mythicalgirl | Vacation - Part 3 (Reply)

Let me just say right now that Guatemala is beautiful. I have no idea what it might be like to live in any of the cities there since I didn’t really see much of the urban areas. But the rural areas were amazing. On the drive to Quiriqua we passed both cultivated and uncultivated landscape. I was especially fascinated by the intricately terraced hills where the locals were growing corn. In Belize we didn’t get to the hillier region until we were almost to Xunantunich. In Guatemala we started out in the hills and pretty much stayed there. And everything was is so green! The road here was better than the one in Belize – better pavement and well taken care of.

Quiriqua is so much different from Xunantunich. First, there are no monumental temples, or at least none that have been excavated. Second, the big draw here are the many stele and zoomorphs. In Belize and Mexico many of the stele were limestone, which ages quickly. In Quiriqua though they built in sandstone. In most cases only the side of the stele exposed to the elements has any weathering and even then many of the glyphs are still visible. From an archaeological standpoint the stele here are very important, as they have given researches some really amazing glyphs to work with. The site is still being excavated and restored, plus we saw only a small portion of it. As with all the sites we saw, the jungle still covers a majority of the site and it is a constant struggle to keep it pushed back.

I for one was fascinated by the different stele, some over 35’ tall, and especially by the zoomorphs. These are large animal themed rocks, like boulders, that have been carved with images of animals, kings, Mayan glyphs, etc. Each tells a story just like the steles do. I wasn’t so fascinated by our guide. She was very nice and she tried hard but she got some of her facts wrong. How do I know this? Well, we had Raoul the day before plus I read up on the Maya before I left on vacation. Dad caught some of her blunders as well. Eventually we kind of did our own exploring and didn’t try to keep up with her to hear what she was saying. There was also the slight racism when she talked about the Maya. She is not Mayan and kept talking about both the ancient and the modern Mayan as “others”. She even mentioned reservations about a political candidate that is Mayan because she thought the woman would only work to help “her people, not mine”. It was a little disconcerting.

It was a good day despite the not-so-fabulous guide. She did get us apple bananas on the way back to Santo Tomas. They are smaller than regular bananas and have an apple-like flavor. Really good! One of the highlights of the day was as we were leaving Santo Tomas. The locals came out to the dock to send us off with music and dancing. This was pretty cool, especially since the port in Santo Tomas is actually a commercial port – not many cruise ships come here. Dad said we must have spent enough money for them to be happy we came. Ha!

The next day was Mexico. I’ll do that in the fourth and (hopefully) final vacation post.