Andrew J. Tonn

PANAJACHEL–People are often surprised to learn that the Mayans are still a vital culture, with their own languages, customs, religion and communities. It may have been a long time since they built any pyramids but the Maya are, if pressed by hundreds of years of Spanish conquest, forced assimilation, frequent massacres and the unstoppable encroachment […]

2 March 2011 SAN JORGE, LAKE ATITLAN, GUATEMALA—As you travel the steep road between Solola on the rim of Atilan’s caldera to Panajachel on its shore, you pass above the town of San Jorge. You look down, a thousand feet or so, into the center of the pueblo, over its houses and into the square […]

SAN SALVADOR—We stopped for lunch at the food court at the large and modern mall in San Salvador. Over the last six years or so I have spent far more time at the mall in El Salvador than I have in the States in the last twenty. The group perused the options, many of them […]

By Andrew J. Tonn Media Director  EL ESPINO—The early morning was dense with the sounds of mourning doves and cock crows, car horns and traffic that intruded on sleep as they echoed through the hard corridors of tile and plaster. I slipped from bed, dressed and padded out into the flower-filled courtyard of the Hotel […]

SAN SALVADOR–I will here, for the time being, suspend my narrative of our journeys in Peru and skip forward to the present. On February 6 I flew from Columbus, Ohio to Guatemala City, took a shuttle to Antigua, where I spent two days at my old favorite, the Hospedaje El Refugio, and early the morning […]