May 25 – The Tourist Trap
After jumping off the bus in Guatemala’s old capital Antigua, I found that there are two big differences between El Salvador and this country.
First of all the indigenous population. A majority of the people living here are of Mayan descent. They have kept their culture and their traditional way of clothing during many hundred years of repression, first from the Spanish ‘conquistadores’, then from the different Latino governments through the history. But still, when wandering around the cobblestoned streets of Antigua, you see the women wearing beautifully embroidered blouses and colorful skirts, carrying their children on their back as they have been doing for thousands of years.
Every community has their own different pattern and colors, that way it’s possible to see exactly what part of the country they’re from, and which of the many Mayan dialects they speak. Many of them are making a living through selling their colored artcrafts in the market and in the street.
The second difference is that while in El Salvador I only met a few tourists. Guatemala and especially Antigua is filled with people from all over the world. Many come to study Spanish, there are more than 70 language schools in this town. As a result of this, you can find almost every kind of food, from Japanese sushi to Greek tzatziki. (As someone said: the only thing that might be hard to find is a typical Guatemalan restaurant…) In some bars you have to remind yourself that you’re not in an European town, because it’s more likely to meet people from any country other than Guatemala. That might of course make it difficult for the person wanting to learn Spanish.
Although Antigua is not very representative of the ‘true’ Guatemala, it’s an incredibly beautiful town with a good atmosphere. It’s comfortable with all the nice restaurants, cool bars, cheap internet places and European style cafes. That makes it very easy to get stuck here for a long time.
