Santo Tomas

The market is the reason to make the journey here. It’s the best street market we’ve visited so far, and we came away with the hold-all we’d packed for the shopping filled. We found the best quality fabric near the church. Bindy, our tour manager and sometime driver, had advised us to get to the Catholic Church early for the Mayan procession and ritual outside while the Christian service went on inside. Thomas, our local guide, took us to a second church where the Mayans also went. It was near the Maya Palace Hotel and less crowded, so we got a great view of this ancient, paradoxical event. Guatemalans are shorter than us, which meant we could see over the crowd and keep track of each other. We stayed at St. Thomas, one of the most basic hotels I’ve ever been in, and it gives the xxx on North Island a close run in the Spartan Stakes. It used to be a monastery, with monks in the rooms, and the stone cloisters still have religious statues, masks, and medieval ironwork. It has a puritan feel. There’s no heating apart from a fireplace you can ask to have lit, but we didn’t want to use a wood fire given what we know about its carcinogenic effects. We slept in the four layers we’d packed for Patagonia on the way to the Antarctic, never expecting to need them in near-equatorial Guatemala! We’d requested a quiet room through our pro-am travel agent after reading about traffic noise, and were assigned rooms 50 and 49. But the stock for this huge market is trucked in the night before, all night long. I sleep through nearly anything, but my partner wore earplugs and only slept fitfully, perhaps also excited about the morning. The market itself was terrific. On the downside, hot water at St. Thomas is available for only a couple of hours morning and evening unless you order and pay extra. Watch out for big tour groups getting into the shower at 8 am sharp. The food generally wasn’t great. I got a bout of D&V despite being careful, though it passed overnight and I never knew what caused it. The same thing happened again a few days later, putting me off food, so I tended to order guacamole, tacos, and grilled fish when available.

This old colonial building is full of artefacts and feels like staying in a museum, a wonderful step back in time. Breakfast was included and good, with lots of fresh fruit, though there weren’t many options. Food is expensive. They didn’t offer language help. If you’re driving, call a few minutes before arriving so they can open the gate. There’s nowhere to wait outside with the car, just a narrow street. Hot water is available, but you have to ask each time and wait for it to run clear. They open and close the old metal pipes, so a little rust can come through at first.

The decor is very nice and breakfast was good, but the rooms were really cold and the beds felt like bricks. Hot water was available around 7 am for a couple of hours. I asked for it at night and they turned it on, but shut it off before I’d finished, so I had to rinse my hair with cold water.

The sandwiches are awful. The macaws aren’t treated humanely. They’re meant to be with hundreds of other birds, in a reserve, not having their feathers plucked out.