Sunday Walk to the Beach

Life continues with its ups and downs. Bert & I went for a walk on Sunday with Chunk & Big Boy on leashes, and the escapees, Velvet & Honeybear who ran free and stayed close (luckily). We avoided the crowded Christmas areas downtown and instead went to the beach here in Jucanya. Even that is decorated for the holidays!

After almost 10 years here in Guatemala, Christmas still feels strange with the bright sun, warm weather, and no snow. But we adapt. Guatemalans love Xmas and celebrate with street parties, parades, and lots of fireworks. 

Bert is the shadowy figure in the middle. Paraglider in the sky. San Pedro volcano in the afternoon haze.

These lovely yellow flowers bloom every fall all along the riverside.

This pink grass practically glows in the sunlight. I love it!

Bert and dogs. This is the beach road in Jucanya. It is always lined with stalls selling things but during the holidays, it is extra festive! All over town, people love to string up decorations over the roads.

A fake Christmas tree and a sleigh with reindeer silhouetted by the setting sun on Lake Atitlan.

These flowers are usually orange and red, but these ones are pretty pink & yellow. They are quite small but there are many of them all over the plant, which is very tall, almost like a tree.

Bert & dogs on the beach road. Palm trees, yay!

Hard to see but those red berries are COFFEE!!

Bananas growing over a wall. My friend had banana trees in his yard and said there were too many for one person to eat!

Rob's favourite plant -- Angel's Trumpet. Smells gorgeous, but is toxic to touch!

Our Christmas Coffee Table! No tree, but stocking, gifts, and cookies for "Santa". :D

Merry Christmas to everyone! 🎄

Semana Santa -- Beautiful Guatemalan Tradition

My wonderful friend and fellow expat, Iva, made a video of the Easter carpets being made here in Panajachel. They are called alfombras in Spanish and they are made from coloured sawdust.

(Click the picture to be taken to her video on Facebook.)

If you want to read about Iva's amazing journey from Canada to the life of an expat in Guatemala (and many more stories!) you can visit her website -- Women Blazing Trails

Horses and the Fair!

The town fair is on right now to celebrate Panajachel's patron saint, San Francisco. I missed the big shenanigans but was lucky to catch the horse parade today. I smiled so much my face hurt! 😄
I took some shaky video for you to experience the chaos of noise that was going on.

At 2 minutes in the video, the guy noticed me filming and showed off for me. If you look closely, you can see his hands are disabled but he manages his horse quite well! Impressive!

Pics below of some of the horses. Literally watched people get bumped by horse butts, almost run over, all sorts of fun. Drunks staggering around, dogs scooting in and out -- total madness!

I wonder if the guys braided the horses' manes and tails ... or if their womenfolk did it for them?

Sorry my pics are bad. Lots of people in the way and the horses were moving around constantly.

I was actually impressed I didn't see more people get hurt in this madness. Horses are skittish creatures. There was so much chaos going on. They did well -- but most were frothing and sweaty. :(

The little guy! That pony is so wide for his tiny legs!! Ha ha!

Also notice the grey horse in the right of the picture above. Sway-necked, skinny, ears back. That's a typical Guatemalan horse that we see in rural areas. Compare him to the show horses below. Big difference!

Fancy show horses from the city. So beautiful, healthy, and strong.

This handsome horse was doing tricks.

Dulces! Gotta buy candy when you go to the fair.
Each bag is Q5. We got fudge fingers and coconut triangles.

Churros!! A must have -- although we were a bit disappointed with the ones we chose.
Not as tasty as we remember.

Cooking potato chips -- good thing hot oil kills all the germs.

Roscas (circle cookies?) and bagged peanuts. Feria traditions.

Amazing BBQs everywhere that smell sooooooooo good.

I didn't go down to the waterfront for the Ferris Wheel of Death or other rides, but I can see the lights and hear the screaming from my house! 😆
Nice to have the fair back in full swing. I've missed it.

Sunny Day Means Laundry

 

It's rainy season in Guatemala so a rare sunny day means you lay out ALL your clothes to dry on the rooftop.
This is a picture out my back window at my neighbour's house. There are clothes hanging on all the lines, plus laid out all over all the rooftops, including more to the left that I couldn't get in the picture.
I have been hand-washing my clothes for years now. It's annoying but just part of life for me. It's frustrating when you wash your fave clothes, hang them to dry... then it rains for 3 days straight so they never get dry. 😖  I took a big risk washing my duvet last week. It got a nice rain rinse one night but then managed to get dry with a full day of sun.
I could take my clothes to a washing service, which is actually pretty cheap, but sometimes they keep your clothes for a couple days, and I'm worried that some of my best clothes will mysteriously disappear. I wish there was a coin laundromat here in Panajachel -- that would be a great business to start!

Great Video from a Scottish Tourist

 It's so nice to see this guy enjoying his visit to our town. 

Be sure to check out his other videos around Guatemala. I am happy that tourism is coming back to support the economy and give adventurous souls their travel fix!

Because It's There

I climbed a big hill today. 😊

The view from the road. I want to climb up to that lone dark tree in the middle.

Walking on the wall between bean fields and onion fields.

The first look at the road up. Cobblestones!

A trickling waterfall down rocks.

Two black vultures looking kinda sus by the side of the road.

It's the end of the dry season so the road was pretty nice.
I wouldn't want to try to climb this in the rainy season due to landslides and mud.

There's the tree!

View from the almost-top. San Pedro volcano and Lake Atitlan.

I thought the road would keep going to the top, but it ended at the onion fields.
There may have been a small trail but I couldn't see it ... and I wouldn't have taken it anyway!

Scenic vista with Panajachel at the bottom left.

Starting back down.

I can see my house!

I'm proud I finally did this hike. It was arduous but so worth it! 😅

Still Here

 I'm still here in Panajachel, bumbling along through life as best I can.

No Booze For You!

Bert and I get a kick out of what a big bunch of whiners the people in the U.S. and Canada are over COVID-19 restrictions. They have no idea! Guatemala goes over the freaking top when a new rule comes out. Back when coronavirus started, they were arresting and fining people who didn't wear masks. Arresting them! Compliance rates increased quickly, as you can imagine.

The latest development here in Guatemala is that, due to rising cases of Covid-19, President Gianmattei decreed that bars are no longer allowed to sell liquor after 6pm. And they were NOT kidding!

Below is a photo taken last night by the press. It is just down the street from our house -- just a couple hundred meters away. There is a little cantina there. Guess they didn't hear the news.

A police office with a machine gun and a police dog enforcing COVID-19 rules

Can you imagine if this happened in the U.S.? People would lose their minds! And this was probably at 6:05 pm. No leeway! We said you close at 6, you close at 6! 

Here's another photo of how many cops showed up at this tiny little bar. Overkill much?

Police in Panajachel enforcing new Covid-19 rules

They had brought in cops from other districts to help enforce the new liquor restrictions. There were trucks all over town visiting all the bars. And there are a LOT of bars here. But the message got out pretty quick and everyone just shut their doors and went home. The cops will probably cruise around again tonight (Saturday) and give menacing looks to everyone, then leave town for the week. 

On the one hand, it's nice to see the government taking the pandemic so seriously. (The President is a former doctor, so that has a lot to do with it.) On the other hand, holy authoritarianism, Batman. Chill, dudes. Maybe kick back and have a beer ... but not after 6! 👮

Easter in Panajachel 2021

A very subdued Semana Santa this year. Lots of food booths and vendors set up, but no big alfombras -- the religious carpets of colored sawdust they usually put down in the streets for the procession to walk through. The only one we saw was in front of the church. I saw on Facebook that there were carpets in other towns around the Lake though. Maybe next year it will be back to normal.

The big church in Panajachel showing Easter decorations.

Bert and I took Big Boy & Chunk for a walk to the church near sunset on Good Friday to see what was going on. Not much, to be honest. There was only a tiny procession with no band. The music came from a speaker system dragged behind. Perhaps we missed the big parades? We've been here six years and neither of us can ever remember what happens when. 

Big Boy taking in the sights.

Chunk was super squirrelly on the walk. So much excitement!

We strolled down a very crowded Santander Street but Bert actually bailed before the Lake because there were too many people. We went back again on Saturday (minus the dogs) to see more sights and eat some yummy carnival food. Everywhere smells like barbecue -- so mouth-watering! People walk around eating corn on the cob or pizza or cotton candy. There are a lot of extra booths but they all seem to sell the same old touristy stuff like tshirts, sun hats, jewelry, toys, local textiles, and crafts.

Near sunset at Lake Atitlan showing the volcanoes.

In the picture above, you can see in the bottom right, there is a guy selling tiny bags of cotton candy. They only cost Q1. That's about 16 cents Canadian or 13 cents American.

Granizadas are slushies or slurpees. These ones are made with alcoholl. A michelada is beer with tomato juice. Very strange.

Delicious fried platano (plaintain) with cream and sugar.

Churros! They need to sell these year-round, rather than just during fairs.

The party boats were kinda quiet this year. Usually their music is painfully loud.

Walking across the river delta from the Pana side to the Jucanya side.

A chicken bus passing under an Easter arch in Panajachel.

Easter (known here as Semana Santa -- Holy Week) is a pretty even split between fanatic religious traditions and insane drunkenness. On Santander, the bars were all pumping out crazy-loud music and the "sexy dancing ladies" were back in town. They're attractive women hired by the alcohol companies to dance and sell booze. They were dressed rather modestly this year, I thought, plus they were wearing masks and face shields, which was nice.

There we tons of cops hanging about, plus I saw a few young people wearing special shirts that said something like "Pana we protect you". They were giving people hand sanitizer and masks. There were signs posted on the way into Panajachel that reminded people to wear masks and keep distance. The mask-wearing was pretty well adhered to but social distancing certainly was not. But I mean, it's the biggest festival all year, so... can't really blame them. I saw a newspaper article that said they estimated there were 100,000 visitors to Panajachel on Saturday. (The town has less than 20,000 residents.)

Anyhoo, here's a very short video of the Easter procession from some footage of how crowded it was around town.

I had a strange realization -- there are no Easter activities for kids here like we do back home in Canada. No coloring eggs or hunting for hidden jelly beans. No Easter bunny. The only Easter chocolates I saw in the store were imports like KitKat and M&Ms. I wonder if non-religious Easter traditions will eventually start to catch on here like Halloween has? 

I hope everyone had a nice Easter weekend. 🐰 

In case anyone is wondering, here are the COVID-19 numbers for Guatemala. 

COVID-19 Situation in Guatemala

Quick translation:

Active cases - 8,592

Accumulated cases - 195,471

Registered deaths - 6,891

I would beseech any tourists who are visiting Panajachel, please please PLEASE wear your mask whenever you are out of your hotel room. Tourists are bringing more of the virus into the country and being blatantly disrespectful by not wearing masks. Guatemala can't handle this pandemic. I read that the local hospital has only two ventilators. TWO. They don't have enough beds for everyone and sick people are literally sleeping on the floor in the hallways of the hospital. You may not be sick, but you could infect a local person and they won't get the medical help they need. The "registered" deaths listed above is a huge underestimate. Most Guatemalans in the Lake Atitlan area don't trust doctors and will die in their homes. Lake Atitlan's biggest income source is tourism, so they need foreigners to come and spend their money. But PLEASE show some respect to the country that has accepted you as a valued guest. Wear your mask! 😷

Flowers & Greenery

Another post to brighten the day of my northern friends who are dealing with cold and snow. 🥶 Winter can't last forever, my friends!

Went for a walk today to take pictures of flowers for my Mom. She was the one who got me interested in gardening when I was a little kid and I used to love going to the greenhouses with her in the spring and summer. I remember especially loving marigolds and lilacs.

Here in Guatemala, it's basically summer year-round so there are always flowers in bloom. It's dry season right now, so things are a bit dusty but still warm and lovely weather for a walk around town. I visited the three viveros (plant stores) that I know of here in Panajachel. I wish I could have bought some plants for my garden, but I just don't have the energy right now to nurture them -- and to fight off the dogs from digging them up. Whenever I dig in the soil, they think it's an open invitation to tear up all the dirt they can get their grubby paws on. 😣

Vivero #1 on the road up that goes to Godinez

Vivero #2 on Arboles across from Deli Pan

The flower lady inside the market building. (#3 on the map)

Of course, there are lots more ladies selling flowers at the market but this is one of the places that's always there, not just seasonal. 

The Vivero across from Despensa Familiar (#4 on the map)

Map of Panajachel showing the three plant stores and the market.

Now a few pictures of some lovely flowers around town, on the roadsides and in people's gardens.

A rare pink & yellow butterfly weed. There are lots of orange & yellow ones around but this tiny guy was different and beautiful.

Literally growing between the rocks on the hot river road.

I love these pretty pink flowers. I'd rather have these than bougainvillea.

The hated bougainvillea in brilliant fuchsia.

These are what I consider the "fall" flowers around here. They start blooming in October.
They're at the end of their time now and most have gone to seed. You can see
all the DUST on their leaves!

Tiny little yellow flowers, only about the size of my pinky fingernail.

That's a poinsettia twice as tall as me!

I believe this is a kroton.

These flowers are pale blue though they look white in this picture.

These orange "finger flowers" always remind me of undersea coral.

A local business that sells gravel and sand has brightened up their yard with geraniums.

No pictures from my own garden as it's a dust bowl! My basil is doing well in the heat, plus a nice spider plant and a jade plant and a pink geranium. The bougainvillea is the bane of my existence. I hate that plant! I would cut it all down if it was up to me. But I guess it does cover the ugly fence quite well and the birds love it.

I'm heading to Tapachula, Mexico, next weekend for my first visa run since Covid-19 started so look for that blog post when I get back. 👍