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The Garcia Sisters |
| Name: | The Garcia Sisters | |||
| Address: | PO Box 75 | |||
| City/Town/Village: | San Ignacio | District: Cayo | Country: Belize | |
| Phone: | 501-91-2023 | Fax: 501-91-2023 | Phone #2: | |
| Website: |  The Garcia Sisters |
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| Email: |  Upgrade to a Premier Listing |
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| Photo Gallery: |  Upgrade to a Premier Listing |
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| Video: |  Upgrade to a Premier Listing |
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| Location: |  Upgrade to a Premier Listing |
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| Description: | Enjoy the art, music, medicines, and meals with a Mayan family. Sit down to a meal of Mayan tradition, cooked on a homemade open hearth stove, where the corn based cuisine tempts the taste buds with delicious tamalitos boiled in plantain leaves, tortillas, porridge, mouth watering desserts, and fresh brewed tea made from lemon grass, ginger, or pimiento leaves. Walk the Maya Medicine Trail through the jungle, as well as the beautiful botanical garden. Take a guided tour through the Tanah Mayan Art Museum, and develop a sense of timelessness while you learn about honored rulers, elders, priests, and gods who are still revered by the Mayans of today. Visit The Art Center where handcrafted jewelry, dolls, masks and sculptures offer the opportunity to take part of the rich Mayan culture home with you. And just three miles from the lodge you can explore an ancient musical Mayan Site, Pacbitun, meaning "stones set in the earth." People travel from all over the world to be treated by the herbal remedies of the rain forest and the traditional practices of the Tanah villagers. The knowledge of how to use hundreds of varieties of medicinal plants, prayers and secret stones known as "zax tuns" has been passed down from their ancestors. The Garcia Sisters have gained much of their knowledge from their uncle, the most famous and respected Belizean bush doctor, don Elijio Panti. Plants are very important to the way of life in Tanah. For example, the cohune palm nuts are used for jewelry or to extract oil for cooking, while the young shoots when boiled or fried make a delicious snack, and the roots can be used for a blood tonic. In Tanah's botanical garden a vine grows which quenches a day's thirst. Plants provide the villagers with definite cures for asthma, arthritis, baldness, among others. It is through communion with nature, preservation of traditions, and a holistic lifestyle that the Mayan Herbal Remedies and Teas can be shared. The Garcia Sisters discovered "art" after they began carving slate years ago. They came to realize that something moved from within the depth of their souls which expressed itself through an incredible energy and vision into action. But the sisters also remember the words of their father who said, "Are you going to eat stone? Who is going to buy stone? People buy food, not stone." And for the first years he would not help his daughters as they pursued their need to carve. Still the women toiled over the stone for it was their father who taught them, "When I say I'm going to do something I'm going to do it." So several years later when the daughters found their father carving a large jaguar they were surprised. It was then that they learned about their father's own carving experience. As a boy he had no money and would carve bowls from limestone to exchange for food in order to survive. And now The Garcia Sisters are able to make their art part of their survival. They exhibit in galleries around the world, teach art classes, and have made it possible to purchase their original Mayan art through Art Center Exports. The Art Center purchases and promotes the preservation of the Tanah Mayan Art Museum and the Mayan culture. Once a year, the Garcia Sisters need to collect their raw material. This is a time of renewal, re-energizing, and to put it very simply, a very happy occasion to look forward to. Slate is normally collected from creeks and river beds. The Garcia's own special place, "secret" in reality, is hidden deep within the Maya Mountains. Not any slate will do. Even at this "secret garden" only specially selected pieces will return to Tanah. The very sight of the creek bed to which the sisters return to yearly, is in itself, refreshing to the human spirit. The act of walking through the creek bed, getting soaked, putting hands on the earth, and feeling the smoothness or roughness of new stone revitalizes both the body and spirit for the Garcia family of artists. And how is the slate collected? Maria Garcia says, "You are drawn to the stone. The stone is also drawn to you and your vision." Each chunk of new slate taken back will have a special purpose. These stones, some small chunks others very large and bulky, have to be carried back on the shoulders of the individual family members to their truck on the roadside a few miles upstream. With the new stones safely back at Tanah, they will be stored respectfully in closed sheds or buried underground. The renewal has been completed. The Earth has released her children into the caring hands of the Garcia Sisters, making it possible to now offer some of these magically transformed pieces of delicate art work to the public. |
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