City Tour of Antigua; chocolate making, and more!

---

We were so excited to know that we had 3 nights in the same hotel, and if it wasn’t for the Semana Santa holiday we could have stayed here 4 nights. So nice to actually unpack; knowing you are staying put for a few days, crazy broken shower and all:-)

Larry had gotten up early, wandered all the way to the square (about 10-15 minute walk) and brought back REAL good coffee. I was all ‘so where did you go; Guatemala City?” (I thought he was going to the restaurant) and when I looked up and saw the real coffee I squealed. Apparently I was too busy inhaling the coffee to say thank you - so I figured a PUBLIC thank you would help to make up for it!!

We had the official city tour with Elizabeth Bell; an expat from California who moved to Antigua in 1969, so she definitely has knowledge. Very involved in the community, volunteering, education, archeology, preserving artifacts and so on. So it was a pleasure having us leading us around; her focus on this particular tour was Semana Santa info; so while it was interesting, after a while it got a bit overwhelming, or a bit more than I needed to know, but still really enjoyed it. We spent 3 hours with her; Justin had mixed up the times so we showed up 45 minutes early; so literally hung around in Central Park, watching the world go by; truth be told I had a lot of fun with that! There were dog walkers out with 6 or 7 dogs that I got to meet, pet and get kisses from; so I was happy!

Learned a lot about Antigua and it’s history; plus modern day information on politics, economics etc. Their current mayor is in jail for money laundering, the police can and are quite corrupt but the city marches on and they do their best by a lot of volunteering and organizations to make it as safe and healthy as possible. There is a lot of love for the city; you can feel that, and Elizabeth Bell definitely is passionate about it.

The only place we stopped where we could ‘shop’ was in the Jade factory; where we learned more about Jade - and I was curious. Chinese Jade (and NZ jade which my necklace is made of) is very different from Guatemalan, and there are different shades and opacities and even colours (green, purple and black). The more opaque the jade the higher quality it is, so it was a good learning curve. Then we got to shop; and I fell in love with a ring that was silver with a small 3 stones setting (?), 2 purple jade and one amethyst stone. I decided to leave it, sleep on it and see how I felt in the morning:-)

We barely finished our tour when we had to rush off for our chocolate making afternoon excursion we had pre-booked. Everyone stopped to grab what they thought would be a quick pizza and I disappeared to get, yet another soy latte for an afternoon snack/lunch. With that and my protein bar, I was set. We made it to the Chocolate museum and the 5 of us, Justin, Randy, Janice, Becky, myself joined a single person from Australia, Linda and we began our tour. Learned everything you ever wanted to know about chocolate and more, including how it is grown, how it is made, how it was discovered, how the Mayans used to drink it; how they introduced it to the Spanish, how the Spanish then converted it to hot chocolate drink and so on. Funny; but the Mayan word for Chocolate includes what sounds like ‘caca’ which in modern slang is “poo” however it is the old Spanish word for ‘poo’ so when the Mayan’s were trying to offer this (cold drink - which had chunks of chocolate in a watery brown liquid with spices and honey) to the Spanish, initially it did not go so well! However they finally tried it, decided they liked it hot, and the rest, is history!

Remember that old expression money doesn’t grow on trees? Yup - the Mayan’s used the cacao bean as a form of currency. So back then, it really DID grow on trees:-)

We made hot tea from the shells of the cocao beans (after we roasted them and peeled them); we then had the traditional Mayan cold chocolate drink (with honey and hot chilli) by literally mashing the cocao beans with a mortar and pestal, working our little butts off, and then finally the hot drink, eventually converted to Hot Chocolate with Milk in it. yummy! Then after all that we got to make our own bon-bon’s with anything we wanted inside of them. MMMmmmmmmm dark chocolate and chilli, dark chocolate and sea salt; and almonds, and coconut, and coffee. mmmmmmmmmmmm We finished that task, cleaned up (read: licked the bowls, spoons, fingers and anything else we could get away with) and left our chocolates to set in the fridge.

Met up with Larry in the park; who had taken the afternoon off to chill out.

Few random facts for you:

For 25 Quetzales you can buy (about $3.50CAD):
One soy double shot latte (medium)
One airplane sized bottle of Stoly vodka
One load of laundry washed, dried and folded
One 4 oz bag of pistachios
About 60 limes if you should choose

So you can guess how the rest of my afternoon was spent:-)

Had a lovely dinner with the group again, our second last night as a team. One thing I've learned so far is Guatemalan's come across as shy initially; but if you smile at them, they will return the smile and their entire face lights up and they just glow from it! Young, old, all of the above. I've never seen such great smiles before - it's hard to capture however as they are very camera shy and generally are not fond of having their photo taken.

SEE BELOW FOR ADDITIONAL PHOTOS

---

Photos

Fountain in central Park
Notice where the water exits?

Inside of the cathedral
Modern on the outside and this in the backyard

Preparing a 'float' for the Easter Processions
This is fresh carnations and there are literally thousands. There is so much pride in having a float in the processions during Semana Santa

Regular street scene
Police getting shoes shined by small children......

Chocolate spins for 22 hours to smooth it out
Dark, Milk or White! Friction heats it and makes it smooth and creamy and blends sugar

Um..........
Mortar and Pestal for crushing cacao beans; what were you thinking?

Pouring the liquid to melt chocolate completey
And cool off the drink - just like the Mayans!