People flock to Chichicastenango (mercifully shortened to Chichi) on Tuesdays and Sundays for the huge market that sprawls across the small town. That’s the only reason tourists come here really, so much so that the tourist shuttles only run on market days, dropping you off in the morning and taking you back to the lake or Antigua in the afternoon. I don’t get this obsession with markets, every Lonely Planet bangs on about them. “Don’t miss the market / bazaar / souk”, like you can’t possibly experience a country properly without being charged seven times the going rate for a sarong / Buddha statue / some manner of armoured exotic fruit covered in spikes that you have no idea how to eat. Anyway!

Chichi is probably the most authentic town on the Gringo Trail, at least for us, so for that extra shot of authenticity we decided to spend a couple of nights there. Y’know, to see what it was like when it wasn’t overrun with foreigners. A boat and three buses later and we were shuffling along the cobbles through a market because apparently Chichi just likes markets. I’d found us a very cheap place to stay by scouring Google Maps and finding WhatsApp numbers and where we ended up had a pretty cracking view of the cemetery, and I do love a cemetery but not in a “lock up your mausoleum” kind of way so you can stop looking at me like that. Aside from that we very much got what we paid for, and apparently what we paid for was a tiny room with a funky smell and the joy of sharing a toilet with someone with an inability to piss IN the bowl.

So, off we fucked in search of things to put in our eyeholes. I’d seen something on the map called the Museum of Masks which sounded pretty badass so we wandered up to that for a gander. It’s free, but it’s just a couple of rooms full of masks with no explanation in any language of the history or significance. You can take photos in one room but not the other and a woman will stare at you very intently the whole time to make sure you don’t touch anything. So yeah. Room full of creepy faces. Cool. Let’s go look at the cemetery instead, you know where you are with a cemetery.

I’d been told that the colourful graves here were Mayan and the white graves were Catholic and they do seem to blend the two belief systems in Chichi. There were at least two large shelters, stained black on the inside from the fires built for the Mayan rituals. There was a bloke doing whatever it is they do, they burn all manner of things including eggs and candles, but they don’t light the wick, they burn the whole thing in the fire like they failed to read the instruction manual or something. I was kind of kicking myself for not accepting the offer of a tour when we arrived, at least we’d know what we were looking at, but my Spanish is nowhere near good enough to get anything our of a tour I don’t think. I’d probably still be nodding and grinning inanely without a clue as to what was going on but I’d be several quetzales poorer for it too.

The following day we headed to the market for some cheap eats for breakfast before launching ourselves into the chaos of the market in full flow. I’m very proud of how far Tarrant has come with her willingness to eat food served from a vat in surroundings of questionable hygiene. It’s where the tastiest food is at, the cheapest too, and you can get delicious, filling meals on a tiny budget at the markets. I remember her horror when I first led her to a food stall in Bolivia and we sat on tiny, plastic stools, shovelling potatoes, eggs and pasta into our chops right next to a drain. Fortunately her desire to not run out of money outweighs her need for a clearly displayed hygiene rating and she now fully accepts that there is a direct correlation between how fucking good the food is and how likely you are to expel said food in liquid form from your arse roughly four hours later.

As for the rest of the market, the stalls had spread right out of the centre of the small town, down the side streets, selling everything from practical stuff like kitchenware, to fruit and veg, traditional Mayan clothing, and souvenirs aimed at tourists. You will be asked if you want to buy all of it and you will seriously consider the logistics of stuffing an entire Mayan outfit that you will literally never fucking wear into your already bursting backpack because it’s difficult not to get swept up in the buzz. I had to be physically restrained from buying a carved stone skull. The fuck am I going to do with it? Hold it aloft and quote Shakespeare at it?

But it’s not just the markets that are worth pointing your eyeballs at, the steps outside of the churches were alive with activity. Catholics were swinging thuribles full of incense around outside the door, other devotees were building small pyres on the alters at the bottom of the steps for whatever Mayan rituals they were going to perform. Flower sellers had set up on the steps too, it was beautiful chaos. The churches are built on the sites of former Mayan temples and the original steps remain so the Mayan/Catholic fusion is woven into the architecture too.

We went back up to the cemetery, largely to feed the dogs we’d seen up there last time, but it’s actually worth dragging yourself up the hill on account of the fact there were loads of Mayan rituals going on. A few tourists stood with their guide taking photos, I settled for taking stalkeresque photos with the less-than-adequate zoom on my little waterproof camera because my actual camera had decided it was done with the humidity and volcano dust and sand and general abuse, and had given up several days ago. I do wish I knew what was going on though. Maybe I should learn more Spanish beyond ordering rice or chips and come back some day.

So basically Chichi market is just one huge photo opportunity but it’s a chaotic, colourful, vibrant photo opportunity. You probably don’t need to stay overnight to be fair, a day trip on a shuttle gives you more than enough time to see and do everything that the town has to offer. You can pretty much walk around it in the time it takes you to say, “Chichicastenango”. We finished up our stay in this authentic Guatemalan town by heading to Dominos for dinner and I must say, the lad behind the counter did very well to hide his horror when I asked for Tarrant’s pizza sin queso. We’d originally booked to stay here one more night but it really wasn’t necessary and we’d sort of fallen a little bit in love with Antigua so we’d decided to head back there for our last few days in Central America.

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

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Chichicastenango, El Quiché, Guatemala

Stayed at: Hotel El Teléfono, Chichicastenango

Useful shit to know…

How To Get From San Pedro La Laguna To Chichicastenango By Public Transport

• Shuttles do go to Chichi from Antigua and Lake Atitlan but only on Sundays and Thursdays for the market. If you want to go outside of these times you need to use public transport.
• From San Pedro you need to take a lancha to Panajachel.
• This should cost Q25 and you pay after the journey. Unfortunately they’ll generally charge foreigners whatever they please but in this occasion we were charged correctly.
• It took about 40 minutes as they’ll stop at other towns and villages around the lake to pick up and drop off passengers.
• Once in Pana, look for a colectivo or bus to Sololá. We were heading towards Carretera Sololá-Panajachel but had to divert due to roadworks and found the former at 14.741228, -91.162123.
• It took 20 minutes and cost Q7. Everyone else paid the same as us. I’ve been told it’s Q5 on a chicken bus.
• You’ll be dropped at the main square where you can find a bus to Los Encuentros.
• I was told it should cost Q5 and this is what we were charged. It took about 35 minutes.
• You’re dropped at a junction where you can find a bus or colectivo to Chichicastenango, shortened to Chichi.
• It took about half an hour and Q15 each which is obviously way too much but it was actually the first time we’d been overcharged all day. We were actually charged Q7 on the way back in a minibus.