Listen, See, Learn…
Built between two home bases, Antigua and Lake Atitlán, your journey brings you into contact with Guatemalan culture, history, and nature in a profound and direct way
Antigua: Living History
Antigua–your home at the beginning, middle and end of your voyage–is the best-preserved colonial city in Latin America. A United Nations World Heritage site with cobblestone streets, charming parks and churches, and crowned by three volcanoes.
Antigua breathes history, astonishes with its beauty, and provides a welcoming and multicultural classroom.
Tikal: A Voyage to the Mayan Past
The largest archaeological site in the West and one of the wonders of the world, the Mayan ruins at Tikal on the Yucatan Peninsula are simply breathtaking.
Tikal is the perfect place to study the pre-Columbian world, to question what makes civilizations rise and fall, and to ponder the mysteries of archaeology. As you scale the pyramids that pierce the jungle canopy, you’ll see toucans, monkeys, macaws, strangler figs and many other species endemic to the region.
Lake Atitlán: A Voyage to the Mayan Present
Lake Atitlán glitters like an azure and turquoise jewel under the shadows of three volcanoes in the Mayan highlands. It has been called the most beautiful lake in the world, and it is true.
Atitlán is ringed by Mayan villages where the people speak Kaqchikel or Tz’utujil. Your home base is the small international town of Panajachel, where you will study and have day-long adventures in one of the most culturally distinct and naturally bedazzling environments on earth.
Coatepeque: A Voyage from the Heart
Until recently, the children of La Unión, Coatepeque didn’t have a school to go to. Now, their elementary school is packed and the junior high is just in its infancy. Located in the coffee-growing West near the Mexican border, Coatepeque inherited a poverty borne of agro-export, underdevelopment, and politics that never seemed to help. And to help is why you’re there – to help build schools, spread hope, and bring a brighter future to the region’s kids.
Rio Negro – The Chixoy Dam
On March 13, 1982, around six in the morning, 12 members of the army along with 15 Civil Auto-Defense Patrolmen (PAC) from Xococ, arrived at the community of Rio Negro. House by house they asked for the men, but they were hiding in the woods due to fear of being rounded up and killed [as many had been a month earlier]. The intruders gathered and forced the population to walk three kilometres uphill. Once at the Pacoxom peak they proceeded to torture and kill the unarmed victims. That day 177 people (70 women and 107 children), all civil and unarmed community members of Rio Negro were murdered.
Today, thanks to the Government of Germany and other non-governmental agencies, the community of Rio Negro is re-building along the river which is now the Chixoy Dam. The Germans built an educational centre and lodge that accommodates up to 40 people. This is Germany’s “never again” initiative. Led by the only survivor, Sebastian, the community has grown to 92 persons. Our students will bask in the beauty of Rio Negro as we learn together about transcendence and healing, history and legal challenges. We will walk the memory trail with Sebastian and hear his compelling story.
Day Trips: Zip-Lines, Markets, Mountains and More!!!
You won’t soon forget these inspired day trips. In Chichicastenango, for example, you will experience the wonder of the largest living Indigenous crafts fair in the Americas, and be transported into another world as the K’iche’ language rings in your ears.
And that’s just the beginning: imagine zip-lining in the jungle, horseback riding on a volcano’s flanks, seeing banana and coffee plantations and being surrounded by butterflies while learning in a way you’ve never learned before.
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