stopped at La Fonda Calle Real. "It was a blessing," she said of that long-ago night.

The blessings seem to come more frequently now for her and for the country. Beteta's empire has grown to include four Antigua restaurants and a boutique hotel. Guatemala itself — after 36 years of civil strife — is emerging from the shadows of its brutal past, and tourism is booming.

More than 1 million people visited last year, about a quarter of them from the United States. Growth has been so strong that tourism officials cheerfully predict Guatemala will soon pass popular rival Costa Rica in visitor numbers. CBS' recent announcement that it will film the next "Survivor" series there may spur even more interest.

Oscar-winning film director Francis Ford Coppola is among those bankingstopping to milk them when passersby or residents wanted a drink.

In Antigua, I dodged Mercedeses and Volvos and saw million-dollar homes in the historic district. But most people in this country — where the minimum wage is $155 a month — still ride on rickety buses, and some live in casas de cartón, cardboard houses.

In the Maya city of Chichicastenango, 84 miles north of the capital, the Sunday mercado — the largest and most colorful outdoor market in the nation — has modernized. Many vendors speak English and keep calculators handy to deal in dollars instead of Guatemalan quetzales. But visitors who climb into the steep hills behind the city still find ritual sacrifices of live roosters at the shrine of the folk saint Pascual Abaj.

Treasures of Antigua