First week in Antigua

We have reached the end of our first school week in Antigua. We are both attending Antigueña language school each morning. I opted for 4 hours a day (3/12 hrs with the break) and Linda is taking 2 hours a day.  Our classes are in the morning starting at 8 am. So far, we are enjoying the instruction.

Most of the afternoons have been spent getting ourselves organized and finding our way around.  The town is easy navigate since all the roads are on a grid patter, steets (calles) run east and west and avenues (avedidas) run north and south. Most of the buildings are 1 or 2 stories tall, painted similar colours and they all connected so even with the grid road pattern it is quite easy to become confused as to you position.

Up until today the temperature has been quite cool. Today is nice, sunny this morning and clouding over as the day has progressed. The temperature today is close to the mid 20's

Here are a couple for photos of our apartment complex. There are 4 apartments all built on and around the ruins of an older building.

The first photo is taken from the common patio area toward the street entrance. The door to our unit is on the right of the photo.

The second photo is taken from the same location looking back into the common patio area.

 Ricardo, who owns the apartments is very nice. We have had some good chats.





Below is photo of the coffee shop located near the church and language school.  They have already memorized our regular order.

After breakfast we went out for a walk. A nice clear day and not many people on the street. The local vendors were just setting up shop. Below are a few photos of town.

This an arch in the main street that runs from the central plaza to the cathedral.  Week days there is traffic on this street but on the weekend barricades are set up to convert this street to a pedestrian area.

Seen through the arch is the main geological land point.   There are several volcanoes in this area some of which are erupting.  Antigua was a major Spanish settlement and there is plenty of archaeological evidence of their presence. Unfortunately two major earthquake, one in the 1960s and a stronger one in 1976 destroyed nearly all of the buildings built be the Spaniards.  The ruins still stand as a witness to to the quakes but they are too week to tour.

A quiet Saturday morning.

Dave an Jen might recognize this location. We parked the motorcycle at the far end of this block during the 2006 trip.

 The woven goods that are for sale here in Antigua are wonderful.  This is a photo of a family settting up on the road. 

How to you say no to face like this?

Around 10:30 we took a shuttle (toyota van) up to a small town in the mountains overlooking Antigua. The town is called San Cristobal del Alto.  Our main destination was restaurant perched on a cliff overlooking Antigua.  The restaurant is popular because it has it's own garden where it raises most of the food served in the restaurant.  On the weekend they only serve a breakfast buffet in the morning.  The buffet looked excellent so we decided that this would be the main meal of the day.  All included... main meal, desert, fruit, coffee, juice etc. cost 80 quetzales , the equivalent of about $14. Canadian each.

The road up to the restaurant was steep and rough. The loaded toyota was struggling around the tight steep corners.  The road was in the process of being repaved so it made matters worse. I was slow rough ride. It should be better next winter.

 Below are a couple of photos taken from the restaurant at San Cristobal del Alto.  The first is of Antigua and the valley looking toward Lago Atitlan. The second is of a small part of their garden.

After getting back to Antigua we decided to take a walk and check out a much newer landmark. Linda's teacher had suggested that we take the time to visit this location.

Can you guess what this is?

There are plenty of these in Canada but this is the largest and most deluxe one that we have seen

It was suggested that we take a pass on the food but we did have an ice cream cone.

Then we had our photo taken with our new friend, Ronaldo

Off to Guatemala

Hello from Antiqua, Guatemala.   We arrived here this afternoon after a couple of flights and a shuttle drive from the airport in Guatemala city.  We have rented a nice little 2 bedroom apartment near the centre of Antigua for the next month.

Our plan is to take some language courses to brush up on our Spanish and get some exercise walking in the warm sunshine.  The weather here is quite cool, albeit we at an elevation close to 5000 ft. asl. We passed through Antigua 12 years ago on our motorcycle trip to Panama with Jen and Dave. It appears that there have been some changes since then. Although the small city of 35,000 people looks much the same, it is busier and much more expensive.



We went to the grocery store for a few supplies and were surprised by the prices. Then we went out for dinner and decided that we won't be doing that too often unless we can find some more reasonably priced places.

Below is the only photo I have taken so far.  Looking south from the central plaza is one of the volcanoes in the area. Some are erupting, although not violently.

It's time now for a good nights sleep in preparation for the start of school.