Guatemala English language Magazine
Weekend festival aims to preserve a natural treasure With a goal of protecting the endangered sea turtle, an environmental group is planning a weekend festival Nov. 26-28 with events centered around the Monterrico-Hawaii Natural Preserve on Guatemala’s Pacific coast. Coinciding with peak turtle-nesting season, the Festival de la Tortuga 2010 (Turtle Festival 2010) will feature turtle releases, nature tours, concerts, […]
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Regardless of its origin, fiambre, in my opinion, is the supreme Guatemalan plate. If this is not the food of the gods, it must be something very close. Fiambre is only eaten on November 1st, the Day of All Saints, and it is so complex that it can easily take as many as 50 or more ingredients.
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Written by Ignacio Ochoa The history of kite making in Santiago Sacatepéquez On November 1 and 2, a powerful force stirs in all the towns of Guatemala. Traditional markets are filled with flowers of sempa (orange marigolds), chrysanthemums, wild daisies and the smell of copal—a pre-Columbian incense made from pine resin. People clean family graves and adorn them with cut-out […]
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Oliver Thor Janson is a wildlife conservationist who uses photography as a tool to promote environmental education, his life passion. Born in Chicago, the son of a Swedish immigrant father and an Irish-Chippewa Indian mother, Thor began his career as an explorer at the age of four when he ventured out on his tricycle far beyond the home territory. At the […]
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I tried to ask Rosendo about the quetzal. “Rochoch Li Quetzal?” I asked, reading from the list of phrases I had in my notebook. This was supposed to mean “quetzal nest” but Rosendo just sat there smiling and nodding at me.
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We feel privileged and excited to be bringing you this special edition. For the past 30 years Thor Janson has dedicated his abilities, talents and resources to attain a goal that any rational human would agree with. Simply put, “To preserve enough cloud forest habitat in Central America to ensure that the quetzal may continue to be the living, legendary […]
Read moreAfter bartending at the Monoloco restaurant for four years, Zac Ballentine is returning to the United States to enroll in college and perhaps work as a ski instructor in Colorado. “I love Antigua and I love the Monoloco. I could spend the rest of my life here, but I’m approaching 30 and I can’t do it forever,” he says. “I […]
Read moreOne summer in my adolescence, I went to the library and checked out Dante Alighieri’s voyage to the other side of the world, a trip that preceded that of Columbus by nearly two centuries. It was Dante’s imagination, rather than prevailing winds, that took him (and me) there. The trip, whose itinerary included Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, was a long […]
Read moreFri., 15 through Wed., 20th — CATM FAIR: The Central American Travel Market (CATM) 2010 fair is a technical and professional encounter, during which tourism offices from Central American countries have the opportunity to establish commercial relationships between the tour operators and the wholesalers of the main tourist-issuing markets at an international level including Europe, Asia and Latin America. The […]
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a book written by Naticksqw When writing about someone as interesting and multi-faceted as Naticksqw (pronounced Nah-tick-squaw) the hardest part is deciding where to begin. Do you start by mentioning she is one of 12 children? That she grew up in rural Massachusetts in a house with no heating? Do you begin by describing the quiet energy that radiates from […]
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Surrounded by an appreciative crowd, a group of musicians known as Grupo Sol Latino, were playing Andean music, which originated in the Incan Empire before the European conquest.
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The apparition appears as a young girl with long, shiny black hair and a beautiful figure, though her face is always veiled in shadow.
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We all like a bit of a scare. As children we’ve gathered under blankets with flashlights and spooked each other with ghost stories. Even while in diapers and growing sea legs we threw on a sheet and screamed “Boo!” As far back in human history fairytales have been scary. On All Saints Day we satiate the desire to scare and […]
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One of nature’s marvels unfolds nightly this time of year on Guatemala’s Pacific coast—a beautiful yet awkward ballet of emerging life that, within minutes of existence, is challenged for survival against natural predators.
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While I am more familiar with La Antigua Guatemala’s “regular” ghosts, spirits and “orbs” (you can see the latter if you take digital camera photos in the crypt at the cathedral), anyone who grew up in Antigua can recite the stories of the folkloric figures. These include La Tatuana, El Sombrerón and everyone’s favorite: La Llorona. It appears that many […]
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This is first in a series of Sacred Animals & Exotic Tropical Plants which will cover ethno-zoology and ethno-botany as related to Mayan archaeology
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As our cover photo suggests, this is the time of year when sea turtles are arriving on the shores of Guatemala’s Pacific coast to make a nest on dry land in which to deposit their eggs. Matt Bokor’s article on page 14 describes some of the wonder and the perils that exist for these gentle creatures at the Monterrico-Hawaii Natural […]
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Pearls are scattered across this favored country, ready for your discovery without your needing to bother getting wet or even opening an oyster. Our pearls can be found along roadways, wildflowers of translucent white that bloom most of the year, and in our gardens, from tiny white buttons of blossoms to creamy white roses. Pearls glisten on our cobbled streets […]
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“Wine is bottled poetry,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. It is the special gift that one brings or the perfect complement to an excellent meal. It’s the extra dash of flavor in a simmering pot of coq au vin or the pot au feu. Whatever the reason or the season, you can find excellent wine selections in La Antigua Guatemala; many […]
Read moreSorry girls, but this is not a thousand-word personal ad dressed up as a column. That is bad news for all you babes who cannot resist hairless middle-aged nerds with mismatched socks and a history of unmedicated bipolarity. Instead, I am seeking one special person, not for romantic companionship but to satisfy my curiosity. This individual is not marked by […]
Read moreThe following cities all have something in common: Sydney, Berlin, London, Toronto, New York, Barcelona, Zurich, San Francisco, Tokyo and Panajachel. Wait a minute—Panajachel? The commonality is that all of them, whether world-class metropolis or funky tourist burgs, have hosted, or will host, the prestigious Cycle Messenger World Championships (CMWC). This month, the event comes to Central America for the […]
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La Camioneta is a feature-length documentary about the “afterlife” of American school buses and the people who make it all possible. After 10 years or 150,000 miles on the road, American school buses are often deemed no longer usable and often end up at one of the country’s many used-bus auctions. From there, a sizable percentage of these buses end […]
Read moreA wise mother bestowed upon her daughter a pearl of wisdom, “You have to find your own equation in life.” The pearl, encased in love and freedom, guided the daughter as she danced through life unencumbered by the equations of others. The daughter’s mother wasn’t talking about quadratic or cubic equations; she was referring to the human equation. Nevertheless, all […]
Read moreCelebrate the vision of young Guatemalans with the photographs taken during Project Einstein. For six weeks of intensive training in Zona Reyna Quiché, more than 70 young Maya-Q’eqchi’s learned photography, video, reporting and journalism to tell stories of their community. All photos were taken by the young people. Funds from the sale of the photographs will be donated to the […]
Read moreThe intention of the Guatemala NGO Network is to make the site a resource that the world can use to better serve Guatemala and its people. At a recent meeting held at La Peña de Sol Latino in La Antigua, attendees had the opportunity to hear about the work of, among others, the Reicken Foundation, Children International, Friends of the […]
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What started as a blank square in the original drawings, La Antigua’s Parque Central grew and morphed in fits and starts for 467 years to meet the needs of each new generation.
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These republics did not have to fight either Spain or Mexico for their independence. But they did fight each other during the Federation period (1824-1839).
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In the dense jungle of Guatemala, in the Petén Basin region which is home to the ancient Mayan city of Tikal, looming pyramids, looted tombs and overgrown paths that once served as Mayan superhighways speak of an era of ancient kingdoms and powerful warring dynasties. It’s easy to die and be forgotten here for thousands of years amid the thick […]
Read moreMaking a difference Tessa de Goede is a 27-year-old Dutch woman who came to Guatemala three years ago. After doing volunteer work in several countries she found out that helping children with cleft lips was the work that touched her the most. “It’s just a feeling I have inside when I see a baby with a cleft lip. I just […]
Read moreIn reviewing my ancestry, I found that my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, John Witherspoon (New Jersey), signed the Declaration of Independence of the United States. Perhaps that is why I became more interested in who signed the Declaration of Independence of Guatemala on September 15, 1821. The 18th century brought rising commerce and an emerging merchant community in Guatemala. The Free Trade […]
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