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.

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! 😷

No Easter in Guatemala This Year

Because of this stupid coronavirus, Easter celebrations in Guatemala have been cancelled. This is sad for two reasons. Number one, Easter is a big deal for the many religious people here. Number two, Easter is a huge tourist attraction and therefore brings in a lot of money for tourist-based businesses.

Not being allowed to have Easter events, gatherings, parades or even church services actually presents a difficult moral decision for many people. Think about it: would you rather disobey your government or your God? I know that I have seen some people on TV in other countries who are still attending large church services and proclaiming that God will protect them from the virus. Yeah, sorry, but that's not gonna work, guys. 😳

Panajachel's religious leaders have come up with a clever way to deal with the cancellation of Easter. All over town, there are purple bows and signs with different inspirational messages and Bible quotes. I snapped a pic of this one on my way home from the grocery store.

Messages on poles in Panajachel about Easter.

The sign above says, "Love to our brothers is to recognize that we have more things that unite us than those that will separate us."

Below that in small print, it says, "Holy Week lives and is celebrated in the hearts of all Panajachel."
I really like that!

As for me, I'm not religious but I will certainly miss the fancy processions and beautiful alfombras (carpets). Here is a picture from a few years ago to show you how awesome they are.

Besides prohibiting all Semana Santa celebrations and gatherings, the most recent COVID-19 restriction is that the President has decreed that during Easter Week, no one can travel between departments (provinces or states). All tourist sites and all beaches are closed.

Here in Panajachel, no one who does not live here can enter the town. All roads into the town are guarded by police who check documents to verify where you live. Of course, emergency vehicles can pass and also trucks delivering food or medicine. 

The other big thing is that all sales of alcohol have been prohibited for 9 days. The ban is said to expire after Easter Monday. Can you imagine the party that's going to happen on that day? 😆

In good news, the Office of Migration here has said that there will be no late fees or fines for any tourist with a valid tourist entry stamp if it expires while the State of Emergency is in effect. This is a relief for me as my stamp is expiring on April 17th. It also means that once the State of Emergency is lifted, which could be many months from now, there will be a tonne of expats who need to do visa runs! I've already talked to a bunch of my friends here who agree that it would be fun to all go together to Mexico for a weekend!

So that's life for me in Guatemala right now. Pretty normal actually. So far the restrictions are just minor irritations. And I'm SUPER grateful that I am not sick, and neither are my family and friends.

Stay healthy, folks. Wash your hands, don't touch your face, and keep your spirits up!

Christmas in Guatemala 2019

This Christmas in Panajachel was unfortunately soured by many little troubles. But I am focusing on the good things that happened and not the bad, and I am especially thankful for all my good friends here in Pana who made my Xmas very special.

I had a wonderful trip across the lake to San Pedro to visit a friend.
I had a delicious potluck Xmas dinner.
I enjoyed the midnight fireworks on Christmas Eve.
I received thoughtful, generous, and unexpected gifts.
I am blessed with a house full of adorable cats and dogs.
I got to video chat with my family in Canada on Christmas Day.

One of the most special moments was small and simple. I was walking home from the potluck and feeling a little down. I saw three young girls playing with some firecrackers, just little ones that spit and sparkle. I walked over to them and gave them each a huge two-foot-long sparkler that I had in my bag. Their faces lit up with excitement! They ran quickly to a nearby tienda to tell their mother. They said (in Spanish), "Look what the gringa gave us!!!" 😄 There was one more child in the store that got the last of my sparklers and I wished them a Feliz Navidad and walked away with a smile on my face.

Below are some photos and videos from the last few days. Christmas here is very special, full of family and traditions, and it's just like home in that way.

Bert got a Christmas basket from one of his dogwalking clients.

This is Coco. She is staying with us for Xmas while her mom is in the States.

The J sound in Spanish sounds like H.

A family selling moss, lichens, pine boughs by the road.
Guatemalans use them to make nativity scenes.

I bought a stick & moss deer for only Q10. The pets love it!

Leo has killed the deer!

There are a lot of parades at Christmastime. Random Santas on motorcycles one night.

A beautiful mural painted on the wall on the way to the docks.

The docks in Panajachel. We went to visit a friend across the lake in San Pedro.

The old Mikaso hotel.

The church in San Pedro.

Some lovely gifts from my friends.

A cute card from my friend.

The "tree" and church in Panajachel

Olafs at the bakery.

My friend built this beer tree for the bar!

The giant sparklers. Only Q10 a pack and 4 sparklers per pack.
That's about $1.71 Canadian or $1.30 American.

Bert and his sparkler at the potluck dinner on Xmas Eve.

Bert's creative Christmas wrapping of my gifts!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas or other holiday celebration! 🎄🎅🎉