Antigua sights

Beautiful Guatemala

Sky and ground ablaze. Pacaya, Guatemala.

Look dangerous? It FELT dangerous. All the mighty forces of the earth are showing us about 0.0000000000001% of their power. And it is humbling. Very humbling. The lava rock these people are walking on is less than a week old. There were crevices I looked down and saw red hot magma less than a meter deep.

Me + Magma. This was on the living volcano, Pacaya

Dia de los muertos, Santiago Zacatapecas style! The barrelete (kite) festival. This festival is held in an opened graveyard. There are tons of marigolds placed on the graves. Then the guys flying the kites romp all over them while hoisting their kites skyward. I like the festive atmosphere, even in the graveyard. Frequently kites would come crashing out of the sky (and they are REALLY big--some are 20´across!), and nearly miss people. Folks would laugh, including the people who were narrowly missed. Bamboo poles stick out of these kites at all angles. They are seriously dangerous. But it WAS fun.

I thought Dad would get a kick out of this. It´s a hand-cranked organ. Pretty cool! This was at the kite festival.

This is one form of taxi in Guatemala

Typical scene: Baby on the back, basket of goods going to the market to sell. It looks like a daughter is behind her, also in traditional dress.

This is the very famous arch in Antigua. On a clear day, you can see the volcano behind. On this day, it was sunset, so you see the fiery sky... Which is somewhat poetic as Antigua has been destroyed (and subsequently rebuilt) after local volcanoes destroyed it 3 times.

I had an hour-long conversation with my new friend Juan shortly after sitting down in the park to read. It was all in Espanol. It was my FIRST CONVERSATION in Spanish, and I had no idea I could! I won´t lie, I didn´t understand everything, but Juan works in Guatemala city in the Judicial branch records office. His mother is in Antigua and he comes up on weekends to visit. We talked about the gigantic divide between rich and poor in Guatemala and about the upcoming election. Juan continuously said hello to other folks who passed because he is here in the park a lot. It is common in all the countries I´ve been in so far for a person to live in the same place their whole life.

Even the old doors in Antigua are beautiful

A typical street in Antigua. We had quite a bit of rain the 1st week I was there, the streets are wet. And not the streets are not asphault. Every vehicle on these streets gets the HECK pounded out of the suspension.

Antigua´s beautiful Parque Central has this church on its E side

I met this cool gal on Pacaya. We didn´t speak much. She´s from Spain & speaks with a beautiful castillan accent. I can tell it´s a beautiful accent, but it´s difficult to make out much of what she´s got to say. She was doing work for an NGO in Guatemala. Her boyfriend was in Guatemala working on water projects. She has a boatload of spunk. I told her her pants were cool & I wanted a picture, and she just threw herself into this pose.