We had a lovely lunch with Cousin Rhonda and Barry during our layover in Dallas. Rhonda picked us up at the airport and took us to their new home which is very nice with a beautiful pool. Barry & Rhonda were wonderful hosts whipping up a authentic Texas BBQ on their party back porch, we had our first hamburger of the season in warm weather...awwww, it felt like spring/summer, love it!
On the flight from Dallas to Guatemala City we were both lucky enough to sit next to beautiful Spanish speaking women from Guatemala. One had been living in Germany for many years and was traveling with her three children and husband back to visit her family. The other had been in Germany for five days on a business trip with the Merck chemical company. The three-hour trip went quickly because they were willing to chat with us.
We arrived in the newly remodeled airport in Guatemala City where we were met by a shuttle driver carrying a sign with our names, it couldn't have been easier
!
Hotel Casa Cristina was very comfortable, though the hours of hot water were limited. It was only a block or so away from the bright yellow Iglesia Merced, one of Antigua's most beautiful and historic churches. The church bells and the crowing roosters made sleeping late impossible but who would want to miss out on the perfect spring weather anyway!
Shana Jan, Jane & Brian arrived on a later flight. I thought I would stay up late worrying about them being picked up and delivered at the hotel's doorstep, but amazingly their knock on our door woke me from a deep slumber.
Thursday, 29 March 2012
We first met Caroline Carton in Mexico this past December in Merida, a fellow traveler on a free city tour. Originally from Massachusetts, she has lived in a small village just outside of Antigua for several months each of the last six years. Caroline was excited to hear that we hoped to take my mom to Guatemala for Semana Santa and emailed often to see if our plans had fallen in place.
Our first meeting was at a coffee shop near Antigua's center close to the hotel where we discussed some potential activities for our visit. We walked to a great local restaurant where we enjoyed eggs and chile rellanos for breakfast for less than $3.00 each while we sat outside in the shade of the garden. Instead of drinking coffee we had a watery hot oatmeal drink with lots of cinnamon, very nutritious and delicious. Afterwards we walked to Iglesia San Francisco, home of the tomb of Hermano Pedro, the first saint from Central America. Caroline is full of information about local happenings and places to visit.
We checked into the Spanish school, Academia Sevilla, where I had reserved lessons for Brian, Keith & I and homestays beginning Saturday for all. When we visited La Union, one of our previous schools, teachers not only recognized Keith but remembered his name! He is famous, no, possibly infamous!!
Antigua is a perfect place to stroll, many shops and art galleries to visit. One new addition is a Chocolate Factory where the history of chocolate in Central America is told while you breathe in delicious smells and resist buying all kinds of fancy chocolates. At this shop you can make your own chocolate bar from scratch, literally grinding the Cacoa bean with a stone pestle and mortar.
Edgar, Caroline's Guatemalan boyfriend, joined us for dinner, we all had a very typical dinner for the area, chicken, avocado, tortillas, rice, beans, lettuce and tomatoes. We stopped by the grocery before returning to sit on the terrace overlooking La Merced and admiring the moon which appears to sit on its side in this latitude.
Friday, 30 March 2012
Jane joined the three students for breakfast at the Antigua institution, Dona Luisa, while Shana Jan slept in.
Our teachers were introduced just after 8 am and we spent three hours using our second language to get to know them as they each assessed our individual spanish skills and made lists of the mistakes they would like to correct during the next week of instruction.
I asked my teacher if instead of reviewing grammar we could walk through the city of Antigua and neighborhoods just a little further out to view the Velaciones in the various churches for my lessons. I told her I wanted to listen to the history and significance of every special place in the city and translate for Jane & Shana to improve those listening, speaking and translation skills that I use in my work. She thought that serving as a tour guide while correcting my Spanish was a great plan and so that will be the direction of my studies this trip.
We met Caroline & Edgar for our first adventure of the trip outside the little town of Antigua. For lunch, Caroline & Edgar led us through a little corner market to a table in a room steaming hot stacked high with dishes, pots and pans waiting to be washed. In a room out of sight plates piled high with food were brought out and served to the people waiting at the two other long tables in smaller rooms beside us. There were flies swarming around and our table was covered with crumbs but the food was typical and tasty. We ate as many avocados as our stomachs could hold. It was an experience that helped me to be aware that I think we can now handle traveling in India!
Riding in the back of Edgar's old truck we traveled to a Velacion nearby, beautiful but spooky, the theme was the transformation of Jesus. Our next stop was to the home of 'the guerilla' a natural healer infamous in the area.
He used Bengay scented creme and a lotion of marijuana leaves distilled in alcohol to massage Keith's pinched nerve from his foot to his shoulder. He worked on Keith's back in his very dark, stuffy room while the rest of the six of us looked on. It was quite an event and seemed to relieve Keith's pain and numb arm for a couple of hours. On to Caroline & Edgar's town where we toured a beautiful monastery in the first town settled in Latin America nestled against the volcano outside Antigua.
Afterwards we were treated to coffee prepared from the beans collected from Caroline & Edgar's garden. I helped Caroline roast beans on the stove for their next pot of coffee. It took over ten minutes to get it started, we had to shake the pan (like Jiffy Popcorn) while stirring it to keep it from burning. As the beans turned oily and brown they started to smoke driving the rest of our crew out of the one-room home to the attached front porch. It had started to sprinkle while we brewed and drank our coffee, but luckily cleared as we loaded ourselves back into the truck bed for our short ride to another village for yet another velacion.
As the evening progressed more people appeared. It was a festive atmosphere complete with many food vendors. We enjoyed sampling some of the street food while we waited for a theatrical presentation on a biblical passage, the curing of an young boy and a visit of spiritual leaders, Moses & another old dude, to Jesus. Again, the references were not readily apparent to any of us. Edgar & Caroline took us back to our hotel where we collapsed into bed after an exciting, full day!
Saturday, 31 March 2012
Each Saturday morning there is a wholesale market behind Antigua's main market which we couldn't miss for buying some of the beautiful hand woven and embroidered cloth goods. With Caroline's guidance, we also purchased some beaded jewelry and a very cool beaded lizard along with Keith's favorite wooded snakes & lizards. By the time we reached our desired breakfast place it was lunch followed by a quick walk back to the hotel to check out.
The school sent a shuttle to help us relocate to the home of Sandra where we will spend the rest of the week. We have three rooms and two bathrooms between the five of us, it is simple, but very comfortable. Sandra had prepared a lunch of spaghetti which we had her save for our supper because our tummies were stuffed.
Edgar joined us at Sandra's and kindly took us to San Felipe to experience their Velacion and the accompanying excitement and food sampling.
The treat of the day for Keith & me was mangos which are in season right now and absolutely delicious sprinkled with crushed pumpkin seed and lime juice. Edgar & Caroline dropped us off near the Merced and we enjoyed a beer in the garden of the Mayan Collective Store, an massive and interesting collection of the artwork and handiwork from all over Guatemala.
We returned home to dine with Sandra which was a nice opportunity to get to practice Spanish as we got to know her better.
Sunday, 1 April 2012~Palm Sunday
We were up early with the sun, off to breakfast at Dona Luisa's and out to see the preparation for the first procession of Semana Santa originating from La Merced. The crowds this morning were much larger than earlier in the week and as it got closer to the time when the procession was to leave the church the crowd became impassable!
Our plan had been to meet Caroline and Edgar in the park at 10 am. It was decided that Jane, Brian and Shana wait at La Merced while Keith and I walked back to the park to gather the other two. We had been trying to contact Candido's family to plan a time to see them and deliver the gifts their father had sent with us. The Internet has been difficult to use and slow when it is available, Skype is out of the question until we find another WiFi spot. We did receive a message from one of Candido's sons with a phone number which we asked Edgar to call as soon as we met them in the park, which he kindly did. However there was no response so we didn't have a good plan for meeting them.
Caroline had no interest in watching any of the processions in Antigua or seeing anymore Alfombras, the original creations placed in the cobblestone roads where the processions will travel, so we made another meeting date with them for lunch, in the park at 1:30.
Keith & I headed back to La Merced to gather up the troops before the 11 am departure of the procession because I wanted to get ahead of the procession to see the Alfombras before their incredible beauty was destroyed. The crowd in the square around La Merced was so large that the sea of people had come to a halt. It was too much for Keith and he vowed that if he could squeeze out of mass of humans he would return to the park to meet E & C, which he did.
Brian, Jane, Shana Jan and I loved our stroll through the streets of Antiqua. Their smiles were wide as they experienced the magic of Semana Santa's beautifully created carpets of flowers, colored sawdust and wood chips exquisitely laid out on beds of pine needles in patterns of which no two are alike. The cooperation of the families and businesses to organize these very temporal works of art is amazing! We must have taken thousands of pictures between us today which we can hardly wait to download and share!
We caught the procession a couple of times during the day and again after the sun had set and saw dozens of magic carpets from one end of town to the other, one can only imagine the number of steps taken today!
We returned to the park to look for Keith, Caroline & Edgar only to find Edgar and Caroline, they hadn't seen Keith since he bailed from sea of people. But Edgar did share the news that Candido's family had returned his call and was there in Antigua waiting for us. Realize that 100,000 people were anticipated in this small town today for the Palm Sunday events so finding the family was a bit hard to imagine, but as I looked across the park I saw Keith and surrounding Keith were the couple of dozen relatives of our dear Candido. We organized a parade of our own to fetch the giant suitcase of gifts from our home in Antigua but quickly became separated in the crowd again, Keith going one way with most of the men in Candido's clan with Jane, Shana & I going another with the women with hopes to reunite with Candido's wife, Flor, who was waiting in the truck.
As the womenfolk waited by the truck for one of the cousins to come drive it over to the house we are staying in, the plan unfolded. Candido's family had come to 'take us away'. They planned to take the five of us, including Shana Jan, in the open back of the truck to the Pacific coast town of Montenegro for an afternoon on the beach. Afterwards we were to go back to their village high in the mountains some four hours away from Antigua. We would be brought back to Antigua tomorrow. I was shocked and they were so disappointed when I tried to kindly explain that this plan would not be possible.
Finally we reconnected with whole family and passed on the gifts from Candido and the art supplies that we had brought for the grandchildren, plus our monthly financial contribution for the children's education. We returned to our planned lunch spot, La Rincon, to find it closed, so sad for us! We found Brian, Caroline & Edgar, tummies full from La Rincon.
E & C had a family obligation and so they needed to split from the group and we went off to Rikki's for dinner, just for old time's sake. It didn't meet our expections, but did fill our bellies
Our fivesome had been invited to help create an alfombra at Edgar's brother's house in the Candeleria so we made our way that way stopped along the way to chat with an extended family making one of their own. The padre of the household had American connections including a grandfather of his grandfather who had served as Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury. The man himself had lived for a short while as a child in LA and told a story of the end of WWI listening to a speech in the grand stadium in LA, the Coliseum by a young politican no other than Ronald Reagan!
As we helped place thousands of flowers on the cobbled street in front of Edgar's childhood home a light storm started so we headed back. We were stopped along the alfombra lined way by the Procession again, now in its 10th hour! It was beautifully lit with electricity created along the way by a noisy generator pulled by young men through the streets of a now dark Antigua.
Monday, 2 April 2012
After a delicious breakfast of pancakes with our lovely host Sandra off we went to Spanish School. My teacher, Acacely, was gracious enough to include Shana Jan & Jane in our walk around town.
She took us to San Francisco where we learned about Hermano Pedro, a Spaniard who came to Antigua in mid 1600's. He was 'sainted' in the 1980's by Juan Pablo II. He walked through town with a bell calling people out for medical attention and food. Hermano Pedro planted trees around the area which are still living monuments, the flowers are collected by the people as sacred items (the petals smell beautiful!)
There was an interesting museum with items that belonged to Hermano Pedro including his clothing, bell, and a skull which he held close while he contemplated his own passing. Most of the monastery was ruined by the earthquake in the 1970's, very scenic and we had a delightful time together.We walked over to La Merced for the Velacion there as well and ended our 'lesson' with coffee and carrot cake at my favorite bakery in its pretty new location.
Lunch with Sandra was delicious as were all the meals at our home stay with her. Sandra makes helados (popsicles) made from fresh fruit and sugar, perfect treat on a hot afternoon. Jane was her helper as the procession passed in front of our house.
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