GUATEMALA
Our Top Pick in Central America
Probably no other country in Central America has as many unique attractions within such a small region. Not everything is easily accessible or convenient for visitors. However, the established parts of their tourist industry are impressively top quality. A wide array of appealing activities provided by tour operators at many locations can make you wish that you had more time to spend in each place. While we encountered many locals with items to sell to tourists, they were consistently polite and never became overbearing trying to make a sale. As a tourist, you will likely feel very welcomed by the people who live here. In our nine days in Guatemala, we chose to visit: Flores, Tikal, Semuc Champey, and Antigua.
Travel Tips:
Armed robbery is a problem in a few places. For example, there have been incidents on volcano hiking trails next to Lake Atitlan. An option for tourists who want to hike some of these trails is to hire an armed guard. When planning a trip, make sure to research to find out which places are currently unsafe.
Despite being within the tropics, cities like Antigua can get quite chilly in the evenings, all year round. Be sure to pack long sleeve shirts or even a sweater or hoodie.
View from top of Temple IV at Tikal
Currency
The quetzal is the national currency. A 100 quetzal note is worth approximately $13. A trip to Guatemala requires careful cash management planning. Although many businesses accept credit cards, they are not as widely accepted as in the US or Europe. For example, about half the gas stations accept only cash.
Exchanging currency in Guatemala can be problematic. I found one guidebook claiming that "you can change money at all banks in Guatemala." That is not true. Many banks only change money for persons with an account. In the city of Coban, I could not find any bank that would exchange currency. Furthermore, the banks that change dollars are very picky about the condition of the bills. Banks would not accept nearly half the bills I brought because of ink marks. Two banks rejected the $20 note pictured above. (There is a black mark on the bottom margin.)
Guidebooks also suggest ATMs but advise that they charge high fees. I tried several. They were usually able to read my card, but none allowed a withdrawal. A few hotels will change money. I found one in Flores.
It is always worthwhile asking businesses whether they accept US dollars because a few do. Taxis from the airport generally accept US currency. Also, some of the private tour guides actually seemed to prefer payment in US dollars.
Flying vs. Driving
Flores has a small airport with daily flights from Guatemala City for a little over $200 round-trip. Oddly enough, at the time of our trip, there were round-trip fares to Guatemala City from the US for less than that! Nevertheless, the 1-hour domestic flight saves a lot of time over traveling by road, and many tourists choose this option. The 300-mile route to Flores takes 8 hours to drive at an efficient pace, not including stops for meals. As a rule of thumb, 40 mph is the maximum pace for driving long distances in Guatemala. The roads are usually single-lane and frequently pass through populated areas protected by speed bumps. Additionally, most of the country is mountainous.
Besides being more economical (especially if traveling with a group), driving has the advantage of allowing you to visit places in between the capital and Flores. Rio Dulce, situated near the midpoint of the main route to Flores, is an appealing option to spend a couple of days. However, the reason we chose to travel by car was to visit Semuc Champey.
Flores
Flores is a small island city in Lake Peten, connected to its twin town, Santa Elena, by a short bridge. It is historically significant as the last independent Maya state, lasting until 1697. Although many foreign tourists come to Flores to visit Tikal, it is very charming and a popular getaway for Guatemalans. We stayed for two nights, but it would be easy to justify one or two additional.
Although the town is compact, it is very easy to find street parking. There are many restaurants, all within a short walking distance. Boats along the shore offer various tours to sites along the lake.
Tikal
Temple of the Jaguar (Temple I)
Tikal National Park is a little more than an hour's drive from Flores. At the entrance, tickets cost 150Q in local currency only. Credit cards are not accepted. You can alternatively buy tickets in advance from outside vendors. I had read that you need to present your passport when purchasing tickets. However, it seems the actual requirement is only an official photo ID since they readily accepted my New York driver's license.
Tikal is a must-see attraction for anyone visiting Guatemala. Having also seen the Mayan ruins in Chichen Itza, I do not consider a trip to either site a substitute for the other. I found Tikal to be very different from Chichen Itza. Our guide explained that the structures at the latter are from a later period.
We arrived by 10 AM, early enough to find a tour guide at the entrance gate. Portable audio guides for Tikal are available, but a knowledgeable individual can provide much more. Our guide was exceptional, so much that I asked for his business card. For those who like to preplan, I highly recommend Jose Luis Zeceña. He can be reached by e-mail at guideoftikal@gmail.com. In addition to his extensive knowledge of the history of the Mayan civilization, one thing that sets him apart is his ability to spot wildlife. He studies birds as a hobby and can recognize the sounds of many of the native species. Near the end of our tour, he heard parrots. He managed to locate them high up in a tree, despite their green feathers camouflaging themselves among the leaves.
The archaeological site is expansive. Tikal was the largest city in the Mayan world, and they were constructing pyramids over several hundred years. Paths through the jungle (which reclaimed the land after the Mayans left) give access to the various structures. At a quick pace, it is possible to see most of the significant ruins in 3 hours. However, I would recommend allocating 4 to 5 hours. In addition to the ruins, the park is a great place to spot Guatemala's wildlife. Rare species thrive here because they are protected within the park boundaries. During our visit, we spotted spider monkeys and howler monkeys. We also saw oscillated turkeys, which are much more colorful than the wild turkeys that live in the US. As we were exiting the park, we were also lucky to encounter great curassows crossing the road.
Lastly, just outside the park entrance, there is a company that offers canopy zipline tours. The activity takes about an hour. Although we did not try their zipline, the tour company receives strong reviews.
Semuc Champey
Although it is remote and time-consuming to reach, this destination is well worth the effort. Lanquin is the gateway town for a trip here. Many visitors book two nights in Lanquin. Alternatively, it is possible to stay for a single night in Lanquin, and then after a day tour at Semuc Champey, drive to Coban and spend the night there. Since our next destination would be Antigua, I thought the latter choice was preferable.
Semuc Champey is a unique travertine bridge formed above the Cahabón River. Its turquoise pools are popular for swimming since the water is much warmer than the chilly river that passes underneath. A few years earlier, we visited the travertine cascades in Pammukale, Turkey. It was interesting to note the sharp color contrast between the two.
Lanquin hotels offer full-day tours to Semuc Champey. The village at Semuc Champey is 10km from Lanquin. The primary reason I booked a tour was to avoid driving on the local dirt road leading there, and in hindsight, I was happy with that decision! Tours typically leave between 8 and 9 AM and last about eight hours. About an hour and a quarter of this time is the scenic commute.
The morning part of our tour started with a visit to the Kanba Cave, a short distance downstream from the cascades. You need to bring a candle, a swimsuit, and shoes that can get wet. (Oddly, our tour guide who told everyone they needed shoes went barefoot!) The cave contains a stream that you wade through at various points. I would best describe the experience as a water park obstacle course in a natural cave setting. There are several optional challenges, including rock climbing, a water slide, and a cliff jump. The most interesting was an alternative return 'shortcut' involving dropping through an opening between the rocks into a deep part of the stream. We also saw some of the cave residents: bats and shrimp. After leaving the cave, we walked further upstream until we reached the edge of the waterfall at the edge of the Semuc Champey travertine. There is a cliff beside the river here that is a popular jumping spot. The drop is about 25 feet.
Some of the local villagers prepare an outdoor buffet lunch for tour groups. The food is typical Guatemalan cuisine and includes grilled chicken. Toward the end of the meal, local children came to the tables to sell locally made chocolate. We bought some, but what was more interesting was that one very entrepreneurial boy also offered for sale a ripe cocoa pod. The pods contain a tasty white flesh that surrounds the seeds used to make chocolate. I had in the past seen juice bars in Costa Rica and Brazil selling cocoa fruit juice, but I had never before been able to try the actual fruit; I had never seen them for sale in fruit markets anywhere that I have traveled. I made a special request and asked if they could bring a few more when I returned from the afternoon part of our tour. They agreed, seeming a little surprised that somebody wanted to pay for fruit that they could easily pick off one of the many cocoa trees in the area!
After lunch, we headed to the Semuc Champey National Park entrance. A steep trail with steps leads up to a viewing platform. This trail is labeled a 45-minute hike, but fit teenagers are likely to reach the top in about 20 minutes. After taking a few photos, we descended and spent the next couple of hours in the pools.
The Road to Lanquin via Sayaxche
Situated 12km off National Road 5 (RN5), Lanquin is midway between Guatemala City and Flores. Although only 150 miles from Flores, the drive takes 6 hours. Two features on the route account for this. First, the river next to Sayaxche, although not very wide, does not have a bridge! It is a good place for a break, as food vendors approach cars waiting for the ferry.
The slowest part of the journey is the last 60km of windy road, which takes nearly 2.5 hours. AV-9, the departmental road that connects Lanquin with RN5, is mostly unpaved. Before the trip, I had read a few opinions stating this is a 4WD road. It is not quite that bad, as we managed fine without 4WD. However, the caveat is that we were not there during the rainy season.
Antigua
This city exceeded expectations so much that we decided to change our itinerary while there. Initially, we planned to spend two nights in Antigua, followed by one night in a town on Lake Atitlan. However, two nights is just too short a visit for Antigua, so we opted for three and would have probably added at least one more had our schedule permitted. The city is loaded with outstanding restaurants, shops, museums, historical sites, activities, and a central market, and everything is within walking distance. It is also an ideal base for day-trips to nearby attractions.
City Tours
The entire city of Antigua is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of numerous preserved Spanish colonial buildings. It is well worth hiring a guide for at least one day. Many independent guides offer city tours for very reasonable prices. We hired a guide for a 3-hour tour that included the Convento de las Capuchinas and Casa Santo Domingo. This tour only covered a fraction of Antigua's sites.
The 1773 earthquake destroyed most of the city. The ruins of the Santo Domingo Monastery were converted into a hotel and museum. Casa Santo Domingo hosts a few resident scarlet macaws in the main courtyard. Although native to Guatemala, there are very few remaining in the forests.
We hiked up to Cerro de La Cruz on the hill at the north end of Antigua. It is an approximately 20-minute walk from Parque Central. Here we got a great panoramic view of the entire city and Volcan de Agua in the background.
The Central Market
Antigua's market is open daily and is a great place to look for local tropical fruit. Some of the fruits we saw for sale included cashew fruits, caimitos, a few types of sapotes, granadillas, rambutans, guavas, jocotes, soursops, a few mango varieties, etc., and of course many fruits common in northern countries. I was most surprised to find ice cream beans for sale in one of the stalls. (The Spanish word for this fruit is paterna.) I had never seen this fruit before. The white flesh around the seed does, in fact, taste a little bit like vanilla ice cream. The picture to the right shows one of these fruits.
Chocolate Class at Ek Chuah
For anyone traveling with kids (or even without kids), a stop at one of the chocolate shops in Antigua should be a top priority. Ek Chuah is a shop that offers a wide array of locally produced chocolate products. It also houses a small museum that describes the Mayan history of chocolate production. We took a chocolate-making class that included a tour of the museum and a hands-on experience through the different steps to produce chocolate from the dried beans. The final step is to create individual chocolates, pouring liquified chocolate into molds, optionally adding nuts or other fillings. The final product is ready to eat after a short period of refrigeration.
During our visit, the staff offered us samples of various products such as cocoa tea and chocolate liqueurs. The kids compared chocolate samples with different cocoa percentages. My daughter cites our visit here as "The best part of the trip!"
Address of Ek Chuah: 4a Calle Oriente #14, one and a half blocks east of Parque Central.
Jade Carving Classes
Casa del Jade is a shop that sells locally made jade jewelry. It also contains a jade museum with displays of Mayan jade artifacts. While walking past our parked rental car on our second day in Antigua, I noticed that the tire was nearly flat. I decided the 2-hour jade carving class would be a great activity for the kids while I would get the tire repaired. The class began with a short tour of their museum. After learning about jade, the kids went to the workshop and first chose a slab of jade to work with; there were about eight different colors of jade to choose from. They spent the next 90 minutes using machines in the workshop to cut the stones, make them smooth, and polish them. Their final products are to the left.
As it turned out, getting the tire fixed took nowhere near two hours. Our hotel manager pointed out that rather than taking the car to a gas station, a tire shop a block away would fix it. Within a few minutes after a brought the car, the attendant at the tire shop pulled off the tire, found the leak (caused by a thin nail), and patched it up within about fifteen minutes. For the service, he wanted only 10 quetzals. (I handed him a good deal more than that.) Upon showing up nearly an hour before the kids' jade class finished, the folks at the shop invited me to also carve a stone while waiting. I took them up on their offer. My kids, of course, pointed out that "I had a lot of help" - as the attendants helped me finish at the same time as the kids.
Address of Casa del Jade: 4a Calle Oriente #10
Restaurants
Lunch at La Cuevita de Urquizu
Dinner at Sobremesa
The food establishments in Antigua are outstanding. We did not have one mediocre meal. When visiting a new place, I often search the internet or travel guides for restaurant recommendations. Because there seemed like so many good options, we instead decided to wander and enter any place that looked appealing. Every restaurant we ate at is worth recommending.
- Antigua Brewing Company, 3a Calle Poniente #4. We dined here on our first evening. It should come as no surprise that this place has an excellent selection of beers. The food menu is limited, having only a few basic choices. However, the dishes we ordered tasted great. The kids had fish and commented that it was very fresh. This restaurant also features good live local musicians at night.
- Sobremesa, 4a Calle Oriente #4. On our second evening, we briefly glanced in this restaurant. The proprietor was at the door and asked if we wanted to see a menu. He further commented that they have a good pulled pork sandwich. I replied, "Oh, we can get that anywhere in New York." to which the owner responded, "Ah, but not pulled pork with guava!" So we went in. To sum it up, this would easily be one of the best restaurants in Manhattan, except with much lower prices. Toward the end of our dinner, we heard the owner reciting the dessert options to a neighboring table. Particularly unique was a large selection of complex gourmet ice cream flavors. For a better description of the food than I can provide, check out the restaurant website: www.sobremesagt.com. We enjoyed the food here so much that we seriously considered returning the following evening.
- La Cuevita de Urquizu, 2a Calle Oriente #9D. This restaurant serves traditional Guatemalan food. From the dishes on display at the entrance, you select one main meat stew dish and two sides. For drinks, we ordered fruit licuados. I would agree with critical online reviews stating the food is expensive. However, this is only relative since restaurants in Guatemala tend to be inexpensive.
- Samsara, 6a Calle Poniente #33. Because we had a very filling late lunch, we ventured out late for dinner on our third evening. We discovered this restaurant just before it was closing at 9 PM. It has a fantastic creative vegan menu. Additionally, the unique desserts in their display refrigerator are hard to resist. We would have dined here had we arrived earlier. Instead, the following morning before heading to Guatemala City, we stopped here for smoothies.
- La Fonda Calle Real, 5a Avenida Norte #12. We dined here on our third evening. This restaurant has a wide selection of typical Guatemalan dishes. We ordered tamales, which were very different from the kind you find in Mexican restaurants. For dessert, we tried rellenitos de plátano, fried plantains filled with sweetened black beans.
Extensions to Our Itinerary
View of Volcano de Agua from our hotel terrace in Antigua
There were several places we wanted to visit that we were unable to fit into the schedule. These include:
- Biotopo del Quetzal - This is a cloud forest about a 2 3/4 hour drive from Lanquin on the way to Antigua. As the name suggests, the park is one of the few natural habitats of Guatemala's national bird, the resplendent quetzal. I had initially booked a night at Ranchito del Quetzal, located near the park. That hotel is a much better place to spot quetzals than in the park itself. Unfortunately, Ranchitos del Quetzal was only accepting cash in local currency. Because of difficulties exchanging U.S. dollars, we instead spent the night in Coban.
- Iximche -This is a site of Mayan ruins, located slightly over an hour from Antigua. Tour operators in Antigua offer day-trips. On some days, tours here include Mayan rituals.
- Coffee and Macadamia Plantations - There are coffee and macadamia farms just outside of Antigua. Tour operators will offer a single tour that includes visits to both.
- Lake Atitlan - The town of Panajachel serves as a gateway to Lake Atitlan. It is a 2-hour drive from Antigua. An option I considered was to leave the car parked at a garage in Panajachel. We would then take a boat across the lake to a hotel in the town of San Pedro. Just outside this town is the San Pedro Volcano. Hiking up the volcano is very popular and takes half a day.