GUATEMALA

I have had a few people ask me to post some pictures of Guatemala so I thought now would be a good time! We had such a wonderful trip and these photos really don't even begin to tell our story of Guatemala. If you ever want to go to a place that will stick in your memory banks forever go to Guatemala. It isn't what you expect, it is just the opposite. At least it was for me. I loved it and would go back again in a heartbeat!

























These pictures are taken in Tikal, the ruins have been taken care of pretty well but, I can't help but wonder if we had something like this in the USA what kind of National Treasure it would be! Of coarse, there is nothing this old in the USA! As you continue to scroll down the pictures go from Tikal to a little village across Lake Atitlan (The Waters of Morman) called Santiago. The children were irresistible. I had to take pictures of them. The next picture is of a Church there that was established in 1549 WOW!





We go from Santiago back across Lake Atitlan to the hotel where we stayed. The pictures of all the flowers ( and I have MANY more) are from the hotel grounds. This place was more than amazing. I have never seen such well cared for grounds . They had all kinds of birds and wild life as well. It was actually a little spooky to go out on the grounds by yourself! They have birds that talk so you think that people are out there all the time trying to carry on a conversation with you in Spanish... If you are the adventurous type however you can wander for hours and just enjoy garden after garden of beautiful flowers, fountains and footpaths. It is truly an amazing place. Steve and Garett made so much fun of me for taking sooooo many pictures of the flowers and gardens. I think when I tallied all of them there were 73. But, in my defense, hydrangeas grow here like weeds! People, I spend the entire spring and summer trying to get one measly branch of a hydrangea plant to produce one small cluster of blue, pink ( or by the end of the summer I would even take white) flowers and every year I fail miserably yet, at Lake Atitlan they have to prune them back to keep them from taking over the rest of the gardens!! I could post so many more pictures of flowers but, as you can see in the next picture Steve and Garett are starting to get a bit annoyed with me and the picture taking in the flowers...

Lake Atitlan has 5 valcano's that rise out of it and around it. The picture of the three of us standing with the lake in the background is looking down on the lake from Solola, a quaint little village above the lake and my favorite village of Panajachel. ( This picture is the spot of my recurrent Hawaiimala/malenoma dream for those of you that know that story). Anyway, there are 10 different tribes ( villages ) of people who live around this lake. ( hummm 10 tribes...???) Most of them speak their own language which is not Spanish. One tribe (village, I believe it is called Monte Carlo) is only accessible by boat. There are no roads connecting it to the other villages. It is also the most distant. I would have loved to have gone there but time was not on my side.

The pictures with all of the cool architecture are taken in Antigua. I was a little less impressed with Antigua because it was very crowded and so much more commercial. Still, you could not help but be incredibly impressed with the detail and the workmanship that went into each one of those buildings. I just couldn't help thinking that if any one of those old buildings had been in the USA just ONE, how different it would be treated. It seems they take their history and the fact that everything there is SO old for granted...to them it is no big deal. To us it is just plain amazing!

These are just the pictures of some of the places that we visited. I could post picture after picture of the people that we met. What wonderful people there are in GUATEMALA! Family after family invited us into their homes and made us feel like we were family. They fed us, tried to visit with us as best they could...no habla espanol... and gave us gift after gift until we didn't know if we were going to be able to bring everything home in our suitcases! Thank goodness we had Garett with us to speak the language and introduce us to all of the special people that he had met over the two years spent there as a missionary. The families that we met think of Garett as one of their sons. He looks a little out of place with his blond hair, blue eyes and his 6'2 frame but that didn't seem to matter at all to them. In a world full of strangers we certainly can find a family of friends no matter where we go!