Greetings from Antigua, Guatemala! Chad and I have been here since Tuesday, and are planning to stay through Sunday night to catch the market and the weekly festival celebrating the coming of Easter. It should be quite a time - yesterday we unexpectedly stumbled upon the floats, stored in the ruins of a colonial church. They were gigantic, very life-like recreations of scenes from the Passion, spanning from the sentence of Pontius Pilot to the Resurrection.
the ruined churches are perhaps the most striking feature of the town - on almost every block you come upon a crumbling facade and broken statues, with interiors crowded by collapsed roofs and fallen walls. Most were destroyed by a string of earthquakes in the mid-1700s, but the Spanish kept rebuilding them until a massive quake in 1773 left them beyond repair.
The streets here are busy in the daytime with busses and tuk-tuks whizzing by in every direction, but quiet in the evenings when the locals return home to their families. The buildings are mostly single story, painted every possible shade of pastel, which makes for quite a view as you gaze down the cobblestone streets. All activity is centered around the parque central, which is surrounded by colonial government buildings with covered walkways that stretch the entire length of the park on all sides except the east, where the Catedral de Santiago towers over the town. It reminds me very much of Santa Fe and other SW spanish cities. Catedral de Santiago is incredible, built in 1542 and painted a bright yellow that makes the whole park seem alive with color. In the evening the park is filled with locals, and a marimba band usually plays by the fountain in the center.
Getting here was insane. We left Flores at a most ungodly hour on a bus for Sayaxche, a small, unseemly town with unpaved roads where we were the only gringos in sight. Our presence did not seem to be very well received. We hired a local boatman to take us about an hour up the Rio de Pasion to the Mayan ruins of Ceibal, which were absolutely incredible. The highlights were the intricate stelae, the 2000 year old observatory, and the sacrifical altar carved in the likeness of a jaguar. Local Maya families were there as well, some exploring the ruins and others selling water and tortillas. It was pretty fantastic to be in so remote a place in the thick of the jungle, listening to the monkeys scream in the trees while climbing a 2000 year old pyramid whose steps barely protrude from the vegetation that covers the temple.
It took a few hours to catch a bus after returning to Sayaxche, but one finally came and we spent the night in Coban, a small mountain town with an old convent high on a hill. Coban was pleasant enough, though our hotel left much to be desired. Scribbled on the inside of our door was a message reading "do not use this hotel - this place is dangerous." We left the next morning.
After a crowded greyhound type bus ride to Guatemala City and an outright insane chicken bus ride to Antigua, we finally made it to our hostel and settled in for a somewhat long stay.
Our roommates here are great - two Candians and a brit - with some of the most insane travel stories I have ever heard. Impalements, lost fingers, bugs burrowing into feet, existing on ants... it's made for some interesting dinner stories.
From here we will spend another 15-20 days in Western Guatemala, mainly in the "tenangos" (huehuetenango, chichicastenango, quetzaltenango, etc) before taking a shuttle to Copan Ruinas, Honduras, and beginning our more southerly route.
Until next time, take care!