Nighttime Parades

My favorite shots from the processions after the sun went down...

Too bad I never got any pictures of the roving generators!

Alfombras

Rather than post a TON of pictures of alfombras on here, I'm posting a slideshow so you can scroll through at your leisure. The majority of these were made with colored sawdust and some creative stencil work. Good Friday is a big day for alfombras so lots of people stay up through Thursday night to finish their alfombras, which is why some of these pictures were taken in the dark.

Daytime parades

None of these pictures really show how many people were at these events but I heard someone in the crowd compare it to the streets of Vegas on New Year's, which I can confirm since we were there in 2007 (SO fun, everyone should do it). 

Here are a couple more shots of Semana Santa floats during the daytime.

The participants had changed to black robes since the float depicted
Jesus after the crucifixion.

Mark and I tried to get onto that upper level but we weren't allowed...
I'm not sure how those people got up there!

Return to Antigua

Our original plan was to travel to El Salvador after Lago de Atitlan, but the more we talked with fellow travelers the more we discovered that everyone and their mom was heading back to Antigua for Semana Santa. After debating what we should do, we decided to head back to Antigua as well since it would be our only chance to participate in a world celebration and a unique cultural experience. So the Tuesday before Easter, we packed our bags and left the lake for the four-plus hour ride to Antigua. I had the misfortune to pick up some sort of stomach bug in San Pedro which made the ride uncomfortable to say the least, although there were some sicker people than I on the ride (our caravan of two vans pulled over about four times so sick people could get out). I'd never been so glad to arrive at our destination! Mainly because the majority of the roads down the mountains looked like this:

Windy beyond belief.

We stayed in Antigua until Saturday - we would have left Friday but couldn't get a ride out of town because of the festivities. Since we came back so early in the week, we had no trouble getting a reservation at the hotel we'd stayed at previously. The days that followed were filled with religious parades and the creation of alfombras, or carpets, made of colored sawdust or greenery and flowers. Antigua residents made the alfombras in the streets so the processions would walk over them. Each procession was similar: the men would carry a float with a depiction of Jesus, and the women would follow with a float with a depiction of Mary. Most processions were several hours long, as they'd pass from one side of the city to another and frequently pause to change out the carriers of the heavy floats.

This float (probably an 80-person float, 40 on each side) was one of
the larger ones. The nighttime processionals were always followed
by generators on wheels.

A typical display of the Virgin Mary.

Early Friday.

This procession passed in front of our hotel so we were able to watch
from the rooftop.

INCENSE.

This picture doesn't do the size of this float justice but they had a lot
of trouble rounding the street corner!

Leg 3: Antigua to Lago de Atitlan

A week into the trip, we took a bus from Antigua, Guatemala, to Lago de Atitlan, a beautiful lake ringed by mountains and volcanoes. We got a slammin' deal on our hotel room, which was just off the lake with a great view, for about $10 a night. There are multiple small towns you can travel to around the lake but we stayed in San Pedro, which was probably the most touristy of the bunch. This was one of my favorite legs of the trip - nothing to do but stare at the lake, read books and watch soccer games!

More pictures after the jump:

Early Semana Santa

The first sign of Holy Week (besides the purple banners everywhere) was a children's parade that took place on the streets of Antigua. Kids dressed up in the traditional purple robes and swung incense in front of their parade floats. And can I just say that if I never smell incense again, I will be a happy, happy woman.

Kids carried these floats down the streets - the base was wooden and the
display was made of paper mache or some other light material.

Volcan Pacaya continued

Near the top of the volcano, you could lay sticks across this entrance and the vapors were so hot they caused the sticks to catch fire! After a demonstration, everyone backed slowly away from the ledge. Some groups brought marshmallows and roasted them but our guide wasn't that prepared.

 

We could enter a cave at one point, which was like being in a dry sauna - the walls were hot to the touch and some rocks on the ground were too hot to touch. I could only stay in there for a few minutes before the heat drove me out. 

You can see the cave entry. And of course some stray dogs.

Volcan Pacaya

One Antigua morning we woke up early to join a group to hike Volcan Pacaya, an active volcano about an hour and a half away. Pacaya's last eruption was exactly one year ago today, covering the surrounding areas in ash. We experienced no such excitement when we were there, though we could see smoke coming from the crater. We'd heard from others that you could hike all the way to the crater and peer into the lava (if you dare) or at least take some pictures standing next to active lava flows, but the upper hike to the crater wasn't allowed by the time we got there and the lava flows had stopped since the last eruption. The hike was still fun though and our guide was entertaining - he had a pet name for our group (the Pumas) and spoke limited English save for phrases like "OK Pumas! Let's go Pumas! We're running DOWN, lean back Pumas! Lean back!!" Then he'd take off down the gravelly path, dividing our group into the downhill runners or the I-prefer-not-to-break-my-leg people.

This one followed us up.

Stray dogs were everywhere. They'd figured out that hikers eat their lunch at the top of the volcano so they'd attach themselves to the first troop heading up and then stay at the top until the end of the day, waiting for scraps.

We got to hike over sharp lava fields, which made me worry how my hiking shoes would hold up - these are some rocks you definitely wouldn't want to fall on.

A volcanic specimen.

Night lights

Antigua sure knew what to do with their churches at night -
most of them were beautifully lit up like this.

My favorite tree in Antigua

This tree resided in the ruins of a convent -
I loved it so much that I made Mark take multiple pictures of it!

Church Ruins

Many rebuilt churches in Antigua still had the ruins of the previous church behind the new one. Some sites were cheap to enter (I think it cost us around $0.50 to get into these ruins) and stunning to see.

You can barely see the moon in this shot.

Some of the detail in the original stone carvings.

Antigua snapshots

The Arch

A typical Antigua street: multi-colored building facades with a volcano in the background.

More pictures after the jump:

La Merced Church

La Merced Church is easily one of the more stunning cathedrals in Antigua because of its bright color. The details on the building facade blew me away – you can see the intricacies in the photo below. At night, the courtyards of the churches became a festival ground of sorts with plenty of food carts catering to hungry tourists and locals in town for Semana Santa.

 

San Francisco Church

This was one of the first churches we came upon on our inaugural exploration of Antigua. Since Antigua used to be the Spanish capital of Central America, you can’t walk a block without encountering a cathedral like this in some sort of state of ruin or repair. Most churches have been destroyed by earthquakes at some point since their original construction in the 1500s or somewhere thereabout. You can see on the right side how the church has been damaged.

Central America: Leg 2

After two days in Flores, we took an eight-hour overnight bus to Antigua, Guatemala. These kinds of buses should be treated the same as airplanes – bring a jacket because it’s going to get COLD. At first this was a blessing: AC in the jungle? I’ll take it! But after a while, my knees turned to ice cubes. And then when I wasn’t freezing, I woke up sweating during rest/pit stops when the bus was turned off and the temperature rose to match outside. My body couldn't figure out how to regulate itself!

When we did get to Antigua around 8 in the morning, we were dropped off at a park in the middle of town. This also became a familiar routine: arrive at your destination, pull out the guidebook and figure out where you'll find a hotel (or just walk a block - hotels are literally on every corner).

The upstairs courtyard in the hotel where we stayed, Hotel Dionisio.

Central America: Leg 1

I wanted to put in a travel line, Indiana Jones style, but I would be completely guessing at the route (Google wasn’t any help).

So we flew into Belize and then bused 5+ hours across the country and into Guatemala, ending in Flores. We shared the 18+ person shuttle with only one person: a traveler from Japan named Taka who showed us some incredible underwater photos of his diving excursions in Belize. He was also the tannest Asian I’d ever seen – we ran into a group of Japanese tourists in the Belize water taxi and bus station who didn’t even recognize him as Japanese and asked him how he spoke Japanese so well (“Um… I AM Japanese.”)

We parted ways with Taka upon arrival at Flores and encountered the first test of my Spanish: finding our first hotel. We’d made absolutely no reservations in advance: we didn’t want to be tied to a set schedule and figured we wouldn’t have a problem. Then the first two places we tried happened to be full. I asked one of the workers if she had any hotel/hostel recommendations and thus commenced what would soon become familiar: an explanation in Spanish that I was unable to translate, sparking a confused exchange of hand gestures and broken Spanish and/or English.

We ended up in a small but clean hostel with a bonus: a couple from Vancouver, BC across the hall. Friends!

Tikal

While we were in Flores we paid a visit to the Mayan ruins of Tikal, one of the largest archaeological sites of the ancient civilization. Pictures don't really do the temples justice - it's hard to grasp how grand these structures really are unless you're standing right next to them. We met a Polish couple on the bus ride there, who kept us company through the ruins.

More pictures after the jump:

Animals!

He looks innocent, but don't let that fool you.

We spent some time in the Flores Zoo, incomparable to well-funded American zoos but fun nonetheless. We had to take a boat across the lake to get there which was a welcome reprieve from the stifling stillness of being on land.

For more pictures, click the link for the jump.

Flores

We landed in Belize City and took a bus a couple hours later to Flores, Guatemala. The above is a view from our hostel, Dona Goya. Flores is an island in the middle of a lake and the surrounding views were beautiful - water and jungle! Since it was the jungle, it was flippin' H-O-T. I think my body went into shock from coming from such a cool climate to a stifling hot jungle. My fingers swelled up like sausages! Gross. The best part about our hostel was the rooftop deck, which housed a few hammocks.

Comfy!

 

 

The city was doing construction on our street so we couldn't exactly sleep in even if we wanted to, the noise was so bad. But the waterfront of Flores was very nice and walkable. Mark visited Flores a few years ago and said the waterfront wasn't nearly as built up as it was now.

The construction zone outside our hostel.

We spent two nights in Flores and ended up visiting a zoo that was on a different island a short boat ride away. Zoo pictures in the next post! Meaning... monkeys. And a hefty-looking jaguar.

#11: Backpack in Central America

Tikal, Guatemala

In no way did we cover all the ground we wanted to (our preliminary itinerary before we booked the tickets took us through all seven countries in three weeks – what were we thinking?) but I can partially cross this goal off my list! We trekked through the jungles, mountains and beaches (though briefly) of Guatemala and Honduras; we originally intended to hit up northern El Salvador as well but decided to partake in the world celebrations of Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Antigua, Guatemala, instead. Everyone else seemed to be heading to Antigua for those crucial days leading up to Easter so we decided that maybe we should, too. I’ll be posting some pictures and anecdotes over the next couple weeks as I try to get back into a routine.