Travels4Yourself

A trip to Guatemala and Honduras is perhaps the most vivid adventure that has happened to me in recent years. This is a guaranteed demolition of the roof: you have not seen anything more exotic and surprising. When the Mayan cities collapsed, this people went into the mountains, where it was impossible to plant reeds and there was no gold - the Spaniards did not follow them, and the once great civilization was preserved there.


Guatemala is cute. This word first comes to mind when you try to sort through the impressions of the first day. In any case, such is the toy town of Antigua, the capital of colonial times. He probably would have remained the main city of this country, if not for the terrible earthquakes that wiped out the majestic local cathedrals and magnificent monasteries. Despite this: perhaps, nowhere else in the New World have I met such an abundance of well-preserved buildings of the era of the conquistadors. We lived in one of them. Now here is the Porta Antigua hotel: a patio overgrown with flowers, a pool reflecting the sky and a volcano, four-meter high ceilings, fireplaces, antique-styled furniture and at the same time all the comfort of the modern world.

Guatemala is vibrant. Here is just an explosion of all colors! I don’t even know which other country can be compared with it in terms of brightness of colors. Is that India? By the way: here, as in India, the majority walks only in national clothes. And men - they have cotton shorts embroidered with touching parrots. And, of course, women: according to the patterns on their homespun skirts and scarves, the connoisseur easily guesses where the charming woman comes from, in which of the Mayan languages​​she speaks words of love to her betrothed ...


Women weave all this beauty not just by hand - they don’t even have looms. The guiding threads of the future canvas are attached to the hook on the wall, and the other end to the leather belt, which the girls receive as a gift when they turn ten. Their whole life is a shuttle and cotton threads, they are old-fashioned painted with a decoction of flowers, seeds and leaves of tropical plants, and then fixed with a brew from the trunk of a banana palm.

Our trip to Guatemala and Honduras was just magical. We poked our noses where we didn’t get to, got acquainted with local people, tried everything (especially for “independent” people: we stopped when we got tired, ate where we wanted, etc., but fell into places where you could break yourself, you will not get).

Have you ever seen a pagan temple in the center of a Christian temple? And what about a headdress made of 10-meter tape? And the shaman who takes in the church in the room next to the altar? Drop everything and go there. Thank you, I promise!