Wednesday, February 27, 2002
We arrived the night before and headed to a pleasant-enough motel a few blocks
from the main airport. The next morning, we chatted over breakfast with a Canadian
couple who were exhibiting what I'll call turista savoir. This is when
travelers who have been in a place for a week think themselves experts, recommending
you do precisely what they've done, even though they lack the context to tell
good from bad. Don't trust everything I tell you; it may be turista savoir.
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El Aeropuerto Guest House 502.332.3086 hotairpt@guate.net $30 single, $35 double Ricard will pick you up at the airport. |
Funny moment as we left our lodgings. I turned to the housekeeper/cook and said "Hasta la vista." She replied with Arnold Scwartzenegger's line, "Hasta la vista, baby."
Visited the Museo Archeologico to see magnificent Mayan art. This is an important stop, for the best glyphs, sculpture, and historic items have been rounded up for display here. The magnificent ruins of Tikal are devoid of art.
In early afternoon, we took a minibus shuttle to Antigua. Alongside were multicolored former school buses, chock full of people, their baggage or chickens strapped to the roof. For $10 a head, our driver took us directly to our hotel.
The Quinta de las Flores is a small hotel (7 rooms) built in the midst of a luscious tropical garden. My room is quite comfy; I even have a fireplace! We had lunch at the restaurant beside the gardens, took a short siesta, and ambled into town. Antigua is charming. Cobblestone streets, falling-down churches, a fine plaza in the middle of town, lots of restaurants to choose from, block upon block of flat-front adobe houses painted in outlandishly bright colors.
Thursday, February 28, 2002
I started the day with breakfast in the outdoor restaurant at our hotel. Un
plato de frutas grande (frutas tropicales de estacion) @ Q16, café
Negro @ Q6, tortillas de maiz @ Q2 = Q24 or $3. I wandered into town, expecting
jai and jan to be way ahead of me (they were in bed another hour or so). A charming
gentleman at Inguat, the national tourist service, walked me through the highlights
of Guatemala. Next up: the Mercado de artisanas, where I realized there's not
much Mayan stuff I really need.
Handicraft vendors are everywhere in Antigua. The Mercado is a rabbit warren of narrow alleys where the locals buy toothpaste, toys, grains in bulk, veggies, flowers, and what-not.
Into the main Mercado, at least four square blocks of narrow aisles between vendors of vegetables, spices, meat, clothing, grain, toys, CDs, belts, souvenirs, Levis, flowers, you name it.
I visited the Internet café next to Los Arcos, one of several dozen around town. Email-fu. There are dozens of Internet cafes in town.
Met jai and jan for lunch at the Café Vieja. (plato tipico). My brother suggested we each name our must-see attractions. Jan chose Livingston, an isolated spot on the Caribbean coast settled by slaves who had intermingled with the red Indians of St. Vincent. Jai went for Tikal and Lake A. I abstained.
Hit the Americaspan office to buy a two-day package to Lake Attical and Chichitenango ($70 para mi). Sat in the courtyard at Don Rodrigos listening to a ten-man marimba band. Listened to the municipal band serenading the people in the plaza. Took lots of balcony pictures. Wandered back to el hotel. Met up with jai and jan, who had been lost for an hour but had found a wonderful restaurant, Meson de Panza Verde (Panza Verde = green tummy, the nickname of the locals after Antigua was abandoned for Guatemala City and they had to subsist on an all-avocado diet. Live jazz trio. Hay ambiente. Stone arches, grotto effect from open-air Olympic lap pool, view to baroque façade, great service; we ate salads, fondu, calamares en su tinto, a liter of house wine, apertivos, and more…for a total of $75, tip included. We walked back to la Quinta de las Flores and rented a casita for manaña noche, the hotels in town having filled up for the weekend.
Spanish language schools are a major business here. Also art schools and dancing lessons.
Note: Banks and Coca-Cola trucks are guarded by men with short-stock repeating shotguns.
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La Quinta de las Flores in Antigua was built in 1992 on the land of the owner's grandfather, the site of seventeenth century public baths. The baths have become a series of fountains whose sound can be heard throughout the breathtaking gardens that surround the seven rooms and casitas on the property. Rooms go for $60. Casitas cost $120 and include two bedrooms, a loft, couches in the living room, a dining room, and a full kitchen. It's a half-mile walk to the center of town but we considered this an advantage.
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La Quinta de las Flores 502.832.3721 al 5 qflores@terra.com.gt |
A plaque records that el Hermano Pedro, who is to be canonized this July, lived two doors down the street.
This is one of the most beautiful small hotels I have ever seen.
A quaint Maya village a few kilometers southwest of Antigua.
Note the smoke coming from the active volcano on the left, el volcan Fuero.
Between San Antonio and Antigua is an extensive macadamia nut test farm. The trees are great for the environment. These guys donate trees to villages all over Guatemala. Macadamia nuts are not only good to eat; they also produce an oil which it used in anti-wrinkle cosmetics. Jai and Jan tried the free facials. We ate chocolate-covered macadamias and jamáica tea made with macademias.
This is the coffee plantation of the owners of La Quinta. They have a coffee museum, a working coffee operation, and a museum of musical instruments.
Sunday
Late this afternoon we returned from an intense two-day excursion. Before six on Saturday morning, we boarded a ten-passenger van for the two-hour drive to Lake Atitlan. Then hopped a small boat which took us from village to village along the shore. In the first village, we caught part of a bicycle race that was coming along the main street of town.
The chicken buses
Rainbow-colored, belching smoke
I breathe their exhaust
In the second village, I succumbed to the sales pitch of a trio of Mayan girls who sold me a shirt. A blouse for "you wife." A tablecloth. A scarf. I felt powerless. These girls are amazing sales people. The third and final village, more purely Mayan, was lined with interesting shops; a woodcarver caught my eye and I ended up with a large St Francis and a diminutive Santiago.
Returning to our bare-light bulb digs after more than two hours on the water, we were thoroughly pooped. Not so much so that we couldn't amble along the waterside to the Sunset Café for drinks and dinner and then a two-hour tour of the shops and food stalls along Avenue Santander.
This morning I arose shortly before seven, hopped in the shower, and headed out for desayuno of huevos rancheros, frijoles, jugo de naranja, tortillas y café. At 7:45, our group of eleven boarded the minibus for the 90-minute drive to Chichicastenango and its famous Sunday market.
hecho a mano
my mother she made this
only five for you
We quickly tired of squeezing our way though narrow aisles of fruit, souvenirs, and household goods and headed for the San Tomás church, the spiritual center of the town.
Chichi has always been Mayan. When Christianity arrived with the conquistadors, the locals didn't replace their old religion with a new one; they simply added the Christian beliefs to their Mayan cultural and religious ways. ("Hey, these new guys have some new stories; let's listen in.") The padres were bringing the sixteenth century equivalent of new movies to the Maya.
In the center aisle of the San Tomás church are half a dozen stone slabs about 1 x 2 meters, each covered with flower-petals and candles. Shamans kneel at each, casting spells and lighting candles. Mind you, this is in the center of a "Catholic" church. My eye wandered from larger-than-life statues of a suffering Christ with blood pouring out of his side to the medicine men helping people one-by-one at altars covered with flower petals. Who are the pagans here?
I commissioned a guide to take us to a sacred Mayan ceremony. We walked and walked and walked, finally arriving at the top of the highest hill in town. Several fires were ablaze - one for health, one for good luck, one to protect the tourists from rip-offs and pickpockets. A couple of "doctors" in black costume lit incense and did sand paintings with sugar. A shaman wandered around swilling aguardiente (corn liquor) and blowing mouthfuls on the flames. A woman on the side had several sacrificial items for sale, for example a live chicken; one fireplace contained the carcasses of several immolated chickens.
A couple presented themselves to be married. One suspects that this particular couple has been married many times; they have two children, a girl about seven and a boy about ten. First, the man was purified; call for white candles; pour Gallo beer on him. Next, the two children; rub them with flowers; pour some Gallo on them, have Dad pour some Gallo on them. Then the ensemble; incantations, shake up a liter of Gallo and spray it on 'em all. Spit some aguadiente on them. This all looked so amateurish you felt sorry for the performers. Upon reflection, I think we witnessed a re-enactment of the real deal. Later in the afternoon, we saw a similar performance-except that the Mayans were gobbling it up. (The last photo above is of blackened chicken, shaman-style.)
Antique masksThe Mayan experience splashed into my crap detectors. Mental XML rears its head-it's search-and-replace thinking. In Morocco, the mantra was "cedar wood from the high Atlas" and "hand-carved plaster." Here everything is Mayan and "hecho a mano," invariably by the mother's own hand.
Monday
I awake well rested. Mi hermano is out for a walk. Su esposa is going through souvenir purchases. They bought textiles galore; I have a suite of knick-knacks. Buying Christmas gifts was their aim; I've just let the vendors sweep me along. All I really "need" is a good Maximone and perhaps a chunk of jade.
Maximone? Same as St. Simon, AKA Judas Escariot. This "deity" is generally found slouched in his chair, a cigar in his teeth, and surrounded by empty beer and aguardiente bottles. Some see Maximone as a joke. Others pray to him. The rules between good and bad are loosely drawn here.
Antigua has been rocked by earthquakes throughout its history, e.g. 1526, 1541, 1565, 1575, 1577, 1586, 1607, 1651 and so on until the city was deserted and the capital moved to Guatemala City. Hence, there are more colonial-era ruins to look at than standing buildings.
The manager of our hotel went to the College of Notre Dame in Belmont! She is a hyperactive, outgoing, charming woman - the product of a Czech marrying into a coffee-plantation family from Antigua. Her family on her mother's side have owned coffee plantations and land here for a long time. The hotel was built on a portion of her grandfather's land. She is currently trying to help us figure the best way to do Tikal.
Later
A travel agent downtown at Sin Fronteras, one of the better looking travel agents, told me that Aviateca had flights to Flores the sixth and the seventh. And coming back? Oh, they have no return flights for weeks. Turns out this is 100% bs. There are plenty of return flights. But how dumb can a travel agent be, offering only one leg of a roundtrip flight? Tikal is in the jungle; no one stays there for weeks.
© 2002, Jay Cross, Berkeley, California. Feel free to use any of these images so long as you acknowledge the source and provide a link back to it.
