• Category Archives Guatemala
  • San Juan La Laguna

    San Juan la Laguna is a little Mayan town

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    Where even Mary in the nativity is really into weaving.

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    They grow tree cotton

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    And then pull all of the seeds out and beat it with sticks

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    And then spin it into thread

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    And dye it

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    All kinds of pretty colours

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    And then they weave it

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    They have a colourful basketball court

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    We played Loteria with the kids

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    And learned to make tortillas

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    Can you tell which ones are Kerri’s?

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    We ate the tortillas for dinner

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    They had a cute puppy

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    He did not like to stay still for pictures

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  • Panajachel

    Panajachel is on Lake Atitlan.

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    Which is surrounded by volcanos.

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    We went for a walk to try to get a good photo of the volcanos.

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    But it wasn’t easy.

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    The market still had Christmas decorations.

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    We took a boat across the lake and there was a cloud that looked like the volcano was exploding.

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    This is a mountain on the other side with a viewpoint with a cross, which we were too lazy to visit at sunrise.

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  • Mayan Ceremony

    There is a Mayan Church in Chichicastenango

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    It was less weird because it’s Vatican approved, but it still has a lot of candles.

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    The Mayan Ceremony we went to was outdoors, because it wouldn’t have been allowed in the church.

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    I’m not sure if that’s because it involved drawing a skull in sugar

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    Or because it involves heaping a bunch of flammable things and setting them on fire.

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    There were candles at the four compass points too, but that’s a normal church level of fire.

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    The first layer of the heap is pinecones

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    Then candles, chocolates and cigars.

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    Then they lit everything on fire

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    After it was burning they tossed some more candles into the fire.

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  • Chichicastenango

    Chichicastenango is known for having the world’s most colourful market.

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    The person who gave it that award was not looking at the market from above.

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    The fruit and vegetables were very colourful.

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    The corn wasn’t that colourful.

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    But it did have more colours than ours.

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    Their cemetery is also colourful

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    The tombs are painted lots of pretty colours.

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    Much better than our boring grey on green grass.

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    Some had rebar sticking up so that they could add extra storeys.

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    Some of them were very tall.

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    There were some boring grey crosses

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    I don’t know why you would do that when you could paint them pretty colours.

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    I guess you can’t paint your own cross

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    You should get someone to do that for you.

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  • Antigua

    Antigua is near Fuego, the volcano that’s always exploding.

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    We could see the volcanos from the air flying in.

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    And from our hotel.

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    They had some weird parade floats.

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    Kerri was confused

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    But then she was happy

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    There’s the volcano again

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    You could see it almost everywhere in town

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    It was pretty

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    So was this one.

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    Every direction has trees

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    So they need souped-up decorated school buses to get up the hills.

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