For cheaper than the price of Greggs sausage roll you can get yourself a bottle of Quezalteca. Other than the Guatemalan coffee we have found few other unique drinks in this part of the world. Perhaps we have not been looking hard enough but there was no need to look for Quezalteca, it had a strange habit of finding us in the most peculiar of places. We have drank this deep in the jungle, carried it up volcanoes and drank it watching the sunset beside spectacular lakes.
Quezalteca is for sale behind the counter in every shop and generally comes in three varieties. The first is the plain unflavoured Quezalteca. However we would recommend the flavoured varieties Rosa de Jamaica and Tamarind. Tamarind is 25% and requires a good shake before it is drinkable as the tamarind flavouring tends to settle at the bottom. Don’t be put off by this it has a unique but easily drinkable taste, slightly too sweet to drink a lot of and mixed with a bitter tamarind flavour that is likely to stay with you for at least 20 mins after your swig.
Our favourite of the two is Rosa de Jamaica not only is this much stronger at 36% offering even better value for money it is also a pleasure to drink. It is just sweet enough to mask the strong alcohol with a taste not to dissimilar to cherry. If possible, stick the bottle in a fridge or over ice and drink it with a squeeze of lime and this becomes seriously good drink. Highly recommended to any budget traveller in Guatemala.
