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The buildings are nearly all Spanish Colonial in design: each house is a mini fortress with no windows onto the street and the exteriors are often shabby and peeling. However, peeking in through a doorways usually reveals a beautiful interior courtyards with a fountains, flowers and small trees. This small city (maybe twenty blocks square) has developed an international reputation for Spanish language training. Apparently, Los Guatemaltecos speak a particularly pure version of Spanish without heavy accents or obscure dialects. There are more than one hundred language schools and people come from all over the world to study. The schools are very professional; the teachers are excellent and well-trained. The large number of foreign visitors makes Antigua kind of a tourist trap but the atmosphere is more like a small college town than a resort. There are dozens of excellent restaurants, many shops and good accommodation. Cost of accommodation, meals and shopping are very reasonable and the Spanish lessons are a bargain. Guatemala still suffers from a certain amount of crime, although nothing like the lawlessness and violence that terrorized the country during the long civil war in the seventies and eighties. Nowadays, the very effective Tourist Police ensure that visitors to Antigua don't have to worry about their safety. The town is very high, around 1,400 meters (4,000 feet), so the climate is not tropical. November, when we visited, is the tail-end of the rainy season and it was often cloudy. Temperatures during the day were in the 66 - 69°F range and cooler at night. When the clouds cleared away, though, the sun was very hot. Altogether it was very comfortable and pleasant. Antigua is laid out in the traditional Spanish style around a large parque central or central square. City Hall occupies one side of the square and the ruins of a huge cathedral, another. In the centre is a large and ornate fountain. Shady trees, pathways, park benches and flower beds make the parque a very pleasant place to stroll, or just sit on a bench and watch the world go by.
Our bedroom window looked on a beautiful volcano rising above the end wall of the courtyard. In fact, every view in Antigua seems to feature one or more volcanoes. Our accommodations in this beautiful setting, including three meals a day except on weekends, cost US$90. per week per person. We shared the house with six other students of Spanish: four Americans, a Canadian and a lady from Holland. We ate three meals a day with these people and became very good friends. Table conversation was supposed to be in Spanish, and when Doña Cony was present we all made an effort. Otherwise, I'm afraid, we often slipped back into English much too easily.
We enrolled in Centro Linguistico International for two weeks of Spanish lessons, attending school from 8:00 a.m. to noon every weekday. All instruction is one-on-one; each student has their own teacher. Instructors and students sit at little wooden tables around the courtyard of another lovely old colonial building. Each table has a parasol for shade for when the sun comes out. Our Spanish progressed quickly with this intense instruction. By the end of the two weeks, Susan, who essentially started from scratch, was able to form simple sentences and understand a remarkable amount of what she heard. I started as an advanced beginner and on the last day my instructor said I was now at the "advanced intermediate level". I can now use five verb tenses, although the irregular forms of the preterite tense continue to plague me.
During break times we chatted with other students from the U.S., Denmark, Czech Republic, Japan, Korea, Australia and many other countries. Just across the street was a little kiosk that sold unidentified (but delicious) snacks on a tortilla that really hit the spot at mid-morning break. Each afternoon, the school offered activities which were led by some of the teachers. We toured a museum or two and went on a field trip to a large coffee plantation that featured our first trip on one of Guatemala's infamous chicken buses.
One day we visited Casa Popenoe: an immaculately restored colonial mansion. William Popenoe was an executive with the United Fruit Company during the 1920's. (For decades the United Fruit Company essentially owned Guatemala -- the original "Banana Republic"). He and his wife bought the house which had been destroyed by an earthquake many years earlier and they painstakingly restored it to its former glory, filling it with original furniture and artwork. Two elderly Popenoe daughters still reside in the house. They discretely withdraw to let visitors like us tour their home. On our first weekend, we traveled by minibus (much less challenging than a chicken bus) to the town of Panajachel about three and a half hours away. Along the route, we saw many signs of the devastation wreaked recently by Hurricane Stan: lots of mudslides, many bridges washed away, signs of flooding everywhere. In one sad village, there was a high-water mark on all the buildings about two meters above the ground. Unfortunately, the floods weren't just water -- every one of the affected building was filled with thick, heavy mud, which is still being labouriously removed by hand. The damage harmed more than the buildings as many, many fields and their crops were either washed away or covered with a foot or more of thick mud. The majority of the aboriginal Mayan people are subsistence farmers. The WHO estimates that 300,000 -- 400,000 Guatemalans will die of starvation and related diseases over the next year due to loss of this year's crops, their only food source. Panajachel is on Lake Atitlan, truly one of Earth's beauty spots. The lake occupies a huge caldera, created by a massive volcanic eruption in prehistoric times. When all the lava had been blown into the atmosphere, a huge cavity was left. The cliffs along the shore fall 900 meters sheer into the lake, the water is 900 meters deep and below the water is some 900 meters of silt and sediment. Around the lake, several "new" volcanoes have arisen, creating stunning landscapes.
A tour boat carried us around the lake to visit the picturesque villages where we mostly had time to visit the handcraft market and allow the vendors to pester us. In these more isolated villages, the Mayan people still wear their traditional costumes for everyday use, not just to impress tourists. Their clothing is woven on hand looms and incorporates every colour under the sun, frequently all mixed together in the same design. The Mayan people are shy and nonaggressive by nature but have learned to be persistent about selling their handmade items. Some of these communities also have Spanish Language schools and some even teach Quechua, the local Mayan language. It would be an interesting party trick to speak Ancient Mayan but it doesn't seem very useful outside of the immediate area. Guatemala has 22 different Mayan languages in everyday use.
On Sunday morning our minibus took us to the nearby regional town of Chichicastenango. "Chichi" boasts the biggest outdoor market in Guatemala. We spent many interesting hours threading our way through alleys choked with people, looking at the things for sale, fending off vendors and occasionally buying something that piqued our interest. (Travelling with backpacks discourages a lot of shopping.)
One of the more interesting sights was a religious dance in the plaza in front of the church. It featured dancers wearing masks and costumes portraying the Spanish Conquistadores and very loud mariachi music. We never did figure out the significance of the tableau but it was colourful and intriguing and certainly very much enjoyed by the crowds of locals who gathered around the square. One afternoon, after class, we went on an adventure with one of our housemates. She volunteers with an aid agency called Camino Seguro or Safe Passage www.safepassage.org. This organization was started by a young American girl in 1999 to help the children of Los Basureros, people who eke out a precarious living by scavenging in the Guatemala City garbage dump. The volunteers of Camino Seguro help the children to attend school by providing them with a mid-day meal and assistance with homework. They try to improve their health and hygiene and teach basic life-skills. The Agency operates a daycare centre to look after the youngest children so their parents can go to work in the dump. We also toured a kindergarten, primary school and a vocational workshop for adolescents, all operated by volunteers and funded by donations. Two years ago, a donation of US$200,000. funded the construction of a beautiful new school building. Camino Seguro is currently helping 537, out of possibly 2,000 children of Los Basureros.
The dump, and therefore the project, is in a desperate part of Guatemala City:
houses are built of scavenged pieces of wood, cardboard and corrugated
tin. The air is filled with noxious odours, smoke, blowing dust,
flying paper and plastic bags. We waited on the edge of the neighbourhood
for an escort so we could safely enter. We couldn't go into the
dump, itself, (much to Bob's disappointment) but it surely is one of the
hellholes of this world. Everything goes in the dump along with
regular garbage: toxic waste, biohazard material, chemicals etc.
The garbage pickers spend their days rummaging through this poisonous
stew, looking for material they can recycle and sell.
Our visit to Camino Seguro involved
our first real introduction to a Guatemalan icon: the Chicken Bus!
In Canada and the U.S. a school bus can only be used for five years before
it must be replaced. As a result there are hundreds of surplus buses,
relatively new and in good shape, available every year. Many of
them end up in Guatemala and other Central American countries as privately-operated
transit buses. The first thing the operator does is install a very
loud air horn. Next, comes a new paint job with brilliant primary
colors and lots of aftermarket chrome trim. A luggage rack is installed
on the roof and many hand-holds in the interior. Each bus is operated by a driver and a conductor. The driver's job description is
quite simple: he drives the bus as fast as humanely possible, weaving through
traffic, overtaking slower vehicles uphill and down, disregarding oncoming traffic and
generally risking the health and well-being of himself and his passengers on a
minute-by-minute basis, all the while blowing the air horn. Of course, there is a
large crucifix hanging in the windshield so nobody needs to worry....! The Chicken Bus business is free-enterprise at its most basic and is very lucrative for
the owners. The buses engage in fierce competition for passengers and the
drivers and conductors obviously earn a per cent of the revenue. I asked our driver
why he drove at such a hair-raising rate of speed and he said if he slowed down all the
passengers would shout at him to drive faster and, if he didn't, they would take a
different bus. The fares are very cheap; we rode 48 km into Guatemala city, about an
hour, for 6.50 Quetzals (about C$1.00) but each bus carries thousands of passengers a
day. As we left Antigua, I remarked that the bus was full as there was at least
three adults in each seat and the aisle was crowded with standing passengers. Our
guide, who rides the bus every day, said: "This bus is NOT full! Trust
me!" Another fellow told us about once riding several kilometres with only his
feet on the doorstep and grasping the handholds -- unable to even get inside the vehicle.
Then, when the bus IS full, the conductor wiggles and squirms his way down the
length of the jam-packed aisle, collecting fares. Traveling by Chicken Bus is not
for the faint-hearted, but it is never boring! Our second weekend, we traveled by minibus (not Chicken Bus) to visit the ancient
Mayan ruins at Copán. The biggest archaeological site in Guatemala
is at Tikal in the northern province of Petén but it would have been too
far to travel just for the weekend. Someday we will go back and
visit Tikal when we have more time. Copán is actually just a few
kilometres across the border into Honduras so we got to add another country
to our list. The minibus collected us very early on Saturday morning
and some six hours later deposited us in the pretty little village of
Copán Ruinas. The Mayan site is about 2 km form this village which
was actually built in 1890 to house the archaeologists who did the initial
excavation. Next morning we walked back out to the ruins site and visited a secondary
area called Las Sepulturas. According to our guide, this
was the area of the ancient city where the middle classes lived.
It was very beautiful and peaceful as most of the tourists visited only
the main site. In a place like this, if you sit very quietly and
you listen very carefully, you can almost hear the voices of the people
who lived so long ago. Once again, we were impressed by the sophistication
of this early civilization: elaborate houses, channels to bring
water from the river into the homes and sewer systems to flush the waste
away, complex art, and an elaborate religion. On this day, our guide
spoke little English, but he spoke slowly and and his Spanish was clear
and distinct and neither of us had a problem following his descriptions
and explanations.
On our final evening in Antigua, our housemates decided to celebrate
American Thanksgiving. It was a week early but we were to leave
the next morning and we had enjoyed each other's company so much that
they wanted to include us. David set out for the market to find
El Pavo (the turkey) and Susan volunteered to make her famous
Pie de Calabasa (pumpkin pie). El Pavo was located without
undue difficulty, but neither Susan nor Blancha, the housekeeper, nor
Felix, the cook could locate una calabasa anywhere in Antigua
or the immediate surrounding area. What to do? What would
Thanksgiving be with out pumpkin pie? Undeterred by this setback,
Susan set out for Cafe Condessa on the central square where she
remembered seeing pumpkin pie in the display case. Even by Guatemalan
standards, Cafe Condessa is not inexpensive and her hopes to
be offered a discount if she bought the whole pie were dashed. In
the end, the traditions were honoured and the pumpkin pie was a delicious
end to a delicious meal. We had a relaxing and interesting holiday, we both improved our Spanish
and we could happily have stayed for another three months in this beautiful
and fascinating country. We hope to return.
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A few years ago, I read about a couple who quit their jobs and set out
on their sailboat to cruise the Caribbean. When hurricane season
arrived, they headed for a safe haven on the Caribbean coast of Guatemala.
They entered the Rio Dulce at Livingston and moored the boat part
way up the river towards Lago de Isabal, then spent the next several months
exploring Guatemala. I was particularly interested to read about their
visit to the old colonial city of Antigua.
