Amanda Outings: Trip to Guatemala! General Review of the country with full color photographs!

Qué rico!

A visit to Guatemala reminds you that like the birds

of the air and the fish of the sea, YOU TOO are ALIVE

“Please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”

-Kurt Vonnegut

A swell idea, but had he been to Guatemala he’d know to say “Qué rico!” (kay-reeko) The words simply mean “how rich,” but when spoken aloud, they stop time in its tracks. It’s a short prayer of gratitude. It’s the Guatemalan way of life.

See, you are always rich in Guatemala where Life is the treasure. The tropical Central American country is pulsing with an energy that invigorates your body and spirit. Discover the ways to fill up on Life in Guatemala:

The atmosphere is full of lights and sounds, firecrackers and music crying out from all directions. You feel as free as the street dogs, and just as friendly. And the colors! The colors are the most vibrant in the world. Clothing and buildings and sky reflect the richness of Earth’s abundance. The very ground trembles with the vibrations of the living and the lush trees dance in joy to the birdsong. You can feel it! What a refreshing contrast to the hate and despair you’re used to breathing back in the States.

At a live nativity you see the pregnant Maria dancing to the music of a marimba band under lights strewn across trees in a churchyard. The people in Guatemala are full of laughter and you just have to surrender to their energy. Smiling babies, horse-playing children, and armies of puppies are all around you. Walk down the street with “Buenos!” on your lips and the city of Antigua opens its nurturing arms for you. Venders sell you items with the flexibility of actual humanity and all the prices are negotiable. You stand up to leave a restaurant and remember to acknowledge the other customers with a nod and an Adiós goodbye. They smile and wave because you are learning to join in the dance.

Traveling in the U.S., you have time to worry or daydream of elsewhere. Not in Guatemala! Sitting with a whole family in a single seat on a brightly-painted school bus, accelerating up the Pan-American highway and flying the kinky route over the Sierra Madres, you don’t have time to think. Only to hold on for dear life as the bus off-roads around slower moving vehicles and swings around bare drop-off cliffs. Your body puts in as much work as the gasoline does and travel itself leaves your muscles toned. And the boat-rides - even better! No one is pulling out their phones to take pictures because everyone is getting rhythmically soaked together, laughing and clutching the sides of the seats each time a wave on El Lago slams you back into your bodies.

Slap! Slap! Slap! You hear as you sit in your favorite restaurant and the owner prepares fresh pupusas and then you eat them with your hands before licking the juices from your fingers and the dirt of this beautiful country along with it. You are alive! In Guatemala, the food is fresh and real and your body responds like it’s home. Qué rico! How good! How rich! How lucky you are to be here, to be nurtured with fruit from the land and to savor this perfect moment of your life before it slips away.

Even Time, that measuring tool considered so stable, is different in Guatemala, stretching out like a cat in a sleepy windowsill. The days move slowly. Your body willingly wakes with the sun and lounges with morning coffee and books. After breakfast you walk your errands and engage with the world. Lunch is a slow ordeal with enjoyment the objective: the food, the drink, the people, the place. In the afternoon you rest inside from the heat of the day. A smaller meal then, and evening activities: business or pleasure with friends, or more luxurious time with yourself. A Guatemalan artist of brilliant paintings and other-worldly music tells you, “Here, there is nowhere to run to.” Exactly. Every moment is what it should be and no time is wasted on worry of places other than where you are. A satisfied smile, a steaming hot coffee and a half-whispered, “qué rico . . . ”

And then there is the language. Spanish is a smoothly rolling incantation. The first thing you notice is the pronunciation of the greeting, Hola, that short little song of human acknowledgement. It’s summoned by the letter L in its center. o – La! How pathetic English sounds to you in comparison. “¿Cómo se dice frijoles negros?” And to that flowing question reflecting the very curves of Earth itself you have to respond with the unnaturally enunciated syllables: “Black beans.” English cannot compete with this kind of melodic majesty, you think. Spanish is music. Spanish is poetry. Spanish is Life.

The sun shines on your shoulders through the open air roof and a cool breeze blows hair across your warm laughing face. Even indoors you are tickled by nature. In Guatemala, you can sense the deep arteries linking the consciousness of the inhabitants to Pachamama, Mother Earth, despite history’s attempts to sever the connection. Pachamama presents herself as a naked force here, symbolized in the ever-present volcanos that puff smoke with each sunrise and the water that gleams with the life of tropical birds, laundresses, and boats speeding to bordering towns. You are on a dock protruding into Lake Atitlan - the Heart of the World according to the Maya. This is a special place. Using ancient gestures to be sure you understand him, your wine-purple-faced Guatemalan friend implores you in liquid Spanish to always remember to thank the Land, the Water, the Air and the Fire, the elements from which we draw our power and without which we are nothing. Tears swell in your eyes. The dock sways beneath you and the moon is full.

Guatemala has nourished your body and filled up your soul. You love its authenticity and the natural freedom that you feel here. You wish the whole world was more like Guatemala: happier, more human; more alive; less depressed; less synthetic; less stressed. Because you surrendered yourself to it, Guatemala settled your consciousness into your body where it belongs. It reminded you who you are and who your Mother is. She implored you to keep your arms open for your brothers and sisters and to always offer love and encouragement to children. A visit to Guatemala showed you how to enjoy being alive again. The words are a part of you now: Qué rico, me amigo. Esta vida! This Life, my friend! How rich!