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.