Under The Volcanos

Western Guatemala is a place of inspiring landscapes with towering cone shaped volcanos looming large over picturesque colonial towns and green hills patchworked with the smallholdings of Guatemala's large indigenuous rural population. It's also a landscape prone to the devasting effects of earthquakes and eruptions, as well as the occasional passing hurricane.

Tourism centres on the old town of Antigua, the colonial capital in Spanish days until a particularly large quake levelled the city in the late 18th C. Its hardy citizens rebuilt it in parts, but left a legacy of gently decaying ruined churches and monasteries in amongst the refurbished mansions. It has a faintly bohemian feel with language schools aplenty catering for young North Americans come down to improve their Spanish by day and kick back in the bars and cafes by night. There seemed to be a lot of weddings going down on the day we wandered about the place, the brides looking rather surly in white while the grooms were generally too squat and rotund to carry off the effect of wearing a double-breasted suit. Perhaps that was what was upsetting the brides.

It was good to push on into the Western Highlands from Antigua to visit some slightly more authentic communities in the mountains. At the highest town in Guatemala (2500m), we divided up to stay in the homes of local families, a fascinating experience. Grace and I stayed with Marina, a middle-aged mother of two who took us for a spin around the market before we helped her prepare dinner in her antiquated kitchen. She lived in an outlying village we reached by cramming into the back of a minivan with around 25 other women and children all dressed in the brightly coloured woven clothes worn by local indigenuous people. Our home for the night was a concrete shack shared with cats, dogs and hens, but it proved comfortable enough once you'd got settled in. Conversation was entirely in Spanish and managed to keep flowing for most of the evening, before Grace was invited to get togged up in traditional clothes and pose for photos in which she towered over our host at almost twice her height.

There were yet more volcanos surrounding Lake Atitlan, an unfeasibly beautiful mountain lake a little like Lake Como in Italy, but without the expensive hotels and luxury boats. Atitlan is home to some of the most traditional communities in Guatemala, each retaining distinctive local dress and customs despite their relative proximity to one another by boat, the only practical way to get around the place. Like a lot a places in Guatemala it's beginning to be seriously impacted on by tourism, with large numbers of local people working in the souvenir selling business in the main villages. It remains to be seen whether traditional lifestyles will survive this latest invasion as well as they managed to survive the arrival of the Spanish and Catholicism over 400 years ago.