Travel itinerary:
29.07
Flight from Florence to Miami via Paris with Air France. Flight from Miami to Guatemala City with Taca.
30.07
Due to the time difference we're already awake at 4:30 but we have to wait several hours before we can pick up the rental car. We set off for Antigua, where we spend the day visiting the splendid city in Spanish colonial style and doing our first shopping. In the evening we reach Chichicastenango and visit the market area, where preparations are under way for the famous market that will be held the following day.
31.07
They had told us to visit the market early in the morning before the arrival of the organised tours, and indeed by 6:00 we're already wandering among the stalls. The market is a mix of smells and colours that will hardly be forgotten, even though at a certain hour it fills up with tourists. We especially visit the church of Santo Tomas, where sacred rites that mix Christianity with paganism are still celebrated. Just as in the whole highland area, the faces and colourful clothes of the Mayan people will stay in our minds forever. In the afternoon we move on to Panajachel on Lake Atitlan, whose view from above is magnificent. We spend the late afternoon in the hotel park amid splendid flowering plants.
01.08
We wake up early this morning too and find ourselves in the middle of paradise. In fact, dawn over the lake dominated by its volcanoes, immersed in greenery and complete silence, is splendid. On a sunny day we decide to visit by boat some villages that overlook the lake, and each one gives us something: in San Pedro we spend some splendid moments resting in a coffee plantation perched above the lake, observing without disturbing a woman in local dress busy washing clothes in the green waters of the lake; in Santiago we come across a local festival complete with procession; in Sant'Antonio Palopò we pause to watch the locals busy working the shallots and to observe some women, in brightly coloured clothes, busy cleaning the outside of the spotlessly white village church.
02.08
We sadly leave Lake Atitlan and, crossing the highland area, reach Quetzaltenango, where we visit the town and some rural areas.
03.08
Return leg to Guatemala City. During the transfer we stop again in Antigua for a further visit to the city.
04.08
With a Taca flight from Guatemala City we reach Flores and from there we finally arrive in Tikal. The archaeological site is splendid in all its parts, but it reaches its peak in the Plaza Major dominated by temples 1 and 2, which face each other, and in the view from the top of Temple 4, from which you can enjoy an overall view of the archaeological site with the tops of the temples emerging from a green sea of vegetation....one of those postcard views that I believe every traveller has always dreamed of.
05.08
With a Taca flight from Flores we reach Cancun and Mexico.
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