50 years ago in Guatemala

In 1974, my mom took me (5 yrs old) and my brother (3 yrs old) on the Amtrak train from Tacoma, Washington to Los Angeles and dropped us off at our grandparents house in Van Nuys, California to spend a couple of weeks at Easter. I remember spending the long train ride playing on the floor with hot wheels, puzzle books and reading my first comic book (Spiderman). My Dad then flew down to join my Mom on an adventure to Belize and Guatemala without us. My brother and I got to go to Disneyland with the grandparents and get Easter baskets. I wish I remembered more of that trip but I’m sure it was my first “best” trip.

My parents on the other hand had a much more adventurous time on their trip without kids to Belize and Guatemala. My Dad was able to do a lot of fishing in Belize City and Ambergris Key. They then traveled to Tikal, Antigua and Guatemala City and apparently took a lot of the same pictures that we took on our trip to those same places a week ago. My mother just sent me a lot of their photos and I think it is really interesting to see how similar and different our trips were. I wish I looked at these before so I could have recreated some more of them. But the ones I did coincidentally recreate are really fun.

Traveling was so much tougher before the internet and it is hard to understand how they were able to book flights, find ground transportation and hotels for a couple of weeks in countries that were just getting started with tourism. Booking by mail or phone from another country in Spanish must have been tough. Of course there were travel agent then, but you didn’t get to see the amount of pictures and reviews of locations on the internet. The amount of tourists in Guatemala in 1974 is a small fraction of what we experienced last week. We have friends that say we are brave for the traveling that we are doing right now but I don’t think it compares to Central America in 1974. It took some guts to make that trip.

My parents talked about the flights that they made in 1974. One of them was on a old DC3 which were built before World War II. The door wouldn’t latch so the flight attendant had to hold onto the handle the entire flight. It must have been a rattly scary flight but my mom says my dad slept the entire flight with his head against the sidewall.

Tikal is one of the major Mayan sites in Central America and covers almost 16 square kilometers. While it was “discovered” in the 1850’s it wasn’t until the 1950’s that archeologists started to excavated the area and uncovered the huge temples that were built between 250 and 900 AD. Today only 30 percent of the area has been excavated but the major temples are open for tourists to explore. Looking at my parent’s photos from 1974, it doesn’t look like it has changed that much except for access. You can no longer climb the biggest (and steepest) temple pyramid but you can climb many of the others and several of them have added wooden stairs to make it more accessible and better ruins preservation. I was just fine not climbing the largest steepest pyramid that my Dad climbed in 1974.

My parents also went to Antigua in 1974 and I have a lot of our 2024 photos that almost match up. The town has a lot more people in it now but they have done a good job and keeping out modern construction. Many of the buildings have been restored and many of the ruins from the earthquakes have been saved. It looks like one of the markets used to be allowed to be in the ruins of the cathedral. Now it is preserved and you need to pay to go see it.

These pictures are fantastic and I really like aligning these up. I wish I would have had looked at their pics before I went. But we are going to a lot of places in Southern Mexico, Panama and other places this year that I am pretty sure they went to on other trips years ago. I will be sure to check out their old pics before I go. I wish they would have taken more photos of themselves but I have a couple pretty good ones…