Shake Your Booty: Carnival in Mazatenango
There are special moments when the sheer exuberance and joy of the human spirit, shining so brightly, transcend all the negative forces and we find ourselves walking on air! Another in a long list of Guatemala’s best-kept secrets is the fantastic annual Carnival of Mazatenango: an event virtually unknown to those outside the Pacific Coast [...]
Amazing Sunsets at Finca El Pilar Nature Reserve
Extraordinary sunsets in the Volcanic Heights of the Mayan Highlands
Video: Tikal Solstice at the Mayan Rainforest
I expect this year’s Tikal Solstice to be an even bigger solstice, which will happen on December 22 at 05:30 a.m. Here’s a fragment about the Solstice from Wikipedia. Many cultures celebrate various combinations of the winter and summer solstices, the equinoxes, and the midpoints between them, leading to various holidays arising around these events. [...]
Photo Op
Where we love is home, Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts. —Oliver Wendell Holmes Photo by Thor Janson: The town of Ixchiguán
Getting High in Ixchiguán
Like Shangri-La, the name beckons from the maps–enticing, mysterious and alluring: Ixchiguan! I had noticed the place many years ago, and I was always looking for someone who could tell me more about this far-flung outpost. Ask anyone on the street in La Antigua Guatemala if they know anything about Ixchiguan and 99-to-1 they will [...]
Cute creatures with bad habits
To the uninitiated, the roar of howler monkeys in the wild has caused many a traveler to shiver with trepidation. However, the only danger these hairy tree dwellers pose to hikers is the fact that, in many regions, they have inherited some very bad habits. One of their favorite sports is to wait silently for [...]
RABIN AJAU UPDATE: A Princess is Crowned
Selected from a field of some 80 young Maya women, Rosa Lidia Aguaré Castro, from Santa Lucía La Reforma, Totonicapán, is the new Rabin Ajau (Daughter of the King) for 2011-2012. The highlight of the annual National Folkloric Festival in Cobán, the magical pageant was conducted July 30 at the sports stadium field house. In [...]
Unicorn Hunting
A photographic quest to the upper cloud forest on Atitlán Volcano’s southern flank in search of the rare and elusive Oreophasis derbianus I reached for my cell phone to turn off the alarm: 12:30 a.m., time to get started. I lit the stove and put some water on for coffee. A few minutes later there [...]
Green Gospel
The tradition of slash-and-burn farming cannot continue text/photos by Thor Janson (www.bushmanollie.com) In Mesoamerica the end of the dry season—April and May—finds millions of campesino farmers busy practicing their age-old method of slash-and-burn agriculture. All the refuse on the fields is put to the torch, enriching the soil with mineral ash. This traditional method of [...]
The Gallon Jug Rainforest
After an expedition to the Sierra Madre of Chiapas, I was returning to Guatemala recently only to be greeted at the border by a glitch in the system and a real-life Catch-22. A new regulation says foreign-plated vehicles have to stay out of Guatemala for 90 days while the driver is welcome to return. So, [...]
Cobán’s Folkloric Festival
In 1936 Cobán prospered greatly from coffee exports to Europe. A group of leading businessmen decided that it was time to organize a regional fair, and so the inaugural “Feria Departamental” was planned for the first week in August. As part of the event it was decided to elect two queens, one representing the European [...]
Rabin Ajau: Daughter of the King
Cobán’s annual festival includes a spectacular traditional pageant It was a cool July afternoon and the cheepy cheepy (misting rain) was refreshing the land when we arrived in Cobán, the capital of Alta Verapaz Department. The last week in July is when Cobán celebrates its annual festival with parades, rodeos, expositions, fairs and one of [...]
Emerald Lightning
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.
Loading ...
Recent Feedback