Quixaya - Aqua Paradise in Guatemala

In the market centre of Santiago there lies a somewhat interesting little model of Lake Atitlan with signs marking all the villages and mountains. It was inspiring to see a gentleman carefully stepping over the volcanoes to pick up some rubbish that was thrown in there. 

We took a pickup truck about 40 mins around hills and below Volcano Atitlan to the aqua paradise valley of Quixaya. A quick look through my pictures tells me they are terrible! There is hardly a way to accurately put what's going on here into any sort of decent 2D frame. So I'll try to describe it as best I can. 

The history of this river running through a valley goes some like this. 6 decades ago it was owned and operated by a coffee and sugar cane plantation boss that didn't like paying his workers fairly. The disgruntled workers joined together and entered a legal battle for their wages which ended with the land being passed into their hands. Now, with power over their own land, the families kept on producing coffee and sugar cane. About 7 years ago in 2010 when the sons and daughters of the older generation of owners came to maturity, they wanted to figure out a way of how best to work with the vast amount of water flowing through their land. They build multi connecting networks of terraced ponds and filled them with water cress and lined the sides all kinds of other water loving plants. I had to check my facts again and made sure that indeed they have only taken 7 years to transform the valley into such an edible utopia. It looks like a paradise. 

The terrance systems have allowed so much water to sink into the land that the valley floor is soaked to the point of being able to bounce on the water logged grass plots. 

There are 3 very clear microclimates. The bottom starts as described earlier, it's a 2km long aqua park. A little ways up the valley walls comes the humid park where a lot of grains are grown followed higher up by the highland dry area which is their agroforestry area stocked with coffee, fruit and wood trees. 

Quixaya means 'heart of the water' and I am well aware that the pictures leave a lot to the imagination so just think of yourself walking along 2km of water cress pools or watch this video which has no sound but great shots of the valley.

Along the road to Quixaya we pass rolling hills filled with coffee plants baking in the sun. They say its some of the massive 'Folgers' plantations and they look sickly. Good coffee grows best in the shade! The land owners now know this and many other sustainable and productive polyculture growing methods.

In the humid microsystem there is layers upon layers of growing surrounded by low, medium and cover cropping trees. Here we have squash growing on trellis giving ground cover for coffee surrounded by banana and natural walls along the pathways. It all looks majorly productive and diverse 

Below you can see some tilapia fish. They function well in 30cm pools as they like warmer temperatures and some water hiasan or other pond plants are a must for shelter and oxygen exchange. The fish are fed with local feed and a protein supplement and they reach eatable size at about 8 months old. 

A year ago they had over 20,000 fish in production which drew the interest of the endangered river otter. The otters decimated almost the entire population in a week. All that is left is one area with spawning pools - they saved the seed! They plan to raise money to build fenced in ponds. The fencing needs to be dug and cemented into the ground and surrounded by barbed wire to keep the wily otters out. That doesn't seem right for such an idilic place. Perhaps they could find a way to use the otter. It is an endangered species, surely people would be interested in observing the otter in it's natural habitat. Maybe a better balance of fish is needed. 

To the left are tiny tilapia which need to be separated from others when they first hatch otherwise they will be eaten. On the right we have a water snail farm. Apparently they make for a great great stew. Below you can see their eggs. One idea is to dry out the egg shells of the snails and

                                                      use it for a calcium supplement in 

                                                      the chicken coup. 

There is surprisingly little written about Quixaya in English. They have had some volunteers in the past and hope to expand that program in the future. 

Such a wondrous place must have it's flaws right? Below you can see the waterfall of trash flowing from the church situated up on the ridge of one side of the valley.