Where the author explains the first reason he chose Tzununa
Tzununa came together to be the almost perfect village to buy and build right now. I was able to come up with some distinct reasons I chose this village, and I'll go into each a bit in ensuing updates.
Dollar Signs
I'm not and have never been much of a business man. I don't care about money or having lots of it, I'm more interested in creating a life I love designed around things I enjoy doing and transfering a good amount of the money that comes in into Mayan hands. I've also never spent this much time in a tourist destination and I couldn't help but see some opportunity. I arrived in the rainy season and went right to San Marcos. The Yoga Forest, where I had lined up a stay ahead of time knowing nothing about the lake villages, happened to be in the mountains above San Marcos. On the lake's north side there is, from west to east, San Pablo, San Marcos, Tzununa, Jaibalito, and Santa Cruz. When it was rainy in San Marcos, it wasn't too busy so gringoes were limited. I stayed and the rain stopped and saw how many white people were in San Marcos, which is the hippiest village and the one most loaded with yoga, spiritual centers and the like. San Marcos is real nice but over-gringoed which is bad enough on its own, but it also means higher land prices. As my friend/architect Charlie told me, three times more expensive in San Marcos than Tzununa, the next village over.
Gringoes are literally spilling out of San Marcos and they need somewhere to go. Right now, at the time of this typing, Tzununa has four hotels. There is Lomas de Tzununa (10 rooms?), fairly expensive and you could almost consider it out of Tzununa on the path to Jaibalito. Nice place. There is the brand new Maya Moon Lodge, gringo owned, which you could consider out of Tzununa on the road to San Marcos. Both those places have amazing views. The Moon Lodge (14 beds) has a beach bar with swimming and Lomas has a small pool. A real nice place, it's new and more budget. There is the Hotel Yac (six rooms), the awful budget place my faithful readers remember. The Hotel Yac only has a view of its own bathroom. The Yac is being remodeled and will be much improved but I still harbour some trauma behind my time there. The last is where I'm currently living, the Mirador, where I have installed my own three-burner stove with a propane tank. This place has the best view in town hands down. This is where I sit and type these words, with a perfect picture postcard view framed by cement arches and columns in some lovely yet hard to name color between pink and orange, and fairly dull on the saturation scale. Tiles are popular around here and these folks chose to go with that. I love them. If I could choose one single best view in Tzununa, it would be here at the Mirador or about a third of the way up toward El Jocotel from here around the spot where the two cantones Sancwhoyoo and Chinimujuyu border each other. There is also the Xocomil Hotel and Restaurant, whose high walls I have tried to penetrate multiple times with no success. I've never heard of anyone staying there. There is Shad's bamboo hotel in construction above the center of town. Very nice build so far. That will have four rooms. El Jocotel could be the sixth hotel in Tzununa, above Shad's on the hill and just above the village on the 'loma'. There are also some private rentals and my place should hover between small hotel and fully private rental. My current plan is to have four rooms in three different structures. My place will have a view better than Shad's place and about 70% as good as El Mirador. My lake view, that is. My place would have the best view of the mountain across the valley, which is fucking enormous. It juts up from the lake and riverbed at least 2500 feet real quick. It's a wash of trees and rock with at least two or three seasonal waterfalls. What's maybe more impressive than the hill itself is that a huge portion of the impossibly steep terrain is farmed with corn, coffee, beans, squash and different fruits. This is status quo around here.
Besides the lodging bringing in money, the land value, as always, is going up and Tzununa is arriving onto the map. Hotels are popping up and 'siempre vienen las turistas. The tourists always come. It's not that people don't know about it, but it's got little enough going that the last printing of Lonely Planet (a hugely popuar line of travel books) I saw has Tzununa on the Atitlan map as a lancha stop but makes no mention of it in text even though it's right next to the major destination of San Marcos. I don't know the politics of Lonely Planet, but I think they'd add a town that now had six hotels especially if we as a group of owners tried to make it happen. We may not actually want to. I bought my land directly from a Tzununa man at a good price well under the gringo rate and, as I said, one third of the going rate in San Marcos. I believe that if I made a concerted effort to find a bankrolled gringo interested in nice land, I could sell my plot at a profit next week. That's not my intention.
The Castillos of beer fame, like most or all the super-rich families in Guatemala, have lakeside property. As far as I know, Gallo and Brahva, Guatemala's two most popular beers, are both run by a Castillo brother. Partially irrelevent to that: here and there, the Gallo Beer Company chooses a pet town and puts money into construction projects there. Tzununa is one of those towns. They're already responsible for one or two roads here (these are rock roads that may mean a driving speed of five miles an hour, but they are passable roads (mostly)), but just the other day, they had a big ceremony down on the futbol field with a tent and a helicopter to announce the launch of the next phase of charitable work: a big, new health center and more road. (It seems a bit Guatemalan to build something and then forget about it. I'm hoping that doesn't happen with the health center and they ensure it remains staffed as was intended. If any visiting medical folks would like to put time in there while here, I'm sure it would only be as complicated as showing up and working.) I don't know exactly what road the beer company is doing, but there is talk of building a path at least for tuk tuks up to the top of Chinimujuyu, right by El Jocotel. This isn't a huge expense, one I would even hope to fund in a few years time, but it would cut the required walking from the closest motor access from ten minutes to three minutes. That would do well for the potential price of my land and ease my life there for my time. It's a bit steep getting to the Jocotel.
Tzununa came together to be the almost perfect village to buy and build right now. I was able to come up with some distinct reasons I chose this village, and I'll go into each a bit in ensuing updates.
Dollar Signs
I'm not and have never been much of a business man. I don't care about money or having lots of it, I'm more interested in creating a life I love designed around things I enjoy doing and transfering a good amount of the money that comes in into Mayan hands. I've also never spent this much time in a tourist destination and I couldn't help but see some opportunity. I arrived in the rainy season and went right to San Marcos. The Yoga Forest, where I had lined up a stay ahead of time knowing nothing about the lake villages, happened to be in the mountains above San Marcos. On the lake's north side there is, from west to east, San Pablo, San Marcos, Tzununa, Jaibalito, and Santa Cruz. When it was rainy in San Marcos, it wasn't too busy so gringoes were limited. I stayed and the rain stopped and saw how many white people were in San Marcos, which is the hippiest village and the one most loaded with yoga, spiritual centers and the like. San Marcos is real nice but over-gringoed which is bad enough on its own, but it also means higher land prices. As my friend/architect Charlie told me, three times more expensive in San Marcos than Tzununa, the next village over.
Gringoes are literally spilling out of San Marcos and they need somewhere to go. Right now, at the time of this typing, Tzununa has four hotels. There is Lomas de Tzununa (10 rooms?), fairly expensive and you could almost consider it out of Tzununa on the path to Jaibalito. Nice place. There is the brand new Maya Moon Lodge, gringo owned, which you could consider out of Tzununa on the road to San Marcos. Both those places have amazing views. The Moon Lodge (14 beds) has a beach bar with swimming and Lomas has a small pool. A real nice place, it's new and more budget. There is the Hotel Yac (six rooms), the awful budget place my faithful readers remember. The Hotel Yac only has a view of its own bathroom. The Yac is being remodeled and will be much improved but I still harbour some trauma behind my time there. The last is where I'm currently living, the Mirador, where I have installed my own three-burner stove with a propane tank. This place has the best view in town hands down. This is where I sit and type these words, with a perfect picture postcard view framed by cement arches and columns in some lovely yet hard to name color between pink and orange, and fairly dull on the saturation scale. Tiles are popular around here and these folks chose to go with that. I love them. If I could choose one single best view in Tzununa, it would be here at the Mirador or about a third of the way up toward El Jocotel from here around the spot where the two cantones Sancwhoyoo and Chinimujuyu border each other. There is also the Xocomil Hotel and Restaurant, whose high walls I have tried to penetrate multiple times with no success. I've never heard of anyone staying there. There is Shad's bamboo hotel in construction above the center of town. Very nice build so far. That will have four rooms. El Jocotel could be the sixth hotel in Tzununa, above Shad's on the hill and just above the village on the 'loma'. There are also some private rentals and my place should hover between small hotel and fully private rental. My current plan is to have four rooms in three different structures. My place will have a view better than Shad's place and about 70% as good as El Mirador. My lake view, that is. My place would have the best view of the mountain across the valley, which is fucking enormous. It juts up from the lake and riverbed at least 2500 feet real quick. It's a wash of trees and rock with at least two or three seasonal waterfalls. What's maybe more impressive than the hill itself is that a huge portion of the impossibly steep terrain is farmed with corn, coffee, beans, squash and different fruits. This is status quo around here.
Besides the lodging bringing in money, the land value, as always, is going up and Tzununa is arriving onto the map. Hotels are popping up and 'siempre vienen las turistas. The tourists always come. It's not that people don't know about it, but it's got little enough going that the last printing of Lonely Planet (a hugely popuar line of travel books) I saw has Tzununa on the Atitlan map as a lancha stop but makes no mention of it in text even though it's right next to the major destination of San Marcos. I don't know the politics of Lonely Planet, but I think they'd add a town that now had six hotels especially if we as a group of owners tried to make it happen. We may not actually want to. I bought my land directly from a Tzununa man at a good price well under the gringo rate and, as I said, one third of the going rate in San Marcos. I believe that if I made a concerted effort to find a bankrolled gringo interested in nice land, I could sell my plot at a profit next week. That's not my intention.
The Castillos of beer fame, like most or all the super-rich families in Guatemala, have lakeside property. As far as I know, Gallo and Brahva, Guatemala's two most popular beers, are both run by a Castillo brother. Partially irrelevent to that: here and there, the Gallo Beer Company chooses a pet town and puts money into construction projects there. Tzununa is one of those towns. They're already responsible for one or two roads here (these are rock roads that may mean a driving speed of five miles an hour, but they are passable roads (mostly)), but just the other day, they had a big ceremony down on the futbol field with a tent and a helicopter to announce the launch of the next phase of charitable work: a big, new health center and more road. (It seems a bit Guatemalan to build something and then forget about it. I'm hoping that doesn't happen with the health center and they ensure it remains staffed as was intended. If any visiting medical folks would like to put time in there while here, I'm sure it would only be as complicated as showing up and working.) I don't know exactly what road the beer company is doing, but there is talk of building a path at least for tuk tuks up to the top of Chinimujuyu, right by El Jocotel. This isn't a huge expense, one I would even hope to fund in a few years time, but it would cut the required walking from the closest motor access from ten minutes to three minutes. That would do well for the potential price of my land and ease my life there for my time. It's a bit steep getting to the Jocotel.
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