MAYA-HO! _{Guatemala, Easter 2003}

We've quite a throng to be traveling from Amador County, California via air (San Francisco, San Salvador, Guatemala City) to Antigua, now haven't we? I think I've counted up to ten or twelve of us. And then Mayari's family will fly in from all over Central America (and some from the States) and join up with her grandmother who lives in Antigua, and it'll be a right jolly mob, eh?

There will be to-ing and fro-ing, and touring and rehearsing, and recovering and discovering. The reception will involve music and dancing all night. Then more recovering, and a few days to watch the preparations for the Semana Santa stuff. Then all the rest of the U.S. crowd will return stateside on Ash Wednesday (I think), but WE have got another five weeks there, as noted above. Zowie.

We still need to do the home-base stuff mentioned above, but other than that, we have detail planning - just which festivals, markets, towns, reservations. The big-picture itinerary looks like this:

• A week at the familial hotel in Antigua, doing wedding stuff, some pre-set tours (like an overnighter to Lake Atitlán), etc.
• A week at another Antigua abode, seeing the Semana Santa stuff, day trips to nearby places, and strolling to acclimate.
• A week out at Lake Atitlán, with alternate days of touring lake villages, and just lolling about like vast pale slugs.
• A week out West, seeing what's around and North of Xela, and maybe doing a Spanish language school for that week.
• A week just North and East, seeing what's around and beyond Chichi and maybe what's out beyond Waté (Guatemala City)
• A week back at Lake Atitlán and Antigua: readying for return

The more we study and plan, the more we wish we had more than six weeks! Alas, other considerations intervene. We're already dreaming of heading back next winter, splash in the sun along the Caribbean coast, explore the Mayan low country, then head back up to the highlands -- if we like it. We shall see...

Some of the best info comes from prople who were just there. Read these fine illustrated journals - see sidebar ===>

Low-impact travelers rate their Guatemala experiences at PassPlanet and WorldSurface. Many travelers post their travelogues at TrekShare and TravelHog or on sites listed at dmoz.

The gist of all that is that travel in Guatemala is beautiful, exciting, safe & cheap, OK for older folks (see the next informative page, Guatemala For Gringo Old Farts) but somewhat hazardous if one is afoot or cycling or careless or stupid. Rather like Arkansas, eh?

We have no plans to drive motor vehicles (car-truck-cycle-scooter) around Guatemala, so it's OK if the International Drivers Licenses lapse, right? We understand that driving there can be heap big trouble, as some (no names mentioned!) can testify. So we'll travel by shuttle van between major destinations, and the Chicken Buses to otherwise-inaccessible places. It's all perfectly safe, except for the occasional bus-plunge.

And for something completely different: after discussing how to store digicam images on the trip (they'll go onto 3 128MB memory sticks, 250-300 images per stick), and figuring that we can USB-link the camera at InterNet Cafes to upload pictures, I got a flash: YahooGroups!

So I'll start a group at Yahoo, put friends & family on the subscription list, and upload some images and journal entries when we feel so inclined. A vacation blog, yup. [churn churn churn...] OK, it's set up, it's called GoinGoinGone [Go2Go2Go2], our own personal travel newsletter. If you know us, you'll be hearing from us...

We finally got in touch with the place we'd hoped to stay for a week at Lake Atitlán, only to find they'd upgraded out of our reach. So the latest plan is: 2 weeks in Antigua, a week or more in Xela at a language school, and then we'll wing it for the rest of our stay.

Some rather unfortunate news: the groom's grandmother's health is getting iffy, so we're not sure yet if she'll be able to attend the wedding and festivities. We certainly hope so.

And some rather strange news: the President of Guatemala wasn't really missing, just hiding from embarrassing crises. Why can't others do that too? But I digress...

Despite the stinking Iraq war, we're going ahead with this trip. I hope. Unless martial law is declared here before we leave. And hopefully we'll be able to return too. Just in case, we've scoped-out ways of returning to the US if air travel is shut down. It turns out that passenger railroads in Mexico are dead, discontinued, kaput. So the last resort may be to cross Mexico by bus.

Searching for Guatemala news, I find that the Atitlán volcano was rumbling a couple weeks ago - will we be in for seismo-exciting times?