GUATEMALA

Testing Tortillas

Making tortillas is not as easy at is looks.  While practised hands transform balls of dough into perfectly round, griddle-ready breads in seconds, unfamiliar hands like mine can be all thumbs, creating tortillas that end up thick and lumpy, finger-hole thin, or just on the floor!  Donning a traditional Mayan dress doesn't necessarily improve your technique either, although the tortilla-challenged at least look the part standing around a wood-fire stove in woven huipiles (square-cut blouse) tucked into tightly belted wrap-around skirts.

Antigua is a Blast

A barrage of noise blasts me from unconsciousness and propels me from tnagled sheets to a tiny window.  Its decorative iron grill frames dozens of figures engulfed in smoke, their blurred shapes illuminatd by the glow of hand-held cndles.  Another volley of fire crackers moves the crowd slowly up the cobbled lane, and chases me downstairs to join them in the early morning darkness.

For the next two hours I tread the backstreets of Antigua, in Guatemala, as the Month of the Rosary (October) processionmakes a curlicue loop back to its starting point at 16th century Iglesia De La Merced (Church of the Mercy).

MEXICO

Ancient Real Estate - Tulum

“Location, location!” is the catch cry for real estate sales the world over, and agents would need to only skim the industry’s cliché collection to describe Tulum, on the Yucatan Peninsula.  “Elevation” and “uninterrupted views” of the Caribbean Sea make these hugely popular Maya ruins as prime as real estate gets.