Guatemala easily

This item appears on page 29 of the June 2009 issue.

I have traveled on my own to Mexico and Central America two to three times a year for 19 years, doing all my own planning, but on a December trip to Guatemala I wanted to take it easy and let someone else worry about the arrangements while I focused on my photography.

Local tuk-tuk transportation in Chichicastenango. Photo: Wolf

I chose Caravan Tours, Inc. (Chicago, IL; 800/227-2826, www.caravan.com), whose 11-day/10-night “Guatemala, Tikal & Copán” tour starts at $995, land only. With taxes and single supplement, I paid about $1,500.

The tour price included all meals, hotels, guides, private buses with great drivers and a black SUV with two shotgun-toting, handgun-packing federal police officers who followed our bus as security. After some of the stories about tourists being hijacked and robbed in Guatemala (Jan. ’05, pg. 17 & July ’05, pg. 16), I was glad to have these police officers nearby. They made me feel safe.

On my flight from New York’s JFK on TACA, it seemed as though half the population of Guatemala was going home. After clearing Customs and Immigration at Guatemala City’s La Aurora Airport at 6 a.m., I exited the airport and encountered a screaming horde of people behind a plastic orange fence. I held tight to my duffel bag, as I knew from personal experience on previous trips that someone might try to grab it from me and not let go until I paid some money.

Eventually, I found the van from Caravan Tours and was transported to the Gran Tikal Futura Hotel, where I was very glad to be able to check in early and get some rest. The hotel was far more beautiful than I had expected. This trend continued throughout the tour; we were booked in lovely hotels each night.

The first day, we took a tour of Guatemala City, and the next day we hit the road in our big, comfortable bus, heading for Chichicastenango and the huge, twice-a-week market. Market days have been held in Chichi for more than 1,000 years. It’s a good place to buy hand crafts of the area as well as traditional handwoven clothing as worn by the indigenous people.

Chichi is an area known for pickpockets, so be on guard at all times.

Also, the locals do not like to be photographed, so be careful not to offend. (On a trip in 1999, my friend and I ran from some locals who were preparing to throw rotten vegetables at us. They were hiding their faces and began picking fruit off the ground.) If, however, you buy something from someone, they usually will permit a photo.

Vendors at Chichi can be a bit over the top in their persistence, so much so that I usually flee to the steps of the Santo Tomás Hotel and photograph from there unbothered, as the steps are forbidden to vendors. In fact, when I was there the steps were guarded by a man with a big pistol stuffed into the back of his pants.

Market day is such a mob scene in Chichi, I can take it for only so long. After I left the steps, I returned to the bus and bargained with vendors out the bus door.

I had been to the Mayan ruins at Tikal on three previous trips, but on this visit there was so much more to see than on my first visit in 1992, thanks to the ongoing excavations. All my visits, including this one, were only a day. I really need to stay for three days straight in order to see everything.

Tikal always blows me away. The size of the ruins! The mists of the morning! It is an overwhelming place.

Our tour included two nights in Copán in Honduras; Quiriguá, a wonderful small Mayan site in Guatemala, and Antigua. I was very pleased with Caravan and gave a large tip to our tour guide, who had done a great job, providing many interesting lectures while we were on the road, taking care of all our needs and even giving us many small gifts.

The tour was a good introduction for those new to travel in Guatemala and a convenience for veterans of travel to this fascinating country. I never had such an easy, worry-free, well-fed trip to Guatemala as this one was, all 10 days of it.

If anyone has questions, I can be called at 203/469-6890.

PATRICIA BUCK WOLF

New Haven, CT