How About Guatemala City?

The first thing we noticed about the city was how modern and hip it is. That is because the area of town where our apartment sits has passed through an intense phase of urban redevelopment. Just a few years ago it was dangerous, drug-infested, and home to squatters. Now, our apartment is in the middle of 4 Grados Norte Zone 4 . . . if that happens to mean anything to you.  Considered bohemian, because there are many artists and writers here, “it shines like a diamond” with easy access to great restaurants, and just about anything one would like . . . shopping, public transportation, places to hang out, and all within two miles of the city center in one direction, and museums, the zoo, and the very urban airport in the other.  Go just a bit farther to Zone 5, 6, and 7, for example, the city’s personality is distinctly different. While this city has grand areas, there are dark, poverty-stricken sides too. But hey! Name one city in the world that does not have both worlds.

Our first day in the city was spent exploring the old town where the Cathedral Metropolitana and the Palace Nacional de la Cultura sit on the sides of the huge Plaza de la Constitucion.  Surprise, surprise! Christmas celebrations have already begun here in Guatemala City.  The entire plaza was covered in holiday decorations, Christmas music blared, and traditional Christmas Market shops were setting up and starting to open.  Food courts were in full operation selling pizza, hot dogs, tostadas, tacos, pollo frito . . . anything the heart may desire!  Even on a Monday, the place was packed with people.  Unlike Antigua, however, there weren’t many international tourists . . . just locals.  

This is Guatemala. Christmas is such a celebration here, that parents take off work to take their children to be part of the festivities.  Kids shrieked as they flew down the tall icy tobogan slide, but the center of attraction was an ice-skating rink set up in front of the Palace de la Cultura.  Picture, if you will, people dressed in puffy jackets and fuzzy boggin hats, on in crash helmets, in 75-degree weather making their way around the rink. Only a few people “skated.”  To be fair, people here don’t have many opportunities to practice, so only two or three people skated in the middle of the rink. None, however, did a spin or a double axel. The rest of the skaters formed a long train, one person in front of another, wobbling and bobbling, clinging to the wall. They bobbled forward and wobbled backward, grabbing one another and the wall praying to make it around the rink without falling.  Few were smiling; some appeared struck in terror. Oh, the joy of the holidays! We could not keep from laughing.

Stan and I justify having our wine and eating well by walking . . . walking a lot.  We walked to the zoo.  We promised ourselves we’d use our bus passes for the return trip but we took one look at the buses packed to the gills with people and the long lines of people waiting to get aboard at 4 pm and opted for another walk home.  Fortunately, the weather could not have been more pleasant. 

What a treat! El Zoologico La Aurora, one of the largest urban green spaces in the city, is a world-class zoo set in a botanical garden.  We were astounded by its spacious well-tended habitats for its 2700 gorgeous animals in areas designated areas of origin:  Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  This zoo originated in 1924 but has been meticulously maintained. Today it remains modern and up-to-date 100 years later.  Guatemala City can certainly brag about its spectacular, award-winning zoo often called one the best of the Americas. 

Another day we walked to Parque Ecologico Cayala, a natural forest in the heart of the city.  In its 34 acres, are picnic areas and pavilions for family fiestas, a soccer field, and a playground for the ninos.    A few steps more leads to the quiet trail that winds through the forest, up and down hills, and crosses wooden bridges over the Contreras River.  Hundreds of butterflies, birds, and more make this their home.  This is our kind of place. 

Already we can say that Guatemala City is far more than just another big city.  It truly is a place of beauty, culture, and discovery. 

There are two must-do’s when visiting Guatemala.  No, actually there are three.  1.  Enjoy the food!!! 2. Spend the night on Acatenango watching Fuego’s fireworks and 3. See the Mayan ruins at Tikal. 

To see Tikal, we took a 6 am flight to the town of Flores.  We spent that day exploring that pretty island town and crossing Lake Peten to Santa Elena to stroll through the Museo del Mundo Maya and finding the Tayasal ruins that are just now being excavated and studied.  On the long walk up the hill to the museum, we saw two young boys clearly up to no good.  One boosted the other to the top of the wall.  At the top, the second boy climbed into the tree and began picking fruit and tossing small green fruits to the boy on the ground.  Of course, we watched.  The boys were eating the fruits about as fast as they could gather them.  Stan asked if they were manzanas.  “No,” they said, “they are ?????”  We didn’t catch the name; it was unfamiliar to us, and the boys looked too busy for us to bother them more.   They tossed us a couple.  We thanked them and vigorously polished them on our shirts to sanitize them. We gave the fruit a try.  Hmmm, not bad.  Crunchy.  Sweet.  A hint of maracuja (passion fruit).  Fruit always tastes sweeter when it is pilfered. 

The next morning we headed to Tikal.  Wow, Tikal.  It is about an hour’s drive from Flores and then requires a 2-hour walk with a guide through the jungle to find it.  Although we were not expecting to, we saw spider monkeys, howler monkeys, birds, and a family of coati deep in the forest.    

Finally, and quite suddenly, we came to a clearing, and wow!  Magnificent, astounding, soaring Tikal!  Because it sits in the center of Mesoamerica at the crossroads to other great Mayan settlements, Tikal is regarded as the capital of the Maya world.  First founded in about 800 BC, we were stunned to learn that at its decline in about 900 AD as many as three hundred thousand people lived in this 360 square mile city in the middle of remote nothingness.    

These people were indeed advanced. In their 1500 years of living, they developed culturally, artistically, and architecturally.  They built temples for ceremonies and pyramids for science . . . astrology, mathematics, engineering.  They developed methods of agriculture, efficiently growing the foods they needed to survive.  Advanced as they were, they did not discover the utility and value of metals.  Instead, they valued obsidian and flint for tools, hunting instruments and weapons, and jade as decoration.  Using plentiful slave labor, great blocks of stone were quarried and carried to build the 5,000 buildings including residential palaces for the elite on this great site.  The common folk, who did the farming, and all the city’s labor lived outside the city. The tallest excavated structure at Tikal is 214 ft high – that’s 20 stories.  Looking out from its top, nothing is visible except blue sky and tops of other “nearly-as-tall” temples poking their tops through the green canopy of trees that extends horizon to horizon. 

Although five squares or plazas, six temples, and several pyramid complexes have been uncovered, only 10% of Tikal has been excavated.  I hope the remaining 90% of this ancient city is allowed to remain in its silent grave in the Guatemalan jungle covered in soil and trees, untouched for eternity as it should be. 

So what happened???   Why did this civilization fail?  They were not conquered.  They did not suffer pestilence.  There was no catastrophic earthquake.  Scientists believe the Maya civilization died at its own hand, not by suicide but by their success. As the city grew, more and more deforestation took place as they expanded their great cities.  Without the canopy of trees, nature changed.  There was no shelter from the heat.  Moisture evaporated from the grounds; crops ran dry. 

The lesson here repeats itself many times over and still, we don’t learn to take care of Mother Earth not just for the present but for the generations to come.