Guatemala, its nature and what is it all about with the Maya

So, lets start with where you are from. And have you heard before about Guatemala? Because about 5 years ago I havent heard anything from this couuntry with a surfface of 108.889 km2. But now within a couple of weeks there will be another President election and than all the demonstrations. So I bet there are more people in the world who heard something about Guatemala.
But beside demonstrations and Blue-and-White-Flashmops on big squares in Guatemala City and a resigning cabinet
there is way much more.

Guatemala is a beautiful country with many different types of landscape and a long and rough history. Its not my intention to bore you with 20 pages of Guatemalan history  but maybe I can explain some basics and show you some beautiful spots which have a important history. And maybe you wanna see these areas after reading this post.

Guatemala has many different climate zones and a great number of varied landscapes. There is the Costa Sur on the Pacific Coast with a hot climate and mostly banana and platains and sugarcane agriculture next to fishing and sesame. With its beautiful mangrooves and waves does it welcome to relax, surf and chill out in some hanmocks in the shade of a palmtree while drinking coconut water or Piña coladas.
One fourth of the surface is the Highland, the Altiplano. The Mountain range is between 1500 and 3000 meters and with 4220 meters is the Tajumulco Volcano the highest volcano and peek of Central America. Most of the Guatemalan citizen are settled here and you find many indigenous handcraft and tipical agriculture as mais, tomato, potatoes, beans in the Highland. And of course many Coffee Plantations.
In the Southeast, el Oriente, is the climate hot and dry and just close to the big river (Motagua) you find agricultre, the main part of the region is dessert.
The Northeast around the Izabal Lake and the Carribean Coast is humed warm and its landscape mostly tropical rainforest.
More rainy days and a moderate climate with tropcical rainforest as well as cloudforest and many limestone mountains can be found in the central highlands around Coban.
The biggest part of the country but with less habitants is the lowlands of Peten. Mostly you find tropical rainforest with limestone areas which made it really important for the Maya to settle down here first.

The Mayan Culture has about 3000 years of  history and is basically the time before the Spanish conquered Central America. But the Maya never disappeared completly although the mayan empire broke down long time before the Conquerer arrived. Still many different Mayan languages are spoken in the south of Mexico, in Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Famous are the Maya for their Corn cultivation, their mathematics and of course the calender system.
Today about 40 % of the Guatemalan habitans (5 Milion people) are counted as Maya. Nowadays, the religon of the indigenous people is combined with christian aspects but you can find mayan ceremonies and rites on archeaological sites or churches basically in the highlands of Guatemala.

The first foundation of Mayan Cities was probably around 2000 before Christ in Belize, the first establishment in Guatemala is dated 1100 before Christ. Only 700 before Christ they settled down in villages in Tikal. The first big City with the highest known pyramide of 72 m is Mirador in the jungle in the North of Peten, Guatemala. you can follow the Mayan Highway (Sacbe) to visit several sites including Mirador. Its a six day hike in the rainforest of Peten.


Important for the Maya was always the Religion and the sacrifice of animals or humans, in general blood as the center of the soul and vitality.
Next to decapitate or alive burying a common death was to drown the victim, either high society member of the same tribe or captured warrios or kings from the enemy.

Usually in use for this was a Cenote, hole in the limestone rock a through a Ashton Collapse.
you can find many of them in Yuakatan, Mexico  (connection with the biggest underground river system) and as well in Guatemala. The region around cenotes is usually fruitful and cenotes could used as wells also which probably causes that the Maya settled close to rivers and underground rivers.
You can see the beauty of Flora and Fauna with its biodiversity and almost untouched.

The Mayan Cosmos exists in basically three atmospheres, heaven, earth and the underground. According to their percepcion just suicides, women, kids and sacrificed people got straight to heaven. Everybody else got to Xibalba ("place of fear"), a realm in the underground where 12 gods adjudicated and humans got proofed in fights and examinations before they could ascend to the gods inn heaven.

For the Maya, caves had been the entrances to the underworld and still today you can find mayan ceremonies in caves as well as cave painting.

Come with us and explore the Entrance to the Mayan Underworld! Either walking, sometimes crawling, hiking, swiming, abseiling or rivertubing. And explore the nature and landscape in Guatemala. I bet you have never seen so many different types of green, never experienced the complete silence and darkness in a cave and never listened to so many various bird and animal noises!