A Visit to Santa Ana Huista's Heart: El Resumidero

The sweet traditional marimba sounds, the church bells tolling, the aromas of home cooking recados and corn tortillas, will be our welcome present when arriving to Santa Ana Huista, a place that was highly recommended yesterday, while enjoying our coffee tour.

This municipality is located a bit more than 350 kilometers from Guatemala City and about 100 kilometers from the capital of the department, Huehuetenango.

Santa Ana Huista is surrounded by exuberant nature and amazingly, there is no need to travel far away to explore the very heart of this peaceful town: El Resumidero. 

I don't know how to translate this name; however, what I can tell you, at least to give you an idea of the meaning is that "sumidero" translates as a place where something is pushed down, the prefix "re" translates as repetitive or more than once; thus, in this case, "resumidero" is the place where the Huista River is pushed down, again, and again through a huge cave where the river literally disappears underground to reappears 4 kilometers further.

The reappearance of the river, as impressive as the disappearance, can be observed close to the cave El Limon (The Lime), located shortly after the village Cuatro Caminos. 

Not far from there, the Huista River converges with the fast-flowing Selegua River, the largest water source in Huehuetenango whose whole basin occupies almost 21% of this department territory and has played an important role in the development of the coffee industry in the region.

This border town is surrounded by extensive forests, where despite of certain degree of deforestation which has threatened several species, many Hormigo trees still can be found there. These are the trees whose wood is used for making the finest marimbas.

These forests are also home to a great fauna variety, among others, ocelots, foxes, skunks, coyotes, coati-mundi, raccoons, deers, serpents, and dozens of birds.

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