Guatemala

Charlie’s favourite country so far is Guatemala. This unassuming and lesser known Central American country is home to stunning volcanoes and lakes as far as the eye can see. Converted USA school buses (‘chicken buses’) connect towns together, blasting Latino music. Expect colourful textiles in the markets and traditional clothing worn by locals.

Lake Atitlan with its lakeside villages and the colonial town of Antigua are the two main traveller and wow are they wonderful. Learn Spanish, hike to your heart’s content and stock up on freshly made tortillas in the markets.

Community-based tourism and sustainable travel are growing a lot in Guatemala.

A Day with an Indigenous Community in Santa Catarina Barahona

Small Change 4 Big Change is a charity dedicated to helping the indigenous families of Santa Catarina Barahona help themselves through education and sustainable farming.

Lisa Mitchell de Mena founded the not-for-profit organisation in 2012 and set up projects in the local community. The projects focus on teaching local people how to live a healthy, sustainable lifestyle. Lisa’s aim is to support families to earn their own income and live well.

6 mins read

Ecofiltro Water Filter Factory Tour in Guatemala

Ecofiltro is a social enterprise who provide clean drinking water for rural communities in Guatemala. Their water filters can be seen across Guatemala. We had the chance to visit the factory where their water filters are produced. 

As anyone who’s spent time in Guatemala knows, you can’t drink the tap water here. While tourists can afford to buy purified bottled water, not all locals can. Just what does this mean for local Guatemalans and rural communities?

5 mins read
Make your own peanut butter with De La Gente in Antigua, Guatemala

Make Your Own Peanut Butter in Guatemala

Ever wanted to learn to make your own peanut butter? If you really want to see how to make natural, organic peanut butter in Guatemala, then you’re in luck. We met Lidia, a local Guatemalan who makes her own peanut butter from scratch. And I mean from scratch. And fortunately for us, they run a peanut butter workshop so you can learn how they do it.

Lidia told us that her family is one of only eight families in Antigua who farm peanuts. And her family are the only ones to make peanut butter! She said that the more people there are selling peanuts, the lower the price of peanuts get. If you can find something new or different to do, then you can get a better price for your peanuts. Her family have been making peanut butter for four years now.

7 mins read

19 Things To Do in Antigua, Guatemala for Culture Lovers

There are so many things to do in Antigua that you won’t know what to do first!

I’d only heard incredible stories about Antigua’s colonial buildings all painted in a light shade of yellow. The misty blue-grey backdrop of volcanoes surrounding the city. The women dressed in gorgeous patterned Guatemalteca clothing. I couldn’t wait to see it for myself.

I’m lucky enough to have travelled and house sat in Antigua twice now! And to be honest, I can’t get enough of this beautiful city. I thought I’d exhausted all the things to do in Antigua on my first visit. When I came back for a second visit, I realise how wrong I was. I discovered even more exciting things to do in Antigua.

11 mins read

Semuc Champey – What No One Told Me

I’d been dreaming of Semuc Champey for a long time. The rough mountain hike that overlooks those magical turquoise limestone pools and the final, satisfying plunge into the cool sparkling waters at the end of the sweaty path.

If you’ve seen photos of Semuc Champey before, then you’ll know exactly what I mean. Semuc Champey is one of Guatemala’s most famous destinations and looking at those aquamarine waters, it’s not hard to see why.

But there was one thing that no one told me about the trip to Semuc Champey and it was my worst nightmare.

8 mins read

Vegetarian Cafés for Healthy Eaters in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

Lake Atitlan is a bit of a mecca for vegans and vegetarians travelling in Guatemala. I’m a self-confessed healthy eater. It doesn’t matter where I am in the world, I want to eat fresh veggies and good grains all the time. Being vegetarian in Lake Atitlan is amazing because you can find healthy and delicious vegetarian food everywhere from San Pedro La Laguna to Panajachel.

In this guide, I cover cafés in San Pedro La Laguna, San Marcos, Jaibalito and Panajachel that vegetarians in Lake Atitlan will love. I was excited to find that each of the towns around Lake Atitlan had some cafés with healthy, organic and veggie options to keep my belly full. Here are the most delicious of the healthy cafés I came across while travelling vegetarian in Lake Atitlan.

6 mins read

Guatemala Travel Guide

Out of all the places that we travelled in Central America, Guatemala stole my heart. Though admittedly Nicaragua was a close second. This vibrant country hasn’t let anything get it down. Despite being notorious for gang activity, bus drivers being held up at gun point more frequently than is comfortable and many communities living in poverty, the Guatemalan locals still have a smile on their face. The challenges of everyday life mean that local communities and families are tight-knit, and work together to get by.

6 mins read
Macademia nuts drying out

Getting My Nut Butter Fix: Valhalla Macadamia Nut Farm in Antigua

You know when I was a kid, I never ate peanut butter. Not because I thought there was anything wrong with it, actually I don’t even recall knowing it existed until the age of thirteen. That seems pretty crazy to most of you, right? Peanut butter isn’t big in England like it is in the States, and mainly it’s just wasn’t something that my family were all that keen on. When I was thirteen however, I had my first peanut butter and jam sandwich – and I was hooked.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised that it’s not just peanut butter that I need a regular fix of, it’s all kinds of nut butters. Oh yes. Delicious, creamy, nutty, sticky nut butters. If I was going to run a business, it would definitely be selling homemade, organic, one-ingredient nut and seed butters – that’s another story though. With my nut butter obsession right out in the open now, you can imagine how crazy excited I was when I read that not only is there a macadamia nut farm in Antigua, but they also sell jars of macadamia nut butter!

Needless to say, top of my travel to-do list in Antigua was a visit to the Valhalla Macadamia Nut Farm.

3 mins read
Guatemalan cooking class vegetarian pepian

What I Learned from a Guatemalan Cooking Class

I learned two things from our Guatemalan cooking class: number one is that making tortillas isn’t as easy as it looks and I suck at it, and number two is that the traditional Guatemalan dish of Pepian can be made vegetarian even though not everyone says it can.

We headed to a small town just down the road from where we were house sitting to meet an old Guatemalan farmer whose wife and daughters were going to teach us to cook. We went through the gate into their courtyard area where a long row of women were sorting coffee beans and dogs were sleeping in the sun.

3 mins read

How to Choose a Spanish School in Antigua, Guatemala

When I found myself with free time on my hands during our house sit in Guatemala, I decided it was time to enrol for classes at a Spanish school in Antigua. A quick Google search for “Spanish school Antigua Guatemala” will pull up thousands of results, which is no surprise as this city is the most popular place to study Spanish in the country, along with Lake Atitlan. With a school on every street corner, just how do you choose a Spanish school in Antigua?

5 mins read

Why You Should Only Visit Panajachel in the Morning

When we docked in Panajachel, the main town in Lake Atitlan, early on a Saturday morning, our first impressions were that actually it wasn’t as crowded as we’d expected. We hadn’t planned on staying in the town but after a night on Jaibalito, which was lovely but rural, we decided we’d be better off staying in Pana so that we could take the bus directly from there back to Antigua the following morning.

We were wrong.

4 mins read