Alan has always wanted to get to Tikal Archaeological site so we booked ourselves onto a ten-day ‘Caravan’ tour of Guatemala in early March. I was rather concerned about the heat and humidity of the jungle but I found that with an air-conditioned bus, insect repellant when hiking and comfy hotels each evening I managed well.

Ancient pottery in the museum was interesting but contemporary pottery wasn’t anything special. I had warned Al that I’d probably be unable to resist buying textiles though. Sure enough, they are delightful, and it was marvellous to walk in the Mayan cities and villages and find almost all the women wearing traditional clothing. On Lake Atitlan where we took a boat trip over to the village of Santiago Atitlan we found that some of the men also wear traditional hand-woven embroidered trousers.

I’ve put together a Picasa album of 100 photos of the first half of our tour and will assemble another covering the second half in a day or two. The photos have been taken by both of us and I have to admit that often Al’s are the best. His SLR does well in low light. I have the better lens for getting closer to distant birds etc but it is only a pocket camera and isn’t good on cloudy days. It’s a dilemma because Al found changing lenses to be a total pain when we were hiking around Tikal.

Sit back and enjoy a little slide show of tropical Guatemala.

Notice the Quetzal birds on these pieces of backstrap-loom handwoven textiles.

https://picasaweb.google.com/112208740085943894765/Guatemala1March2014