After spending a month in Mexico, for some reason, arriving in Guatemala felt like we had finally started our journey around the world; Mexico had seemed like more of a vacation.
We were lucky to have Scott’s daughter Heather join us for 10 days on this leg of our trip. What a joy to have her there to share that part of the world with us.
(Side note: We loved Antigua so much that we went back for a second visit. These trip notes relate to both visits.)
ANTIGUA
Antiqua is a beautiful colonial town nestled between three volcanos in the southern part of Guatemala. There are tons of restaurants and bars, historic churches and quaint shops (and quite a few tourists) that fill these cobblestone streets. And pretty much everyone we met was nice and helpful.
Most all of the historic buildings and churches show signs of extensive earthquake damage; the most recent and destructive quake happened in 1976 with a magnitude of 7.5. Some buildings get repaired over time, others are left as ruins.
Antigua is basically flat land surrounded by volcano peaks and small hills. The skies are usually partly cloudy — you know…the heavenly puffy, cotton ball types — some days with a bit of haze.
We walked a million miles through their rocky streets exploring the city’s points-of-interest and hiked to the top of the nearest hillside to view this picturesque town. You don’t want through this town drunk! Gapping holes, missing utility covers and pointed stones everywhere; with 2’ wide sidewalks and busy traffic, we kept to a single-file line with our eyes wide open at all times.
Hiking Volcanos
One of the biggest highlights of our first visit was our volcano hiking and camping experience. Kelly and I booked the easier hike to Volcano Pacaya —still a challenging 2 1/2 hour hike to our camp site and then another half hour hike to the volcano. When we arrived at the top, we enjoyed roasting marshmallows on hot lava.
That night, after all that hiking and a pasta dinner, we were ready to crash in our 4-person tent. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a wink of sleep on the cold, sloped ground with our tent-mates we had just met. Kelly used a roll of toilet paper as a pillow.
A slow, painful hike down the volcano next morning completed our memorable journey. It was beautiful at the top and a pretty great experience all around.
Heather, on the other hand, decided on a much more challenging volcano experience known as the ‘Double Whammy’ — Volcanos Fuego and Acatenango (here’s her post on her extraordinary experience).
We also found an excellent yoga studio — Shakti Shala — that we loved. Next door, a quaint hostel-owned cafe with Kelly and Heather’s favorite drink — a Chunky Monkey Smoothie from Roots Juice Bar. Right across the street, Fat Cat Coffee. Next door, an amazing handmade chocolate shop (Choco Museum). A few doors down, the best banana bread and brownies in town at Cookie’s Etc.. Ya can’t beat that.
We don’t know why but there were a fair amount of highly-rated restaurants open and fully-staffed with no people in them. And, even with our best efforts, we had a hard time finding great food (on our first visit). There was something very unappealing about blaring American 80’s pop music in this quaint, old-world town that didn’t help. But the restaurants were charming, none-the-less.
At first we surmised that we westerners eat earlier (7ish) than Guatemalans and international tourists. However, low guest counts turned out to be a tale tale sign of a not-so-great experience. We vowed to use this criteria going forward in selecting new restaurants, and dined only where there were other people — even if that meant a waitlist. But through the week, we just weren’t finding good food.
Towards the end of our first visit Scott met a few people who totally changed our dining experience. He ‘took a boy’s night’ to visit the cigar bar in town and met some expats who gave him their top restaurant finds. Life changing. At their direction, we ventured into an unfamiliar part of town — with hipster hostels, craft cocktail bars and sweet little international restaurants — Mexican, French, Chinese and Italian. We got so excited about the finds, but were running out of time on this visit, so Kelly and I scheduled another trip to explore further.
Here are the restaurants we enjoyed…
Frida’s (as in Frida Kahlo) - tasty margaritas and tacos. Great music with a lively vibe — and usually a wait list.
Como Como - Oh my! Lovely courtyard patio dining with great wines, breads with French butter, and delicious food $$$.
Samsara - yummy vegan bowls.
Por Que No - our favorite hole-in-the-hole graffiti-covered fine dining experience. Everything on the menu was highly recommended and the brownies were to-die-for. Reservations are a must there unless you get friendly with the hostess and she gives you her WhatsApp number. Then, merely text, and she’ll squeeze you in. We got friendly…
Welton - We made an exception to our ‘no other diners’ rule on Valentine’s Day. And we were glad we did. This was truly an amazing pool-side dinner experience. Manhattans. Steak and seafood. We truly couldn’t figure out why there were only two other guests in the restaurant. Pricey, but worth it.
Caoba Farms - our favorite lunch place to hang out for a few hours, bask in the sun, lounge in their homemade furniture and umbrella covered-picnic tables, drink green smoothies and breakfast alcoholic beverages, eat great burgers and salads. This organic farm-to-table, grocery store, live music venue was so fun we visited there 3 times in one week.
Where we stayed
On our first visit…
We rented a lovely two bedroom Airbnb about a mile south of town ($55 per night). Our intention in renting a house with a kitchen was to cook more, eat out less. Well, that didn’t happen. We went into town almost everyday by either chicken bus (25 cents) or tuk tuk ($4), looking for good food.
Our ‘in town’ Airbnb courtyard.
So, on our second trip…
We rented a beautiful apartment in town within walking distance to everything ($65 per night). Although it had a kitchen, we didn’t cook there either.
It was comforting to return to a familiar town and we were excited about not taking tuk tuks everyday down those cobblestone roads.
After Heather left us, we felt less of a need to explore and discover, so the pace of this visit was much slower and laid-back.
Ah, the beauty of slow travel.
LAKE ATITLAN
From Antigua (the first visit) the three us of headed to Lake Atitlan; which we expected to be a very laid-back, yoga-going, read and sit-on-the-porch-and-stare-at-the-water sort of experience.
After a cramped 3-hour, bumpier-than-hell shuttle ride (where one passenger decided that it was OK to Facetime her friends for the duration of the trip), we arrived at one of the most magical places on earth. We had a short boat ride from Panajachel to a private dock at our Airbnb ($68/night), and settled in. We instantly wished we had planned a longer stay.
We stayed on the shore of Santa Cruz and visited other lake towns by boat throughout the week:
Santa Cruz — home of some very cool hostels, small hotels with yoga classes, excellent views and some pretty darn good pre-fixed dinners, and Larry’s Bar (a private dock where, when the owner is visiting, is open for Thursday night happy hours for the local expats).
San Juan — coffee plantation, honey bee farm, weavers and coco grower’s tours. All were entertaining and informative.
San Pedro — hippy hipster yoga retreat center of the universe.
Santiago — traditional Guatemalan town where the locals live and school their children.
Our favorite meals:
La Iguana Perdida - we arrived late in the afternoon on the lake and had to quickly find food before it got too dark to explore. This hostel/restaurant was a quick walk down the beach. When we arrived, the host/bartender sat us on the patio with an amazing view of the lake at dusk and quickly served us the most delicious margaritas. Three times. Dinner was pre-fixed and the hostel guests filled up the restaurant family-style around 8pm. It was a memorable drunken evening full of laughter and new friends.
La Casa de Mundo - see video above. Ahh….even if the food was bad (and it was excellent) this would still be on our list of favs because of the setting and the beautiful, craft-inlaid decor and charming buildings perched on the hillside.
Hotel Isla Verde - by far our most excellent dinner on the lake. Simple but favor-fully delicious. The drinks were amazing and the French owner was on hand for some lively after dinner conversation. And watching the sunset on the water was picturesque (see banner photo above).
What’s next?
We’re off to Guatemala City for a night so Heather can catch her plane back to LA. We’ll be so sad to see her go. Then Kelly and I have an exciting excursion planned in the Tikal jungle.
Related posts:
Last week’s adventure in Antigua