Barbara's Travels

The Carmelite Arch

Another famous Antigua landmark is the arch that was built between the two parts of the convent which were divided by the street. This allowed the cloistered nuns to cross over without going out into public. It is no longer used as a passageway but someone goes up once a week to keep the clock running properly. The mechanism uses sandbags to regulate the works and they need to be reset weekly.

In Antigua we saw far more passenger cars than in any other place, except Guatemala City. Considering the roughness of the cobblestone streets, I'd like to have the franchise for shock absorbers and tires in town.



 
 

La Merced Church

Locals call this the "Wedding Cake Church" and you can see why. It was restored from earthquake damage (most recent 1976) and is a gem. In the interior pictures you can again see how statues are clothed in garments appropriate to the liturgical season. Elizabeth Bell, who talked to us about restoration, is a leader of the group which is slowly restoring the many damaged churches and other buildings in the community. As you drive around Antigua, there are (I believe I remember this correctly) 28 damaged and ruined churches.

La Merced means, of course, Mercy Church.



 
 



 
 



 
 



 
 

Antigua

Antigua is a UNESCO heritage site. Our hotel is the Casa Santo Domingo, the ruins of a Dominican monastery built in 1538 and destroyed in the 1773 earthquake. The present owners repaired some of the damage and built wings of hotel rooms and a conference center and it makes a wonderful hotel. You can wander among the ruins, through 3 museums, use the swimming pool and spa, and then walk easily to the Plaza Mayor, the center of town - if you don't mind walking on cobblestones.

Antigua is noted for having the purest Spanish accented language and is the home of many language schools. There is also a large American expatriate community and we were treated to an interesting and informative lecture by Elizabeth Bell, one of the expatriates, who has devoted much effort to the restoration of colonial era buildings and runs a tourist/touring agency in town.

Since this was a lower elevation, I immediately began to perk up and feel better. Lovely room with a little balcony. In the depths of winter you probably need to use the fireplace in the room since there is no heating.



 
 



 
 



 
 

More Iximchi

Although I did not see it, I heard all about the shaman who was exorcising an infant who was said to have "the devil's eye." As one of the women in our group said, that probably means that the baby won't stop crying and let the parents sleep. Hope it worked. You can see the mother in picture 2. Notice the flowers in picture 1.



 
 



 
 

Iximche

On our way to Antigua we stopped at Iximche, another pre-Columbian Maya site. It was here that I realized that I was really sick as I could not walk to the ruins and had to sit on the bus while Bob made the tour. We were at over 7000 feet. This answered a question that had been puzzling me for some time. I definitely am not going to Machu Pichu!

A Mayan word which sounded something like Guatemala (meaning: forested land) was the original name of Iximche. The Spanish mispronounced it and made it the name of the settlement which they made their first capital, and eventually the entire country. The capital was moved to a second location, which we did not visit, then to Antigua and finally to Guatemala City in 1776 after the earthquake destroyed Antigua. So the site is now called Iximche and is only partially cleared. Since it was the 21st, the anniversary date of the big date in December, the site was filled with children brought from school. Some of the girls were dressed like fairy princesses with wings. There were ceremonies at various ruins and everyone seemed to be having a great time.

You'll notice the ruins are not the tall temples we say at Tikal.



 
 



 
 

Tuesday, February 21st

We headed back out of Lake Atitlan to Solola on our way to Antigua, back up the twisty, turn-y highway and the bus stopped for only a moment so we could take pictures of the lake.



 
 

Panajachel

Everywhere you go in the Guatemala you see old American school buses. Except in Guatemala City, they provide all the local and long distance transportation in the country. Some yellow buses still say "Polk County Public Schools," "Arrundal School District" and so on though many have the name painted out. The yellow buses are local transportation, between and within a center and its suburbs. The bus pulls up, the back (emergency) door opens, people pile out while others pile in at the front and away it goes to the next stop. Buses which in the US would seat 40 have as many as 80 people crowded in. Inter-city buses are brilliantly painted to indicate the route they follow so those who cannot read the sign still know what bus to catch by the color and design. Buses have assigned routes. Pictures later.

In picture two is the ubiquitous tuc-tuc. They are three wheel vehicles, holding one or two passengers, powered by the equivalent of a power lawn mower engine. They whiz around, apparently on no assigned routes and even get easily up the steep streets.

In picture three note the man standing on the top of the bus. Passengers toss up their bundles to be tied down and the bus takes off with the man still standing on top. Estuardo said that in some more rural areas, they are called chicken buses because passengers bring their chickens to market this way, riding on the top of the bus in cages.



 
 



 
 



 
 

More volcano pictures

What look like three separate volcanoes are actually three cones of the same magma chamber, emplaced at different times. They are on the west side of the inlet. The solo volcano is on the east side while there are many other peaks totally surrounding the caldera/lake.



 
 



 
 



 
 

Santiago part 2

Turning off the main street you head to the Catholic church with the volcanoes in the background. All the statues in the church are the possessions of the various confrdors and, to assist the illiterate, each confrador dresses its statues in a different style and color. These wear blue with gold fringe but others were simply dressed in plain smocks of pink, blue and green. During the civil war the statues were taken from the church and hidden in the town. As things got better, the statues began to appear at the door of the church without any message attached, so gradually they were restored to the church. Because the Catholic church was traditionally associated with the wealthy landowners and the government, against whom the rebels were fighting, many people left the church and became evangelical Protestants. Although the parochial school offers a much better education opportunity, many people refuse to send their children there due to this bitter split.



 
 



 
 



 
 

Santiago Atitlan

The docks here are rickety with lots of boats. As soon as you get on land, the cobblestone streets go straight up. The first picture is of a weaver in his shop. At another stop, the second picture is a young girl, early teens, wearing a local headdress. This is not a hat. It is a tremendously long strip of fabric which she first wound around her long hair and then around and around her head until she came to the end. We saw a lot of them in the town. The third picture is the kitchen of her family's tiny house - which not surprisingly looks very much like the primitive kitchen we saw in a Mayan home in the Yucatan. The residents of Santiago do wonderful embroidery on locally woven fabric, as seen in her blouse.

Estuardo explained that during the civil war, the army imposed a curfew that lasted about 20 hours a day and since the residents had to stay indoors, they began to do embroidery and carving small wood items. Santiago was badly damaged during the civil war as many men were killed by the army or the rebels, leaving penniless widows with children they had to send out on the streets to beg. Though nearly 25 years have passed since the end of the war, the results linger. The widows' group was meeting in the church while we were there; a whole generation grew up without education or skills and still beg on the streets.

Saw a BBC story today that a Guatemalan court has sentenced a former soldier to 6060 (that is not a typo) years for a massacre in another village and that is not an isolated story. The American born priest of the Santiago Catholic church was assassinated by the army for aiding the rebels. And the rebels, when they had control, were no better in the way they treated the people. Men were conscripted into one side or the other and the women, children and old folks were left to manage as best they could.

Today Santiago appears to subsist on the tourist trade and the local market. The long main street was nothing but stalls selling one thing or another. A back road leads to the Pacific lowlands so there are vehicles crowding the streets and lots of tuc-tucs. I'll post a picture of the ubiquitous tuc-tuc a bit later but they serve the purpose of taxis.