the cultural aspects of what we were seeing. We walked by a municipal building and I was somewhat shocked to see some pretty strong images from the civil war era, which ended in 1996. The photo I've included here shows some military helicopters in the air, while natives stand burning in flames. The indigenous people have a pretty horrific story and this was one way to share it with their illiterate countrymen.
We spent a good while of shopping and bargaining (Christy brought home this very cool shrine-ish looking case and couldn’t quite convince the proprietor to part with the Saint Michael statue inside it. We had to bargain separately for one of those), and then stayed the night in the lovely Mayan Inn, which has no locks on the door but instead is managed by an attendant who watches your door and lights the fireplace both at night and comes in your room early in the morning. There is a lovely restaurant attached which also had a working fireplace (it was chilly at this elevation) and really reminded me of those Merchant-Ivory films where there are table
linens and waiters standing by to attend to your every need. My kind of place, and inexpensive, too!
We later went off to our favorite Hotel Atitlan, the highpoint there sending Grammy down a zip-line, high above the jungle canopy. Go, Grammy!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.192s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 61; dbt: 0.1226s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb