San Juan Co-operatives and Homestays

Welcome to San Juan

Today is the 1st December and this blog covers the 29th and 30th November. We have now been travelling for 13 weeks so means we are a quarter of a way through our travels, assuming the finances allow us to travel for a full year. The time is flying.

Back to the travels, we headed by boat to San Juan, which is a small town and quite popular with tourists. We had a couple of hours to look around, it has lots of interesting and colourful streets. For a large part, every surface is painted with scenes or bright patterns. Even a building site covered with corrugated sheeting was oainted to look likd bamboo. There are decorations overhead, which are lit up overnight, such as painted sombreros and cut out figures of people. Ideas for our pergola when we get back!

The Co-operatives of San Juan

After some lunch we had some group tours to some local co-operative groups.

The first to a Mayan bee centre. This was really interesting: the Guatemalan bees don't look like ours, some appeared more like small flies and the bigger ones were completely black. None of the ones they kept had stings. Another garden idea here were some comfy seats made from car tyres.

Next, we went to a chocolate factory, and after quick presentation we tasted and then bought some chocolate. We opted for the dark chocolate with chilli

The last visit for the day was to a weaving centre. A women's co-operative with 80% of the prices going to the weaver and 20% to keep the centre going. We found this the most interesting, impressed by the effort that goes into everything. Karen bought a lovely scarf from here and it comes with a label showing who made it (opting for this scarf as Sheila made it and her mums name) and how long it took to make (2 weeks), which is a nice touch.

Homestays: A True Cultural Experience

After the weaving demonstrations we were all paired with ladies from the co-operative for our homestay. Myself and Karen were with Maricela. We went to her house and met her son Pedro and daughter Juanita. We chatted to the family with the help of our very limited Spanish, Google translate and Juanita's English. We had games of Jenga, then a crazy card game taco, pizza, cheese, goat, cat. We plan to buy this as great fun. When Pedro senior came home we had tea. The tortillas I made caused much amusement. Worse was to come as Pedro senior's father came round later and also had tea, the first "tortilla" he got was one of mine. He looked at it slightly confused put it down and got another. Maricela pointed to me, which at least broke the ice with lots of laughter. The chickens enjoyed my stay as well, I dropped a couple of tortillas as I was making them and the dough was set aside to feed the chickens.

We had a good night's sleep at the homestay and after breakfast rejoined the group although all were varied it seemed we had all enjoyed the homestay and found it a great experience.

Back to Antigua

We then headed back to Antigua, stopping for a pottery demonstration on route. It was interesting but no one really had the space to buy anything, I hope Intrepid at least give them something for letting us visit.

Back in Antigua we had our last meal as a full group and said goodbye to some people who are starting an overnight mountain walk in the morning. Seems quite sad as the group has gelled well and we've gotten along brilliantly. Our ages ranging from 23 to 68. People from Canada (living in US), Germany, Australia and England. As well as an incredible mix of backgrounds and jobs.

One last surprise as we were leaving the restaurant, someone mentioned a big parade in the town centre and we headed there to see a procession of Christmas floats. This included Santa with a snow machine, not quite what we were expecting and it reminded us all we nearly in December.

I would definitely recommend this sort of group trip , just be aware of the class of trip. Ours was "basic" which meant very few meals included and cheap but generally okay hotels. Getting a hot shower seemed to be hit and miss but we did OK.