The next morning we decide to go to Cafe Welchez for coffee and Arty joins us. We go back to the hotel to have breakfast which is pretty simple and tasty. I am not hungry since I am nervous about making sure we are financially OK once we reach Puerto Barrios. The others are already sitting in the bus so we hurry and put in our luggage and join the rest . We stop on the way to Quirigua for lunch and see rows and rows of coffee being dried close to heavy-laden mango trees. We pick up some beans and they have a thin membrane covering the seed that looks almost light brown in color. Arty tells us to hurry since there is a football game starting soon and the crowds will be in to watch the game there. We order our food and start watching the game. Barcelona leads; Paco and Juanita start dancing with joy. Actually the crowd is also cheering Barcelona; apparently Milan is not popular here.
We leave just in time to get to Quirigua. This reminds me of Copan; however, here the structures are made of sandstone and tells the story of the deceitful leader who captures the king of Copan and becomes the new king: a story of intrigue, deception and killings. There are several zoomorphs, representing mythical animals. Quite impressive.
We leave Quirigua and finally find ourselves in the port area: Puerto Barrios. This place is considered to be a little ‘dodgy’ being a port town and has a very interesting demographic mix. There are a lot of Afro-caribbean people as well as Indians from India who mixed with the local population and are called ‘coolies”. We see a ‘Tajmahal-like’ cemetery indicating the presence of Indians here. We move on to get to our hotel, Amatique Bay Resort.
Tags: guatemala, mayan structures
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