Chichicastenango

Also known as 'Chichi'! Famous market town - our Guatemalan itinerary was organised around being here on a Thursday!

We get away at 8:00 a.m. - I suspect Maurizio wanted to go later but I insisted that we stick with the time on the itinerary as we have a big day and I don't want to get into Antigua late. He has been a good guide, but they all seem to suit themselves ...

We were pleased to leave 'Pana' as it is known - very over-rated in my opinion. It is over an hour to drive to the Thursday market at Chichicastenango.

On the way up the steep descent away from Panajachel Town to Solalá at the top, My Friend and I comment that this climb would be good training for aspiring Tour de France riders - only to get to the top to find vehicles loaded up with some very good bicycles on their roofs! (Maurizio has no idea what we are on about; afterall, we've seen nothing but old 'clunkers' in Guatemala so I don't think cycling is high on the agenda of the average Guatemalan). We pass many more vehicles laden with bikes; obviously there is a big comp. on today.

Maurizio has just told us the price of petrol is PER GALLON. That means Super works out at roughly Q5 to Q6 per litre which is about $US0.75 per litre. It is CHEAP here, not expensive (I thought the Q21 was per litre!!).

I tried to find out from Maurizio about the inroads that the evangelista churches have made into Guatemala but all he said was that they are more common in rural areas. I suspect people 'play things close to their chest' here - as suggested in the book Silence on the Mountain that I read. But even that book didn't go into much detail. I have just looked up an interesting article: 'The evangelical church arrived in Guatemala with the so-called Liberal Reform of 1871, during which the Catholic Church was expelled and its properties expropriated, to reduce its economic influence in the country - Catholic convents were converted to secondary schools, for example.'
https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/interviews/a-discussion-with-monica-ramirez-world-vision-guatemala

Chichicastenango is a large indigenous town at an altitude of 1965 m; 98.5% of the municipality's population is indigenous Mayan K'iche.

Many apples apparently are grown in this area and exported. In fact we buy a couple in the market.

Next to the market is the 400-year-old church of Santo Tomás. It is built atop a Pre-Columbian temple platform, and the steps originally leading to a temple of the pre-Hispanic Maya civilization remain venerated. K'iche' Maya priests still use the church for their rituals, burning incense (copal) and candles. The Maya priests or shamans perform several rituals here.

My Friend, the shaman! -

The market did not disappoint - it is huge (reputably the largest native market in Central America) with many, many corridors choc-a-bloc with everything - we saw tortillas being made, fruit, vegetables, beans, poultry (some alive), puppies, kittens and of course the usual bags, cushion covers, masks, jewellery. I've never seen carrots, watermelons or avocados the size of the ones here! Loud bombas (firecrackers) go off sporadically, adding the smell of fireworks to the incense. All very colourful!

We also visited the very colourful cemetery and 'lucked' on a shaman ceremony.

We were away by 11:45 a.m. to return to Antigua where we stay the night before a transfer in the morning to Guatemala City for our flight to Panama City.

We wind through many curves steeply back down to Tecpán which is known as the "first capital of Guatemala". This claim is based on the fact that the first permanent Spanish military centre of the nation was based here.

There are many heavily laden trucks and long yellow school buses from the US; and multi-coloured buses lights flashing and generally being driven by lunatics and belching black exhaust smoke.

We arrive back into Antigua about 3:00 p.m. and head straight for our favourite coffee place Cafe la Parada where we chat to the barista, a guy from the US working in Antigua and a young Antiguan guy who has been training to be a barista; then we wander down to the main square to sit and watch, before heading back to our hotel to get ready for dinner.

I have finally caught up with Frida! Frida Kahlo that is. The only connection with Guatemala and Frida that I can find is that just weeks before her death in 1954 at the age of 47, she participated in a demonstration against the U.S.-backed overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala. But tonight we went to Fridas the restaurant - a very lively place popular for drinks and food. The restaurant’s owners are great fans of Frida’s work and have decorated the dining space with their own collection of posters and reproductions of the artist’s paintings. We had a really nice meal and Tequila Sunrises - spending the last of our Guatemalan quetzals.