Antigua

The weekend after Lago Atitlan I went to check out Antigua with Laurel and Troy. Antigua is only about an hour by bus from Guatemala City, so it's a popular destination for catching a shuttle to and from the airport (Troy's flight home was that Sunday and Laurel had a friend coming in on the Monday). Renown as one of the most gorgeous cities in Guatemala, Antigua served as the first regional capital during Spanish rule of Central America and is famous for its architecture and street design (it was one of the first cities in the Americas to be set out on a grid system). It is an incredibly popular tourist destination, one of the top in the country, and has a very robust ex-pat community. Although Antigua is also known for its Spanish language schools, it's a city you can easily get by in without any Spanish. I thought I had gotten more photos than I apparently did, probably because I neglected to bring my camera on our first day wandering around the city and the market. Laurel and I did a second pass of some of the highlights on Sunday, so I'll put those photos up now. I'm headed back in a week or so to catch my own shuttle to the airport, along with some friends who will be new to the city, so I should have the chance to see the sights again.

This is the Antigua Arch - it's an iconic feature of the city

The trip to Antigua was my first trip doing a bus-change as there are no direct chicken buses from Xela. We took a microbus headed for Guate, which is what everyone terms Guatemala City - the bus ayudantes call out "Guate! Guate! Guate!" through the door as they drive through towns to fill the bus, the same way they call out "Xela! Xela! Xela!" going the other direction. I may or may not have purchased a tshirt with that slogan in a tourist trap in Antigua. Anyway! To get to Antigua from Xela, we took a microbus (just smaller than a chicken bus - think 15 passenger eurovan) headed for Guate to Chimaltenango, and then had to switch to a bus from there to Antigua. It's only 30 minutes or so from Chimaltenango to Antigua, which was a good thing because the roads between Xela and Guate and very twisty and always make me nauseous.

As we waited for the bus in Chimal, Laurel and Troy bought some fresh fruit from one of the street vendors. This was Laurel's third trip to Guatemala, and studying at PLQ. Her first trip was when she was 13 and this visit was partly in celebration of her just graduating high school. She's practically a mini-celebrity at school (all the returners are), and is a savvy traveler mature beyond her 18 years. So, although I figured if anyone knew when to eat street food, it would be Laurel, I was still too gun-shy when it came to street fruit. Her next purchase, however, was from the helado (ice cream) vendor next to the fruit stand, and I could not resist a bite of chocolate dipped vanilla. Fortunately, I experienced no ill effects of that decision.

We got into Antigua right around lunch time. All told it was about 3.5-4hours from Xela. Troy and I had called ahead and made reservations at Hotel La Casa de Don Ismael - and it took us several phone calls to find someplace with an open room. It also took us a few circles of the block to find it - it's tucked down a dead end side street. It was a lovely place with the kitchen situated right in the middle of the garden patio, right in front of our door. They don't have too many rooms, so it feels quite cozy, and the roof deck has a great view of the surrounding mountains. The best part, though, was the shower.

Despite it being the rainy season and there being a pretty consistent afternoon shower every day, all of Guatemala experiences a water shortage, all of the time. No one takes daily showers. I'm down to 3 a week, max. This is to explain that Laurel and I didn't discover the shower until Sunday night. Why Troy didn't rave about it on Saturday I will never know, but Sunday after Laurel and I got back from wandering around town in the rain and the cold and getting splashed by tuk-tuk drivers, all we wanted was 5 minutes of hot water to revive us.

Side note about Guatemalan showers to further appreciate this: there are 3 types of showers in Guatemala- unheated, gas heated, and electric heated. Gas heated showers have a small water tank that is heated with gas. You get a 2-3 minute burst of super hot water when you first turn it on and then 10 more minutes of diminishing heat until it runs cool. Electric heated showers have an electric heating element at the point of the shower head. Cold water runs into this small chamber where it's heated by the heating element, and then passes through the shower head. The nice thing about the electric showers is it's possible to get hot water for your whole shower since it's essentially heated on demand. They are two downsides though. First, to achieve hot water for a duration longer than 30 seconds you have to make sure the water runs through the system at just the right speed (read: slowly) so there is no such thing as a hot shower with water pressure. Downside number two is that the system is set up in such a way that you sometimes get a little shock from the water handle when you go to adjust or turn it off. It's akin to the jolt you get licking a 9V battery or shaking hands with a hand buzzer - it doesn't hurt, it's just, well, shocking.

OK, so now you know the state of showers in Guatemala. Now you will understand why, when Laurel returned after nearly 20 minutes in said shower and told me I was going to love it, my interest was immediately piqued. The shower at Hotel la Casa de Don Ismael is both hot - steaming hot - and has water pressure (by Guatemalan standards). It was glorious, and I totally indulged for a 20 minute shower myself. Best. Shower. I've. Had. In. Months.

Other fun shower stories: the morning of my 29th birthday will always be remembered by me as the morning I experienced an earthquake in the shower. Luckily it wasn't too strong (by my standards apparently - my host mom and all of my teachers told me it was a decent sized shake). My philosophy is, if I don't have to go stand in a doorway, it's not that bad. And I was rather glad I didn't have to go stand in a doorway naked and dripping wet that particular morning.

Anyhow! Before we discovered the amazing shower we spent a good deal of time walking around Antigua, which does live up to its reputation as one of the most gorgeous cities in Guatemala. After we got to our hotel and plopped our bags down we took off for the market, which we had walked by on our way from the bus terminal. It was huge, and almost as confusing as the Minerva market in Xela, just with a better grid-like layout. Markets in Guatemala are just fun places to go. There are stalls selling literally everything you could possibly think of. Different sections usually for things like food, textiles, clothes, and home goods. The food sections are always the busiest because they have the highest turn-over and it's generally loud and bustling. It's also possible to find corners of markets that are quiet with souvenirs or textiles or other low-demand items. Troy found a Guatemalan flag, Laurel got a little bag from one of the textile stalls, and I found some cool wood-carved puzzles with little hidden drawers in different designs. I fell in love with the term for them as much as the designs: rompe cabeza, literally "head breaker" although I immediately perceived the translation in the context of the puzzles: "brain teaser".

After the market we wandered up towards Parque Central and the famous Antigua arch. The arch is part of an old convent that is now a hotel - it's one of the more expensive hotels in the city, although I believe they do have rooms in the arch. We checked out a few of the churches too, also well known for their architecture. La Merced was by far my favorite. It looks like a yellow cake that someone took a piping bag to and applied intricate icing designs.

the front of La Merced and the intricate detail work.

Close up of one of the statues next to the door

View of Mt. Augua from the same street (other direction) of the arch

As we wandered, we shopped. Being the tourist center of Guatemala, there are lots of stores and restaurants. Everything is about twice the price as it is in Xela, making Antigua the most expensive place I've visited in Guatemala. The food was good though! For dinner on Saturday we found our way to a steak house that also served pasta and a really yummy flan. Troy declared it the perfect dinner to end his trip on. On Sunday Laurel and I had brunch at a little cafe she had found on one of her previous trips. They had amazing coffee and made their own chocolate on site which was also delicious. It was a brunch buffet so we got to have all of the fresh fruit, OJ, and fried plantains we could eat. For lunch we ventured to a chain restaurant that I have totally forgotten the name of. But they had good cheap tex-mex and brought me my Rosa de Jamaica Fresco in a giant goblet. Rosa de Jamaica is a local drink down here made from hibiscus flowers (I think - maybe they're jamaica flowers). It's bright red/pink and is sweet and delicious. They have it everywhere - including McDonalds - and it's one of my favorites. I had it again at the pizzeria Laurel and I found for dinner on Sunday. It was a rather large restaurant with rooms for let upstairs. We were the only people there on a Sunday night and apparently the family that runs it is from Napoli, so it turned out to be really, really good pizza.

Other highlights included the bizarre interaction we had with the bartender at Sky Bar. Troy wanted to go out for Saturday night so we put together a list of places to check out from the two guide books we had. I made the clever decision to start at the farthest locale and work our way back towards our hotel so the more we imbibed, the less distance we had to cover to get home. Sky Bar was the farthest away so it was our first stop. It was 1) a tequila bar and 2) very quiet. When I say tequila bar I mean that in the top-shelf tequila kind of way. We sat down at the bar and were checking out the menu when one of the bartenders came up and said, very flatly, "get out." pointing Troy in the direction of the door. He motioned to Laurel and I, "You ladies can stay, but your friend here has to leave." We all looked at each other slightly confused. It shortly came out that our bartender was an avid football (read: soccer) fan, and his team was Munincipal - the team that Xelaju beat out for the championship in May. Troy was wearing a Xelaju jersey. This is essentially the equivalent of someone wearing a Yankees cap walking into an irish bar in southie. However, the weird part was that the bartender didn't then just laugh and happily take our money in exchange for drinks. He kept us at arms length the whole time and kept insinuating that we weren't welcome in his bar because of Troy's football jersey. He also insisted that all of their tequilas were sipping tequilas and recommended we try one. We felt awkward not having a drink, but our plan, upon seeing the subdued scene, was to do a quick round of shots and move on to our next bar. Instead we sat and self-consciously sipped our tequilas for twenty minutes before bidding our retreat, subjected to the minor-ranting of the bartender. It was just weird.

Following Sky Bar we hit up a couple other locales on our list, but got fed up with the cover charges (we don't have cover charges in Xela unless it's a benefit party night). We also got annoyed at the 20Q shots. At Pool and Beer in Xela, one of the local watering holes, you can get 3 shots for 20Q. Now, mind you, 20Q is around $3, so we really had no reason to be annoyed. Only that it was so much more expensive than our Guatemalan home turf. Welcome to relativism.

Anyway, once we'd had enough of the bars we headed home, stopping off for water and snacks - including another round of ice cream courtesy of Laurel's craving. Seriously, I heart that girl for reminding me about ice cream. There's a tienda on my way to school that has an ice cream freezer and now I usually stop on Mondays. Ice cream always makes Mondays that much better :)