As we take off for Central America (this time to Costa Rica), we think back to our first visit to the region a couple of years ago: Antigua, Guatemala.

Although Antigua has a reputation for being touristy, we found that it wasn't too difficult to get lost and find a slice of authentic Guatemalan life. One of our favorite places to do this: Antigua's central market.

Walk past the front section of the market, past the souvenirs and freshly cut fruit intended for gringos, and just keep going back, back — deep into the market, maybe even into the adjacent back parking lot areas where on weekends vendors come from neighboring villages.

It's beyond this first scratch where you'll find it: real life.

As you take a spin around you'll see activity and people bustling about in every corner, from the woman making purple corn tortillas to women selling piles of mangoes, peppers and strawberries on the ground. You'll notice that some women are dressed in traje (traditional dress), something you see across Guatemala. If you stick around long enough you might even catch a Mariachi band roaming the place.

So when people suggest that Antigua is too touristy, our advice: go deep, get lost at the market — so lost that you might even have to ask for directions to find your way out just like we did..

The post Amidst Piles of Freshness: Antigua Central Market, Guatemala appeared first on Uncornered Market.

Stand in the middle of the Grand Plaza between Temple I and Temple II at Tikal, Guatemala and imagine what life must have been like in this Mayan city over 1,200 years ago when Tikal was at its peak. The size of the temples and surrounding acropolis indicate that this must have been a rich and sophisticated city-state. Yet the ruins are only partially exposed and understood, as thick rain forest still covers most of the park.

And the grand mystery remains: Why was Tikal abandoned in 900 AD?

We can't answer that question, but we can give a sense of what it's like to sit in the middle of the Grand Plaza and wonder.

Advice for visiting Tikal Mayan Ruins

If you're visiting the Tikal ruins from Guatemala, you have a couple of options.

1. Day Trip from Flores: It is possible to visit Tikal as a day trip from Flores. Most travel agents in town sell round-trip bus tickets to and from town (around $7.50 round-trip) and you hop on whenever it suits you. If you chose this route, try to get on one of the first buses in the morning; you'll be able to enjoy the park in the early morning light before it the becomes stiflingly hot and humid.

2. Camp at the Park Entrance: There are a couple of hotels at the entrance to the National Park. However, their prices tend to be on the high side for budget travelers. We rented a tent (complete with an air mattress) from Jaguar Inn for around $25 for the night. If you wish to camp but don't have your own equipment, there is also a campground in the area that supposedly rents camping equipment. In any case, spending the night in the park will allow you to enjoy the light and cool weather of the early morning and enter the grounds before the late-morning onslaught of the crowds and buses.

Additionally, you'll get a full appreciation for the wildlife in the neighboring rain forest. We originally mistook the eerie nighttime sounds of the howler monkeys for growling jaguars — added a bit of “holy sh*t!” to our night, to put it mildly. You'll also be treated to the full-blown wake-up call of a birdsong symphony in the morning.

The post Visiting the Mayan Ruins of Tikal, Guatemala appeared first on Uncornered Market.

“For safety reasons, we'll need to go in groups of at least four to the cemetery,” our Spanish language teacher informed us.

“Why,” we wondered. “Are the dead coming back to life?”

Just the opposite: the morning spent with our Spanish teachers at the Cementario General in Xela (Queztaltenango) turned out to be one of our most remarkable.

Although not quite as polished as Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Xela's Cemetario General gets the nod for the colorful and visually eclectic. It also provides a glance into Guatemala's socioeconomic structure and how the delicate balance of merging Mayan beliefs with more recent Catholic traditions plays out in the way that Guatemalans honor their dead.

Perhaps we have as much to learn about other cultures from their cemeteries as we do from their streets.

In spite of all this, we highly recommend making the effort to visit this stunningly beautiful place.

Find a hotel in Xela (Quetzaltenango), Guatemala

The post Why You Should Visit Cementario General in Xela: Guatemala’s Most Beautiful Cemetery appeared first on Uncornered Market.

Descendants of shipwrecked slaves from Nigeria; Jerry Garcia's rumored Caribbean seaside bungalow hideout; warrior dances (see video below) and turtle shell drums; echoes of an accented pigeon pidgin English that smacks of Jamaica; and a remarkable coconut seafood soup called tapado.

This is Livingston, home of the Garifuna. This is the other side of Guatemala.

Who Are the Garifuna?

No story puts a finer point on Guatemala's diversity and complicated history than the one tracing the arrival of the Garifuna in Livingston.

The Garifuna (or Black Caribs, as they are sometimes referred to) trace their roots back to St. Vincent, an island in the eastern Caribbean. In 1635, two Spanish slave ships from Nigeria shipwrecked there. The slaves mixed with the locals indigenous Caribs and a new culture defined by both West African and Caribbean features and traditions emerged.

In the late 18th century, the British deported the Garifuna population to the island of Roatan (Honduras). The Spanish also got involved, moving Garifuna populations further along the Honduran coast to Trujillo and into parts of Belize. In the early 1800s, Garifuna moved from Belize into what is now Guatemala and set up the town of Livingston.

Almost two hundred years later, the Garifuna continue to maintain their traditions and speak their own Arawak language in Caribbean coastal towns in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Livingston Today

An older Garifuna man explained to us:

When I was a kid, it was all Garifuna people here in Livingston. Each time a Guatemalan arrived by boat, we'd go down to the dock for a look. Guatemalans, they were a novelty.

Then, Guatemalans began to arrive during the war. This area was safe; there was no fighting here. Guatemalans sold everything in their villages and used the money to buy up buildings from people like my parents and set up businesses.

I blame my parent's generation for selling our buildings, but the current generation won't invest in our future; they want everything immediately.

When you arrive in Livingston by boat, you'll notice all the shops and restaurants that line the main streets are owned by Guatemalans (and a few Chinese). The Garifuna have been relegated to the side streets, the edges of town. They live along the shore.

But it's the Garifuna culture that sells in Livingston. All restaurants offer tapado – a Garifuna coconut-based soup chock full of seafood and shellfish. A few offer Garifuna music and dance demonstrations to boatloads of day-trippers.

Rasta Mesa in Livingston

We dropped by Rasta Mesa, one of the few Garifuna-owned places, one late afternoon after a visit to the local cemetery on the edge of town. A restaurant-cum-cutural center, Rasta Mesa features evening shows to educate travelers on Garifuna culture and music, while at the same time passing on traditions to children in the Garifuna community. The owners have plans to expand their project into an organic community farm and a Garifuna cultural education center. It's not your typical business plan.

In the evening, a group of Garifuna musicians gathered with bongo drums, conch shell horns, turtle shell drums and maracas. Some kids got into the action, dancing and singing away.

The best way to describe this scene? Watch the video below…and make sure you catch the warrior dance at the end.

Watch the video of Garifuna music and dance

Jerry Garcia's Footprint?

The same man who waxed long about the changes in Livingston over his lifetime shared another little nugget: Jerry Garcia once owned a house (Casa Garcia, of course) on Livingston's Caribbean shoreside and played with local musicians. He also gave our storyteller his first guitar and sponsored his education at the University of Illinois.

While we haven't been able to confirm any of this, we still enjoy the image of Jerry Garcia jamming with a group of Garifuna musicians in this little town on the Caribbean coast of Guatemala.

Myth becomes truth, stories become reality. In Livingston, you're never really sure what to believe.

That's part of its charm.

View more photos from Rio Dulce and Livingston

Travel Information for Livingston, Guatemala

How to get there: Livingston is only accessible by boat. Take a boat from Rio Dulce ($10-$12) or from Puerto Barrios ($5).

Where to stay: Hotel Rios Tropicales on the main road across from the municipality has simple rooms with hammocks outside in a cute courtyard. Perhaps most importantly, it has the strongest wifi signal in all of Guatemala. A double room with shared bath is 100Q ($12). Contact info: hotel_riostropicales@yahoo.es or 502-794701558

Where to eat: A lot of the restaurants offer the same menu. Here's our “best of” list from the week we spent in Livingston:

• Best Tapado: Antojitos Gaby has excellent and inexpensive tapado (65Q or $8). The bowl is loaded with seafood – fish, crab, mollusks, conch, sea snails and shrimp – and is more than enough for two people to share.
• Best Grilled Prawns: Restaurante Tiburón Gato, on the main strip, serves up delicious grilled giant garlic prawns.
• Best Shrimp Quesadilla with Roasted Tomato Salsa: The menu at Tilingo Lingo doesn't list this dish, but you can ask for it from Maria, the self-proclaimed “only Mexican in Livingston.” Absolutely delicious. Also on the menu: Indian food (Maria lived in Calcutta for a few years), pizzas, burritos, and stand-up Turkish style coffee. Tilingo Lingo is located at the end of the main road near the coast.
• Cheapest Breakfast: Restaurante Bahía Azul offers a typical “chapin desayuno” of refried beans, eggs, fried plantains, bread, coffee and juice for 15Q ($2).

The post Livingston: The Other Side of Guatemala appeared first on Uncornered Market.

Some friends have suggested that we attach helmet cameras to our heads to give viewers the unabridged full monty version of our lives.

Trust us, you really don’t want to see all of it.

But there are moments where a helmet-cam would communicate our circumstances better than a pen, better than a camera (although we did our best with the video below). Moments of on-the-run multi-hop transport and cultural over-immersion that leave our heads spinning and our bodies reeling.

This time it’s Guatemala. But what we are about to describe could well have been in Armenia, Uzbekistan or Nepal, albeit with a few cultural adjustments.

This is our amazing race, one that doesn’t finish at the end of this year’s TV season.

Woo-hoo: The chicken bus from Xela to Totonicapan

We ponder a Guatemalan riddle: why post a sign inside the bus that reads “Christ lives” when virtually all bus drivers insist on driving like hell?

We lose track of the stops on this 90-minute bus ride – one that was supposed to take only 45. The irony: twice as long, double the frenzy.

At each stop, vendors pour into the front as others hop off the back — all while the bus continues to move. Peanuts, bananas and bags of water all make sense. But school geography stencils, cheap perfumes, and a Guatemalan version of Spirograph? (The vendor assures your child will get straight A’s if you buy him one.)

Then, in the middle of nowhere Guatemala in this chicken bus full of locals, an indigenous couple turns and asks us – the only gringos on the bus – for directions to a small village.

Do we really look like we have any idea where we're going?

Happy Hour at 5 AM

We're in Totonicapan to photograph microfinance borrowers for Kiva. That night, we forgo earplugs because we have an early start and fear sleeping through the alarm.

Little did we know that a full-blown happy hour would break out in our guest house at 5 AM. The common-area TV blares just outside our door (soap operas start early in these parts). An unrelenting parade of footsteps, morning chatter and laughter competes.

Who are these people living it up at this hour? We are the only foreigners; the other guests didn't look like vacationers. And this guest house is no place for a vacation: tiny rooms, separate beds, and bed linens that murmur “u-use your slee-eep sacks.”

As the party disperses (where did they go?), silence descends and we fall back asleep.

Five minutes later, the alarm goes off.

Totonicapan to San Francisco El Alto – “It’s only a 15-minute ride”

It’s 5 PM; our photo shoot is over and it’s time for a microbus to the bus station. The bus, designed to hold 17 people packed like sardines, now holds 30. School kids indicate we missed our stop. Fortunately it’s only a few blocks back. Backpacks at the ready, we hop off, the bus still moving.

Minutes later, we're on another chicken bus to Quatro Caminos (Four Roads), a transit frenzy where four roads meet. The drunk man behind us prompts us to forget all the Spanish we picked up the previous week.

“No comprendo.”

Although locals assured us that we would arrive in San Francisco El Alto in 15 minutes, we are already almost one hour into the journey. Is this what's meant by the Mayan calendar?

Up the Hill, Squashed

At Quatro Caminos we disembark and get pointed in the direction of yet another chicken bus. A young man ushers us on, promising a quick arrival in San Francisco. If only we had a nickel for every promise like this.

This bus is stuffed. Three or more seated on each side, aisles packed. The bus sways as it tackles switchbacks up the mountain. All eyes are on us, our large gringo frames and backpacks flailing with the turns.

We’d love to take a photo of sunset over the hills – if we weren’t certain to slam our lens right through the window. Laden, we clutch the luggage rack above with two hands as the bus driver accelerates out of one hairpin turn and into another (see the first part of video below).

As darkness descends, the bus driver curiously turns off all interior lights. There's an upside to this darkness: if we go careening off a cliff – a distinct possibility given the way he’s driving – we won’t see it coming.

When are we supposed to arrive in San Francisco El Alto again? We turn to a crowd of school kids for help. One girl shrieks and retreats at our inquiry. Another boy, armed with middle-school confidence – urges us: “Get off now!”

A Town with No Map

Edge of town. Edge of night. We’re without a map and we stand out in the darkness as the only foreigners in town. This town hosts one of the – if not the – largest market in Central America each Friday, but our guidebook doesn't see fit to provide a map. It's also a place our Spanish teachers described as dangerous — the kind of place where thieves cut your pockets to steal.

As we consider our circumstances, the lights from local tiendas (shops) shine through the day’s unsettled dust. Under weak bulbs dangling on flimsy strings, vendors and families set up stands for the following day’s market. Although this lends the place an ethereal quality, we are still on alert and directionless. We walk briskly, deliberately, and with feigned purpose. We pause occasionally to ask directions and dodge the town drunks who wish to practice their English.

Hotel Galaxia

Dark, fairly bleak. This must be our place. It’s supposedly the best of the accommodation options in town.

The woman running the hotel gives us the rundown of the market schedule. Stalls go up at 3 AM. People start buying at 5 AM. Animals are sold behind the Catholic Church.

Our room: only cold water. A convenient excuse not to take a shower before tomorrow’s market. Our room evinces a dilapidation so complete that renders it impossible to imagine the place as new. It hangs together, but falls apart. The walls are leprous, pallid, and punctuated with holes that once served as electrical outlets.

But a few functioning holes remain. We have electricity. And the room has a wastebasket. In our book, this is almost luxury.

But the bed sheets still sing the song of sleep sacks.

Market Day

5 AM alarm is brutal. It’s the kind that leaves the body burning with sleep deprivation. Maybe that's just the effect of the recent bed bug bites on our legs.

The weekly market beckons as we hear it unfold on the streets outside.

As we exit, we dodge men carrying heavy loads on their backs and women baskets on their heads. The food stalls appear almost medieval – black cauldrons of chicken, rice and beans simmer atop burning wood fires. Women open lids to let us peek inside. “Come back. It will be ready later.” Genuine smiles, we are all tired.

Light falls on a stack of cowboy hats under the shadow of the church. Women unpack large Chinese market bags full of dried, salted fish. Young girls bob and weave the maze of rickety wooden tables, carrying large metal kettles filled with hot chocolate. They giggle as they pour our cups. Hot chocolate at 6 AM never tasted so good.

Above the Catholic Church, pigs squeal for their lives, geese peck at small puppies, sheep crowd close to their owners, cows stubbornly refuse to move. The animal market disappoints on only one account: no donkeys, as we were promised.

Video: Market Day in San Francisco El Alto, Guatemala

The market crowds swell at 9 AM. So does the heat. It’s time to go. Another chicken bus and we’re back where we started two days before: Xela.

Just in time for us upload photos and prepare for a three-day, 40 kilometer (25 miles) hike to Lake Atitlan that leaves the next morning.

View Photos from Totonicapan

View Photos from San Francisco El Alto

Totonicapan and San Francisco el Alto Travel Information

What to Do: Both Totonicapan and San Francisco El Alto are known for their weekly markets when – mostly indigenous – vendors and buyers from neighboring hill villages and towns descend for a day of trade. The Totonicapan market is on Tuesday and Saturday. San Francisco El Alto, Friday. These are truly local markets, meaning you won't find souvenir or other stands geared towards foreigners. Go to Chichicastenango for that.

We highly recommend arriving in San Francisco the night before so you can wake early and enjoy the market before it becomes crowded and hot, ideally between 5:30 and 8 AM. You'll have the market to yourself. Travelers that do visit usually arrive by tourist shuttles from Xela.

Where to Stay: You don't come to either location for luxury accommodation. In Totonicapan we stayed at Hospedaje San Miguel (tel: 7766 1452) next door to the Casa de la Cultura (8 Avenida and 3 Calle). Rooms are basic (bring ear plugs and sleep sacks), but showers in the shared bathrooms have surprisingly hot water. Cost: $10 for a double room with shared bathroom.

Hotel Galaxia (2 Calle, 1-81, tel: 7738 4007) in San Francisco El Alto is right below the main square and in the middle of all the market action. The woman who owns it is very kind. Cost: $10 for a double room with private bathroom (cold water).

How to Get There: Both places are serviced by direct chicken buses from the Rotunda or Minerva bus stations in Xela (Quetzaltenango).

The post Our Amazing Race: 48 Hours in the Hills of Guatemala appeared first on Uncornered Market.

There we were at the dock in San Pedro bargaining for a boat to Santiago. The price seemed prohibitively high for a whimsical afternoon side trip on Lake Atitlan. Natasha, another traveler hoping to take the same boat, also questioned the price.

“You know, I have a car here. We could drive. You can just give me some gas money.”

Sounded like a reasonable alternative.

Just as we turned to leave, the boat ticket salesman's voice rose, “Carretera. Banditos. Peligroso.” (Highway. Bandits. Dangerous.) In other words: the highway is unsafe, so my boat is your only option. Assuming his opinion was a thinly veiled attempt to profit from fear, we dismissed it.

More Talk of Banditos

On the way out of town, we asked for directions. “Up there, right then left. But it’s dangerous. And there are bandits,” one taxi driver offered, without skipping a beat.

“Just up this hill and then a left. But are you sure you want to drive there? It’s notorious for bandits,” another man added in perfect English just a few blocks later.

We looked at one another, taking stock of our situation. Natasha attempted to reassure us, “I checked at my hostel. They said the road is in good condition. Otherwise I wouldn’t risk it.”

“So if there’s a bandito in the road, what would you do? Run him over?” Dan asked as he practiced his ducking skills.

“I guess so,” Natasha offered with an anxious laugh. “But, I can’t guarantee anything. So if you want to get out I completely understand.”

Dan and I sat there looking at each other, not quite sure what to do. We considered the odds. When was the last time anyone actually saw a bandito on this road?

Although personal safety was our primary concern, our photo equipment came a close second. Natasha too, for she’s a photojournalist. The compromise we negotiated with ourselves: hide our camera equipment in the trunk under blankets and bags.

Certainly no bandito would look there, now would he?

We Hit the Road

Initially, the road was superb – one of the Guatemala’s newest and smoothest. Our anxiety receded. Who could ever stop us here? We were virtually bandito-proof. But secretly we stole looks into the jungle and to the tops of hillsides for masked men.

Thirty minutes later, the highway crumbled into a hilly moonscape. We slowed and bounced to a crawl amidst huge clouds of dust. We couldn’t outrun anyone here. Roads like this dropped mufflers. Broke axles, too. I peered into the brush and coffee bushes each time we slowed, looking to see if anyone was approaching. I locked my door, rolled my window up.

Whenever a person appeared by the side of the road, I wondered suspiciously, “Now what’s he doing there?” Invariably, it was just a local carrying bags of coffee berries or a farmer returning from the fields. I wallowed in sheepishness because of my paranoia.

At the edge of one village, we pulled up to chat with and photograph some workers shoveling coffee berries into burlap sacks. Even the most innocent of scenes – men working, children playing, mothers cooking – couldn’t prevent a glance or two into the bushes to ensure the banditos weren’t coming our way.

The Road Hits Back

After enjoying Santiago, we piled back into the car. The return journey would be doubly difficult, for all those dusty moonscapes now pitched uphill.

At the first broken patch of road, Natasha drove like a champ – bobbing, weaving, and creating traction where there should have been none. But when the drive wheel finally began to spin freely, I could feel the tension rise in the car.

We kept the conversation going, chatting about the photojournalism projects Natasha might enjoy in places like Georgia (Republic of) and Xinjiang, China.

She deftly navigated the uphill, boulder-strewn dustbowl. Upon clearing it, she remarked, “I’m sweating. Thanks for continuing to talk to me through that ordeal – it helped take my mind off the situation.”

Silence is to fear what gasoline is to fire.

Fifteen minutes later we hit the hill. It was deeply rutted and covered in fine dust and stones. Natasha spun the wheel this way and that, making her way with wide turns. But halfway up, we were defeated. The drive wheel cried as it spun against a boulder. The cloud of dust was punctuated by the distinct scent of roasted clutch.

Natasha backed up to take another rutted approach.

We were going nowhere.

No more than 30 seconds later, a pickup truck full of passengers rode over the crest of the hill. They stopped, realizing our predicament. A group of locals and tourists (dressed in life vests, oddly enough) hopped off. One guy took the driver’s seat of Natasha's car. The others– together with Dan – pushed the car up and over the hill.

Video: Dust-Covered and Relieved

“It’s a minor miracle that you guys showed up when you did,” I suggested to one of the tourists in a life vest.

He laughed, “If our boat hadn’t broken down on the lake, we wouldn’t be here.”

One man’s misfortune is another man’s savior.

The remainder of the journey was pleasantly uneventful, but we breathed a sigh of relief upon arriving in San Pedro anyhow.

Travel Fear in Guatemala

Reflecting on the day's emotions, I realized that travel fear is relatively new to us. Aside from a rifle being aimed at us by Tajik army guys at the Afghan border and almost getting crushed at the Uzbek-Kazakh border, our travels throughout Asia were relatively – and fortunately – free from fear.

The risk of violence is higher in Guatemala. And the perception of that risk is higher still. Melodramatic local media plaster dead bodies on page one of the morning newspaper. And breakfast talk with locals, full of the latest busjackings, kidnappings, and murders doesn't inspire much confidence either. Those conversations offer unsettling parallels with the infamously dire travel warnings issued by the local U.S. Embassy and The State Department.

All of this is difficult to reconcile with the fact that our interactions with Guatemalans have generally been warm and welcoming. So instead of accepting the first dire warning, we consider data from all sources. After all, we didn’t travel to Guatemala (and Latin America) to sit in our hotel room and on tour buses. But we also don't want to tempt fate.

So are there really banditos on the road from San Pedro to Santiago? Or is this just a well-circulated local legend now taken as truth?

We may never know.

The post A Road Trip, Some Banditos, and a Dose of Fear appeared first on Uncornered Market.

When Guatemala City and the town of Totonicapan both wound up our itinerary, several Guatemalans we spoke to wondered aloud: “Now why exactly are you going there again?“

Usual suspects on the Guatemalan tourist trail these places are not. The primary reason for our visit: cooperation with Kiva, an American organization that raises capital for small loans from online lenders. It then disburses the funds to borrowers in the developing world via its partnerships with local microfinance institutions. Individuals lend small amounts (e.g., $25) over the internet, and collectively they help to impact the lives of many. Innovative, and — as Kiva describes it — “person-to-person.” (You can read more about microfinance and how it works here.)

Our contribution was to photograph Kiva borrowers (i.e., individuals who had received small loans). Working with volunteer Kiva Fellows, Andrea and Lori, we got to see first-hand the effect of loans distributed through Kiva's partner microfinance institutions (FAPE and ASDIR in Guatemala City and Totonicapan respectively).

The project took us to villages outside of Totonicapan and a host of areas outside of Guatemala City, including a slum in Villa Nueva. We met a select group of women – and one man – using small loans ($1,000 or less) to build or expand their small businesses. They weaved, sewed, crafted shoes, baked goods, made candles and ran stores. In their homes and workshops, they shared their stories, their lives, and their goals.

Here are just a couple of those stories.

A Weaving Business Inside the Family Home: Totonicapan, Guatemala

The image below captures the interior of a family home outside of Totonicapan in the highlands of Guatemala. The space measures somewhere between 150 and 200 square feet: a TV workspace in one corner, a bed in the other, a small table, and some knick-knacks hung on the wall. A husband and wife and their two children live there. Look closely and you'll notice a large weaving loom – the purchase of which was aided by a Kiva microloan – taking up half the space.

When we visited Juan and his family earlier this year, he had successfully sold his first batch of hand-woven traditional cloth (or traje) at the market.

Candle Workshop Outside Guatemala City

Although only one person received a Kiva loan for the candle workshop above, the entire family benefits. In the shelter of bamboo and corrugated tin, several generations work together cutting string for wicks, dipping them in pots of hot paraffin, and arranging the candles to dry.

After giving us a tour of her candle workshop, the Kiva borrower — a young mother named Magda — proudly showed us the plot of land where her family home would soon be built.

While the photo sets linked below don't offer traditional snapshots of travel in Guatemala, they do provide a glimpse of how people live in small towns and villages. Ultimately, these people hope to support their families, improve their lives, and provide an education for their children.

And after all, isn't that what we're all trying to do?

Photo Set: Microfinance Around Guatemala City

Photo Set: Totonicapan and its Environs

The post The Face of Microfinance in Guatemala appeared first on Uncornered Market.

The other day we broke down in Guatemala City — in front of a piñata factory no less.

I helped push the stalled PT Cruiser whose motor had knocked, pinged and spoken of better days. Back then forward, we rolled the car out of traffic and into a parking lot.

Guatemala City is notorious for guns, violence, drugs, blighted neighborhoods and danger lurking around every corner. And there we were in a sketchy little parking lot in the middle of the city at dusk.

But in a stroke of bizarre fortune, we had come to a stop on a corner clustered with piñata shops. Our anxiety eased immediately; we couldn’t help but laugh. Whatever our concerns, we were surrounded by a veritable army of piñatas. All their goofy grins and silly outfits — from Super Mario to Mickey Mouse to a giant can of Gallo beer for the adultos – served as the backdrop of our introduction to Guatemala’s capital.

Indeed Guatemala City has its dangerous side, but it has its joyful side, too.

So we cracked out the camera, snapped some photos in the waning light and ventured inside for a closer look at the production side of things. Under a harsh fluorescent light, a young man – the piñatero – was slicing thousands of little paper hairs on a plump, anthropomorphic chicken-hippo fitted with Mary Jane sandals.

She would fit right in with her dazzling companions dangling outside.

Piñatas are an under-appreciated art. They come to life in multiple stages: first the wire frame is twisted (think mega-long clothing hanger), then the hard paper wrap is molded to make sure the shell is not easily broken, and finally the outfit (or vestido) is attached. As the piñatero explained, each stage takes between 15 and 20 minutes to complete. That these craftsmen crank out their art at high-speed makes their results that much more impressive.

After our conversation, the car came to and we headed to what would become our adopted home in Guatemala City.

So how did we end up here again?

We were the beneficiaries of chain-linked kindness. Audrey’s friend (whom she’d met in the Peace Corps in Estonia) put us in touch with Vicky, a Guatemalan woman he’d met at a conference earlier this year. After a few email exchanges, Vicky insisted we stay with her family and take her bed as she would be out of town. After a few intervening text messages and phone calls with her mother, we were picked up at the bus stop upon our arrival from Antigua and carried away in Vicky’s PT Cruiser.

In addition to taking care of our every concern – transport well across town each morning, afternoon follow-ups to make certain we would arrive home safely, and copious amounts of home-cooked food – they made us feel like part of the family. Virginia, the mom, gave us hugs and kisses each morning and night. Father and son – Adolfo and Adolfo – made sure we were fully engaged with their good humor; we responded in our broken Spanish.

At the end of each day, it felt as if we had returned home.

So What?

This whole situation got me thinking how beautifully bizarre and pleasantly surprising life can be.

The car breaks down – which on the surface is a bad thing, particularly in a dangerous city. But we break down at a piñata factory, an ironic set of circumstances if there ever was one.

Furthermore, people we had never met go out of their way to take care of us, abide by (and help us exercise and improve) our suffering Spanish language skills, make sure we are fed and safe, and offer a sincere open invitation to return.

Yes, we continue to hear about daily crime and murder rates in Guatemala City. Guatemalans possess a knack for sharing the gory details of the latest murder from the morning paper.

But from now on, when we hear “Guatemala City” we’ll think of the piñata factory and the Guatemalan family who took us there.

The post Life Happened on the Way to the Piñata Factory appeared first on Uncornered Market.

Sawdust carpets adorned with brightly-colored designs and cut fruit line the streets, giant carved floats sway on the backs of local men and women, and depressing dirges creep out of battered horns. Ceremony is high with marching Roman soldiers and elaborate crucifixion ceremonies as Guatemalan communities come together to mourn Jesus' crucifixion and celebrate his resurrection and the close of Lent.

This is Semana Santa (Holy Week). And in Guatemala, no place takes to the occasion like the town of Antigua. We've never experienced a lead-up to Easter quite like it. The slideshow and video below show why.

The Elements of Semana Santa, Antigua style

Processions (Procesiones)

A collection of local townsfolk carry various floats – sometimes as long as ten hours – through the city streets. Swaying together to manage the load, the float-bearers make their way in an impressive demonstration of strength, dedication and stamina.

So too, family and community. Float-carrying fathers walk hand-in-hand with their sons. Mothers, too, carry their baby girls. Waves of purple, white and black consume the streets.

Until Friday afternoon, men are dressed in purple. After the crucifixion ceremony at noon on Good Friday, they change their robes to black. Throughout the day, women remain dressed in black and white, their heads covered in scarves.

Musica Triste (Sad Music)

Floats are often preceded and followed by musicians warbling semana santa music through tired instruments. Dirges feature heavy, slow brass tones punctuated by foreboding drums. A Spanish teacher aptly described it “sad music.” And while the float carriers switch off throughout the day, the musicians are in it for the long haul, playing sometimes for an entire morning and afternoon.

Click on the video below to hear and see for yourself.

Carpets (Alfombras)

Holy week carpets are surely a visual highlight. Townspeople craft them by hand from piles of sawdust, dyed sands, cut fruit, berries, pine fronds, and corozo palms. Although the carpets require hours of patient labor and the effort of entire neighborhoods, they take only seconds to be destroyed by the marching processions.

The final product is fleeting, temporary; the joy is clearly in the creation. Or perhaps more appropriately, the annual ritual creation of the alfombras serve as a metaphor for the cycle of life, death and rebirth (thanks to @llmunro on Twitter for this insight).

As we admired our favorite carpet on Good Friday morning, a local man explained to us that alfombras are borne entirely of private initiative. Families and communities work together to pay for, design and create the carpets. And there's no sense returning next year to see your favorite design, for each year features new stencils and designs.

In the epitome of dedication, the neighborhood just south of Escuela de Cristo joined forces to fashion a carpet almost 200 meters long. When we spoke to some neighbors, they had been at work almost 17 hours and still had a few hours more to go. But they laughed and they were upbeat. That the procession would pass in the dark with few onlookers at 1:00 AM did not matter to them. Their work, their effort, their spirit – that was reward in itself.

Crucifixion Ceremony

Fortunately in Antigua (in contrast to some places in the Philippines), there is no live body involved in the crucifixion ceremony. Church officials, dressed entirely in black, tie a statue of a bloodied Jesus to a cross and raise the cross in a fully-packed church. Although one ceremony takes place at the main cathedral, we chose to view another more intimate ceremony at the Escuela de Cristo church.

Even though this is obviously all a reenactment, the music and crowds conspire to make the event vaguely and eerily emotional.

Several hours after the ceremony, men dressed in black carry another float, atop which the statue of Christ crucified (el señor sepultado) lays in a glass coffin.

Semana Santa Street Food

Every good festival needs good food.

While you could find the usual street food suspects – pupusas, chiles rellenos, tostadas, grilled meat – well-represented during Antigua's Semana Santa festivities, local street stalls also featured holiday treats like pepian, fish (dried or fried), plantains cooked in mole sauce, and empanadas filled with sweet milk.

It comes as no surprise that the street food areas were some of our favorite places to hang out. The mood was particularly festive in front of El Calvario church, where multiple generations of families passed time together on blankets or in the open-air backs of their pickup trucks.

While we admit to missing biting off the ears of a chocolate Easter bunny or two, it's an exchange we're glad to make for the opportunity to experience Semana Santa in Guatemala. Although we found the event both overwhelming and somber at times, it served to underscore the importance of family and community spirit.

A fitting context from which we wish you a Happy Easter.

The post Holy Guacamole, It’s Semana Santa in Antigua, Guatemala! appeared first on Uncornered Market.

Learning a new language is great, but doing so through the lens of food and markets strikes us as ideal. So when the topic of Guatemalan cuisine came up during our Spanish lessons (day two, as we steered each of our instructors there fairly quickly), we seized the opportunity and asked if one of our sessions could double as a cooking class. You'll see the results in the video and recipe below.

So instead of a typical early morning Spanish lesson grinding through verb conjugations and placement of indefinite articles, we set off for a local market in Xela (Quetzaltenango) to buy ingredients with our Spanish teachers, Karla and Maria-Luisa. Then we returned to the school kitchen for some hands-on instruction on how to make a fabulous Guatemalan national dish known as pepian.

Roughly speaking, pepian is chicken (boiled then lightly fried) served in a recado – a rich, blended sauce composed of various roasted ingredients. At first look, the recado resembles mole, a sauce known well in Guatemala's northern neighbor, Mexico. Its flavor, however, is remarkably distinct due to roasted sesame and squash seeds.

No wonder Guatemalans often reserve this dish for special occasions (e.g., weddings, birthdays, holidays). In their words, it's muy rico (very rich)!

Please give the pepian recipe below a try and let us know how it goes. As you'll see in the video, it's fairly easy to make, so long as you can find the ingredients. Hint: look for the nearest Latin American grocery store – or Whole Foods – near you. Enjoy!

Video Recipe: How to Cook Pepian

Note: This all happened on day #8 of our Spanish lessons. Bear that in mind as you withstand our butchered Spanish.

Pepian Recipe

Ingredients:
2 oz. green squash seeds (pepitoria)
2 oz. sesame seeds
1.5 inch piece of cinnamon, broken into several pieces
4-5 roma tomatoes (whole, unpeeled)
2 oz. tomatillos
1/2 dried guaque chili
1/2 dried pasa chili
10 peppercorns
salt
2 lbs chicken, cut into pieces
1 1/2 liters water
2-3 hot dog buns (in Guatemala, they use about 3 pieces of pan frances, which look more like blunt hot dog buns than baguettes)

Place the chicken parts in a large pot with about 1.5 liters of water. Cover and simmer for about 20 minutes until chicken is done and a golden broth emerges.

Dry roast the sesame seeds until they are slightly brown. Place them on a paper towel to cool. Do the same with the squash seeds.

Place the tomatoes, cinnamon fragments, tomatillos and chilies on a flat, non-teflon metal roasting plate (called a comal in Guatemala) atop a burner (preferably gas) and allow everything to roast and blacken slightly. Turn occasionally to allow all ingredients to roast evenly.

Pour the roasted sesame and squash seeds into a blender and blend until finely ground, or about 30 seconds. Add the roasted cinnamon stick fragments and pepper corns and grind for another 30 seconds. Then add the wet ingredients – tomatoes, tomatillos, chilies – and top with the broken pan frances and about 1 cup of chicken broth. Blend until everything is smooth; add more chicken broth or pan frances fragments until you achieve the desired consistency. The sauce should drip slowly from the spoon (see the video).

Heat a pan with a bit of oil. Remove the chicken pieces from the remaining broth and fry for about 5 minutes, until golden. Then add the chicken pieces to a large pot and pour in the recado from the blender. Simmer for about ten minutes; the sauce will darken. Add a couple of pinches of salt to taste. If your sauce is thinner than you'd like, cook a bit longer; if it's too thick, add some of the remaining broth.

Serve chicken pieces topped with recado. Sprinkle remaining sesame seeds on top for garnish. Serve with rice pilaf (see recipe below).

Rice preparation:
Brown the rice kernels, diced onion and garlic in a bit of butter or oil. Add water (ratio of 2:1 to rice) and chopped vegetables. Add a couple of pinches of salt. Simmer until water is absorbed.

¡Buen Provecho!

The post Guatemalan Pepian: Please Try This at Home appeared first on Uncornered Market.