Quetzal (photo: Thor Janson)

Yes, emeralds are found in our jewelry stores, but only imported gems. Emerald, however, is a rich sight in the Highlands of Guatemala, especially now with the rainy season polishing the leaves and enriching the grasses. And yes, we’ve our own emerald stones too, the deep imperial of Guatemala’s very special jadeite jewelry, but it’s the deep green tones of the hillsides and gardens that we’re really admiring this month.

As the Spanish had learned from the Moors, and brought to their colonies, most homes around La Antigua tuck their patios and gardens inside where families can use and enjoy them, instead of planting big lawns out front for neighbors to see. It’s considered fine to peek through open gates while walking around town, glimpsing the marvelous courtyards inside. Even if the great portons are closed along walled sidewalks, emerald leaves spill over the white facades, and there’s much more emerald in the coffee plantations and pine forests that surround us.

More emerald takes a bit more observation, and luck. The Antiguan city flags are emerald, at least when new before the brilliant sun fades them. On our patron saint celebrations this month, the municipal government usually breaks out a few new emerald flags, so enjoy them when you can.

Bellies of hummingbirds glisten with green flashes in the sun as they migrate north now and south in a few months. Down on the Pacific coast, emerald means a good field of sugar cane; up in Alta Verapaz, emerald might be seen if you’re lucky enough to find a quetzal bird fluttering among the emerald pines. Some sea turtles are deep emerald if you find them waddling along the beach or paddling alongside you in the water, and emerald tropical fish can be spotted in the warm waters of lowland lakes.

It’s a gem of color on our Guatemalan palette.

Processional Carpet (photo César Tián)

Breathe deep and enjoy some of the rich scents of this Lenten season! Enjoy the odors of Holy Week, with two pungent yet pleasant smells standing out in your memory. Use all your senses at the processions. See the colors of the carpets and vestments, hear the funereal bands and shuffle of feet, taste the incense smoke in the mouth, feel the press of the crowds (just watch out for the press of a pickpocket against you, please). And don’t forget to smell the roses, quite literally as thousands of rose petals will decorate those elegant alfombras, the intricate carpets made along procession routes.

Carpets can include citrus peels, chrysanthemum blossoms, spicy carnations, sweet hyacinth, each scent distinct yet blended pleasantly.

Great bundles of pine needles give base to many alfombras as they give off the smell of nearby forests. Sawdust, collected all year from local mills and furniture factories and dyed to give intricate detail on many alfombras, adds its own earthy odor.

The two standout smells that you’ll always identify with this season? One is the intense, sweet odor of a sticky golden fiber from inside the pods of several different types of palm trees. The pods themselves, several feet long and carried up from the coast, then split open in the shape of boats, are often used on carpets. The fibers scooped out from inside form crosses for doorway decorations. They are woven together with statice flowers to form gold-and-purple symbols of the coming Crucifixion, blessed and sold at the doorway of churches on Palm Sunday. Palm fibers are also used as borders and edges along many of the alfombras. You’ll never forget their distinct odor once you experience it.

Neither will you forget the pom incense, the crystallized tree sap burned to smudge and bless the procession routes. Some of the incense-bearers get particularly enthusiastic in swinging their braziers with smoldering pom, and the streets get thick with smoke. Sometimes the pom catches fire, the flames coming out of the silver container until the cucurucho swinging it snuffs out the fire. The incense is the other odor of your memories of Holy Week.

Yes, there are some less-pleasant odors too. The Roman soldiers, or rather their horses, add some farmyard piles on the cobbled streets as they ride before dawn on Good Friday to announce the Crucifixion. Cleanup crews with Bobcats and dump trucks sweeping up after the processions add unpleasant diesel smoke, though Antigua city government is converting most of their vehicles to a bio-fuel that’s much more pleasant, with their trucks smelling like burgers and fries.

Carry home lots of photos and videos of these holy celebrations. And carry home memories of the pungent scents, too. You’ll never forget the experience.

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Semana Santa (photo: Leonel Mijangos/enantigua.com)

Colorful carpets, thumping bands, pungent odors, rich tastes, thick crowds—through the Lenten season, into Palm Sunday and Semana Santa, Holy Week, all five senses are overwhelmed in every Guatemalan city and village, but nowhere more than in La Antigua Guatemala with its colonial traditions and frequent processions.

Intricate floral designs, forming colorful alfombras, carpets, are most elaborate on Good Friday but delight the eye before every procession throughout this season. Purple robes, and sometimes white, red, black vestments, line the streets and drape penitents carrying saints through the streets, with banners of color on the homes of the faithful. In the markets, great bundles of multihued flowers, of green pine, yellow palm, brown bark, sawdust dyed in many shades, are stacked for sale for the carpets. All these are treats for the sense of sight.

Soft shuffling of hundreds of feet along procession routes. Loud and mournful bands following the statues of the saints. Even louder and incongruous rock from speakers entertaining the carpet-makers through the night, and loud mortars and strings of firecrackers. Horse hooves on the cobblestones as the actors playing Roman soldiers ride to announce the Crucifixion with shouts. Sobs and laughter, moans and cheers, murmurs of prayers from penitents in the processions and cries of laughter from children in the parks. And, of course, the joyful music of marimba, in restaurants and homes. All these are treats to be heard.

Pom, incense of burning pitch, forms thick clouds of smoke to cleanse the procession routes. A sweeter odor comes from the machines spinning cotton candy in the park, the sugary smell blended with charcoal grills with sizzling steaks and sausages. More subtle are smells of the blossoms, of the dust, of the crowds standing or shuffling in the sunshine, of the pine needles trampled underfoot. These and more are treats to be smelled.

The special tastes of traditional foods of the season, salads of beets, of smoked tuna, green olives, pickled eggs, candied fruits. The taste in the mouth of the incense smoke as the processions pass, or of the sweets sold by vendors following those processions. Strong coffee for carpet-builders, and draft beer for the spectators. Tamales and tacos and grilled carnes and fried bananas. There are so many holiday treats to be tasted.

Then there’s touch. Sore shoulders and feet for those carrying the heavy anda platforms with the carved saints. Sore backs for fathers carrying little ones on their shoulders to see it all. Sometimes unpleasant touch of people pressing so close together along the procession routes. Sometimes loving touch as couples and families hold hands as they walk among the marvelous carpets before those exquisite creations are destroyed by the marchers in the processions. Each special touch, each sensuous sight, sound, smell, taste, form unforgettable memories of the season, of Semana Santa in Guatemala.

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Antigua Guatemala Roses

Many indigenous costumes include bright red, cotton dyed from the cochineal insect once raised as a major export, the same dye used for the British Redcoats’ uniform. The sister towns of Patzún and Patzicía dazzle with brilliant reds on the women’s blouses in their outdoor marketplaces, well worthy of a stop just off the Pan American Highway winding into the Highlands.

Sweet scents of valentines come from the thick chocolate melting on the stove for a morning drink, and the sugary sweetness from cotton candy spun on antique machines at festivals. If it’s true that you best reach a man’s heart through his stomach, the smell and sizzling sounds of meat on the grill might please him even more than the chocolate savories.

Other sounds of the season come from romantic valentine chords strummed by a guitar player in a shadowed courtyard or the joyful music from a marimba band in the plaza. On the cobbled streets, hear the clop of hooves from horses pulling lovers’ carriages, and the tap of high heels as a beautiful woman bustles along a sidewalk; the quiet pase adelante welcome from the shopkeeper, and the gentle buen provecho wishes from the server.
And feel the warmth of the February sun, the soft breeze on your cheek. Another valentine for you, from Guatemala.

Enjoy the month, through all the senses.

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These days of celebrations bring colorful treats of greens, reds, golds and other holiday shades. All the senses enjoy December, with its rich foods to taste, velvet cloths to touch, carols to hear. The laughter of children, the ringing of the bells, the singing in the streets, all the sounds of the month join the colors and savors to enjoy.

But please take a few minutes each day this month to enjoy the scents of these holidays, all by themselves.
Some scents are easy and common: the fresh pine needles scattered on floors, the kitchen-pots bubbling with ponche and many other goodies, the pungent cups of chocolate.

Some scents are more subtle, such as fresh fruits simmering in sugar on the stove. Some are less pleasant but strong: the smoke from the fires of the day of the devil, the whiffs of powder from exploded firecrackers of the celebrations.

Roses are a year-around scent to enjoy in the Highlands, unlike colder areas where they bloom in shorter seasons. Our rose bushes bud and bloom all year, and armfuls of long-stemmed blossoms can be bought and enjoyed any day in the markets. This is the eternal spring country, remember, not like those places with four seasons and roses to smell during just one of them. Fresh rose scent is a holiday delight in Guatemala, as it is all year.

Sure, evenings can be crisp this month, and lighting your fireplace may be needed to cut the chill. But that brings its own pleasant scents, from the crackling pine or—richer and better—cedar logs, if you have them.
Advent, Christmas, New Year’s, wonderful days and evenings to enjoy, each day a treat for all the senses. But we regret the REVUE has no scratch-and-sniff panels, at least yet. So it’s up to you to seek out those special scents of these holidays, and find pleasure from them daily.

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Heliotrope plant (photo by Hubert J. Steed)

Here’s a challenge for November — find the heliotrope. It’s there, around us, hidden among the rainbow of prolific colors in the Guatemalan spectrum, in weavings, on some walls, along the roadways. I said heliotrope, mind you, not fuchsia, indigo, lilac, mauve, periwinkle, or any of those other shades of violet that are also to be found in the Highlands.

Heliotrope, as in the pink-purple-vivid lavender flower native to all Central and North America except far into Canada. Heliotrope, as in the pretty wildflower or potted plant with the sweet scent of vanilla or cherry pie. Heliotrope, as one more color to be sure you have on your palette should you plan to paint this colorful country.

Several Mayan weavings incorporate the heliotrope shade as a dye for the native cotton. Our friends at the wonderful Ixchel Museum say the Maya weavers use indigo root and pull the naturally coffee-latte-colored cotton out of the dye-pots before the indigo makes it too, well, índigo. See if you can spot the heliotrope shade in dozens of the magnificent weavings at the Ixchel next time you visit, or on the rich brocades of the women’s huipiles from San Antonio Aguas Calientes near La Antigua Guatemala. It’s there, a subtle thread among the reds and yellows and browns and blacks.

In most of North America, the heliotrope plant is a summer-only bloom along roadways or in pots from nurseries. Great-grandmother loved heliotrope in her garden. Then it fell out of fashion, now it’s back again. Never out of fashion in Guatemala, though. Here it blooms year ‘round, anywhere above the hot coastal littoral. The scent is delightful, for us and for cattle that might munch it. That’s not a good idea, though. Heliotrope is a deadly poison to cattle, and it’s a plant pest in fincas. It gives us humans gastric distress too, though not deadly. So find the color, enjoy the sensuous scent, but please eat vanilla flan or cherry pie, and not the sweet-smelling heliotrope.

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A sensuous high comes throughout October and into November as colors swirl and sounds swish around the city and countryside. It’s the season for big and small kites, with big and small people on the ground holding on to strings while their creations soar above—or come crashing down to drape trees and wires with pastel colors that may hang limp and pretty for weeks.

Kids of all ages build them, kites representing the souls of the departed soaring on high, and also just good windy-day fun for most of the creators. Smaller kids build kites with sticks, paper and any string they can find, contributing the limp but colorful forms you see draping on city wires or country trees. Bigger kids build huge kites, sometimes two or three times the adults’ heights, with far more elaborate designs using layers of tissue paper pasted into the intricate forms of stained-glass windows and modern geometrics.

Kites are a sensuous delight for the eyes, especially on and around All Saints’ Day when crowds fill villages along barrancos, steep canyons, with breezes up the canyon walls that lift the kites high. Kite-builders start while barely old enough for school or field-work. Kite-builders develop into family competitors and even commercial entrants, entertaining spectators who drive out from the city to enjoy each year’s festivals. Watch out for those beginners, though. The children’s earnest efforts to get their little kites flying sometimes brings danger when the builder runs along the roadways, oblivious to autos or other blocks to their successful launches.

Kites are also a more subtle, sensuous delight to the ears, too. There’s a soft sound as the breeze raises big and small discs, with humming vibrations from the colorful papers, strings and the wooden frames encircling the designs. There’s the occasional thunk of kites out of control, crashing back to Earth. And there’s the ooohs and aaahs of the crowds at the bigger kite festivals, that human sound practiced all year with the fireworks that welcome the New Year, festivals, weddings or any happy time. The murmur of appreciation as those big kites soar is as sensuous as the sights of colors against the deep Guatemalan skies. Listen —and look. It’s a high time for both senses this month.

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Free into the wind —Rudy Girón

Free into the wind, your beautiful flag marks a happy month of national celebration just as Guatemala’s national anthem proclaims. Blue and White are the colors of the flag, with fresh flags and blue-and-white bunting on display all over “Guatemala Feliz,” happy Guatemala, as we near mid-month and Independence Day. 

The new flags are indeed a beautifully clear blue and clean white, as are the Guatemalan skies most hours each day. But just as the skies can cloud over quickly with darker clouds, or turn velvet-black quickly when the sun sets with very little twilight time, the national flag’s blue fades and the white softens. Your observant artist’s eye in September should be counting how many blues, and what different whites, can be found around Guatemala this month of independence celebration.

Start counting the blues. Some homemade buntings and flags are dyed a rich indigo, while the store-bought decorations can differ from darker to lighter shades. Then the bright Central American sun does its job in a hurry:  blues fade steadily lighter, until they’re almost gone after a few months of flying time. How many blues can you count? — I came up with at least a dozen shades to mix on your palette, if you’re going to paint in oils the flags over our buildings.

Then come the different whites. Yes, I know; white is the absence of color and all that, and if it’s not pure white it’s not white. But c’mon, the white of the national colors around town can be a light or even a rich cream, an egg white or an antique white, a light grey or even darker shade if the flag has picked up dust or soot. Kids kicking soccer balls add a bit of dust in the air to make a flag nearby turn to a light-brown-white. Diesels add spottier-black-white. There are at least a couple of dozen whites on display around our block this month, from new flags to older ones.

Just like in the Guatemalan sky. September celebrates with cumulus white clouds, or soft strings of white caught around the volcano and streaming out, or dark thunder-clouds building to a storm, or maybe just a couple little lost clouds floating by. Against the different sky-blues, it’s all part of the national decorations, this happy month and all year. Enjoy the beautiful flags of whatever shades, free in the wind, Guatemala Feliz.

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Metropolitan Cathedral in the center of Guatemala City (photo: Jordan Banks)

Ah yes, there are lots of vehicles indeed, some with a unique rhythm of cylinders firing in ragtime, some chugging smoothly, with an occasional backfire or squeal of speed. Ignore those sounds. There are so many better ones: shuffling feet in sandals, marching feet in boots, staccato sounds from stiletto-heeled ladies, quick pattering from children running after the pigeons. Listen for all the variations in footsteps, businessmen with briefcases stepping briskly, pushcart vendors straining to move their full carts, soft steps from files of nuns shuffling into the cathedral.

The cathedral’s bells break through the city noises, ringing the hours, calling the masses: early morning, midday, evening prayers. Other parish churches must wait until the cathedral bells sound first, then other bells can join in around town in waves radiating from this central square. Some mid-mornings, the cathedral bells toll for a death; some mid-afternoons, they ring joyfully for marriages. The big deep bells came from Spain to the old capital four centuries ago were brought to the New Guatemala after La Antigua’s earthquake destruction. Smaller bells were often cast in Guatemala from the broken pieces of Spanish bells that broke in route or in tumbling from steeples. Hear the silver tones in those bells—of course, lots of silver was included in the alloy, for lots came out of these hills.
Under the arcades, hear the sounds of sizzling foods on the grills, the music from kids’ boomboxes, the soft singing from some of the merchants humming under their breath, the louder cries of voices calling out special prices on tables full of goods. A pleasant murmur comes from women at shop doorways, pase adelante, a welcome to come in. Harsher calls come from the men with cases of dubiously labeled watches or counterfeit cell phones.   Ah yes, those cell phones, ubiquitous on streets around the world, though somehow the Guatemalan voices are usually more musical and tolerable than chatter on most of the world’s streets. Maybe there’s music in the Guatemalan blood that soothes many voices.

Around the corner, the noise of the city is stronger; in the broad expanse of the great square, sounds seem more muted. If you’re fortunate, a marimba band is playing, the happiest music in the world.  Hear all the sensuous sounds surrounding you in this center of the Republic.

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Pink sunset over Lake Atitlán (photo: Harris and Goller/viaventure.com)

Pink has a reputation as a wimpy color, sort of weak and watery. You wouldn’t think pink could stand up strong and proud against the deep blues, rich greens, bright yellows and striking reds of the Guatemalan palette. Even by using the fancier French name rosé, pink wine is considered, well, sissy. Pink bows look cute on little girls, but wouldn’t be a grown-up’s color. Pink roses don’t seem to send the same passionate love message of deep-red, long-stemmed beauties.

Pink seems to be improving in its reputation. Pink-and-gray outfits for men are back on European fashion houses’ runways. Rosé wines are gaining new respect. And pink opens almost every day in Guatemala. Get up at sunrise to see for yourself, and to appreciate the light, deeper and elegantly rich pinks of our dawns. No color could be richer than a sky-full of pink at la aurora.

Not that pink has ever been dismissed as wimpy around here. The women of Totonicapán have always woven pink ribbons in their black hair, and they always look strong and confident. Men in several of the villages around Lake Atitlán combine pink and blue without embarrassment in their traditional outfits, mirroring the pink sparkles on the blue waters. Up among the highest peaks of the Cuchumatanes near the Mexican border, the Kanjobal of Salomá wear a long, white tunic with pink, blue, green and gold bands forming collars. Their tunics, similar to those of the Lacondones across into Mexico but enhanced with those color bands, may be the closest dress still around to that of their ancient Maya forebears.

In the famous weaving town of San Antonio Aguas Calientes, pink bands are used to separate the stronger colors in the weavers’ complicated brocades. And in the thick wool blankets produced by the male weavers of Momostenango, little pink animal designs join those in blue and gold. The blanket-weavers learned decades ago to tone down the red achiote dye from little bugs, blending the dye with alcohol to make the pink figures on the natural white wool of their ponchos. The lanolin-heavy blankets make excellent spreads for bedrooms back home, with the pink animal designs marching along the edges.

Pink primroses edge our gardens year-around, and a hearty oleander tree with deep pink blossoms would take over our terraza if we didn’t keep chopping it back. A pink antherium manages to hold its own between our white and deep-red bushes. The pink rose next to our fountain has the most profuse perfume of all our bushes, and pink fuschia drape our patio to tempt visiting hummingbirds. And, of course, there are the pinks themselves— the button-sized blossoms that look like preschool-age carnations. Pinks are bought cheaply by the armload in the markets and last many days in vases around the house in proof that pink is proud to be in Guatemala. Pink is wimpy? No way!

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The classic Maya must have really gotten into tweeting, given the number of oval-shaped ocarinas and straight pipes that turn up in the digs. Their descendants continue to tweet, using bird-like twitterers that are demonstrated by kids in lakeside villages, or long flutes offered tourists on city streets. They sound so good when the young salespeople play them to entice your purchase—and never sound quite as good when new tweeterers get back home and try to play. Some guys from Peru have been twittering around our town for a couple of decades now, selling their own version of pipes. You’re much better buying their recordings, though, if you want to share the twitters with your friends. You’d need lots of twitter practice to reach their skills.

Twitters have been sounded around Guatemala even longer than the flutes of the Maya people, however. There are over 1,000 species of twitterers in the country, some natives and some transients. See how many different tweets you can count while you’re here. Some like the grosbeaks sound their snorting “ihk, ihk” tweet year-around; some like the scarlet tanagers excitedly twitter for only a few months while here wintering in the Highlands. Listen to the loud, twangy twerp of the martins, the piercing screech of the owls, the gruff cooing of the pigeons strutting around the squares, and the hoarse, drawn-out whistled scream of hawks high overhead. The transient orioles may have started a dance fad, too, as their twitter sounds like chachacha. The birds love twittering with their friends, and we can share their tweets, too.

A couple of birds around our home have mastered a twittering sound that matches our telephone ring. They must be hanging around laughing as they twitter a ring, and we go dashing to find no one on the line. Probably mockers, who come close to perfection in twittering marimba notes when the band practices next door. Or maybe the macaw on the other side, constantly twittering whether anyone is paying attention or not.

Modern tweeting has really caught on in Guatemala, too. Along the alameda near our home, there can be six, eight, 10 police interns on the same corner, twittering away as they wave traffic along to the next batch of twitters at the next corner. These young Aspirantes have been outfitted with portable twitterers. The aspiring young officers seem to earn points by how often and how loudly they tweet. Most have learned how to twitter continuously, with the briefest of pauses for quick breaths, even as they wave cars toward each other from all four directions at the same time.

Bird tweets, Mayan pipes, police whistles, twittering is all over Guatemala for you to listen and enjoy.

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Up in northern latitudes, folks get so excited when the first crocus breaks through the snow or when a scrawny poinsettia plant lasts past the holidays. Our British gardening friends bubble with joy when they spot mayflowers, even if those simple flat blossoms are usually a month or two late. After consulting seed catalogs all winter, Nordics nurse their little seedlings in flats indoors, waiting for the right moment to transplant and then hope for no more frost. Gardeners up there work so hard for a few months of blossoms.

Down in the tropics, folks chop away to thin out greenery that would fetch fancy prices in American or European nurseries. Ferns, bromeliads, philodendron are so abundant they block roads and driveways. Machetes are used with surgical slashes to cut back plants that homeowners in the northlands would pay big money to put in their steam-heated living rooms. Gardeners must hack the stuff out of the way to plant anything else.

Gardening in Guatemala’s western mountains is perfect. Other than occasional watering between showers, the biggest work to gardening is deciding what color combinations to pick and put in a vase. Here in the Highlands, we have it not too cold and not too hot but just right: Flowers all year, roses blooming every month, rich green hillsides, and always the colorful climbers spilling over whitewashed walls. Children up north who might need to search hard for sufficient blossoms to fill a tiny May basket can gather huge armloads in fields here or buy more than they can carry for a few quetzales.

You know the common joke that corn grows so fast in Iowa, or wheat in Kansas, or whatever in California, that all you have to do is drop in a seed and stand back quickly before you get pushed aside. That’s not quite literally true in the Guatemalan Highlands, but it sure comes close. A slip from a friend’s geranium, a begonia cutting, a tiny fuschia sprout, seem to double and double again by the weekend. That baby key lime we planted a year ago is well over our heads already and producing lots of fruit. The nazareno vine with its deep purple flowers topped our wall in a few months and is draping itself nicely in both directions. Pink oleander is yards taller than the neighbor’s walls, giving us a colorful treat.

We work so hard back in colder climates to nurse orchids along. It’s amazing to see the varied orchids that are abundant on so many trees here. We’re proud of our roses back in the north, after pruning them at the right time of year, drip-watering ever so carefully, cutting off the hips just right to get another bloom before it’s too cold. No need to prune the plants that produce rich white roses all year at our doorway, until the bushes grow so much they start snagging sweaters as we enter.   Bird of paradise and papyrus bushes across our driveway are problems too, as they beg to be cut and used for indoor arrangements.

Drive the valley road out of Antigua and see the endless rows of roses being cultivated for export. Sometimes a husband-and-wife team is in charge of a row, competing with their neighbors to nurture the finest long-stemmed beauties that will be sold when they’re perfect in the floral auctions of Holland and Pennsylvania. Because no fuels are needed to heat the greenhouses here, blossoms can compete in price year-around in the world wholesale markets. Potted plants, orchids and carnations are exported also throughout the year, especially orchids timed to be tied into corsages for the northerners’ Mothers’ Day late in May.

We’ve shrimp around all year, too. Not the eating kind, though they sure look like their crustacean cousins. Pink and yellow shrimp, a couple of inches long, cascading from their mother plant climbing up the walls. And there’s the antheriums, from patent-leather-deep-red through pinks to almost pure white, so colorful every month. 

Gardenia’s sweet perfume can be enjoyed any old time. Primrose and zinnia are lush. Calla lilies, aromatic freesia, golden margaritas, deep blue statice arrive for a few months only, rotating with red and white nochebuenas — poinsettias to northerners, blooming for the good nights of the year-end holidays.
 May baskets? May flowers? Nice for those who’ve struggled through cold months without. We are happy to enjoy our flowers every month, thank you.

photos: Smith & Riegel / atitlan.net

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Semana Santa (photo: Leonel Mijangos/enantigua.com)

Colorful carpets, thumping bands, pungent odors, rich tastes, thick crowds—through the Lenten season, into Palm Sunday and Semana Santa, Holy Week, all five senses are overwhelmed in every Guatemalan city and village, but nowhere more than in La Antigua Guatemala with its colonial traditions and frequent processions.

Intricate floral designs, forming colorful alfombras, carpets, are most elaborate on Good Friday but delight the eye before every procession throughout this season. Purple robes, and sometimes white, red, black vestments, line the streets and drape penitents carrying saints through the streets, with banners of color on the homes of the faithful. In the markets, great bundles of multihued flowers, of green pine, yellow palm, brown bark, sawdust dyed in many shades, are stacked for sale for the carpets. All these are treats for the sense of sight.

Soft shuffling of hundreds of feet along procession routes. Loud and mournful bands following the statues of the saints. Even louder and incongruous rock from speakers entertaining the carpet-makers through the night, and loud mortars and strings of firecrackers. Horse hooves on the cobblestones as the actors playing Roman soldiers ride to announce the Crucifixion with shouts. Sobs and laughter, moans and cheers, murmurs of prayers from penitents in the processions and cries of laughter from children in the parks. And, of course, the joyful music of marimba, in restaurants and homes. All these are treats to be heard.

Pom, incense of burning pitch, forms thick clouds of smoke to cleanse the procession routes. A sweeter odor comes from the machines spinning cotton candy in the park, the sugary smell blended with charcoal grills with sizzling steaks and sausages. More subtle are smells of the blossoms, of the dust, of the crowds standing or shuffling in the sunshine, of the pine needles trampled underfoot. These and more are treats to be smelled.

The special tastes of traditional foods of the season, salads of beets, of smoked tuna, green olives, pickled eggs, candied fruits. The taste in the mouth of the incense smoke as the processions pass, or of the sweets sold by vendors following those processions. Strong coffee for carpet-builders, and draft beer for the spectators. Tamales and tacos and grilled carnes and fried bananas. There are so many holiday treats to be tasted.

Then there’s touch. Sore shoulders and feet for those carrying the heavy anda platforms with the carved saints. Sore backs for fathers carrying little ones on their shoulders to see it all. Sometimes unpleasant touch of people pressing so close together along the procession routes. Sometimes loving touch as couples and families hold hands as they walk among the marvelous carpets before those exquisite creations are destroyed by the marchers in the processions. Each special touch, each sensuous sight, sound, smell, taste, form unforgettable memories of the season, of Semana Santa in Guatemala.

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White flowers (photo: Jon Wilbrecht)

OK, so if you really must bring it up and insist on being scientific, white is officially an absence of color, and our editor wants these “sensuous” comments to be about Guatemala’s rich palette of all the colors in this land of rainbows. So maybe you’ll allow us to think of white as the framing for all our Central American colors, the whitewashed walls being necessary to set off the brick tones of the tiled roofs, needed to accent the bougainvillea reds spilling over their tops, to frame the lovers nestling at the gates. The bone-white facades of the churches serve as mattes for the gray saints in the niches and the worn brown doorways. The white foam of the breaking waves along our beaches frame the deep-blue Caribbean and Pacific waters beyond. White cottages on hillsides dot the greens and browns of the crops and the rich soil around them. Afternoon whitecaps on Lake Atitlán are warnings of rough sailing but are also touches of interest scattered atop the deepest blues of the great lake.

White frames the blue and the old-gold crest in the national flag, white feathers flash on our sea birds along the coasts, white doves nest in the nooks of the white cathedral ruins. White dresses adorn the brides heading to their afternoon weddings, lacy white shawls drape over the black hair of ladies in the markets, where white roses and white lilies stand out among all the floral colors. Out in the green fields, white herons pick at the earth for their meals, then float and swoop and playfully glide in formation to nest at sunset back in their favorite trees, right on time each evening.

Some of the ceremonies of the cofradía brotherhoods burn a special pitch for white smoke, while white robes cover Christian brothers and sisters and drape over the Christ figure in Easter Sunday processions of the Resurrection. White smoke puffs occasionally from the active volcanoes, steam replacing the usual black or red plumes.

And, of course, the full, white moon bathes the land in a special white light, when clouds allow the moonlight to break through and turn patios silvery-white.
And ah, those clouds! Gorgeous, puffy, white clouds, billowing up from the seacoast through the volcano passes some afternoons. Great stretches of feathery white clouds floating overhead. White thunderheads catch the midday sun, before their bottoms turn dark to refresh the earth with brief rains. Ever-changing clouds keep the tourist busy catching them in photos, and painters dabbing gobs of white on their canvases. So who says white’s not a color?

Red Flowers (photo: Smith and Riegel)

Red can be frustrating, such as a red curb at the only parking spot on the block, or a red light stopping your hurry along a boulevard. Red can hurt, especially red from the tropical sun on light-skinned visitors.  Red skies in the morning are supposed to give sailors warning, though Guatemalan storms come whenever they feel like it anyway. Red flames are fine, so long as they stay in a fireplace. But it’s a touch of red that delights the eye in blossoms spilling over white walls, or ripe red tomatoes pyramid-stacked in the market, or red chili pieces in a good salsa, or the flash of a red skirt when the salsa becomes a dance.

Red attracts attention in advertisements or on fire trucks, but also in some traditional weaving of Maya ladies such as the dazzling reds from the town of Patzún, or more subtle deep-red brocades in San Antonio Aguas Calientes. Red dye from the bodies of cochineal insects was used in ancient times and was a major product of the La Antigua area until synthetic dyes arrived over a century ago. Now cochineal is beginning to return as a natural coloring for foods, textiles and cosmetics, just as in the Classic Maya courts.

A few dots of red poppies along green roadsides please the eye more than big red signs for cell-phone service or soft drinks. Nature in Guatemala uses red as a subtle touch, an iridescent flash on a hummingbird hovering to sip nectar, a cardinal’s feathers as the birds cluster up and down the Americas, a streak of red on a trout jumping in the sunlight. Sometimes red isn’t quite as subtle, such as the reds of guacamayas, the scarlet macaws of the jungle, endangered due to relentless capture and display in courtyard cages. More usually, Guatemalan red is restricted to points of color, to coffee berries during their short weeks of being ready for picking, to bright-red shorts on kids kicking a ball on a dirt field, to liturgical red in churches at some seasons.

And of course red is the color of love, red hearts pasted on preschoolers’ Valentines, red boxes of sweets, red lips waiting to brush cheeks of lovers. Thousands of boxes of long-stemmed red roses are shipped from Guatemala each February to the markets of Europe and North America, symbolic tokens for homes and offices. Each rose is a reminder of love, and of the lovely touches of red to be found around Guatemala.

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