I arrived to our hotel in Antigua a little greener than usual. The streets are cobblestone, and I don't do well with the shaking. Our hotel here,
Posada la Merced, looks much nicer than our Flores accommodations. We have a rooftop garden and the building is old and beautiful. Here's me on the roof of our hotel.
Our first day we just walked around and got acquainted with Antigua. What a beautiful city. I was surprised by how small it was. Our hotel is pretty centrally located so it's easy to get to everything. What I really love about the restaurants here is a setup where the courtyard is in the middle of the building. Every place we have gone to eat so far has a private, quaint and quiet outdoor area completely closed off from everything. My Spanish is getting quite a workout here, as very few people speak English.
Our plan included climbing a volcano on the day of new years eve. We booked the tour, and were told that we would both need flashlights on the trip. Nothing could be easier than buying a flashlight right? WRONG. I didn't know the word for flashlight, and
fuego/luz were just not cutting it for me. It took us over an hour, several stores, and all of the crappy Spanish/charades skills I possessed to buy flashlights. Totally worth it in the long run, and I will never forget the word
linterna as long as I live.
We got to the base of the Pacaya volcano and I saw that the climb was ridiculously steep. Right at the base there were locals asking if anyone in the group would like to ride the donkeys up (for a fee of course) and some in our group gave in right away. I was very tempted to give up, but Mike was all for doing it in our own. About 50 feet in, the hike got a lot easier. I suspect that the locals made it super difficult at the base in order to make some extra cash.
Another strange thing happened on our way up. As we were walking we heard weird screams. Eventually we passed a boy, probably around twelve years old, who was slowly hiking up and periodically screaming. He seemed OK in all other respects. A while later, after we have stopped hearing the screams we came upon a man and a little girl - looking very similar to the boy. They were hiking up, and the dad's face seemed set and upset. I suspect that the boy was whining, and the dad decided to leave him behind and teach him a lesson. (all pure conjecture, but it's the only sense that I can make out of this story)
After a little while longer we got out of the woods and to a place where there was lose lava rock everywhere. The climb got a lot harder then, like climbing up a hill of sand. We could see the smoke billowing a little ways up, so we got our strength together and made it up to the lava! The feeling of standing next to molten rock is incredible, there was a cold breeze blowing at the top and if you stood just right, you would get a mixture of the cold wind, and the hot hot air from the lava hitting you at the same time. We were close enough to the lava, to be able to touch it with a stick. AWESOME. We stood at the top and watched the sun start to set.
As the sun was setting our guides got very nervous and started taking us back. The way down was hard and the darkness wasn't helping. I was having a difficult time going down in all of the lava rock and since Mike was taking his time looking around, another guy took my hand and started helping me down. That got Mike to come over and help :). We were rushed down as a pretty insane speed, my understanding is that there are people that prey on tourists that separate from the group after dark, so our guides were hurrying us out. We stumbled down and finally made it on to the bus and back to Antigua.
By this time, Mike and I were absolutely starving. All of the restaurants were completely packed because it was New Years Eve, and we never thought that we would be back so late and didn't make any reservations. We waited for an hour to be seated at a restaurant. In fact, we were the last people that were accepted in, the rest were turned away. It took FOREVER to get our food. We managed to sneak a peak into the kitchen and were absolutely shocked to see a normal house stove with four burners. This is why the cooking was taking so long. I don't even know what the food tasted like, because we inhaled it as soon as it came out. We were done with dinner a little after 11 which just gave us enough time to get back to the hotel, and shower before New Year's
The New Year's celebration in Antigua blew me away. Mike and I went up to the roof garden to see all of the fireworks and it was spectacular. There were fireworks exploding everywhere. People on the streets had backpacks and shot fireworks straight from those (don't try this at home). The fireworks lasted for a long time, I think half of Guatemala's budget probably gets spent on New Years. We just stood and watched and felt like we were on top of the world. We could even see the fireworks display from the next towns over. Happy 2009!!!!!
As we waited on the main square we noticed that there was a guy who set up backgrounds and was taking pictures. Imagine my surprise and amazement when I saw that one of the backdrops was a picture of the twin towers, where one tower has smoke billowing out of it and a plane is flying towards the other one. In front of this display is a plastic donkey that you can sit on. I am not an emotional person, but seeing that picture in that way made me sick. I can not fathom why this is a fun holiday background for a photo.
The procession finally started and it was very colorful. It started in a church and went to all of the corners of the square. Incense smoke was everywhere. I would describe it as a mix of a Catholic Mass and a small town parade. The whole parade consists of the one float that you can see in the picture. On the float are: Mary, Jesus, and a wise man. The whole procession is accompanied by an extremely sad, off tune sounding band and the locals explode incredibly loud confetti bombs. The parade also has a queen, la Reina de Santa Maria de Jesus. We were stuck in the town for a little bit, since transportation is pretty unreliable, but eventually made our way back to Antigua and did a little more walking around the town and sight seeing. I was amazed to see some synagogues there. Apparently our people are everywhere.
On our last full day in Guatemala we went on a day trip to Lake Atitlan. Atitlan is considered to be one of the most beautiful lakes in the world and when you are there, you never want to leave. The lake is surrounded by three volcanoes and the nature there is absolutely gorgeous. Mike and I had some time there, and since we didn't want to hang out at the beach and shop in Panajachel, we took a boat to the village of Santa Lucia de Atitlan, across the lake. If I ever win the lottery, I will build a house on this lake and will drink coffee on my deck gazing at the volcanoes. We had a very pleasant walk around Santa Lucia and even got a little lost. True to ourselves we ended up almost missing our bus back to Antigua, but to tell you the truth, I wouldn't have minded being stranded there. Our pictures don't do it justice, but I highly recommend that everyone go there at least once in their life. What a wonderful day to finish off our Guatemalan adventures. I found some pictures online that might come close to showing what it looks like. We came back to Antigua, and had our last Guatemalan dinner, in a restaurant with an inside courtyard of course. I will miss this place, Adios!
