116 images Created 13 Sep 2012
Guatemala maya
A small kaleidoscopic country full of lush green and scenic landscapes, vibrant traditional costumes that many Mayan women still wear, and colorful markets with their piles of flowers and fruit. Guatemala, unlike many Latin American countries, still has a large indigenous Mayan community, around 50 per cent of the population, that makes the country so visually fascinating, The Mayan way of life remains remarkably untouched by modernity and, now that the country full recovered from the years of civil war, traveling to the highland mountains is the best way to enjoy the Maya’s lifestyle, because each village preserves the ancestral traditions. Most travellers who come to Guatemala start off in the old and charming colonial town of Antigua Antigua that has been named a Unesco world heritage site for its beautiful colonial and Spanish Baroque architecture. A stunning, theatrical baroque landscape of Spanish colonial architecture, with cobblestone streets lined with beautiful palaces and churches uncovered by frequent earthquakes and eruptions of the nearby volcanoes.
In Antigua, but more often in the Mayan towns of the highlands, the Guatemalan churches offer a unique sensorial and visual experience, a colonial architecture oiutside but a hybrid of Spanish-origin Catholicism and ancient Mayan practices inside, with statues of saints dressed up with Mayan traditional robes. Some villages still worship local deities, such as the highland town of Santiago Iztapa which reveres Maximόn, a wooden figure drinking and cigar-toting brand, the most surreal manifestation of tihis hybrid belief systems chased by the local catholic churches but protected by a Mayan brotherhood, a blend of a Mayan god and the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado,
At the edge of time the beautiful Lake Atitlán, the deepest lake in Central America, is encircled by little Maya villages, fed by fertile land with a way of life going back at least 100 years, In Santiago Atitlán for exemple the women's blue huipiles, a kind of sleeveless tunic, are covered in dozens of embroidered birds, and they are proud of their heritage, the more interest you take in them, the happier they are to share it with you. Also in Chichicastenango, a place perhaps too much crowded with hundreds of tourists but also amazing for the synchretic ceremonies on the steps of its church and for a colorful and famous market.
The most fascinating and real experience is travelling to the highlands villages around the town of Quetzaltenango where the Mayan population is concentrated. Many women still dress in their traditional hand-loomed costumes, and this mean that in a village everyone is wearing red and black stripes but in another village few kilometers down the road they might be in blue and purple.
In Antigua, but more often in the Mayan towns of the highlands, the Guatemalan churches offer a unique sensorial and visual experience, a colonial architecture oiutside but a hybrid of Spanish-origin Catholicism and ancient Mayan practices inside, with statues of saints dressed up with Mayan traditional robes. Some villages still worship local deities, such as the highland town of Santiago Iztapa which reveres Maximόn, a wooden figure drinking and cigar-toting brand, the most surreal manifestation of tihis hybrid belief systems chased by the local catholic churches but protected by a Mayan brotherhood, a blend of a Mayan god and the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado,
At the edge of time the beautiful Lake Atitlán, the deepest lake in Central America, is encircled by little Maya villages, fed by fertile land with a way of life going back at least 100 years, In Santiago Atitlán for exemple the women's blue huipiles, a kind of sleeveless tunic, are covered in dozens of embroidered birds, and they are proud of their heritage, the more interest you take in them, the happier they are to share it with you. Also in Chichicastenango, a place perhaps too much crowded with hundreds of tourists but also amazing for the synchretic ceremonies on the steps of its church and for a colorful and famous market.
The most fascinating and real experience is travelling to the highlands villages around the town of Quetzaltenango where the Mayan population is concentrated. Many women still dress in their traditional hand-loomed costumes, and this mean that in a village everyone is wearing red and black stripes but in another village few kilometers down the road they might be in blue and purple.
