The morning of our first day in Guatemala found us in Antigua Guatemala. This small city is about 40 km (24 miles) from Guatemala city and it served as the capital of Guatemala from around 1542 until about 1773 when it was destroyed by an earthquake. During this time, Guatemala (along with Mexico, the rest of Central America, and some of South America) was under the dominion of the Spanish crown. This city was built by design of the Spanish nobles appointed to the government of the colonies. Many years after it's destruction (I’m not sure how many) the city was inhabited again and rebuilt in its original colonial style. It is now considered a cultural heritage and no modern buildings are permitted in the city, there are no structures above two stories high, the streets are all cobble stone, and even all signs for restaurants and businesses must observe colonial standards. It’s beautiful!
Our house was located almost on the edge of the outer perimeter of the city and certainly built in this century, but it faithfully followed the colonial style.
This was our living room. The open doors led to a small balcony that offered a view down to the small courtyard/garden and up to the surrounding volcanoes.
This is the balcony as seen from the kitchen.
In this old colonial style, there seems to be a hidden treasure behind every heavy wooden door. There are beautiful balcony style windows with ornate iron bars that peek out of the tall and thick walls surrounding most of the structures. There are also large and heavy doors made of wood and iron carefully carved into the fort like walls, but wherever you look when you walk the streets these monumental walls stare you back. They flirt at you with a beauty of their own, daring you to imagine what greater beauty they must enclose.
The houses within these walls were in its majority built around a square courtyard with a fountain at the center. Presumably, the fountain was at the center to provide the water necessary for daily living, but I haven’t managed to figure out yet where the water came to be in the fountains at all! Our house only covered two sides of the square but some of the most magnificent properties had two or three of these courtyards surrounded by rooms.
A peculiarity about our house was that although the door would lead you in through a car port to the main living areas of the house (dining room, living room, laundry room, and kitchen), the stairs led you -down- into the yard and the bedrooms. Thus, to the left of the stairs you can see a bathroom (the door to the right is a bedroom). Continuing to the left, the next two doors before the turn are bedrooms, as is the first door after the turn, and the very last door you can see after Benny is another bathroom.
In this picture you get to see the kitchen window upstairs to the right of the stair well. The doorways to the left are the laundry room (the small one) and the car port (the larger one). After the turn were a half bath, a dining room, and the living room.
This is quite self explanatory. The red structure sticking out of the wall in the garden is a fountain.
This is the view from the balcony in the living room. There are three volcanoes visible from the house. One is volcán Acatenango (last erupted in the 70s and currently dormant). The next one is Fuego and that one is currently active. In fact, last year, this volcano was responsible for a pyroclastic flow that destroyed more than one entire village. Every morning you can see it “puffing”, and some times you get to see the red lava coming down its crater. The last volcano you can see from here is Agua. This one is an extinct volcano no less impressive though!
I didn’t mention yesterday that my mom had her bags packed as well and moved in with us from the very first night. We had intentionally looked for a house with enough bedrooms to accommodate any family members who wanted to come stay with us.
This was the little kids bedroom, it had a bunk bed and two twin beds. They loved the little window! They would close the door, open the window and pretend that they were selling ice cream.
We never really tried to see if the fountain worked or not, but that didn’t stop these littles from playing in it, especially after it rained. Since we visited during the rainy season, we had rain pretty regularly during our visit.
View from one end of the living room out the balcony. The doors to the left led out to the hallway.
This view is opposite to the picture above. That is the balcony window looking out to the street (which the kids found fascinating! They would sit there and wave to passersby quite regularly). The doorway to the right led into the dining room.
And here, the dining room with the remnants of that morning’s breakfast and a happy Benny in his own window balcony!
After a slow and restful morning we went out for a stroll around the city. My Mom really wanted us to experience the public transportation within this small town (and apparently most towns have their own line of these). There really is no way to describe these than just showing you the pictures, so here is our first ride on Tuc Tucs (pronounced took-took)!
For about $2 you can experience the bumpy cobble stone streets inside a small canvas and metal (or fiberglass) cabin. Let me tell you, though, this motorized, adult human size tricycle of sorts comes in handy when you have been walking and shopping! It’s also great when a down pour catches you half way home!
Of course, bumpy ride + toddler = the best fun!
In colonial times, there were a good 17 or so Catholic churches with its corresponding convent in Antigua. Many of them are still standing as they have been restored and serve the community. Many others are now just ruins. These are the Ruinas de la Candelaria and they are at the beginning of the road where we stayed.
Most of what is left of this church is this broken facade.
This arch was built upon request of the nuns that inhabited the convent on the left of this picture. These nuns of Saint Catherine took vows of reclusion. Their order grew to a point where they needed to expand their convent to the property across the street and a special permission was granted for an enclosed bridge to be built over the street for the nuns to move freely from one building of the convent to the other without being seen. There used to be a church past the arch, to the left. Today, this street is knows as “Calle del Arco”, the original part of the convent is a colonial hotel and still preserves many historical traits and artifacts from convent times.
ICE CREAM became a regular occurrence. Any day we walked through town, once little people began to complain of feeling tired and bored, we would just go into one of these ice cream shops (there are TONS all around town!), and take an ice cream break. We always filled up the shop and overwhelmed the poor attendants who weren’t used to such large orders!
Our first day in Antigua was wrapped up with this afternoon walk into town in search of a small grocery store in the other end of town.
My brother Jonathan brought my Dad that night to stay with us.
It was a nice, slow, and quiet first day. It’s amazing how the time difference took a toll on all of us even though it’s only a two hour difference. Guatemala is two hours behind us. It did take us about a week to get our bodies used to the slight difference in routine. The first few days, the younger kids were waking up at 4 a.m. local time! After all the excitement of discovering our house, riding the tuc tucs, and walking half the town we went to bed eager for all the adventure ahead.