When you come out to Visit

I had the opportunity to go with some of my Guatemalan counterparts to some potential “eco-tourism” sites around the Tejutla area. There is no succinct definition of “eco-tourism”, but basically it indicates that the main tourist attraction is the environment or perhaps something cultural and that the visitor is conscientious and will attempt to do no harm. Our first stop was a little adlea called Los Arcos. As the name implies it has an arch. Allegedly it was build 1000 or so years ago, but I’m not sure anybody knows. There isn’t much too, but it was kind of interesting, although I see it from the bus every time I head out of town. Next we went up the ways to El Chorro Viente Polos which has a beautiful waterfall. The road to it is less than perfect and I’m sure it’s impassible in the winter. There was somebody shooting guns at the bottom so we decided not to go down there. The third site was a corn field near Cuya. Surrounding the field were three small mounds, perhaps the size of a small one-story home in the US. As it was related to me, these were ancient Mayan sites of worship althought they looked a lot like piles of dirt. Also in the middle of the field was small stone table which was perhaps used for some sort of sacrifice. The next stop was a hilltop outside of Cuya with a nice view of the valley. Our final stop was a place called agua tibia (warm water). The water wasn’t actually warm. There were signs that some people in the past had tried to make this a destination of sorts (pools and the like), but it’s all in disrepair at this point. Maybe I’m jaded because I’ve seen the Great Wall of China (or at least the portion that’s a replica built by the Chinese government in the 1980’s), but I’m not sure I would go out of my way to see any of these sites. The most spectacular of all the places was certainly the waterfall, but it’s a long drive to just look at it. It’s actually encouraging to see the municipality try and think in terms of how to take advantage of its resources, but I’m not convinced that Tejutla is going to be a tourist destination except for those of you who come out to visit, in which case we’ll undoubtedly be looking at an old broken table in the middle of a corn field. I'm sure you can't wait.