Adventure Travel Guatemala: The Road Less Traveled… - December 16, 1999
…could be that way for a reason. A narrow dirt road, on a steep mountain, waaay above the lake is not the best place for a dead end. I got some good pictures and I got to put Baby Blue into four-wheel drive, but it was a little hairy turning around. Yiiikes! Yesterday I took the highway around the lake and today I took a road much closer to the lake. Most tourists take a boat to one or two specific villages. Each boat is greeted by a flock of merchants and local guides hungry for the tourist Quetzales. I was able to visit the smaller villages that don’t get any tourist traffic. The brilliant colored outfits that Guatemala is famous for are different in every village. At the time of the Spanish conquest, each village was assigned different colors as a way of keeping tabs on the Natives. The colors are now a source of pride, like school colors, if you will. “We’re from the blue village, Rah, Rah, Rah! We grow onions, Sis, Boom, Bah!” OKAY, they’re not that excited, but the colors are awesome!
