Blogs from Antigua, Capital Region, Guatemala, Central America Caribbean - page 10

The whole Catholic world prepares for the biggest event in the Church calendar. In Europe believers are busy with their lenten vows, shopping for the Holy Week celebrations and attending evening mass. In Guatemala people build beautifuly decorated carpets made of saw dust, flowers and fruit and organise whole day long processions every Sunday. We were lucky to be part of one of them. The abundance of shapes and colors In the morning inhabitants of the Jocotenango village go out of their houses to begin their preparation. It is Sunday and this week valacion (holy procession) is passing through their streets. Everybody is busy around beautiful alfomras as if they were artists preparing for a gallery. It is going to be a very important day, as people from all over the region will arrive later to ... read more

Arrrrrrriiiiighttt! Rose and Lucy here, still in Antigua. After a violent but brief bug we're back in action! We're still taking it slow-Joe by spending the whole of yesterday chilling in a funky cafe/second-hand bookswap called the Rainbow Rooms. We were loving life so much that we went back there in the evening for an acoustic open-mic night which was SO much better than the cheesey ones you get in England. From local Guatemalan and Mexican singer song-writers to a very in-love Swedish couple and some crazily high banjo-playing eccentric. We had a slightly stressful walk home in the rain (how very dare it rain on us) after discovering that tuctucs unhelpfully stop running at night... But all was well due to Rose's fab sense of direction and a helpful Guatemalan shopkeeper. Today was fairly similar. ... read more

If New Orleans is a town with a Drinking Problem, Antigua is a town with a Chocolate Problem. It is sold in every form, everywhere, until you think it must have been invented here. Well, it was, in a way. But that was long ago and in another culture. The annual world prodution of cacao beans is now about 3 million tons, of which Guatemala produces a hardly noticable 1000 tons- not even enough to supply its national consumption. The choclate tree is a minor bush, just taller than a man, living in the shady underbrush of the jungle. It is easy to spot because of the large bright yellow or orange cacao pods hanging directly off the trunk. Botanists believe it is indigenous to the Amazon jungle in Ecuador, and was brought to Central America ... read more

For those of you who follow our trips you may remember that we visited an orphanage in Agra, India last year making a donation of clothes and toys that we had carried from New Zealand with us. The premise of this was twofold. Firstly we feel that we take so much from a country by way of experience that we are compelled to give something back. Secondly the level of poverty that we generally see is hard and most people would want to help, if only out of compassion. The problem is how? We are commonly confronted by beggars however everywhere we read advises against giving money as you don't know where the money goes and probably more importantly it is unsustainable. Proof of this was in India. We were commonly propositioned by children who asked ... read more

So I have just had two weeks of Spanish lessions in the colonail city of Antigua. Day one of school was daunting, turing up at 8am to be assiged a teacher and then walking a mile or so to the garden where we would have our lessons. This was a chance for my teacher Diana to gauge how much I could already speak. She imformed me on the way that she liked lessons to be fun, with lots of jokes and laughs along the way, as sitting for four hours a day with one person can get boring. It quickly became clear that we wouldn't spend much time sitting down, if at all possible. She informed me I had a fear of speaking and we would change that over two weeks, so the paper verb sheets ... read more