Fronteras, Guatemala

We are staying on the Rio Dulce on a lake called El Golfete. There is one bridge that spans the Rio Dulce, and it connects the towns of Fronteras and El Relleno. Fronteras is the center of commerce for the area, and only 10 minutes away by dinghy.

The town is busy. The main road has multiple shops, produce stands, cell phone stores (to top off your sim card), and a couple of banks with ATM machines. We usually park at one of the waterfront restaurants and from there everything is a short walk up and down the main road. The laundry is a drop off service that is usually available for pick up the next day. What a luxury to have everything washed, dried, and folded for us, and at a reasonable price. There are 2 decent sized grocery stores with a reasonable selection of dried goods. Not as much of a selection of fresh stuff like meat and produce. The milk is all boxed milk, it’s hard to find any refrigerated dairy. The eggs are never refrigerated, frequently the butter isn’t either. There is a very small selection of frozen goods. The power is just too expensive and unreliable to run large refrigerators and freezers.

People also get around in ride sharing vans called collectivas. These vans will hold as many as 20 people in them.

This is a pretty typical street front store. It has ropes, pots and pans, garlic, beans, corn, you name it….

This is Brenda’s, one of our favorite places to stop and eat lunch. It was introduced to us by our friends on Scholé who were regulars there. There are multiple street food stands, hers apparently got so popular that she was able to expand and have a little sitting area with tables and chairs. Brenda makes huge soft taco type dish called “gringa”– basically an extra large tortilla stuffed with meat and cabbage and onion and some sort of green sauce. It is delicious. She also makes Mexican tacos. The four of us can stuff ourselved for Q80 (about $12.00).

There are several stands where you can buy fresh tortillas. They are sold by the Quetzal (the Guatemalan dollar) and depending on the stand are 3-5 tortillas per Quetzal. I think most locals only buy 1 or 2 quetzales worth at a time, we buy Q10-15 every other day, which always surprises the ladies, not sure they heard us correctly or if we were making a mistake in translation. But we go through them, especially Benjamin. He likes to make tortilla sandwiches: two tortillas with refried black beans in the middle. He will eat as much as 6 sandwiches at a time as a mid-afternoon snack. I finally figured out how to fill him up for less than $1!