Antigua! Dec 15th, Jim writes:

Here we are all (now six of us) in Antigua. The core four (Linda, Mattias, Willa and Jim) travelled by bus from Todos Santos to Antigua in a long day on Saturday. We were sorry to leave Todos, but excited about meeting Jessica and her amiga, Kim Imp at the airport Sunday evening. Sunday morning we spent combing the town for affordable rooms to accomodate the six of us, as well as affordable places to eat, not to mention what might be available for Willa´s birthday tomorrow.

There are the usual travel stories connected with meeting Jessica and Kim at the airport, but could be summarized in saying that it proved mildly difficult finding a shuttle to the airport on Sunday afternoon which eventually showed up about 40 mintues late. This late arrival had Linda and I already trying to come up with an alternative way to get to the airport on time without busting our trip's budget (ie; a taxi.) But alas, around the corner came the shuttle, I was the second to last passenger to get picked up for the journey to the big city. By the time we had the last passenger on board, Jessica and Kim´s plane was scheduled to land. However, in reality it was probably just over Cuba at that point and arrived about 2.5 hours late, giving me plenty of margin for arrival. Why worry?

When gazing out from the top of 12,000' LaTorre back near Todos Santos, (mentioned in Tias' writings,) we could see across a vast sea of clouds seven volcano tops, among them, Santa Marie which Linda and I (as well as niece Melissa and friend Coni) climbed on a moonlit hike back in 2001, arriving at the top just before dawn in order to see the sun rise from an approximate 12,000' vantage spot. Even further in the distance were two or three volcanoes surrounding Lake Attilan. The furthest peaks (dark triangles jutting above the snow white clouds) we saw that day were volcanoes surrounding Antigua. I should look on the map to see how far Todos to Antigua is, but here I will guess 150 miles. Three volcanoes were puffing tall towers of white smoke high above the cloud ceiling. Now we have the window of the girl´s room (Jessica, Kim and Willa) making a perfect frame for the largest volcano here. The view was part of the reason we had to pay $15 for the room.

Despite the sounds of a low costs, when multiplying food, etc, prices times five, expenditures mount quickly. Instead of eating out all the time, we eat out once, and cook in our kitchenette for the other two meals. This involves gathering items from sources including a grocery story, various smaller tiendas (very small stores with the food on shelves that the proprietor must retrieve upon your request for the item) and the local market where vendors sell produce, generally whatever is in season. No one place has everything, and we have yet to find a source of dairy products of any sort, except ice cream novelties. I am especially enjoying the tangerines for 15 cents each directly from the market place and I keep eyeing those pineapples... Most of us six gringos here enjoy the shopping (I hear that snickering coming down from the far, frozen north for that statement!)

A bit about Antigua itself. This town was the major colonial settlement and capital of the area, one building on one side of the town´s plaza has a plaque stating establishment in 1660. There certainly were many buildings already here before that date as glancing through a brief history of Antigua indicates various buildings around town were begun in the 1560's. Antigua thrived with many large (huge is more accurate) Baroque styled churches and other government buildings (the latter not being multi story units, but single storied, city block long pueblo type buildings made of sun dried mud bricks, and mud mortar fronted with 15' wide porches) the beautiful, shady town square, now bedecked with christmas lights strung on every tree. The streets are cleaned every night, there is no stray dog population (zero) and all is maintained with an obvious police presence, day and night. Hence, the town´s appeal as the premier tourist stay in Guatemala today. As a result of this status, a tourist can spend just about any large amount of money on housing and plush resturaunts located in these ancient buildings. Antigua is also the site of many earthquakes. Over the first couple of centuries, earthquakes occurred perhaps 6 or 8 times. The resident's response was to build their building's walls still thicker to withstand the next quake. Then the big one occurred in 1773. While many buildings were rebuilt, there are more than a few ruins of very thick walls of church and church like buildings jutting without roofs or windows into the skyline. At night, many of these are artistically lit with spot lights. Apparently, the reconstruction was going too slowly for some government officials, so a new capital was established in Guatemala City in 1776. With the evacuation of the big money to the new Guatemala city, the churches that were rebuilt did not retain any of their original baroque interior details.

We also witnessed two parades yesterday evening connected with Christmas, right from our hotel window´s balcony. However, time is running thin, and I'll leave that description to later.