Antigua

The second half of our day yesterday involved traveling to Antigua, and doing
the tourist thing. Debbie, having stayed in Antigua for ten days a year ago, was an excellent guide. We went to the market on the outskirts of Antigua, which was quite an experience. Antigua serves as the commercial hub for many of the surrounding towns, but where we have our shopping centers in the US, they have open-air markets: a vast array of wares for sale by hundreds of different vendors. Much of what was for sale included textiles, for which the Guatemalans are known.

We then tooled around Antigua proper, looking at various shops, trying to find our way to the Sky Cafe, a restaurant that, while apparently lacking culinary acumen, possesses an excellent view of the town, from a rooftop three stories up. It was indeed a good view, with the chairs being quite a bit taller than those to which we were growing accustomed (the height of a typical Guatemalan is around4' 11").

Our day was ended with the attendance of a mass at La Catederal, the center church. It was a tolerable ceremony, though it was a bit lost on Debbie and I, as we both cannot understand beyond the most basic of Spanish phrases. Only having been brought up Catholic did I have any notion of what was transpiring.

Of course, the most exciting part of the day was the failure of the electrical system in the taxi we took back to Common Hope, culminating in Eduardo, Carolyn, Maxxe, and I pushing the taxi back across an intersection and into a parking spot, and then all cramming into a smaller taxi. Luckily, the rest of the trip was only about a mile. We would have hoofed it, but it happens that the outskirts of the town are were the most trouble happens, especially after nightfall.