McBerkoBlog

Now that we've been home from Guatemala for several weeks, we sat down over sushi and discussed what we missed (food, culture, environment) vs. what we weren't as sad to leave behind (some convenience and health factors). Things We Miss Food! We ate so much great food on our trip. The prices were low enough that we could eat out frequently, and there were so many options that we didn't even visit all the restaurants we hoped to. For such a small town, there was a wide variety of international cuisine, and we mixed those with plenty of traditional Guatemalan options. We enjoyed a lot of Guatemalan coffee too, and I know Ruth will miss the frequent stops for flavored iced coffee. Our favorites were mostly simple things - super ripe fruit (mango!), being able to buy fresh cut fruit as a snack in the park, the handmade hot tortillas with "squeezy beans", and our near-daily avocado toast with always perfectly ripe avocado. The girls loved that cheap smoothies were offe...

We spent the first weekend in July on "a vacation from our vacation," swapping our normal Antigua routines for a visit to Lake Atitlan. The lake is the deepest lake in Central America, a huge volcanic crater. The majority of the population here is Maya and many different Maya languages are spoken, with Spanish as their second language. Saturday Our shuttle picked us up around 9 a.m. for our ~2.5-3 hr drive to Panachel, a larger town (~15K ppl) on one end of the lake. Pana was the first place where we saw older Guatemalan men in traditional clothing. (In Antigua, many women wear the beautiful traditional clothes but we never saw any men.)  We ate lunch at a traditional Guatemalan place where Bill had a fish fried whole, then walked to the dock to catch a boat taxi over to the small village of San Marcos. Boats are the easiest way to get around the lake because it's surrounded by so many volcanos and other mountains that there aren't really any big roads circling it. Pe...

This was one of our most anticipated activities while researching our trip, because come on, how cool is roasting marshmallows on an active volcano? Pacaya's last big eruption was in 2010, sending ash raining all the way to the capital 30 miles away. Lava rivers flowed even last year. We weren't expecting to see any lava (and didn't), but weren't sure what it would be like exactly. This was one case where we didn't want to research too much and spoil the surprise of the experience. We had a 6 a.m. shuttle pickup, bumped around the town's cobblestone streets for a while picking up other passengers, then started the hour-long ride to the national park. We passed through smaller villages on the ride and got some peeks into life there: horses carrying cargo, guys packed like sardines into the back of a truck headed to work, women hand washing clothes at a central public laundry pool.  At the entrance to the park, we had a quick bathroom break (water at sink but not ...

I had read about this hike before our trip but was not planning to do it. Overnight backpacking is more up Bill's alley than mine. My typical camping rule is "bathroom required," and there are no bathrooms on a volcano. :) But in the end, Bill got sick, we only had a few days before we flew back home, and it just looked too cool, so I signed myself up for this adventure and hoped for the best. It was a volcano weekend - we'd just visited Volcano Pacaya the day before. View of Volcano Fuego from camp on Acatenango I booked with a tour company called Wicho & Charlie's , liked their social and eco-conscious approach which even included all plant-based food. When I arrived there at 7 a.m., they handed out little juice shots - beet, orange, and ginger - to help with the altitude (not sure if that works but it was delicious), and then we got to "shopping." Temperature at the top of the volcano can get down to 30-40 degrees F, so they recommended everyone c...

Real talk here. Why? Because it's hard to plan trips like this and accurately estimate how much you'll spend, so I always appreciate seeing details about how much it cost other people. Maybe this info will do the same for someone else. Costs of course will vary based on what you value. We wanted to try a lot of local food and experiences so weren't trying to skimp on those, but weren't throwing money around lavishly either. Volcano Pacaya We were gone for 30 days. I won't make you scroll: our total net cost for this trip for our family of 4 was ~$3,050 . That's cheaper than our typical 7-10 day trips, including our prior trips to Germany, Costa Rica, Los Angeles, and Boston/Maine. I'm specifically looking at our net costs to understand how much we spent over  a typical month at home, so am subtracting out any normal monthly costs not incurred to more accurately reflect the true additional cost of being somewhere else for the month. Let's break it down: T...

We have been eating out at least once a day, a mix of places enjoyed by the locals and more expensive touristy places. I was expecting that our food costs here would be about the same as home, and they are close, with the difference being that we're eating out at least once a day here vs. not often at home. It'd be easy to eat very cheaply here by sticking to traditional places or eating at home more, but I'd rather enjoy as many places as we can while we're here! The tourist places are a little less than US pre-pandemic prices, ~$45-50 for dinner for the 4 of us including beer or other drinks for everyone.  Local places are half that or less, breakfast ~$3 and lunch/dinner ~$5. Our best deal was probably this traditional breakfast - coffee, basket of hot tortillas, beans, scrambled eggs, cheese, sweet plantains, and watermelon, all for $2.80 (including tip): One of Ruth's early favorite meals was at a traditional Guatemalan restaurant in the middle of the market wh...

 Highlights from our second week in Antigua: Santo Domingo del Cerro museums and zip line course ChocoMuseo chocolate class Pool time with friends More great food Santo Domingo del Cerro We visited this cool art museum last Saturday, a series of small galleries in separate buildings surrounded by beautiful gardens, sculptures, and mosaics, all on the top of a hill overlooking the city. We learned about Efrain Recinos, "the Picasso of Guatemala", who created most of the work permanently exhibited here.  Side note: Are you getting sick of the iMovie "Magic Movies" yet? I am, but not so much so that I'm willing to spend the time to edit stuff together on my own. ;)  After we explored the grounds and galleries, we found the zip line course. We did the hour-long short course of 8 zip lines and 2 hanging bridges. Zadie said it was scary at first, but then "super fun after the first one". I was a little surprised both a) that she made it through the course (...

Some highlights from our first week in Antigua: 1. El Cerro de la Cruz From one edge of downtown, we hiked up a steep but relatively short paved path to El Cerro de la Cruz ("the hill of the cross"), and were rewarded with great views of downtown and the surrounding mountains and volcanos. Well, almost great views of the volcanos - that big cloud behind the cross is covering the top of one volcano. 2. Iglesia y Convento de la Merced We tried to see this church last Saturday, but the church itself was closed for a morning mass. The attached former convent was open, however, and we practically had it to ourselves. A series of earthquakes mostly destroyed it in the 1700s. The girls and I returned yesterday to check out the church's mosaics. 3. Valhalla Macadamia Nut Farm We drove 15-20 mins outside Antigua to a nearby organic macadamia nut farm, where we took a short free tour to learn about the farm and their mission to provide free trees to rural farmers. The girls got to ...

We've never stayed away from home so long before, so wanted to find a place where we'd be comfortable and the girls would be happy for a month. Braver folks might book two nights in a hotel, then upon arrival, immediately meet with a real estate agent to tour and lease a place for the month. While that would have been cheaper (and stressful!), we booked through AirBnB for ease of use and peace of mind, filtering for places with a pool and separate rooms for the girls. So far, we're happy! We're a half mile from the central plaza and markets, and basically the entire town is within walking distance. Here's a photo compilation overview: I'm so glad we booked a place with outdoor activities. Zadie LOVES the trampoline, jumping multiple times a day. She even met a friend around her age one day, though it's usually empty. There are two pools, one shallow and one deep, but as we expected, neither is heated and they are pretty chilly since the air temp has been 60-...

 Zadie woke up early this morning and wrote in her journal about Guatemala:     "Gwotumolu is cool and osum. A litl uv both." Before we get to why, I'll talk about our travel here. Stories about the actual mechanics of travel are inevitably boring (delayed for some reason or another, spoiler alert: we got there in the end), but I'll record it for posterity's sake anyway. I won't be offended if you skip reading this post. :)  Current COVID rules for Guatemala do not require fully vaccinated travelers to provide negative test results. All our American Airlines info agreed, but still wouldn't let me check in online unless I attested that I had negative test results in hand. We ended up going to the airport 3 hours early just in case we needed to get a rapid test, but they checked our vaccine cards and we got our boarding passes. Hooray!  RDU must have staffing shortages, because the majority of the restaurants were closed when we looked for dinner. We ate, pl...

A week out from our month-long trip, the question we've gotten most so far is "Why Guatemala?" There are many reasons we chose to visit Antigua, Guatemala after seriously looking at several other places that fit our criteria (Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Columbia, Puerto Rico). Short list of most important factors: time zone/"workability", language, "walkability", activities, weather, and cost. Longer answer: Time Zone/Work Bill will be working remotely much of the time we're there. His supervisor doesn't care where he's physically working since their team is fully remote, but joining meetings would be difficult if we were outside of the Americas. We focused our search on Central and South America and referenced "best places for digital nomads" lists for ideas. Guatemala uses the equivalent of US Mountain Time, and is supposed to have reasonably reliable and fast internet. Language We previously decided that we should learn Span...