Las Lisas, Guatemala

It started out seeing an ad for two houses, total of 7 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms with a pool on a piece of property that stretched from the canal to the ocean in Las Lisas Guatemala. The attraction, the price of under 60.000 dollars.Having owned property overseas before, we were not against doing it again. But under 60K for a beach house that came fully equipped was worth looking into. 

First we examined Las Lisa's itself. It was on the border with El Salvador, it could only be reached by boat and there were no vehicles, it was walking only. Okay, that can be good or bad, but you won't know until you try. I contact the owner of the house. The advertisement had a few pictures but they only showed the exterior and the pool, all of which looked good. So I requested some photos of the inside of the house. Photos that I never got. So we figured it was probably a hole, but we had a long weekend coming up and we had never been to Las Lisas.

There are two ways to get to Las Lisas, one was out of the city on Carreteria El Salvador, the road to El Salvador. Between the fact that it rainy season and the coast can be really hot we elected to take the car. The road that I thought we were taking was one that I already had rode on the motorcycle and although it was a fun road, the condition of it can be questionable.

We leave on Friday of the Independence Day weekend, hoping to miss the parades and “torch” runs. We escape the city without a problem, head out past the suburbs and continue along some very scenic roads. The road is surrounded by volcanoes and one them had been erupting. Fortunately we did not spy “Fuego” the current erupting volcano. It is a smooth run until we hit Barbarena, a town on the way to El Salvador. The traffic is at a standstill and we think we have hit a parade. I elect to follow the locals who are turning left. The road goes up and up. Barbarena is bigger town then I thought. We finally turn left and continue around the outskirts of Barbarena. We see a sign to our next city but the road turns bad and I turn around. A quick left turn takes us back to the main road. We missed the traffic, but whether we gained any time remains to be seen.

Since the last time I had taken this route there was a flurry of road construction. We are forced to right and I wonder if perhaps I guessed on the wrong road. A few kilometers down the road I see a sign to turn to our next town. Turns out it was the road that my friend Doug and I had taken last year on the bikes. We follow through town and head on towards Las Lisas. We approach what looks like a permanent detour, so I inquire whether “Este es la ruta a Las Lisas?” The bus driver tells me to take the detour. A short time later the relatively good road has turned a reasonably crappy dirt road, which follow. The loop takes us back to the other side of the permanent detour and we head down to Las Lisas.

As I stated previously, the only way to get to Las Lisas is by boat and if we were actually staying in Las Lisas, it would have cost a few “Q” to take a public launch. But our hotel was further up the canal. The hotel had quoted a price of 150Q for the launch, we negotiated it down to 100Q. The papers for the hotel were left in the car but we told the launch driver we wanted the “Eco Hotel”, he said no problem, he knew where it was. We take this massive fiberglass outboard to our destination.

We get off and walk to reception. Now we actually had reservations, but the woman had no idea what we were talking about. Now the place was, shall we say, of a lower standard then we/I expected. Maybe we had the wrong place. All I knew that the place was owned by a foreigner. The woman gives some directions to walk down the beach to this other place. About 20 minuter she says. We decide to fortify ourselves with a Gallo, the local brew. We slogged up the beach (remember no roads) looking for this place. It is the middle of the afternoon, we are 11 degrees above the equator and it is too hot to be carrying some luggage to find a hotel. We walk the 20 minutes or more, under the blistering sun and we find a likely candidate for our hotel. The place seems vacant, until the owner come out. He is a Frenchman, he does not have any reservations for us and “this is not the place you are looking for!” He opens an old tourist magazine and lo and behold we find the real name is called Playa Quilombo. The French guy knows the place and sends us back the way we come. We stop two additional times and ask Donde esta Playa Quilombo? We keep walking back down the beach. I walk into the place right next door and ask the woman relaxing in a hammock, Donde esta Playa Quilombo? She points right next door to the place where we originally stopped. Oh well, exercise is good.

Turns out Las Lisas is pretty darn desolate. Playa Quilombo only had electricity at night and there was no one around, though the Hotel had additional guests each of the nights we were there. . With the kindle loaded with books I was not too worried about having nothing to do. We had jumbo shrimp for dinner one night and a whole cooked fish the next. I guess if you want to go to a place and absolutely “veg” out this would be the place to be.  Oh  that house, we never bothered. This was not a place where we could stay at for a long time.