A View from a Midwestern Adventurer - Remodeling Ideas from Central American Travel
Traveling anywhere from the Midwest is always an adventure. The differences one finds are fascinating and the similarities - mind boggling. The Midwest offers so much in the way of architecture and living styles you might even think there's no reason to travel. For example, you can find just about any style of exterior interior design you want and if you want to change yours you can always just go to a Chicago home improvement place and add a big city feel. What you might decide to do though is to travel and see what the world offers. One fascinating and vastly different place to visit is Guatemala.
In Coban and the Verapaces in Guatemala you won't likely find a Chicago style kitchen remodeling example very often, but you will find a type of interior design that you can incorporate in your Chicago kitchen renovations when you get home from your trip. The use of light in the architecture you'll find in Guatemala is quite different than what you normally find in the Midwest. Even more fascinating is the use of light by Mother Nature in her natural architecture. Can you imagine being able to take home some of the beauty of the subtropical rain forests you will experience? Would it be possible to incorporate some of the lush gardens into your next room additions, especially in an enclosed patio with green house type windows. To be able to capture the look and feel of your experience would be awesome. One way to start might even be to find a place that sells orchids as the varieties you will see in Guatemala are amazing.
Your experience in the forests of Guatemala may be like walking through a Japanese painting. Every tree is a work of art. Many are covered with mosses, red flowering bromeliads and carpets of orchids. With the high humidity of the Caribbean clouds covering the mountains and leaving their rain, some of the plants need very little if any root system. The bromeliads store their water from the rain in their leaf rosettes and the orchards their rain water in their luscious bulbs. With the right design, you could even use window replacements with green house type of windows. This way you can create a humid environment that will lead to a similar look of a Guatemalan garden.
Some of the other design ideas you can bring back from Coban and the Verapaces will be derived from all of the vivid colors you can experience. If you visit during the last week in July you can attend the Coban Folklore Festival. Here you will see the many varieties of indigenous handiwork from clothing to art, you will taste the many delicacies of the typical cuisine and you will be surrounded by Mayan ceremonies, music and dancers. You can't bring them all home but you can capture the sounds and colors to incorporate into your home for that everlasting reminder of your vacation in the cornucopia of beauty and wonder of Guatemala.
