At one moment in time, I’m sitting at a restaurant with the view of Lake Atitlan and I’m enjoying a delicious seafood meal, occasionally chatting with the kind and energetic server. I have been here for over two hours, and he has not bothered me or nudged me to leave once (a sweet luxury I have rarely been able to enjoy in the US thanks to the set-up of the hospitality industry there). At another moment I am asking the lady from a local bakery what is a must-try pastry in Antigua. She smiles when I moan as I bite into the besito con jamon y queso that she recommends with pride. Señora Graziella, my host lady at San Juan La Laguna, shares a list of blessings with me before I depart their humble house in this captivating pueblo on the Atitlan Lake shore. In the same pueblo, by pure coincidence I meet Rosa, a guide at a small cultural house that enthusiastically retells stories of the Mayan women in this area. As I leave the house, she hands me a piece of a Mayan plant that is supposed to heal and protect energy, and she sends me off with a hug and love that I can feel deeply.

Juan and his daughter Abi are the family of Señora Graziella and they take me on a sunrise hike that I will remember for the rest of my life. We talk about the pueblo, their lives, avocados, and I teach Juan some English as we hike back for two hours. A family of ten starts asking me questions about my country and my reasons for visiting Guatemala after watching sunset from the rooftop of a church in Antigua. As I bid them goodbye with a simile, they run towards me, shyly asking to join them for a family photo. Another family of four laughs with me as we are being driven up at the back of a truck on a bumpy road to the small park of Hobbitenango. On my last day at the lake, a lady sitting next to me on the boat from Panajachel to San Pedro La Laguna endlessly compliments my Spanish and laughs at my story about my telenovela “learning” journey of this language that has allowed me to have conversations and connect with the people here. 

Everybody calls me amiga. And everybody feels like a friend to me, from the moment I hand in my passport at the airport, until the very last shared beer on a rooftop in Antigua. Guatemala is a country abundant with beauty and serenity. It is a place of kindness and hospitality. But to me, Guatemala will always be, above anything, the country of amigos. 

As I was retelling details about my trip shortly after I came back, someone asked me what my favorite part of the trip was. Usually, a mesmerizing landscape would stand out, a sight that it’s hard to believe you are witnessing with your own eyes, or a day spent exploring the city you never thought you’d visit. My favorite part of my Guatemala trip, though? It was the people.

Coming into this country that I confidently stated (and now I am ashamed to admit) I would never visit alone, I allow myself to be humbled and surprised. I tune into the stories of the places that I visit without a rush. And the stories unfold everywhere. Roaming around the streets of Antigua, San Juan La Laguna, San Pedro La Laguna, Santa Cruz, I am pulled into these microcosmic plots within the stories of the Mayan people that are overriding and rewriting the dominant narrative of danger, poverty, and foreignness. These people are artists. They are bilingual and multilingual storytellers and carriers of a rich and painful heritage. They are keepers of the old and creators of a new in which there is care and community. I witness this and I am deeply in awe. Every single day during my time in Guatemala, I have been thinking and deeply feeling how I had never been to a place where I had been more in love with the people than in this country. The unpretentiousness of the interactions and the smiles on people’s faces is what reminds me that humanity still holds its gentleness and sometimes we find it in the most unexpected corners of this world.

My random encounters and heartfelt conversations with Guatemalans in small pueblo corners and street markets, or in front of the jaw-dropping volcano vistas reminded me how kind the world can be, and also how much of our humanity is stifled these days. We seem to be slowly shedding our openness and curiosity for the people at the bus station, behind the counter in our local coffee shop, in the line at the supermarket, the people we meet by coincidence. So many stories left unrevealed in our rush to get where we are going and do what we are supposed to do. Our travel experiences are often curated to the point where we don’t leave space and time to have a conversation with the people we meet. Our day to day experiences – predictable and scripted. Our interactions – often shallow, a ground for bringing and breeding our ego. And yet we all yearn for better and deeper. 

It is one of life’s many paradoxes that the situations that show us what is missing, also reveal what is sacred and whole. The world is still humbling. Despite the heaviness, people are still warm. People still love. And in that innate human search for warmth and love, we need to allow ourselves to arrive at a new place with an open heart. We need to allow ourselves to closely look at the threads that make the tapestry of beauty and richness of humanity. We need to risk before we find comfort in the most unpredictable, and we need to trust before we accept people’s invitation to connect with us, to show themselves to us.

The detrimental stories of otherness and dehumanization don’t get rewritten within four walls, through screens, or in protection and silence. We get to rewrite them with every intention of curiosity we show for the people that we don’t know. We get to be proven wrong when we stay open to the world. We get to receive kindness and love when we show that we can and want to be kind and to love. 

My Guate amigos, in writing and sharing the stories of you and your lands, I am eternally grateful for your lead in uncovering and internalizing the themes that you live by daily.

Hope is the thing with colors. 
Wholeness is the thing with people.