Antigua is a lovely colonial city and a great place to hang out and chill for a while as well as a good base for visiting the nearby villages and Lago Atitlan. We got here last Saturday and have enjoyed a mixture of good food, footie, shopping and an overnight trip to the Lake and famous market of Chichicastenango.
Impressions of Guatemala so far are that the people are very friendly and the landscape is beautiful- green and hilly. The actual capital, Guatemala City is not a particularly nice place and tourists are not advised to visit it, pretty much everyone heads here to Antigua, the former capital so this town is fairly bursting at the seams with tourists and caters for their every whim but without losing its own character.
Antigua was Guatemala's capital until 1773 when it was heavily damaged by an earthquake (an earlier capital, Ciudad Vieja had suffered the same fate resulting in Antigua's foudation to replace it in 1543) Following its founding Antigua grew to be Central America's finest city home to numerous churches , a printing press and a University. The earquake of 1773 was one in a line of many which damaged the city but proved too cataclysmic for recovery and for years Antigua was abandoned. Since the 1973's however efforts to preserve what remains and recover what was lost have gained momentum and there is muh restoration going on today. The city is surrounded by volcanic peaks; the highest Acatenango is 3976m, Volcans Pacaya (active), Agua and Fuego (which still emits occasional columns of sh) complete the set.
One of the most tempting (and expensive) artesanias on offer in Antigua is jade, which is mined in the east of Guatemala. It has a different composition to the jade mined in the far east, being muh harder and therefore only workable with diamond tools. It comes in a range of colours from the familiar pale to deep greens to creams and pale greys and a lovely lilac veined (rare) variety, as well as black. Craftsmen make replicas of Maya masks and statues of jaguars and Maya carving as well as jewellery to suit every taste. Antigua has several glossy shops with prices to mach but we heard of a family in one of the nearby villages who work jade and sell direct so we took a bus out there and saw how they work the stones and lots of lovely things they produce- most outside my budget even thoug they were half the price of the shops in town- but it was nice to dream:-)
We also visited a macadamia farm in San Miguel de las Dueñas- all organic and with apparently over 300 varieties of macadamia. They sponsor a project providing trees to indigenous communities as they are both good for the environment (big O2 exchangers) and a source of income. A macadamia cream facial was very relaxing but the white chocolate covered nute were the highlight (no surprises there).
From Antigua we took a trip to Lago Atitlan which Aldous Huxley called "the most beautiful lake in the world" Approached from the hills overlooking it the lake could easily be in the north of Italy- it is deep blue with a green shores dotted with small towns and backed by mountains (although unlike Italy many of these are volcanoes). We based outselves in Panajachel, one of the towns on the near side of the lake and took a boat tour for a day to visit several of the vilages around the shores. The best know being San Pedro la laguna which is a b of a hippy hangout, very relaxed and full of bars advertising their worl cup coverage with ever bigger screens. In Santiago Atitlan and Sa Antonio Palopo we admired the beautiful, colourful clothes worn by the indigenous women (and occasionally the men) and succumbed to buying some of their handwoven fabrics- how many table runners do you need (especialy if like me you do not actually own a table)- well you never know...
The following day we took a short bus ride (well it would have been shrt but the bus engine was knackered and it could only manage uphils in fit an starts) to Chichicastenango for the famous market which takes place on Thursdays and SUndays. The town was basically taken over by the market- stalls lined the streets, or even creatd streets. Being over 6ft this was a bit of a minefield for me as the tarpaulins they string up as roofs are ineviably secured by ropes stretched across teh walkways at was is well abopve ehad height for your avergae Maya and about neck height for me. Nevertheless I managed to avoid garrotting myself and managed to procure yet more lovely fabrics, placemats, table runners... the result of which was an hour spent in the post office back in Antigua licking about 100 stamps to cover the cost of the package I sent home.
From Antigua its on to the Carbean again to Livingstone and a ride up the Rio Dulc before we carry on northwards to Tikal. Photos for this entry to follow in a couple of days!
Guatemala's Flag
Map of Guatemala