Antigua Guatemala

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Flying into Guatemala City reminded me of flying into Costa Rica. Upon exiting the airport there's a wall of people facing you holding signs, waving, shouting, touting rides. Doesn't give one much time to adjust.

Catching a bus to Antigua was easy, and cost US10. We got real lucky and as it turned out one of passengers happened to own not only a tour company but the property we planned on staying at outside of Sipicate. Adolpho, as he was named, was very knowledgeable and pretty much gave us a 45 minute welcome to Guatemala speech. One of the more interesting points he brought up was concerning coffee in Guatemala. Briefly,

Coffee in Guatemala

One of the my favorite things about Central and South America is the coffee here. It's just generally better than in the states. Better beans, better flavor, better atmosphere for coffee drinking, and coffee related drinks are made with more attention are care. Guatemala seems to be the exception. As it was explained to me, the coffee in Guatemala is generally horrible. There are primarily two reasons for this.
• Instant coffee
• Economics
Guatemala is the first place instant coffee was sold. This was the early 1900's and it was marketed by an American living in Guatemala. It has become a part of the culture here because of that. While instant coffee (ex. Nescafe) is pretty big everywhere in Latin America this seems especially true of Guatemala.
Economics also plays a role in the coffee consumption of Guatemalans. Guatemalans quickly realized that the best coffee beans had more value to other countries than their own. So the best beans were exported and what was left over was sold to Guatemalans. Now why this happened in Guatemala and not in other Latin countries is a bit of a mystery to me, but I do know from experience that the coffee kind of sucked here. The fancier restaurants and cafe's were better off when it came to this, and Adolpho did tell us that for the last 10 years or so this trend has started to reverse and the better beans are becoming more accessible to Guatemalans. In fact right in Antigua is a coffee shop owned by one of the two master roasters in the entire country (according to Adolpho) and they did, indeed, have fantastic coffee.

La Antigua

So back to my story. Upon arriving in Antigua we dropped off our two other passengers and then jumped out of the shuttle with Adolpho at Fernando's Koffee. Really neat place in a very colonial building. A central courtyard set up with chairs surrounded by a roasting room, chocolate factory room, what looked to be a small apartment, and the central kitchen and shop. The coffee was excellent and the place offered WiFi.

From here we headed over the our Hostel, the Jungle Party, and dropped our bags off. The Jungle party was a pretty typical hostel. Main room with some bean bag chairs and cloth and wood framed chairs, a small bar offering liquor as well as beers, a back sitting area with an open patio for smoking, and four rooms. I think one or two of the rooms were private. We stayed in a dorm room with 6 total beds (in the form of bunks) and an attic with several mattresses laid out on the concrete floor.

La Antigua itself is a very classic and pretty town, but all in all was a little touristy for me. A day is plenty to see all there is to see of the town itself. The town is full of restaurants and bars catering to tourists and students studying Spanish. We checked out the ruins of an old church complete with catacombs (most of which were walled off) and a large market style store. After spending some time wandering around town we headed back to the hostel where we met some of the other travelers staying there and all went out for dinner and drinks after. It was a really good group of people staying there, whether that was dumb luck or just the crowd that hostel gets I can't say.

We ended up in a club called La Salle that was featuring ladies drink free until 11. At around 9:30 it was moderately busy but by 11 it was completely packed. There was a live band doing salsa, from what I could tell with a Cuban influence, as well as rock elements. Knowing we had to be up early we did was any responsible traveler would do..we stayed up all night drinking and then woke everyone up in the hostel when we finally managed to find our way back. The buildings in this town all look the same!

After a rough start in the morning we checked out and waited for our ride to El Paredon surf camp.

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Photos

Fernando's Kaffee
First place we stopped at recommended by a local we met on the bus. Turned out to be pretty typical of the businesses around here with the courtyard in the middle.

Vendors
The streets vendor's are a bit much. Here's my buddy getting hit up by someone peddling necklaces.