Last Days in Guatemala

Guatemala is now several months in the rearview mirror, which has given me plenty of time to reflect and reminisce. Our tour ended up being shortened by over seven months of cancer treatment to start and an early departure of ten weeks to accommodate Vietnamese language training and home leave. By the end, we spent only 14 of the 24 months we were originally assigned to the country physically in Guatemala. That left us with plenty of missed tourism opportunities, but we feel like we saw enough of the country to say that we got a full Guatemalan experience.

November 21, 2024 0

Holy Week and Religious Processions

Guatemala has built up some renown for their celebrations leading up to Easter, so much so that UNESCO designated Guatemala’s Holy Week an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2021. For five straight weeks leading into Holy Sunday, you can find processions around the country. The most famous is during Semana Santa, when residents of Antigua build carpets made of dyed sawdust, flowers, scraps of paper, and other materials, called alfombras in Spanish.

November 15, 2024 0

Petén: Isla de Flores and Tikal

The last trip we made during our time in Guatemala was to Petén, the largest and northernmost department in Guatemala that borders Mexico and Belize. Our original trip was supposed to be in early July, but that ended up being delayed until just days before our departure due to a tropical storm. We knew we were taking a chance by booking a trip during rainy season, but we weren’t about to leave Guatemala without seeing the famous Mayan ruins of Tikal.

November 7, 2024 0