Antigua & Guatemala City: Exploring the Streets

Antigua is an interesting place to write about for me, since I was there for a while and one of the places I had a semblance of a normal life. A week of my time was spent in Spanish classes. I spent a largely unsocial life; taking walks in the morning, eating a little breakfast, and heading to class before my one on one at Antiguena Academy. After I would often grab drinks with my new friend, Hanna, who was also taking Spanish and staying at my hostel; we had met in Semuc Champey.

One of the factors in my great time in Antigua was that the hostels there are all well run and maintained well. I stayed at 3 different hostels and all of them offered the comforts I needed. Maya Papaya was probably my favorite, but where it added from free breakfast and great comfort it sacrificed a bit in sociability. Meanwhile, Matiox, and it’s sister hostel which I don’t remember the name of, were more social and had cool perks but were definitely more busy and traveler-y. It was at Matiox where I was finally able to start cooking for myself and get in the groove of long term travel. I haven’t actually gotten as many opportunities for this as you might have guessed, however, food has been generally cheap enough that going out can often be a better deal for better food.

As a city, Antigua is super accessible. Safety is hardly ever questioned since there is such a tourist presence. However, unlike other heavily visited places, like the Yucatan peninsula, the tourist presence isn’t overwhelming. Sure it’s pretty easy to get caught up in tourist traps in the center of town and you can see them everywhere, but when you build your own little world, it just becomes a comfortable place to be.

Some highlights of the city:

• Overlooking he city is a little hill that provides a great view. As my morning wake up, I walked up the hill a few times, just to enjoy the solitude and some music or a podcast while getting a little bit of exercise. In the morning, before many tourist stands pop up and the crowds increase, it can be a great little hang out spot.

• Chukis are a national treasure; not sure that’s how you spell it… One of my favorite spots to eat in the city would give you a footlong sandwhich with either steak, chorizo, lagostino, hot dog, or a mix for 20Q which is roughly $3. On the “french bread” they’d put chimichurri and oil before grilling it, and then add a number of condiments; ketchup, mustard, mayo, hot sauce, sauerkraut, and onions. Yes, I get it, you’re sick of me talking about what I ate.

• Caoba Farms is a tourist and local haven for organic food, crafts, and a farmers market. While this place is overrun with visitors, their ethos is still nice and it’s a good place to grab some good food and enjoy the ambience of the farms.

All in all, I really enjoyed my time in Antigua, whether or not I did a ton of activities. Recomend it for sure.

A minor writeup on Guat City..

Many people skip or minimize their time here, which is understandable. With the help of some locals, however, it can be pretty neat place. First I stayed up in Mixto, slightly out of the city, with my friend Martin's parents. They had a nice house with a view and it was a great place to relax and get a feeling for a real home.

We would drive into the city for activities like restaurants and bars and avoid walking around the city, mostly because of safety. However, I spent some time on my own in District 14, one of the nicer ones, and was fine. There are dangers for sure but I used it as a base for hitting some restaurants, cafes, and malls. It’s probably a place you don’t need to spend much time for but if you’re in good company, there is plenty to do , as in most cities.

Antigua: Climbing Acatenango

There are three volcanoes that watch over Antigua. There are certainly more looming in the distance but there are three watchmen. Agua, Fuego, and Acatenango. Why it didn’t get a cool elemental name, I don’t know.

Right now, Fuego is the one that’s active, and I don’t just mean that in the sense that it isn’t technically dormant. It spits smoke and lava out almost daily.

The hike itself is not insanely difficult. Yes, it’s steep and the ground in unsteady but the trek is made more difficult because of the altitude, (insert height). You carry a little more than you would for a day hike (food, extra water for cooking and warm clothing + blanket for the cold), but truthfully, I would have been willing to carry up more had I not been so cold at night.  

To start the morning, I went to breakfast to score a smoothie and some pancakes, primetime hiking fuel. The bus picked me up at 8:30 and we went around grabbing a few people from other hostels before an hour-long drive out to the base of the mountain. 

We gathered some gear for the trek and packed up and began the ride up. When we weren’t in the trees, the view was pretty nice of the towns around as we made our way up, however, the clouds obscured much of it.

There were a few stops on the way up, one of which was for lunch. In addition to the lunchbox they had packed, they were selling ramen, which I bought. Not a great idea, as the soup would be sloshing around in my stomach for the last half of the ascent.

When we reached the camp, we started a fire, which was needed anywhere out of the sunlight, which was dwindling quickly. We were made dinner by our guide and ate around the fire. The fog was rolling in but we had the joy of being joined for company by several explosions of the volcano, many of which scared us at their size. As darkness fell, the fog shrouded the caldera. However, we were still able to see a few splashes of lava. Luckily, time would be our friend and the fog would recede and let us get great views of the spewing lava that we had been hearing.

After enough watching, it was time for bed. We had a sleeping bag, blankets, and extra clothes, but I still was freezing. We weren’t even on the ground; we were on cots in a shared tent. Preparation was not one of the things that went well for me on this trek. It was honestly a pretty brutal night, especially since leaving the sleeping bag to go to the bathroom resulted in losing a lot of my stored up heat.  

One redeeming, but really not comforting, in fact plunging me right back into the icebox, factor was that we woke up early (3 AM) to hike up to the summit. As I told you before, I was underprepared with warm clothes, so this was bad, since it got windier as we approached the unprotected top of the mountain above the clouds.

Semuc Champey

The ride to Lanquin is a windy, bumpy, road through the rainforest.  Much of the drive is on the sides of hills/cliffs, offering magnificent forest views as well as a peephole into the life of rural, indigenous Guatemalans.  As you might already know, much of Guatemala is poor and maybe 3rd world in terms of development. People live in little villages in the forest and live off farming and other moderate means to have enough to eat. The buildings are of ramshackle construction and often don’t even look like people bothered completing them. 

The town of Lanquin is a little more developed than the surrounding areas but is still not enough to qualify as a city. The hostels are not even settled in the city, they all are perched in the forest, cloistered away in their own little serene areas, overlooking the forested valley.

I stayed at Zephyr Lodge, as requested by my Guatemalan friend, Martin. It was a fun adventure but it was much different than expected. Zephyr is a bit of a party hostel despite its appearance of a relaxing resort in the trees. The pool is not that clean but the hot tub is a nice break from all the busses you will have had to endure on the way there.  In addition, the culture there is centered on partying because there is absolutely nothing to do outside of the hostel itself.  Everything is self-contained. However, thanks to some great company, I still had a great time, despite it being different from what I had hoped.

On my bus over from Flores, I met three Dutch girls, Iris, Zoe, and Fenne. We talked a little in the bus, but decided to hang a bit when we hopped in the back of the truck to get from the center of Lanquin to our hostel. After settling in briefly, we hopped in the pool for some beers and we’d hang out for the rest of the trip.

The first day the activity was river floating, which is basically just sitting in an inner tube and drinking beers. It’s super mellow but because of the structure of it, it became quite the event. At our first stop, we played volleyball and if you hit the ball into the river you had to fetch it and then beer bong one of your beers. I hadn’t done that since college and I have to say, it’s not a skill that sticks with you... Anyways, I had to do it twice, but was otherwise playing pretty well.

The second stop was to wait for the truck and drink some more beers, it was a fun day but honestly, you didn’t need to be in Guatemala for this. Although, the riverside scenery was pretty lush.

Day two was Semuc Champey and the surrounding area. The first segment was my favorite and was focused on “exploring “ a cave. We took candles in to the cave and waded around in the water, doing a few activities, like climbing up a rope through a waterfall, climbing up a rock wall and jumping into a pool, and squeezing through a little crack into another pool. It was not very extreme or anything but it was fun to play around and be doing different activities in the dark, underground.

Afterwards, we went outside to a swing that basically launches you 20 ft in the air and slams you into the water, pretty fun but I lacked the skills to land gracefully. One guy was able to pull a flip, only to get over confident, try a double flip and land flat on his back.

Afterwards, we had a meal of fried chicken and some sides that was average at best, but fed us. This was the precursor to the actual pools of semuc champey. I passed on hiking to the viewpoint because all I had was sandals. It was a good choice, because hanging out, relaxing, and swimming in the pools was really enjoyable, even a bit cold. The waterfalls were a tad warmer and felt amazing to sit under because they offer so much more water pressure and coverage then any of the showers here could even dream of. The smaller pools off to the side offer interesting colors and moss to slip and slide around in. All in all it was pretty fun day. While we waited for the whole group to leave we were approached by kids trying to sell water, coke, and chocolate. They kept returning as if we had changed our minds since there really isn’t anything else to do and they could use some money.  Thus concludes the trip.

The next day would have a hellish ride to Antigua.

Flores

After a long, arduous day of traveling via bus from Bacalar, I arrived in Flores. Flores is an incredibly small island in the middle of a lake. It’s possible to walk the whole city in an hour or two; it’s really just a stopping of point to go see Tikal.

After I arrived, I managed to message my hostel, which was located on the other side of the lake, so that I could call the shuttle/ferry to pick me up. This wouldn’t have been so hard with phone data, instead, I used wifi at another hostel and found out where to get picked up and met the boat there.

The next day I went to Tikal. I took a bus there and was joined by two German girls who I met at the hostel. It wasn’t so hard to get there, although upon arrival I realized I had lost my ticket. The strange thing is, however, that our “guide” had left to go gather more groups and pawned us off on others. Me, not having a ticket, was left stranded trying to figure out what to do. Luckily, I ran into my old guide about 20 minutes later.

 In a place like the states, it might have been easy to prove that I had bought a ticket. In this case, I had bought my ticket at the airport to avoid the line, and the park entrance is 17 km away from where you could buy a new ticket.

Anyways, after talking to the guide, I realized that I was shit out of luck. The guide suggested that I could sneak in if I hugged the ropes off to the side and avoided the gaze of the guards. So, that’s what I did. I made it in through the gate by standing in the middle of the group, where I’d try to stay for the remainder of the day. I even put on a rain jacket, despite sweltering humidity, under the guise of protecting from mosquitos but really covering up my bare wrist, which didn’t have the entrance bracelet. I guess it made the day more exciting. However, the ruins didn’t need help, as they are staggeringly impressive and stand high above the rainforest canopy, offering a nice climb and view from massive stone temples of old.

Don’t worry, I made it back alright, despite not having a ticket. My bus driver, Pablo, remembered me but made fun of me a bit for having lost both tickets (which obviously I had been holding together) My guide even bothered to escort me out of the park, so we would be low key.

After I returned, I walked Flores to enjoy a little festival that was going on. There was a little fair up on the top of the island, where there is a basketball court and little center. There were food and beer tents with some assorted games and vendors. There was a band playing what seemed to be covers (since people knew the words) but they weren’t very good. Not a festival for me to hang at, I headed back to the hostel to sleep and prep for the long windy road to lanquin, the city nearby semuc champey.