A Festive Christmas Tour of Panajachel, Guatemala

Do you wonder how other countries celebrate holidays?

When you think of 'Christmas', you probably have a vision in your mind of what that includes. Maybe it's snow, a Christmas tree, presents, egg nog and Christmas carols.

Travel offers a new point of view. It shows you that what's 'normal' for you is completely foreign to someone else. It teaches you a new 'normal' -- they way it's 'always' been for hundreds of thousands of people -- for generations.

When you have that sort of mind-expanding realization, you'll begin to understand why travel is so addicting.

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Where ever we are in the world, it's home. This year, home was Panajachel, Guatemala.

(Last year we were almost homeless, but then we celebrated at Laguna Bacalar, Mexico. We remember wondering 'where in the world' we would be for Christmas in 2012. We would have never guessed that it would be so close to Mexico.) 😉

Because we've already been in Pana for so long (can you believe it, 10 months now!) we know what Pana is 'usually' like. Now we got to see her in all her festive glory.

I thought I would share it with you with a nice little photo tour of the city.

(Click this link if you want to see how we celebrated Christmas in Guatemala -- including piñatas, fondue, fireworks and getting shot.)

The Mercado

Pana's has a good-sized daily market, but on Sundays (and sometimes Wednesdays?) market size increases.

For the Christmas season, the everyday market is bigger and better -- with vendors filling up adjacent streets and offering imported items you can't usually find.

Gift baskets are wrapped and ready to be given away.

Look at this baby sitting in the apples 🙂

This mossy stuff, and strings of orange fruit (anyone know what it is?) are a popular holiday item.

Mandarins are in season -- 10Q for a dozen. Aaliyah is buying herself one.

Grapes are an imported specialty item.

This is the lady we usually buy our vegetables from.

Lots of spices...

Chocolate is a regular item, but I actually bought some this time... for chocolate fondue!

There's usually flowers at the market, but these Gerber daisies are special for the Christmas season.

And the poinsettias (which grow naturally in Guatemala -- there's poinsettia trees all around town).

Christmas candles

This is colored sawdust... used for decorating. It's the same thing they use in many of the 'carpets' for Semana Santa (Holy Week).

This is the 'pig lady' where Greg buys menudo (pig innards) for our dog, Epic, and where he ordered 47 lbs of meat for our Christmas feast (there was 21 kids and 9 adults). There's actually a really funny story about this... maybe I'll tell it sometime 🙂

Around Town

This is one of the kids favorite stores -- the 3 Quet store (aka the $0.40 store). They were buying Christmas gifts for each other. (It was so CROWDED in the store, between people and ALL THE STUFF!!!)

Another 3 Quet store (there's a dozen of them in town).

A Santa piñata

Fireworks are a BIG deal for Christmas in Guatemala. It looked like a U.S. Fourth of July with all the firework stands around town (of course you'll never see these fireworks for sale in the United States) 🙂

Everybody loves fireworks for Christmas!

More grapes, this time for sale in front of the liberia (paper store).            

More fireworks, apples, marshmallows and cookies.

On Christmas Eve, many stores put these pine needles on the floor and out in front of their shops. It's something they also do for Semana Santa. I've heard it represents the palm leaves that they laid before Christ as he rode into Jerusalem. 

The Christmas tree in the town square. This is the second one they put up this December. The first one burnt down!

Santander

Even Santander, Panajachel's tourist street, got into the Christmas spirit... just a little bit.

The People

Panajachel has lots of colorful people. I saw some familiar faces around town, and some new ones as well.

I've seen this cute little lady many times before.

I actually saw this man at a party on Christmas Eve.

Pana has it's regular panhandlers, but I've never seen this woman before.

Or him...

Or him...

This is how most of the traditional women carry their babies.

Wow! Look at that herd of gringos! Hey, do I know them???

What was Christmas like around your city?

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