Storyteller Adventures
Storytelling is one of our most fundamental communication methods. Who doesn’t love hearing a good story? The fact is, we spend much of our daily lives hearing and telling stories! It’s our way of sharing information and living vicariously through the experiences of others.
During our first half-century, we have been fortunate enough to have some pretty incredible experiences and we fancy sharing our tales. We’ve called this blog, “Storyteller Adventures,” because we wanted to share some of our incidents of travel as well as to document our journey of how Vista Tranquila Publishers came into existence and how it continues. So, what does our blog include and what can you expect to find? For sure, we’ll touch on topics relevant to bilingual life, our travels around the world, the exotic foods we try, and the intriguing people we encounter. We have astonishing adventures every day though, even when we don’t go anywhere. We’ll share our mundane observations and some truly unique encounters.
Vista Tranquila Publishers is our creation but, it’s so much more than a book publishing company. We seek to tell stories that will inspire interest, promote cross-cultural understanding, and be entertaining at the same time. Our basic premise for our business is in favor of creating shared experiences and opposed to the collection of garage sale fodder. We want to make our books and our products come alive. Once you become a part of the story, the books and the handicrafts we sell become part of our shared encounter, a type of trophy you story in your memory. Everything we post on our website will tell a story. We hope you like what we’re doing, and we look forward to reading your comments!
Day at the zoo
A Sawdust Carpet Journey
One of the delights of traveling abroad is to unexpectantly happen upon a traditional festival. As I walked through the town of San Cristóbal Verapaz the day before Easter 2008, I was greeted with a crowd of people lining colorful streets. I squeezed into a space on the sidewalk below the church and watched in wonder as people quickly put the last touches on brightly colored elaborate religious and geometric designs. Antigua’s colorful sawdust carpets are world famous. What a treat it was to see the ancient tradition in the smaller town outside of Cobán.
Eight years later when my husband and I moved to Guatemala, weekend trips to Antigua became our escape from the chaos of life in Guatemala City. As I spent more time in Antigua, I knew that I wanted to see the incredible sawdust carpets of that colonial city, so I reserved a hotel room a year in advance. Because of a family issue that required my presence, I canceled the reservation and planned to attend later, but with a pandemic and a transnational move, I was not able to attend during Holy Week.
In November 2022, three years after publishing the Magical Skies of Sumpango, I reached out to Analuisa Alvarado, who illustrated the kite festival book. With the memories of the first sawdust carpet, I began to think of a storyline that would be relevant to children yet explain the cultural tradition. One afternoon while washing dishes, the entire storyline came to me, and I ran upstairs and wrote it down. A few edits later, I sent the story to Analuisa, who shared that as a child she helped make sawdust carpets.
In March of 2023 just before Easter, while I was in Guatemala for the printing of Fernando Llort: Painting La Palma: Pintando La Palma, I was invited to read Antigua’s Amazing Sawdust Carpets/Las increíbles alfombras de aserrín de Antigua, which had yet to be printed, to a group of children in Antigua and work with them in making a sawdust carpet. With the story in hand and large copies of the artwork, I read the story to an enthusiastic group of youngsters who didn’t seem to mind that they didn’t have a physical book to read. After the event, we sat in the coffee shop of a friend and watched as Holy Week processions passed by. Now that the book has been published, Edna Coyoy will be reading it in Antigua and participating in making a sawdust carpet. I plan to make reservations at my favorite hotel for Easter 2025.