Discover Guatemala’s ancient Maya ruins, colourful colonial towns, volcanoes, rainforests and lakes
Gerardo was 5 years old when I spent a month in Antigua, Guatemala studying Spanish at Centro Linguistico Atabal in 1990.
He would accompany his mother from their remote village in the hills near Volcan Fuego to Antigua where she sold goods on the street. Too poor to afford a shop, she occupied a spot on the tiny sidewalk in the portal of a wooden door on 5a Avenida Norte, about halfway between the Parque Central and La Merced.
When Gerardo got bored, he wandered down to the parque where there was a used tv and repair store. The owner allowed the street urchins to sit on the floor and watch TV.
I didn’t know him then, of course. But I must have walked past him and his mother a hundred times. I was boarding with a Spanish family on the same street. And La Boheme, the bar where I drank beers for 30c and listened to live music, was just around the corner.
But today he is my walking tour guide.
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Back in 1990, I arrived with disappointment. Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) controlled 2 of Peru’s nine provinces and had executed tourists on the Inca Trail, so that was out. Bolivia was in the grip of a major cholera epidemic, so that was out too. The backup plan - learn Spanish in Antigua - didn’t sound like much fun.
How wrong I was. It was some of the best fun I’ve ever had. School 8-12 Monday to Friday, evenings at La Boheme, shutters open while obligatory electrical storm raged, weekends to Panahachel, San Pedro, Chichicastenango, Todas Santos. A lifelong friendship made, from which, later in London, further lifelong friendships sprang.
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Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote of nostalgia in One Hundred Years of Solitude as an inherently bittersweet force distorting reality. Both a creative act and a melancholic trap.
I must admit that walking the streets fucked with my head. Smells - bougainvillea and roses - and sounds - breezy Caribbean reggae and passionate Latin dance music - doing so more than sights.
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Much has changed …American fast food (and shit coffee) outlets have arrived, the old school has closed, and spending on a hotel for one night cost what would have been 2 weeks budget back in the day.
But much remains the same …the chicken buses, security with pump action shotguns, the jade and silver and the vibrant indigenous markets.
It remains still - from Tikal and Flores in the north, to the jungle of Livingstone on the Caribbean coast, to the remote highlands, to the black sands of the pacific beaches - one of the most remarkable places on the planet.