It's a catch-all term for a number of indigenous groups with similar culture and languages - along the lines of 'Slavic' or 'Polynesian'.īut it is not a culture that has been pliantly subsumed. The Maya tend to be thought of in terms of temple ruins, ancient calendars and failed civilisations, but the Maya make up approximately 41% of Guatemala's modern day population. The majority of people in San Juan are Tz'utujil, one of the 21 different Mayan groups living in Guatemala. The corrugated iron roofs of otherwise submerged houses provide a stark warning about the dangers of building too close to the shore. When it swept through in 2005, the fierce rains and accompanying landslides raised the water level of the lake. Just before mooring at San Juan de Laguna, the effects of Hurricane Stan are evident. Lanchas - fishing boats turned water taxis - connect the towns and villages around Atitlán, with a cargo of locals with shopping bags and blissfully contented day-trippers. The region's ever present volcanoes dominate the view, with Volcan San Pedro rising from the water's edge. Lake Atitlán is a rub your eyes and double-take sort of place, accessible only via a precipitous road down through the fortress-like ring of mountains surrounding it. It doesn't have to, though - the setting does the talking. It's an amiably lazy place, all flip-flops and beer in hand, not feigning pretence at anything more demanding. It became a hippy hangout in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, and many of them are still here, running cafes and trinket souvenir shops. It's the same story in Panajachel, the main lakeside resort town in the Western Highlands. The language schools mean the gringos are having as much of an impact on Guatemala now as the Spanish did three centuries ago. Elsewhere, a peek behind a door reveals dozens of young travellers lined up across wooden school desks, stumbling through nascent Spanish with their local tutors.
Saberico, for instance, looks like a deli from the outside, yet venture inside and you'll discover a secret garden of ginger plants and birdsong. The cocooning dreaminess is a joy to succumb to, however, especially if you start poking into courtyards. Jade jewellery shops, travel agents, leather-specialist boutiques and pan-global restaurants tuck into handsome old buildings that are very much Castillan, not Central American. There's an edgeless, omnipresent charm that can con you into thinking the Spanish conquest of the Americas was all about civilisation and higher purpose rather than rapacious greed for gold and devastating exploitation of indigenous people. La Merced is one of many convents, churches and monastic complexes - some reduced to free-standing facades, others faithfully restored - that bring knowingly swoonsome grandeur to the cobbled streets. Before 1773's devastation, it was the capital not just of Guatemala but of Central America. The city, tightly hemmed into a bowl by the volatile, thickly-forested hills around it, is very much Spanish Guatemala. And it's a spot - a moment - that perfectly captures Antigua's colonial time-warp fantasy. It's not really a roof - the earthquake took that too - but what remains of La Merced's upper cloister. This is somewhere the protagonists would agree to meet in a lusciously hammy spy thriller. But the crumbling red brick arches and pockets of earthquake-ravaged ruins, left unrepaired since 1773, heighten a sense of lost city make-believe. The dome of the daintily-restored baroque church - all yellow paint marzipan and white stucco icing - attempts to compete with the surrounding volcanoes.
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