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Published: April 16th 2006
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Happy Easter!
Well things certainly picked up since my little experience with theiving fingers last Thursday. In retrospect losing $100 was not bad at all considering I bumped into a girl from London who had just had EVERYTHING stolen, leaving her with only $0.50 in her pocket, and her friends were held at gunpoint and robbed the other night (something that I hear has started to happen quite often in Antigua).
ANYWAY, I´m really enjoying the town. It´s absolutely gorgeous. I´ve spent my days wandering the cobbled-stone streets visiting beautiful churches as well as ruins caused by earthquakes over the last 400 years. My favourite was the Church of San Fransisco - the oldest church in the town built in the 1500s. Inside one of the rooms was the tomb of Hermano Pedro (founder of the local hospital hundreds of years ago) and a tribute to him as he apparantly heals the sick through miraculous intervention. You should have seen all the photos of people he has apparantly ´cured´over the years. There were thousands of letters of thanks and tons of little crutches and walking sticks belonging to children who were ´helped´by his divine intervention. It was pretty crazy.
Yesterday I Joined a group and walked to the outskirts of the town and up a hill to enjoy a view of the city and the Agua Volcano that looms over. We were escorted by tourist police as there have been attacks on these walks in the passed. Otherwise I´ve been enjoying observing Mayan culture - the people, the textiles, the language - very colourful. I´ve been spending my evenings with Beth and her Belgian friend Fabien.
For the last 4 nights the streets have been packed with people celebrating Semana Santa - meant to be the most spectacular in all of Central America. It certainly has been an experience observing the rituals and street processions! Everyday, every couple of hours a procession kicks off. I´ve observed a number of them and been in awe of what I´m seeing: the men, all dressed in robes, carry various floats of Jesus which tell different stories regarding the crucifixion. Roman guards on horses surround these floats, and an orchestra follows behind performing a dirge. Then a float of a berieved Mary follows carried by women dressed in black. There are thousands of people who take part in the dressing up
and carrying of the floats, and the whole scene is clouded by incense. The processions are beautiful, but once you´re caught in one it´s impossible to get out until it´s all over due to the crowds. I´ve been late once or twice meeting people due to this! Very frustrating, but quite funny too!! Now everytime Beth and I see a procession we roll our eyes and do everything to avoid it!!
On Thursday they had started to carpet the streets with religious patterns made of mainly sawdust, but also flowers, sand, bottle caps, and all sorts! Locals and Gringos alike work together to create these elaborate works of art that are truly striking. We spent that night watching the street procession and visiting a couple of bars. That night was alive with millions of people in the streets. We drank til 2am, and on my walk back to my hotel people were still up in streets, including families with small children, designing their beautiful works of art.
I didn´t sleep on Thursday night due to the noise of the streets so got up at 5am and joined the thousands outside my hotel room who were gathered for one
of the main street processions. It was an awesome sight with sunrise lighting up the volcano and the Roman soldiers gathering on horseback near the heartbreaking floats of Jesus carrying his cross. The expressions of Jesus on the various floats are painful to look at - the anguish on his face and on Mary´s is very lifelike. Reminded me of the Passion of Christ.
The rest of my weekend has been very similar to Thursday. Alot of observing the Easter rituals and celebrating in Antigua´s vibrant nightlife.
Tomorrow I´m off to Costa Rica to meet Lorna and to save some turtles. For now I´ll leave you with some pics! Hope you´re all stuffing your faces with chocolate eggs and a lovely Easter dinner!
By the way I´m adding more pics of Anigua to my last blog entry if you want to see them.
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Cody
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Processionals
Hey! Great photos. I am an adoptive father of a girl from Santa Maria Chiquimula but who was in an orphanage in Antigua. We were fortunate to be able to be there for the last 2 Easters in Guatemala. What a tremendous experience that was and you captured it so effectively with your lens. I look forward to reading more of your entries! If relevant, would you mind if I reference your work on The Guatemala Adoption Blog found at http://guatemala.adoptionblogs.com ? Thanks for sharing your journey!