Backpacks and Burritos : ANTIGUA!!! 26 March

Here we are in Nicaragua and in desperate need to update our blog as we are about 6 or 7 weeks behind! Here´s our refelction on Antigua where we spent two weeks.

Guatemala. A place that was placed in my mind from a rather famous Shortland Street quote ("You´re not in Guatemala now Dr Ropata!").

Guatemala is beyond beautiful in culture and landscape. A small country between the Pacific and Carribean Ocean - a playground for natural disaster, as quoted by the Lonely Planet. By far, Guatemala has stayed with us more than any other place because of the Mayan culture and getting to know the Guatemalan people at the language school.

Lago Atitlan, Guatemala

After our food poisoning experience that we wrote about in our previous post, we were set for adventure at the beatufiul Lago de Atitlan, which we had heard so much about from our dear friend Emma. We arrived in Panajachel and had a fabulous night.After an early night we awoke to the most beautiful vista. From our view in our hotel room at 8 in the morning, we saw everything we had heard about - the volcanos, the hills, the water, the villages, and the clear blue sky! It was actually breathtaking.

Next stop was Antigua to learn Spanish and get settled for a wee while. Antigua is a beatiful, cobblestoned, colonial town reknowned for it´s cheap, ethically-run language schools. It is catered well for tourists, with fantastic restuarants and activites. We chose Antiguena Spanish School as it came highly recommended. Our local was a small, nothing special to look at bar away from the tourist streets run by a local lesbian couple. The litre Gallo was cheap..and cold...the music was awesome, and the Nicaraguan rum on the house was the highlight. We missed our dinner curfew after spending an afternoon here. YOLO (you only live once. Our Canadian friends just taught us this phrase. Feel old.)

The ruins opposoite the best McDonalds in the world.

Luis and his two teenages boys and mother in law, Elena were so good to us. For one week we really felt like part of the family, complete with rules and curfews! They gave us three meals a day and talked to us whenever we were together. That was great but very hard as we literally spoke no Spanish at this point. Now, it would be great to see them again and actually be able to communicate with them (well with less sign language anyway).

It was such a pleasure to be welcomed into their house, which we´ll never forget. He was such a lovely man who made the biggest effort to get to know us and let us know how much we were appreciated (in terms of company and income). What was special about Luis and his family was that he really appreciated us being around. He enjoyed our company even if it took us half an hour to express the time or weather. The family waited for us at meal times and would always make sure they stopped to talk to us even if they saw us in the street or in the hallway.

The last supper, with Luis and his family.

Another thing that cannot be forgotten, was Samana Santa - Easter in a Catholic driven nation. Mamma mia! The preparations are immense, the town goes wild and everyone is so excited. This is their big party of the year and they don´t hold back! The population grew from 100,000 to 500,000. Processions throughout the town were endless. The most beautiful part of Semana Santa are the carpets that they painstakingly make from sawdust, fruit and candles. They are incredible. What we got over more quickly was the music. (This is Julien here describing the music - the whole thing is dum, dum, dum - I-V-I in a minor tune on susamaphones. The same one too, and bloody repetitive!!!). Nonetheless it set the scene for the Easter story.

The croud awaiting Jesus on the cross to go into the main cathedral - Easter Sunday

Children in Semana Santa sitting on a statue

Street vendors - Semana Santa

Waiting to join the prosession

The Virgin Mary prosession, with Volcan de Aqua.

Tortillas anyone?

The Virgin Mary procession

The tourist street.

Semana Santa Carpets, the carpet for the neighbouhood in Jocotenangoi

Week two we moved to another cheaper family for a change of scene, and to meet some more people. Anna-Maria was really lovely. She looked after us and made us feel at home. I felt sick one day and missed classes, and she turned up in my room with a cup of herbal tea to help me. She was so lovely. We met some great travellers there though who we got on really well with. And even though we spoke more English, every time Anna-Maria heard us we got told off and had to continue en Español! She was great and we learned so much.

At the Spanish school we had 4 hours of class a day, 5 days a week. Only twenty hours a week sounds easy, right?! No way!!! 4 hours a day literally takes it all out of you. The free coffee and beautiful garden setting, not to mention our lovely teachers made it all very easy though. The teachers are incredibly experienced and taught us well. I learned heaps of vocab related to birth and babies as my teacher was just about to become a grandmother, and on the final day of lessons little Gabriel was born. We love the language mistakes... On our final day of classes we took a tour to the coffee, costume and music museum up the hill (cruisy last day). In front of our table of students and teachers I presented Theresa (teacher extraordinaire) with a pair of booties. Completely seriously I gave them to her and said "these are for your snow". Not as bad as Julien´s faux-pas. In the middle of a serious conversation about Guatemalan politics (probably) he went to say I lost something, and inadvertedly missed out the crucial letter of ´r´ and said instead said ´´I farted.´´ Lessons had to stop for the next five minutes as neither he nor his teacher could get rid of the giggles. It wasn´t as bad as our friend though who told her teacher how much she shat on the street as opposed to falling...

Feel like a pastry from the dog in the window in the way to school?

Coffee tour

The group and our teachers!

While we were in Antigua we did as much as we could in our weekends. The first weekend was of course taken up with Semana Santa celebrations which were truly impressive. The second weekend we signed up for a Volcano Hike. Sounded harder than it was. The shuttle dropped us off at about halfway up the volcano and the summit was only 1.5hours away. Up there is was beautiful though! This volcano was particularly active at that time and we couldn´t go right to the top (thankfully as there was an eruption while we were up there and huge rocks were sent flying down!). There were two highlights. One was the crazy Norwegian guy on the tour who was as high as a kite, took a horse up the mountain, ran barefoot across all the volcanic rock, screamed at his lungs on the descent about how "in the moment he was" and arrived only to tell us how good the local weed was. Two were the marshmellows that our guide cooked for us from the vents of the volcano near the summit.

A shop near the top of Volcan de Pacaya!

Standing on Volcan de Pacaya. We couldn´t go to the top as it was heavily active! In the distance, Antigua

Other highlights. Jocotenango (nearby suburb) for the best haircut of Julien´s life (for $1.90!). Pastores to get custom made leather boots for a song (not great in our packs though!). Experiencing the natural hot spings, surrounded by military personnel , with the biggest bloody guns out! Not so relaxing, not to mention that every couple in the pool has sex in there. No jokes. If you can´t beat them, then join them... Just jokes! Ending up in a cigar bar with a glass of red (why on earth did we order that after so many Gallos? Hangover central!) Dont know what was in the cigar, but we became each others Mayan Spiritual Guardian for the rest of the evening. The best market in the world.

Antigua, you rock!