1986 MEXICO and GUATEMALA a trip revisited by heart 37 years later

It was a group trip with Avventure nel Mondo, a spartan agency that chooses small hotels and restaurants and travels above all by public transport in order to have a full immersion in the country- It was a group made up of about twenty Neapolitans, including group leader, partner and daughter and then 4 Nordic Italian girls and I who, however, sang Neapolitan songs better than the Neapolitans themselves. We flew into Mexico City after a brief and unfortunate layover at the New York airport (endless lines, lost connection, hotel given to us on Long Island for a few hours at night and back to the airport). We visited the Mexican capital going to see the Zocalo, the huge central square with the cathedral and then Piazza Garibaldi with the taverns where the Mariachis perform, the fun and colorful musical groups with huge sombreros and where you drink tequila with worm and salt. We also went to visit the Aztec museum, a real jewel that houses the relics of all the Central American civilizations of which the Aztecs were only the greatest. Then some excursions in the area: the archaeological site of Teotihuacan with the imposing towers of the sun and the moon, truly impressive and then the city of Cuernavaca with a visit to the palace which also housed Maximilian of Habsburg the unfortunate brother of Franz Joseph who lived a few years in the castle of Miramare in my Trieste before becoming emperor of Mexico and being shot by Mexican rioters. In that palace I coud admire some wall paintings of the famous painter Diego Rivera, the husband of Frieda Kahlo. Another nice visit was to Nazco, a village which is famous for silver and then we saw a village festival with the "cuccagna" (tree trunk which the brave climb to catch the pots hanging on top). A domestic flight took us south to the Yucatan where we took possession of our rental cars and began the tour of all the archaeological sites of the Maya including Tulum with its beautiful beach, Palenque, Uxmal and above all Chichenitza with its best preserved pyramid. In nearby Chapas we visited Antigua, the city repeatedly destroyed by earthquakes which retains its charm, then San Cristobal de las Casas with its orthogonal streets, low and colorful houses, the colorful and ethnic market of Chichicastenango where arrive descendants of the Mayans to pray in their own way (the men half-drunk) in the church of San Tomas while all around you can see stalls and natives with their traditional and colorful costumes. Another flight and here we are in Guatemala City, the capital with almost 4 million inhabitants, not very interesting, so we went instead on various excursions: to Agua Azul with its low waterfalls, the impressive Sumidero canyon which we sailed by boat observing the high waterfalls that descend from the very high surrounding mountains and above all the spectacular Lake Atitlan with its volcanoes and ethnic villages each with its own costume, dialect and customs. The highlight was with the visit to Tikal, the former capital of the Maya, in full forest and with a very rich archaeological site as various towers and pyramids. We arrived there by bus after a long journey along a dirt road full of potholes and with the danger of being attacked and kidnapped by the rioters and all because of the stupid group leader who, in order not to pay the plane tickets for his partner and daughter, invented the lie that the plane was overbooked, but as I discovered upon arrival that was not true at all, I would have killed him with my own hands! Apart from this mishap, it was a beautiful journey full of landscapes and archaeological sites, happy people and good food, the drawback being the humid heat suffered in Yucatan, not elsewhere because we were always high up.