How did I come across as "ignorant" Take this from someone who has been to Guatemala. Anyone who knows anything about Guatemala would say what I said.
"The countryside is beautiful and the people are descended from one of humanityβs major civilizations, the Mayans."
You can cherry pick nice places from anywhere. Places like Mexico, Baltimore, South Africa, Brazil, Detroit and Guatemala have have some nice places here and there but let's be honest like most of South America it's a poverty filled shithole and most Guatemalans/South Americans would even agree with me on that.
As someone who is doing a massive research project on the Maya peoples right now, that civilization was technologically way ahead of the game! They had toilets with a sewage system, clean aqueducts and water purification measures, and ball sports a thousand years before the colonizers that fucked em up. A THOUSAND YEARS.