Welcome to your temporary house. You are inside a building quite different from what you would usually find in Guatemala and the rest of the World. Already the frontage maybe surprised you; it is inspired in Copan, more specifically, in the well-known temple Rosalía. From there comes the color pink-zapote of the front and the sides of the building. One year after colored Uxlabil, a publication of the National Geographic (to see in reception) shows with such colors how the city of Palenque during the Mayan classic period was painted. We already evoke a time missing but glorious in the Meso-American tradition.

The entrance has the hybrid form of the mouth of a snake and of a jaguar.
The descending form of the three balconies of the front of the building looks like the pyramid shape that had most of Mayan constructions.

There are details of the frontage that should not get lost: The shape of the bricks is very typical of Copan; the Guacamayas was manufactured by an artisan of Rabinal and they also come in proportions and colors typical from Copan, as idea of course. Lastly, observe the windows that form an "L" inverted. Their narrow base and their upward inclination are the external form of the Mayan false arch, a technique that allowed them to build solid buildings of several levels.

In the back of the building of Uxlabil, evokes another time and another civilization. Basically a mixture of the Spanish constructions and the Provencal of the south of Europe inspire it, just as they were given in the XVI and XVII centuries. The light-yellow color is inspired by the preponderant color of Ponte Venice in Florence. Their irregular levels have also been elaborated intentionally in such a way to evoke an old time.

In front and behind of the building we have ecological originalities. In front gate there is a tree that you will find unknown; it is the tree "Ramón", brought especially from Petén and it is one of a few (for not saying the only one) in Guatemala City (there are many of these trees in Yaxhá). At the back of the building, there are two Ceibas (national Guatemalan tree); our idea is to produce oxygen and cleaning. For such efforts, it is not a strange thing that many birds come every day to give us a morning concert.

The harmonious combination of two styles so different between each other - the Mayan classic and Spanish-European, constitute the purpose of describing the two big roots of this country.

Each door of the different apartments was made by special responsibility by a cabinetmaker from Ciudad Vieja, a near town to Antigua that was the first capital of the Kingdom of Goatyhemala. These doors where made using cedar-wood from Petén, the designs are taken from Mayan codexes, they partially simplified in some figures and shapes for the final presentation. Another element that you will see in this building is the figure of the rhombus, a square placed in balance. The remarkable thing is that starting from the rhombus; Mayan people elaborated figures and designs. In the fabrics of many places (San Juan Sacatepéquez or Chapul) you can find designs and figures that are formed starting from rhombuses shape with different colors and sizes.

As you go up in the different level of the building, you will observe a rhombus that goes indicating the dominant color of each one of the levels: white in the first one, yellow in the second, green in the third and red inside the room. This is not about a whim or the search of a rainbow presentation, but an evocation of the cardinal points in the Mayan Cosmo-vision. Although, today there are some variations, but in the past the east and the west were represented by the target and the yellow, the north and the south by the green and the red one. The basement of the build has been painted with gray color, wanting to evoke the black of Xibalbá, which so strong presence has in the sacred Mayan book, Popol Vuh.

Some people enjoy watching the surrounding landscape from the roof of this building. Some other enjoy reading a book, taking a swig or simply relaxing before the immense greenery of this part so central and so different from the Guatemala City. By the way, we are in the end southeast of zone 10 and the court of sports of this building is half on zone 10 and the other half is in the zone 15.

Echo suites Uxlabil Guatemala opened its doors in 1998. The name Uxlabil comes from the language Quiche and it is equal to "Your Breathing", although, in that language, this word makes a deeper sense, like coming closer to "vital breathing".
In Uxlabil we have had encouragement to grow and to diversify us in short time: in July of the year 2,002, Echo Hotel Uxlabil-Atitlán opened its doors, located in San Juan The Lagoon (to 175 Km. from the Guatemala City). In December of the 2,003 Hotel Museum Uxlabil-Antigua begins operations, a live-portrait of a time already gone, one block and a half from Central park.

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