| The BookArmor Guide to Guatemala
- March 2008
While the standard guidebooks are fine for where to visit, where to stay, where to eat, where to get wasted, there is more to life in Guatemala than this for those considering an extended stay. This is my attempt to impart useful information gathered through the personal experience of living here for two years. This experience surpasses the typical tourist experience due to the fact that for the last year I have had a Guatemalan partner who lives in the city. This means that I will eschew the usual guidebook warnings on the dangers of Guatemala City, and actually treat the capital as a place not simply of violence, but as a resource, for shopping, entertainment, eating out, and cultural purposes. Guatemala has borders with Honduras, El Salvador, Belize*, and Mexico. All are within easy reach by bus or by plane (as are Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama further south). With the exception of Mexico and Panama*, the other countries are all in Central America and as such can only be visited with a valid visa. (Definitions vary, and Belize and Panama are sometimes included as part of Central America, sometimes not). The Big Four My time has been divided between three of the big four destinations for travellers to Guatemala: San Pedro la Laguna (Atitlan), the city of Antigua (Sacatepequez), and the capital, Guatemala City. The fourth destination, Xela (or Quetzaltenango), in the NorthWest, I have visited just a couple of times and can offer little insight beyond stating that it is an enormous sprawl with a markedly poorer climate than the other three places. Attractions Besides these four destinations, there are a number of places that are popular to visit, rather than to live: I will call them attractions. These include the beach at Monterrico, the Mayan ruins at Tikal (and the adjacent island city of Flores, Peten), the caves, waterfalls, and river at Semuc Champey, the caves at Lanquin, the statue of El Cristo Negro at the Basilica in Esquipulas, the Thursday and Sunday markets at Chichicastenango, the permanent market at Panajachel, Lake Atitlan, the frontier towns of Tecun Uman and Tapachula (in Mexico, and onwards to San Cristobal de las Casas), and the volcano climb of Pacaya, outside Antigua. All of these trips can be found described in the guidebooks, and one's own contribution is the provision of supplementary information drawn from personal experience that may be of use or of interest . Lastly, I would add that Antigua is the transport hub of choice for travelling to all of these places, with a plethora of travel offices and a proliferation of microbuses (see microbuses vs chicken buses) leaving each day for all parts of the country. Guatemalan Culture I have experienced much here, and have a personal interest in popular culture, but here is a list of things, some of them uniquely Guatemalan, others just central to life here. Where appropriate, these descriptions also include advice, for example with regards to using banks or what kinds of products are available in pharmacies and why taking your clothes to a laundry service is almost always a bad thing :
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