Guatemala has been an absolute blur of beautiful people, buses, and apparently time! I can't believe it has been a week since we left Denver. With the intention to blog everyday- I've clearly missed the mark, but created amazing memories regardless!
Angela and I have researched traveling to Guatemala several times in our "travel lives" and have always turned away due to safety warnings of the US government. In fact, we travelled to Colombia instead of Guatemala several years ago. I can still remember the shock when we told people we were headed to the infamously drug heavy and violent Colombia. (Which, in fact, goes down as one of my all time favorite trips!) So, needless to say choosing Guatemala did not come without a fair share of worry, but we talked to enough people and really got ourselves comfortable with the precautions to take.
We arrived in Guatemala City last week and immediately headed to Antigua. What a charming, lovely place! We are traveling during the low and rainy season so Antigua has not been filled with tourists and we have had our fair share of "group" tours that are only us.
We decided to get right into the mix of the culture and booked a Guatemalan cooking class on our first day travelling. We were lucky enough to be in class with three Australians, which always makes these experiences more hilarious. Also adding to the humor was the fact that the class was taught in Spanish. As you probably know from past trips, language is not Angela and my strong points so learning to cook in Spanish provided its own form of entertainment. I did realize that we were a step ahead of one of the Australians when Felicia (the teacher) pointed at what Ben was cutting and said "mas" and he looked at me and said "does that mean more?" Phew.. I was one step ahead of him!
We learned how to make some really delicious dishes- chile relleno, tamales and plantains with mole sauce. The best part were these out-of-the-world black beans! I've never seen more oil go into a pan....but boy were they amazing! They are part of the tipico breakfast here and will be the culprit of any extra pounds. Muy delicioso (ps: that's 'delicious' in Spanish). The cooking class was a really great way to get into the cultural mix and start out trip!
The next day we went on a tour of the local coffee plantation. We had been told to meet in front of Cappuccino on a specific street. Assuming that "Cappuccino" was a coffee shop - Angela and I skipped breakfast and figured we would grab something there. As we got near where "Cappuccino" should be we kept asking directions and people kept pointing us to the same place. We were walking back and forth on the same street looking for cafe Cappucino ...turns out it was a church. Oh Spanglish.
What an eye opening experience the coffee plantation was and such a great reminder of why purchasing fair trade is so important. During the busy harvest season they hire over 400 people to do the back-breaking work of picking coffee beans. Turns out these people are getting paid by the pound which is around $5/day - approximately the Guatemalan minimum wage. Each bag of coffee sells for over $7. We did the math and that didn't seem to add up!
Kara arrived the next day to Antigua and we were more than excited to be reunited and to start the Threads portion of our trip! Kara wasn't happy to hear that we had booked ourselves on a 5:30 a.m shuttle to make sure we could get to our first group of artisans the next day, but with good spirits we made our trek to Lake Atitilan early the next morning.
Angela and I have researched traveling to Guatemala several times in our "travel lives" and have always turned away due to safety warnings of the US government. In fact, we travelled to Colombia instead of Guatemala several years ago. I can still remember the shock when we told people we were headed to the infamously drug heavy and violent Colombia. (Which, in fact, goes down as one of my all time favorite trips!) So, needless to say choosing Guatemala did not come without a fair share of worry, but we talked to enough people and really got ourselves comfortable with the precautions to take.
We arrived in Guatemala City last week and immediately headed to Antigua. What a charming, lovely place! We are traveling during the low and rainy season so Antigua has not been filled with tourists and we have had our fair share of "group" tours that are only us.
We decided to get right into the mix of the culture and booked a Guatemalan cooking class on our first day travelling. We were lucky enough to be in class with three Australians, which always makes these experiences more hilarious. Also adding to the humor was the fact that the class was taught in Spanish. As you probably know from past trips, language is not Angela and my strong points so learning to cook in Spanish provided its own form of entertainment. I did realize that we were a step ahead of one of the Australians when Felicia (the teacher) pointed at what Ben was cutting and said "mas" and he looked at me and said "does that mean more?" Phew.. I was one step ahead of him!
We learned how to make some really delicious dishes- chile relleno, tamales and plantains with mole sauce. The best part were these out-of-the-world black beans! I've never seen more oil go into a pan....but boy were they amazing! They are part of the tipico breakfast here and will be the culprit of any extra pounds. Muy delicioso (ps: that's 'delicious' in Spanish). The cooking class was a really great way to get into the cultural mix and start out trip!
The next day we went on a tour of the local coffee plantation. We had been told to meet in front of Cappuccino on a specific street. Assuming that "Cappuccino" was a coffee shop - Angela and I skipped breakfast and figured we would grab something there. As we got near where "Cappuccino" should be we kept asking directions and people kept pointing us to the same place. We were walking back and forth on the same street looking for cafe Cappucino ...turns out it was a church. Oh Spanglish.
What an eye opening experience the coffee plantation was and such a great reminder of why purchasing fair trade is so important. During the busy harvest season they hire over 400 people to do the back-breaking work of picking coffee beans. Turns out these people are getting paid by the pound which is around $5/day - approximately the Guatemalan minimum wage. Each bag of coffee sells for over $7. We did the math and that didn't seem to add up!
Kara arrived the next day to Antigua and we were more than excited to be reunited and to start the Threads portion of our trip! Kara wasn't happy to hear that we had booked ourselves on a 5:30 a.m shuttle to make sure we could get to our first group of artisans the next day, but with good spirits we made our trek to Lake Atitilan early the next morning.
We had an amazing visit with our artisan groups in Lake Atitilan! Check out the future Threads Worldwide blog for theses heart warming experiences!
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