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Antigua 1
We arrived in Antigua following 2 bus journeys and a change in Guatemala City. The 1st bus journey from Rio Dulce to Guatemala City was eventful to say the least. First of all the bus arrived 1 hour late. We piled on and the inspector made a local man move so that Charlie could have his seat ha ha! Lisa, however, was not so fortunate and was shoved to stand at the back of the bus. Lisa’s experience: wobbly and generally uncomfortable with people too close to her personal space. Even the poor old lady next to Lisa wasn’t offered a seat. Eventually all the kulaks piled off the bus for a toilet break and for some reason only half of them made it back on the bus before we set off (we blame man eating toilets), so we were eventually able to sit together.
The next incident was a religious experience. We 1st noticed 2 ladies (one about 40, the other 20) trying to board the bus but spending a long time talking to the driver. This soon turned into a heated conversation with lots of arm actions. Charlie thought this was maybe because her bags had been lost; Lisa thought the lady was angry because the bus was late (Spanglish only goes so far –we have to rely heavily on interpretative expressions, neither of which proved accurate in this case). The next thing we knew, the rotund bus driver was wrestling with the older lady, but her spindly frame was no match for his bulk and she spidered past him onto the bus. The bus driver then stomped off the bus and the 2 ladies started jabbering at everyone in foreign. The bus driver then returned, swore angrily and sped off at high speeds, turning up the radio very loud to drown out the ladies voices. Granja, sitting across the aisle from us, kept giving us very sympathetic looks as the two ladies babbled on. Our beginner Spanglish allowed us to pick out words like “Dios” (God) and “Jesus” (Hey-zeus!) and we realized that we were now part of a mobile congregation. The younger lady said (shouted) a long prayer and then started to cry, so moved was she by the Spirit. Even Granja sitting next to us looked moved. We didn’t know where to look so we just looked at each other and sniggered. Eventually the ladies departed and peace was restored.
However, 10 minutes later the bus stopped for about 20 minutes for an apparently vital measuring task, as the driver got off the bus and returned with a measuring tape and began measuring all the windows and windscreen. He then returned to his seat and the bus moved off again. We continued our journey none the wiser, but now almost 2 hours behind schedule. We arrived in Guatemala City, viewing streets full of piñata shops. Here we changed buses and boarded what looked like a gypsy carnival bus which took us the rest of the way to Antigua. As soon as we stepped off the bus we were accosted by a tour guide who led us to a hotel. Our bags were too heavy to argue!
We had been thinking about attending a Spanish school in Antigua and the guide said he would take us to get information on them the next day. We agreed to meet the next say and he left us with a Guatemalan newspaper, which we perused throughout the evening. It heavily featured pictures of car accidents, riots and fires with the accompanying corpses left in the shot.
True to his word, the tour guide picked us up from our hotel the next morning. He escorted us straight to a Spanish school run by a mafia member with gold teeth going by the name of Jaws (to us at least). Here we were relentlessly encouraged/forced to attend his school. However, we eventually managed to escape by convincing them that we would think about it and having promised to return later that day. The very next moment we fled back to our hotel, packed our bags and moved out so the tour guide wouldn’t be able to come back and harass us. The poor old lady owner of the hotel was so nice that when she asked us why we were leaving we had to lie and say we were going to live with a Guatemalan family as part of our Spanish course. This seemed to please her immensely so we didn’t feel too bad.
Raksheeta´s Remonstrations
After fleeing our hotel we looked in that great Bible, Lonely Planet for cheap options and wandered around them all getting prices. The cheapest, by far was Posada Ruiz II, which was 38Q (2 pounds 50) for a twin room. Bargain! It was a simple hotel but it had hot water showers and toilet complex (outside) and a kitchen, which consisted of 4 gas hobs. We found a kitchen to be essential in Antigua as the restaurants are phenomenally expensive and the word vegetarian is not truly understood.
Antigua must be one of the richest towns in Guatemala as it has a feeling of Florence, Paris or other cosmopolitan towns. The coffee shops, art galleries and stylish boutiques and housed in rich colonial architecture. This also means that it is a fairly expensive town but by finding Raksheeta´s we could splash out on coffees and other luxuries!
The family at Posada Ruiz II lived in the same complex as the guest rooms. The rooms surround a lovely little courtyard with hanging baskets that hit our noggins each time we walk past, the learning process hasn’t quite caught up with us! Anyway there are loads of plants, tables, benches and a fairly social atmosphere which had us scared to leave our room on a few occasions, but only because of the German language harshness. We named the lady of the establishment ‘Raksheeta’ but have had to change the spelling from the Palenque version as Sta Travel stars it out as a rude word! This lady does the most cleaning, washing and scrubbing that it is possible to squeeze into 24 hours! She also has 2 small daughters that spend their days helping and hindering poor Raksheeta. One sunny day the girls were playing boisterously in the courtyard and spinning each other round. The elder girl (named ‘Dino’ by us on account of her wrinkled up nose when she frowns, which is almost permanently) accidentally tumbled on the concrete floor. Tears began to fall and Raksheeta hearing the distress rushed out as any caring mother would. We stared on expecting to see kind words and a motherly hug. It was not to be! What followed was a strained yanking on the little girls arm to drag her to her feet, a torrent of harsh words and a belting across the backside. Tears kept falling but were a little more subdued. Then Raks got her to the house door and gave a second walloping to the girls head, this time the tears stopped. We applaud Raks for her modern child rearing practice. We were later even more pleased as we discovered their favourite/only xmas gift were big matches filled with gunpowder that sparked and banged when they were struck on concrete. These frequently showered the children with sparks and they were sent screaming but soon returned to continue the firework game!
Raksheeta’s anger probably stems from a lack of front door keys issued to guests. A guest must ring a bell to be let in and this facility is available 24 hours. Not only does Raksheeta or husband (Raksheeta Man) have to answer the door at any hour but guests are also awoken by the excessively loud Ding Dong. Raksheeta has a primitive spy hole which is a large hatch with bars, unfortunately Raks is of a very small stature and so tall gangly European guests must peer in and stare down at her. We decided to make the bell a little more fun for everyone and would vary the length of time before the ding and the dong. Sometimes they would come in rapid succession and sometimes there was a very long pause. Once the pause was so long the Raks had reached the spy hatch before Charlie had released the bell for the dong to sound. Raks had opened the large wooden door when the final Dong sounded. he he. Some guests are very impatient and ring the bell several times with gusto even if Raks is engaged in the toilet!
Some of the other guests in Raksheeta’s are a little bit weird, including a 70 year old Granjad that lives in Antigua for 6 months and in a random undisclosed location in Asia for the other 6 months! One Day Granjad appeared in the courtyard and we hola’d to him, when he hola’d back he waved a bottle of orange liquid in the air and promptly disappeared into a toilet. When he reappeared the bottle was empty (and probably stinking). This meant that Granjad was too lazy to visit the toilets at night when they are only 10 paces from his room. And this dirty Granjad had the cheek to be arrogant!
The Spanish Affair
As mentioned previously, we had decided to take Spanish lessons whilst in Antigua. After our disastrous introduction to one school, we took it upon ourselves to collect a number of flyers for schools from the local tourist office (INGUAT). We sifted through the adverts, discarding those that were too expensive or too professional looking. At the end of the task, we visited a great number of schools that had made it past our selection process. Here are the most memorable:
Laughing Woman
We arrived at this school and were met by a very pleasant young lady who started telling us about the school. However, soon afterwards a strange hysteria overcame her and she laughed uncontrollably at everything. This continued during our chat in her office, then while we had a tour of the school and then again at the end when discussing prices (which although reasonable, did not warrant being taught by a lunatic).
Crispy Hands Man
This school was deserted when we arrived, then suddenly an old man appeared with red raw patches under his eyes. An uncomfortable silence followed, during which time the man made no effort to volunteer any information about the school. Eventually he nervously answered our questions, all the while focusing far too intensely on our eyes in a very unnerving fashion. Ultimately we decided that this school was not for us as the man was very ugly and frightening.
The Poster Woman
We arrived at this school and were told that the owner would be with us shortly. Meanwhile we were invited to have a cup of coffee out of the huge urn. However, the lady was a very long time and we accidentally drank the urn dry. When she finally arrived, she sold the school very well, however when it was time for us to leave she went crazy and started unraveling lots of old posters of conventions she had attended in Paris. After promising her we would “think about it” we left and considered ourselves as having another lucky escape.
The Return of Jaws
While looking for another school, we accidentally bumped into Jaws, the mafia owner of the 1st Spanish school we visited/were kidnapped to. He whisked us back to his school where we were given the hard sell. After battling his price down, he dragged in a student to tell us how wonderful the school was. It turns out the student had only started at the school that morning. This boy had fear in his eyes, and although it was too late for him, we considered ourselves lucky and made good our escape from the school.
We adjourned for lunch to consider our somewhat depressing options when a gangly man that seemed to work at the café we were dining at came over and offered us his opinions (in Spanish) on the various schools for which we had flyers for. We asked him which ones were the best and he told us. Meanwhile, Lisa ordered “Vegetarian Noodle Soup”, however when it arrived there were large lumps of low/grade meat floating in it. Lisa questioned this and the lady waitress removed the bowl. Assuming a simple mistake had been made, Lisa waited patiently while the waitress returned with another bowl. In fact, it turns out it was the same bowl, just with most of the meaty lumps removed. Oh dear. The gangly man, having overheard the complaint, returned with 2 pieces of corn on the cob, making a “shush” gesture as he gave them to us as he didn’t want to lady owner of the café to know what he had done. A nice enough gesture – until later. While waiting to pay at the counter, Charlie begged Lisa not to look over to the kitchen area. Unable now to not look, Lisa peers over the counter and sees exactly where the corn came from: little piles of them all nestled cosily between roasted chicken carcasses.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the gangly man from the café insisted on escorting us to one of the Spanish schools he recommended, refusing to simply show us where it was on the map. We tramped through the streets following him, and arrived at a school. A cleaning lady answered the door and after a secretive conversation he informed us that the owner wouldn’t be back until later that afternoon. We promised to return later, and when we tried to leave the gangly man kept trying to go in the same direction as us. Eventually he became angered after we dallied for so long in order to lose him, and he set off in his own direction.
Sucio-Limpio School
After our encounter with gangly man, we stumbled upon a little Spanish school. We entered, and sitting behind the desk was a friendly looking rotund man with the smallest feet encased in highly polished black shoes and only one functional eye. He enthralled us with descriptions of how we would learn Spanish, including a game of snakes and ladders involving verbs, and a fabulous memory game featuring two pigs: Sucio Limpio! All the lessons took place in a field just outside town, reached by a 10 minute bus journey. Alternatively, the friendly man told us that he could be our teacher and we could instead study with him there in the school office, which was just around the corner from our hotel. We thanked him for his time and left to consider our options.
Decision Time
Within an hour we made our decision to go to the Sucio-Limpio School (Cooperacion). On arrival at the school there was a big iron gate that closed and made the school look like a cage. Assuming the little man to be out, Lisa peered into the cage and saw the empty chair and desk that was scattered with half-eaten snacks. Confident there was no-one in Lisa informed Charlie of the situation, shouting “The Kulak’s Dead, He’s been eating snacks”. A small rustle was then heard from inside the cage and Mario the teacher appeared. We were let in and saw that he had been sleeping around the corner on a small mat on the floor. The kulak had obviously taken a nap after snacking. It also meant that he probably heard Lisa’s shouting. A new lesson was learned today which was: Don’t scream derogatory words into the open door of a Spanish School, as the Kulaks speak English!
Mario, the man we met at first, asked us if we wanted one teacher each or to share. Charlie responded to this question with a loud “YOU!” Charlie obviously had a very different spanglish conversation in his head and was politely asking if Mario could become our teacher. He replied in the positive as he was too scared to say no. We signed up to start on Monday morning at 8am with 5 hours a day finishing on Friday at 1pm.
We Be Happy
We paid our money on Monday morning and sat at a little desk in front of a whiteboard. We started our first lesson with some verbs and a lot of practicing asking questions and making sentences. We had a little break for half and hour and then returned, it was after this break that it all started deteriorating. We managed to scrounge a cup of coffee and continued with more verbs. At about 11:15am a small tattered brown book appears and Mario would give us a phrase and we had to change it to I, he, she, we, they etc. concentrating on the verb change. Unfortunately these phrases were full of vocab we hadn’t ever learned. It was like a memory test as we had to remember the sound of all the words and repeat them back in the right order. Often we forgot the verb and had to get Mario to repeat the whole thing several times! The whole lesson broke into a mass of hysteria as Charlie kept making up words. The hilarity continued unabated until Mario terminated the lesson early and threw us out! Offering to continue the lessons extra hour on Saturday. He started to realize what a mistake he made offering to be our teacher. We left happy knowing that we had destroyed our first lesson successfully. We were given hideous homework to write 60 sentences but we actually managed to complete this task without too many sniggering fits.
Over the next few days, sniggering was kept in check even when the brown book came to the table. Mario had learned to shorten the sentences and avoid all unessential words. We learned loads of verbs and played matching pairs with flash cards. This was also our homework and we became fairly studious. There was always something missing in our lessons, the Sucio-Limpio Game which had won our custom had never been played. We pushed this matter and finally on the Saturday, which had now collected 3 hours due to our laziness and ADHD, the game was played. The game was amazing and we sniggered all the way through and kept playing until Mario finally took the cards away and forced us to learn past tense.
The Spanish School was also a Salsa School and our new Saturday lesson clashed for the final 30 minutes and so we relocated to Posada Ruiz II. We had always thought that Mario and Raksheeta would make such a lovely couple. It was finally time for them to meet. We felt excitement in the air as we pressed the bell. Raksheeta appeared and questioned his presence in her hotel. They exchanged a few cold words and frosty glances. It wasn’t going well. After the short lesson Mario said his final goodbye. Lisa commented to Charlie “They didn’t seem to get on” to which Charlie replied (with lots of emphasis) “NO, THEY HATE EACH OTHER!” Spanglish is still our main language but we have now obtained the level of Advanced Spanglish.
Christmas – Guatemalan Style
Christmas in Antigua was always going to be a very different experience for both of us. The town had gone crazy and there were decorations everywhere but that Christmassy feeling was missing. With both family, cold weather and presents missing it was going to be a bizarre experience. Parque Central was full of trees that were covered with tiny white lights on their trunks and leaves. This gave us a little xmas atmos but it was still far too warm. The supermarket was also covered in large dangerously swinging decorations that we had to duck under for fear of decapitation. They only seem to consider their own small statures when hanging these oversized gaudy decorations! We visited this Bodegona (Supermarket) on Christmas eve so we could stock up on food for the next day incase it was closed. The shop had the most eclectic music ever to grace a supermarket. The tunes included a selection of Irish themed xmas songs followed by greensleeves and then an ultra modern pop song! The place was packed out, especially as deliveries come through the same door as people and there is no stockroom. So there was a lot of ducking and weaving to avoid shoppers and carts full of delivered items! On this day we treated ourselves to real cheese and savoury biscuits. We have never been so content with low grade cheddar cheese, it was amazingly unprocessed.
Lisa decided that going to a late Carol Service might initiate some Christmas feelings. We headed out to a local catholic cathedral at 10pm (the latest we had ever left Raksheeta’s). All the service was in Spanish and there were no xmas hyms or hymn sheets. There was one uncomfortable moment when everyone turned to their neighbours and hugged them to say Merry Xmas (Feliz Navidad). We had to turn to each other and pretend we hadn’t noticed this very unBritish friendliness. People were walking in an out of the church willy-nilly like it was a social event and fireworks were being set off which echoed around and drowned out anything the priest was trying to say. All the songs were unrecognizable twinkly tunes; the lack of singing was disappointing so we made up our own lyrics to the music, much to our sniggering and everyone else’s stern pious looks! As soon as communion started we escaped into the dangerously firework laden streets. We went to bed immediately after church but were woken up again at 12 midnight when a war started. The war lasted for more than 30 mins and it sounded like every single person in every street was setting off banger fireworks. Even Raksheeta and family were setting things off. We stayed in our beds.
The next morning (Christmas Day) we assumed everything would be closed but to our horror and happiness the coffee shops were already open at 9am. We exchanged gifts of Rassi Sport sandals for Charlie and a Mariposa top for Lisa. We also opened our cards and presents from home (Thank you parents) and ate Thorntons Chocolate Coins for breakfast (Thanks Mini) with cheese on biscuits. We wandered around the town a lot and then made our Xmas dinner of curry and rice. Not traditional but certainly scrumptious. Lisa drank a bottle of red wine and Charlie tried to catch up. Both were now in a mood for dancing but couldn’t find any dancing places. The only place we found was a hideous Irish bar that was packed to bursting with sweaty ugly men (like any Irish bar). So we gave up and went back to the hotel and slept/passed out.
Parque Central
One of the most lovely things about Antigua was the park surrounded by old colonial buildings and churches. It was a lovely place to wander around, especially at night when all the trees and fountains were illuminated. One of the main attractions of the park (for us) was a lady who inhabited an archway outside on of the large buildings (the INGUAT building, to be precise). Her apartment, as it later became know, consisted of walls of crates and was like an Aladdin’s cave on the inside. On the many times we visited it, we saw:
- A collection of worn out handbags
- Sunglasses
- Take-out coffee
- Sewing/knitting equipment
- Bedding
- Books and magazines
- Xmas chocolate selection boxes
- Bright pink collapsible toy pram missing a wheel
- Remains of dinner and other snack like products
One of our first encounters with the apartment lady was when we passed by her apartment one afternoon. She made eye contact with us, clapped her hands thrice in a syncopated rhythm and cheerily sing-songed “Hola!” at us. We replied “Hola!” and a happy friendship was entered into. Or so we thought. The next day we were sitting in Parque Central on a bench enjoying the view and the sun when who should approach us but the apartment lady. As we saw her we smiled and prepared to say hello, however something about her slow robotic movements alerted us to the fact that this was not a good day for the apartment lady. As she approached us she slowed down and her steely gaze fell to a piece of cake on Lisa’s lap. The apartment lady then stared into Lisa’s eyes with a sinister look on her face, before moving slowly off again. It is highly probably that Lisa was cursed during this time; we will wait and see.
We attribute the apartment lady’s maxi-period to the fact that her apartment has to be moved a few meters every night due to the presence of a book fair on her property during the day. One evening, we walked past the tables used for the book fair, unaware that the apartment had moved underneath them. As we walked by, we heard a sinister whisper of “muchachos!” (which means boys and girls) come from the apartment at us, a moment which haunted us to our beds that night. Another morning we bumped into the apartment lady as she washed her clothes in the fountain in Parque Central. She was having a conversation with the air, so we hastened away. Some days we would visit the apartment as often as 3 times as we felt a bond with its occupier. One day we followed the apartment lady’s route around the town, observing her as she ventured from street to street wearing a beanie hat and huge Dior glasses on one of the hottest days of the year.
We also encountered one of apartment lady’s comrades one day as we wandered through the park. Sitting in front of one of the large colonial buildings on a busy pavement was a young gentleman with hair snaking from his head, juddering a lot as he sat. We glanced over and observed him, but something didn’t seem quite right. As we looked closer, we noticed a blemish on his dark brown corduroy trousers. This will teach us to be so inquisitive, as the next thing we knew was the true nature of the blemish was revealed to be none other than his pene hanging outside his trousers. We ran away, disgusted.
One of the roads leading off Parque Central was well traveled by us during the course of our daily wanderings. Here we encountered a young black man, trying to encourage people into his shop selling natural insect repellents and scents. He struck up a conversation with us and we found out he was from Brixton, as we had guessed due to his strong south London accent. He however was not so geographically astute, and thought we were either from Australia or South Africa. And this was after speaking to him. We thought he was joking, but it turns out he wasn’t, and he was extremely surprised to learn that Charlie lives only 30 minutes away from him. Oh dear.
Volcan Pacaya
We arranged a trip to see a nearby active volcano. Ignoring all warnings from GCSE Geography and not daring to consult Lonely Planet, we headed off with a tour group. Our transport was one of the old yellow American School Buses (like in South Park) and we sat at the back like rude kids. Charlie managed to choose a very broken seat. He he. The journey over the cobbled streets of Antigua was quite sickening but soon we were on smooth roads (in comparison) and sped past Guatemala City.
We arrived at Volcan Pacaya safely ignoring everyone on the trip. Although a ginger girl with very large willy wonka style white sunglasses, whom Charlie named Bree, kept trying to initiate conversation. Her efforts were futile. We paid at the entrance and a lazy American family delayed the start by hiring horses to trudge all the way up. We expected the walk to be short and at ‘kulak funeral place’ which is the normal very slow gait the kulaks have around town, v. frustrating to be behind. But to our horror their was a 3km, one and a half hour fast pace walk up a very steep and slippery hill, up to 2000m. The light was beginning to fade as we reached the lava field. This was our highest point as it was probably too dangerous to climb to the summit, which was venting steam constantly. We saw a lovely little caldera lake on the way up. The lava field was amazing to see but the thing that struck us the most was the hot molten lava that could be seen glowing red and white through crevices in the dark black cold lava. The heat was tremendous and as the light decreased is got more spectacular and had a feeling similar to Bonfire Night. Some of the tourists were toasting marshmallows in the 1400 degree centigrade heat – obviously not that close but they still set on fire. When it went completely pitch black we set off back down. Once in the trees we had to stay near people with lights and sniggering as various people stumbled or fell, including ourselves. We stopped at a viewpoint where we could see other volcanoes, the lights of Antigua and the huge sprawling mass of lights from Guatemala City. From here the City looked beautiful, certainly nicer than when in it! Once descended we climbed back to our favourite seats on the bus but this time the whole back seat was broken and swinging dangerously and tipping us forward on every bump. Other than the seat it was a fairly uneventful 2 hours back to Antigua.We decided that of all the things we had seen and done so far this was by far the most impressive and awe inspiring.
Raksheeta’s Ruin
One day while lying on our beds in Raksheeta’s hotel, Lisa became restless and lying on her back, put her feet against the wall and pushed. As she did this, her bed moved away from the wall. Little did she realize but by doing this she caused two of the penes (legs) on the bed to bend so they were flush against the bed frame, which was now slanting dangerously. This caused much hilarity, but eventually the little wooden penes were bent back into the right angle on their metal brackets.
On another occasion, Charlie encouraged Lisa to rock violently on her bed, which resulted in another hilarious bed collapse, whereby the two penes bent back into their previous misshape, having already been substantially weakened by previous incidents.
Another evening, Lisa had rested her huge traveling bag on the end of her bed that was supported only by the damaged penes. This was quite safe until Lisa lay down on the bed and reached over to Charlie, who grasped her wrist and yanked her body until the bed collapsed. This time, however, the extra weight of her bag on the bed caused the end pene to loudly break and snap completely from its now misshapen bracket. This caused a huge amount of sniggering, and resulted in a hugely unstable bed, which now had to be carefully balanced on the broken pene.
The bed was now so badly weakened that often it would collapse when Lisa was lying perfectly still in it. Also, both beds had erratic springs that boinged loudly and stabbed you in the back throughout the night.
The final bed mishap occurred on our penultimate day at Raksheeta’s. It was a beautiful sunny day and we propped our door open to get a nice breeze. Lisa was sitting on her bed and suddenly pulled Charlie on top of her. Charlie then began to rock violently, sending the bed crashing to the floor, knocking over an empty wine bottle with a loud crash and sending the dislocated pene skittering across the room. As Charlie rolled to the floor, chuckling heartily, he looked out of the door and saw Raksheeta staring at him from her kitchen window, which faced our room. We both rushed about trying not to look guilty and quickly shoved our bags in front of the collapsed bed to try and hide the damage. At this moment, Raksheeta Man came to our door and said he would come and clean our room in 5 minutes. We spent this time trying to find an escape route, as we felt sure he knew the bed was broken and our game was up. When he returned we had managed to perilously balance the bed on the broken pene, but any more than a light touch would send it collapsing to the floor. He tugged at the bed sheets and what seemed like an eternity passed before we thought that perhaps he didn’t know as much as we previously thought. So we hurried him out of our room, telling him we didn’t need it cleaned today, and so he left, unaware of the disaster right before his eyes. Following this close call, we rushed to the nearest hardware store to buy glue as the middle pene was now also dangerously to snapping clean off the bed. When we returned, we suspiciously locked our door and window and drew the curtains. We then tipped the bed on its side top perform major surgery. Using Lisa’s pliers, glue and stuffing we rearranged and reorganized the penes on the bed and turned it round to face the other way so the missing/broken penes were hidden against the wall and out of sight of prying eyes. Happy with the cover up, we left Raksheeta’s the next day safe in the knowledge that our dirty little secret was safe – at least until the bed was pulled away from the wall to sweep behind it. We vowed never to return again.
Antigua the Town
Antigua is a surprisingly beautiful town. Almost all the buildings are from colonial period and so have a Spanish/Mediterranean style to them. The streets are all cobbled and certainly look lovely but most of the cars don’t look in any state to risk this jolting around. Lots of windows that we walked past had very small balconies, with bars on the outside. Many of these mini balconies had dogs lying in them, trapped on the outside by window shutters. Charlie took great pleasure in blowing on these dogs, causing them to go crazy and try to run around, only to find they were imprisoned behind bars. One day we were wandering around the sprawling market and came Across a stall selling Xmas decorations. We thought it would be nice to decorate our room for Xmas with a few bits of tinsel etc. We approached the lady and asked how much the tinsel was. “10” she replied. Charlie confirmed the price by repeating it. The lady started cutting strands of tinsel from the stall and started counting them out. We thought that she was showing us how many strands we got for 10Q, however as she counted above 6 and eventually stopped at 10 it turns out she thought we had asked for 10 strands. We then had to say “no gracias!” and run away, leaving the lady looking very angry with lots of strands of tinsel all over her arms.
One day we took a walk to El Cerro de la Cruz, which is a big stone cross half way up a hill in Antigua. We had to go with a Police escort as robberies and muggings used to be common here. From this vantage point we could see the entire town (which didn’t look as nice, as there are a lot of corrugated iron roofs that were normally hidden). This town is surrounded by volcanoes on all sides (all dormant thankfully) and its scenery is very picturesque.
On another day we went to a local Macadamia Farm. We took another hippy gypsy carnival bus and got off at Valhalla. We went up to a main looking building and there were a lot of people milling around. The farm people only spoke Spanish and we were directed somewhere and something to do with breakfast. We assumed they were setting up tables in that building so we had to clear off for a bit. We wandered around the site for a long time looking at a mouldy trailer, nuts, a Beetle car and puppies until we returned none the wiser. The woman seemed to have been looking for us and apparently we were supposed to go up a hill to a table already set out. This worked in our favour as we didn’t have to share the table with anyone. The breakfast consisted of Macadamia pancakes with Macadamia butter, blueberry jam, honey, pineapple and banana. We also got a choice of blueberry juice, tea or coffee. We wolfed down at a table where we were surrounded by 3 dogs and 1 cat. They all begged for food and we obliged with small pieces of pancake. One piece got thrown to cause a small war but the large male dog went for it and instead of using his highly sensitive nose to find it, he squished it under an oversized paw and looked dumbly around as if nothing had existed. We were in hysterics again. We finished off the amazing macadamia butter (like peanut butter but smoother) and gave the dish to the dogs. They liked it clean so we gave them the full dishes of honey and blueberry jam and again it all disappeared. We figured they would get diabetes or all go crazy from the sugar. We ran away quickly before anyone realized what unhygienic things we had done. We stole some free samples on the way out since we had been deprived of decent chocolate. Local stuff is awful and they import Hershey’s American chocolate, which is not a patch on Cadbury’s nevermind Lindt etc… mmmmm…drool….mmmmm. We left on a bus back to Antigua and appreciated the sense of achievement that we had got somewhere without a hideous tour group.
Final Thoughts: We both loved Antigua and were very sad to say goodbye to not only the town, but also all of its characters that we had encountered on our way. Looking forward to returning in a few days!
Mark out of 10 = 8.5
Next time… Monterrico.
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