Before leaving Chichi, we took a short hike up to Pascual Ab鈥檃j, which is a Maya sacred site that survived the arrival of the Spanish. There used to be a carved idol at the site, but some Catholic Action members defaced it in the 1950s. It鈥檚 still an active site, though. You can see real Mayans conducting rituals there every day. Lost and Found Even the cows knew we were lost ...
Twice a week the main square and surrounding streets of Chichicastenango are transformed into the largest open air market in Central America. People come from miles around to buy and sell goods. Some are grown, some are reared, and many are hand-made. When we have visited in years past, there have been hundreds to thousands of tourists combing the market for bargains, but this year was very different. We have always wanted to stay at Hotel Santo Tomas, but it was always completely full, forcing us to stay in some of the other hotels in town. This year we had no trouble booking 2 large rooms. And when we checked in, we found out we were the only guests in the entire hotel. They told us if we wanted to use hot water to call them and they would turn on the boiler for us. They were not running it because the hotel was empty. That probably meant the other hotels in town were also empty. And that probably meant there were no tourists in town for the market. ...