Adios Guatemala - Aloha Hawaii

Guatemalan Adventures will be off-line for the next week as we will be vacationing in Maui, Hawaii and attending the wedding of Nancy Phillips and Eugene Clark.

Stay jealous!

Chichicastenango Market

Our lovely friend Hanh from Seattle, Washington (hee hee) came to visit us in Santa Cruz del Quiche. We were very spoiled to have a visitor and took the opportunity to go to all the great places nearby, including the famous market of Chichicastenango.


"Chichi" is what the locals here call the city of Chichicastenango and every Thursday and Sunday a famous market is held in the central square that sprawls out to the side streets. A normally sleepy turns into a hustle and bustle of locals and foreigners. Sellers come from all over the country, and tourists flock to the city of these market days. Lucky for us this town is only 30 minutes away, so it's quite easy to head over there whenever we feel like it. But, for our first trip to the market we took Hanh over there.


The market is quite the mecca for tourist souvenirs, none of what are available in Quiche. Our market just offers a ton of produce because no tourists come to our city. One indoor area is a crazy produce market where all the locals come to by their food. We didn't buy anything there, but we did pick up quite a few other gifts for our family and friends. Enjoy!

We enjoyed people watching, tourist watching, and laughing at the crowds of people smashing through the narrow aisle ways. You too will be able to enjoy the fun when you come to visit us. This is a must see in Guatemala.

Bigger Pictures

Just a blogger note for you all.....

If you want to see the images larger all you have to do is click on the pictures and it will come up in a new screen as a much bigger picture. Hint: You may want to do this with our alfombra pictures to look at the details.

*Maria Teresa and I making the alfombra at about 4:00 am.

Alfombras - Carpets for Jesus

We've already mentioned alfombras in previous posts, but I wanted to explain further what they are and how they are made. Toby and I had the pleasure of viewing many amazing alfombras during lent and Semana Santa. We were even fortunate enough to help make one with the Guatemalans and students at Probigua (Toby's school).

First off, alfombra is the Spanish word for carpet. These "carpets" are made out of many different materials and usually are very brightly colored. Their purpose is to provide a beautiful walkway for Jesus and Mary as they are carried along on the anda during the procession. Only the people in the procession walk over the alfombras (luck Toby!) because everyone else is very respectful of the labor and artistic energy put into the alfombra made for Jesus. The process consists first of watering down the area in the street where the alfombra is to be made. Then either strings or boards make the shape of the alfombra so it can be lined up and even. Next depending on whether you are making an alfombra with pine needles and flowers or (aserrin) dyed sawdust your work will head in different directions. (Note: a lot of preparation work happens before making alfombras because the plain sawdust must be dyed all the different colored and flowers need to be trimmed de-stemmed, etc.) The sawdust alfombras usually have a thick layer of sand or dirt smoothed out straight before the colored designed is created. Many people then use different hand carved stencils and strainers to sprinkle on sawdust in their chosen pattern. Please understand that this is a VERY time-consuming activity, taking many hours, that people put their heart and soul into during the time between Ash Wednesday and Easter. The most are made during Semana Santa when there are processions every single day, and people working hard making alfombras in the street. The flower alfombras can be done somewhat quicker, but the really detailed ones look better and take more time. They usually are made with a combination of flowers, flower petals, pine needles, and other materials.


Other unusual and occasional styles of alfombras seen are ones made entirely of produce. Sometimes fruit or veggies are used as accessory decorations in alfombras, but other times they make the entire alfombra. It looks like the market with cucumbers, cabbages, lettuce, carrots, avocados and more arranged in a design. Lots of people snag these things after the procession has walked by to take home.

On Good Friday (Viernes Santo) Toby and I woke up at 3 in the morning to go and start work on the alfombra we helped make. The procession from the La Merced church leaves at 5 am and so we needed time to work on it before that procession started. Tons of other people were out in the streets, some working all night long making alfombras. The really serious all-nighter teams set up lights, play music, wear custom team t-shirts and work away! It's such a fun time walking around and appreciating everyone's artwork and experiencing the festivity of it all....for Jesus Christ too! It was nice to see people admiring and photographing our work as well. =)

Very soon we will be sending out a link to all our Semana Santa and Cuaresma pictures. You'll be able to view a bundle of alfombras and us making an alfombra as well as processional photos, Toby carrying, and much more. Stay tuned..... For now, the ones above are Toby and I with the alfombra we made, and the La Merced anda walking over our alfombra. We are also happy to answer any questions regarding these alfombras, the significance of the processions, etc.

When it Rains it Pours

In Guatemala the weather is great. We have sun during the day, warm to cool evenings, and beautiful sunsets. However, this is the dry season. When the wet season arrives this will all stay the same, however Mother Nature will add in a one hour thunderstorm and HEAVY downpour just about every afternoon. However, even during the dry season we have been privy to a about three of these storms all ready. That week we endured a horrific downpour during which the lightening was so close to our office, we could hear the streaking and the hiss of every bolt that struck nearby. You could even smell the ozone that was created ( in case you didn't know...lightening bolts create ozone, the same thing you smell when you make a copy on a copy machine). To most people, sitting inside a big, safe building, waiting out a storm wouldn't be a bad thing. Even I enjoy watching a good storm, under the cover of a porch or a house. However these storms we dread.

It all started when we were walking home one day when it started to rain...just a little. It seemed that with every step closer to home, the rain increased. We hurried and hurried until we finally reached the safety of our house...or so we thought. While Brittany went into the kitchen to put away some things from the market, I wandered upstairs to put on some dry clothes. However, there was no need to change, because it was raining inside our house. I yelled downstairs for Brittany so she could see our predicament. You see, upstairs we have a sort of central landing, to which all the rooms enter, as well as where the stairs to the roof continue. Above this landing we have two sort of glass pyramids that comprise the part of the roof to let sunlight it. These pyramids are comprised of a metal grid-like framework with the glass sealing inside the frames...or should I say the glass was supposed to be sealed.

We scrambled to to get as many buckets as we could to collect the water, however the water was coming from too many places to collect even half of what was coming inside. Gallons upon gallons continued to stream into the house while we grabbed brooms to sweep the water out the door on the second floor. So much water was coming in that it formed a small river from the second-floor landing, down the stairs and into the hall on the first floor. We really didn't know what to do. The owner's of the house weren't home, so I waded across what was previously our street but what was now a river with about a foot of water in some places to the ice cream shop, which our landlady owns, to obtain her phone number. We then called her with our cell phone we just happened to purchase that day, however she didn't answer. We would later discover she didn't have her phone with her. So then, we simply left a note at her mom's houses explaining what was happening. Since there wasn't much more we could do, we emptied the buckets, swept some more water out, and went into our bedroom which was high and dry and tried to forget about everything.

When the owners finally came home, we learned it was the first time it had rained since the roof was installed (I would want my money back). The nice thing is, the owners had their "muchacha" or cleaning woman make everything as good as new....this time. Now I just hope they get the roof fixed, otherwise we will have to continue to fear the rain and I will have to fix it.

Brittany, Let's go the Plaza to Watch the Flogging

Much to my surprise when I bought the morning paper the other day, I saw a picture of our town plaza on the front cover. It appears that on Tuesday three men that had been robbing and extorting the local tuk-tuk (little vehicles imported from Thailand) taxi drivers were chased down by the drivers who had had enough and taken into custody. This weekend two of the five gang members were arrested by the police at taken to jail. It then was discovered that the rest of the gang members were in town, so all of the taxi drivers fanned out looking for them. Apparently they had had enough of being robbed and extorted, so when the robbers were spotted all the drivers converged on the area, which just so happened to be in the neighborhood of our cousin. The three robbers were then stripped of their clothes, given a towel to wear and marched to the center of town. The picture I saw even showed them being accompanied by a few soldiers from the military. Once in the town plaza, on the stage of the small amphitheater, the men were kicked and beaten with leather belts. Once the taxi drivers were satisfied, the men were turned in to the police and put into jail. As you can see, in Guatemala the justice is dealt swiftly and with a leather belt.

Semana Santa Pan y Miel

During Semana Santa it is customary to make a special bread and a special sauce that you give to neighbors, family, and friends. We were fortunate to assist in the process with Andy, Tomasa, and family starting with visiting the bakery...
Since most people don´t have a huge oven they take their ingredients, with the proportions they prefer and deliver it to a baker where they put it all together. Tomasa took something like 25lbs of flour, 50 plus farm fresh eggs, 7lbs of sugar, and I don´t know how much shortening. The guys at the bakery mix all the ingredients and make probably 100 or so loaves of bread of different shapes and styles then cook them on wood planks in a wood burning oven. Supposedly they have it ready at a particular time for you to pick it up, but we have learned that ¨Guatemala Time¨ often works differently. The bread was meant to be ready at 3:10 but when we arrived at 3:45 it wasn´t finished, so we killed 45 minutes going to the store. When we returned it was just about to come out of the oven. About 20 more minutes later they were ready but had to cool on metal trays for a while before we transported them. It´s difficult to explain, but what seems like a simple procedure of dropping off and picking up can turn into quite an adventure and eat up a whole day.
The next days we helped Tomasa by peeling fruit for the miel. We peeled a couple baskets green mangos, peaches, green figs, and coyoles (not sure in English?). The coyoles are pertty fun because you can´t use a knife or a peeler so we threw them really hard on the ground to make some cracks and then hand peel the shell. It was a bit crazy with coyoles bouncing and flying all over the kitchen. The mangos and figs sat in a bucket with water and lime (the mineral) for a day before going into a pot to brew. In a pot goes all the fruits, plantains, garbonzo beans, and some brown sugar type sweetener. This all cooks down for hours until it is really dark and syrupy then it is eaten with the bread and all tastes very sweet and fruity.

JESUS WALKS Part II

On the day of the procession, we went very early to Mass so we could get a good view of the Anda (the giant platform holding Jesus). The procession began about 11:45am when the first group lifted the Anda off of the ground to the music of a drums and a large bass band. I felt really bad for the first group as they had to hold the Anda for a very long time while in the church. Toward the door of the church the group then had to lower the figure on to metal tracks on the ground so that the figure could be pushed through the doors because it was either too tall or wide to be walked through. It was quite the experience between the thousands of people packed into the church and the noise of the band. Once the figure had left the church we scrammbled to get around the corner to where my turn would be. There were 30 different groups arranged by height and I was turno 3. I got to my transfer point just in time and got ready to carry just as the Anda was rounding the corner towards us. In addition to a "turno" each person is assigned a "shoulder" where they carry each time as well. I was surprised that the Anda was SO HEAVY. Even though there was over 70 people carrying the figure it it was very heavy and by the end of the turn many people were bending over from the weight. While walking through the town we were constantly surrounded by hundreds and thousands of observers. People lined the sides of the streets to watch the procession travel down the road. I felt so priviledged to take part in such a special ceremony. Luckily for me I will get to participate in a procession this friday during the Holy Week when Antigua is flooded with around 500,000 people for the week.

Red Light District

We learn something new everyday!!!

Apparently, here when there is a red light outside of a doorway it doesn't mean "prostitutes here" or whatever we may think in the United States. It actually means that food is available for purchase. Go figure!

Thanks for the heads-up Andy.