Well, Montezuma finally exacted his revenge. While I started feeling ill before boarding the bus in San Cristóbal, I didn’t receive the full impact until after I arrived in Oaxaca. This left me with only one full day to really explore the city. I was most impressed by the ethnobotanical gardens next to the Santo Domingo temple.
The region occupied by the Oaxacan state has a very rich cultural and agricultural history. It’s considered the “cradle of corn”, and home to at least 16 indigenous groups, of which the Zapotecs and Mixtecs are the largest and best known for their traditional and very colorful artwork.
San Cristóbal de las Casas is a picturesque colonial city in the Mayan highlands of southern Mexico. I’ve enjoyed its abundance of restaurants and cafés with organic vegan food, fresh whole-grain bread and great coffee.
The city with two names – Quetzaltenango and the original Mayan name Xelajú, or just Xela (“Shay-la”) – is considered the academic center of Guatemala and the largest city outside of the metropolitan area around Guatemala City.
After too many hours on the school buses in Belize, I decided after arriving in Guatemala to take advantage of the tourist shuttles, instead of using the “chicken buses”, to save time and have more leg room. The driver to the shuttle stop outside of Xela remarked that Guatemala used to grow much wheat and cotton, which were used by the breweries and to make traditional clothes. That cultivation and the agricultural economy depending on it were destroyed by the importation of cheaper staple crops from abroad.
The elimination of tariffs causing prices of imported (and US-government subsidized) grains and other goods to plummet occurred after the passage in 2005 of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) between the US, the Dominican Republic and 5 Central American countries including Guatemala.
As we were waiting for the shuttle to arrive, we watched a family in traditional Mayan garb lounging on a small patch of grass eating a meal together and drinking soda (“Super Cola”) from a large plastic bottle. The driver lamented that so many have become habituated to this cheap artificially super-sweet beverage, unaware of the damaging effects to their health, whereas before they would drink water or natural fruit juice.
San Marcos is another town I visited on Lake Atitlán, much smaller than San Pedro, and only a short boat ride away. It has become a kind of new age tourist center, drawing mostly hippies, or ex-hippies and other foreigners to its blend of Mayan culture and various new age “spiritual” enterprises. At least the tourism provides the locals a market for their Mayan handicrafts and produce. I hiked to the nearby nature reserve, which has a trail to many nice overlooks of the lake.
I think San Pedro is probably the best place I know to learn Spanish. I studied here for a couple of weeks in 2007 and 2008. There are many schools here that give inexpensive private lessons with local teachers who speak slower and more clearly than in many places. Many of the classes are taught outside under thatched-roof shelters surrounded by lush vegetation on the shores of Lake Atitlán. The town is a tranquil place to study and focus on learning and practicing the language.
Antigua has always been the tourism capital of Guatemala, but since I was here 11 years ago, it has become more upscale and expensive compared to how I remember it. While there are many good locally-owned restaurants and cafes, they are unfortunately intermingled with a large number of American fast food outlets.
I read in one of the local newspapers that prolonged droughts and intense rains in 2018 have caused 1.4 million people in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua (in what is called the “Corredor Seco”) to need food assistance. This has not been forthcoming from the governments of these countries, and therefore has been a cause of much internal displacement as well as emigration to other countries, including the US. Another article on the hunger driving increased migration from this region can be found here.
The extreme weather events causing such food shortages are one of the predictable effects of global climate change. So this is an instance of activities of the US (with the highest per-capita energy use and largest per-capita carbon footprint) being a cause of problems that result in increased immigration to the US.
Crossed the border from Belize to Guatemala in a small boat over choppy seas. The port of Livingston has more of a Caribbean/reggae vibe, different from most of Guatemala and more like coastal Belize, although mostly Spanish-speaking.
Enjoyed a peaceful stay in Punta Gorda, an authentic multiethnic small town and a lot less touristy than Placencia, probably because it lacks the white sand beaches. This is the end of the road in Belize, and the departure point for ferries to Guatemala.
In this town, I learned about a new twist on environmentally-responsible eating: Eat invasive species! Here in the Caribbean, the invasive lionfish from Indonesia is destroying the coral reefs and native species critical to maintaining the reef ecosystem. This article explains (and illustrates on a series of maps) how this species has spread all over the Caribbean in just the last 10 years. In this case, we don’t need to be concerned with overfishing, as long as the rest of the marine ecosystem is not harmed in the fishing process. We should actually try to eliminate as many of these invasive fish as possible.
I tried the curried lionfish in a local restaurant and it was delicious. While these fish have poisonous spines, the meat is reputed to be very nutritious, with high levels of omega-3s. In most places I’ve been living since I moved from Alaska, I’ve avoided eating fish after learning about very high levels of contamination in the water where the fish are harvested. However, the coastal waters of Belize are covered by more protected areas and restrictions on offshore drilling than most of the Caribbean, so the fish may be less contaminated.
I read that the barrier reef system that extends from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico to Honduras, with 80% off the coast of Belize, is now (as of this year) considered to be larger than Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. That’s because so much of Australia’s reef has been destroyed by bleaching from warmer waters and pollution (see this). Both reefs are dying, but apparently Australia’s at a more rapid rate. More than half of its coral has died off in just the last few years!
After many hours of riding in crowded and cramped repurposed old school buses (the only kind of bus I’ve seen in this country), I arrived again on the Caribbean coast.
Placencia is at the end of a long, narrow spit of sand barely above sea level, and is a popular beach destination for Belizean and foreign tourists. Most of the hotels, restaurants and shops are away from the road, along many sidewalks over the sand.
San Ignacio is a nice, relaxed small town in western Belize, considered the ecotourism center of the country. Lots of birds and birdsong in the air.
On the bus to Belmopán, then on to San Ignacio, I passed a continuous series of billboards encouraging citizens to vote “yes” on an upcoming referendum to allow the International Court of Justice to settle a longstanding land dispute between Guatemala and Belize.
Guatemala claims that the southern 43% of the country is rightfully their territory, and voted in a referendum last year to take their case to the international court. Although many legal analysts predict that Belize would win the court case, the stakes are very high in this small country with a total population of less than 400,000.
