unfettered

Last weekend turned out to be far more action-packed than I had envisioned. Saturday started it off with the Antigua city tour with Elizabeth Bell, a native Californian whose family relocated to Antigua in 1969
, when she was 14 years old. She has authored a number of books on Antigua, including children’s coloring books (I don’t know if coloring books are considered to have authors?) and her tour provides a lot of insight into the historical and present-day political and social setting of Guatemala. We began the tour at Parque Central, which serves as the main square in town and continued to the Palace of the City Hall and the Cathedral Santiago, which both border the park.

The cathedral was founded in 1542 and was probably originally very impressive in its original state, but major earthquakes throughout the 17th and 18th centuries caused significant damage. Only the front section was rebuilt and rest was closed off and allowed to fall into ruin. The ruins are accessible from the back entrance of the cathedral, where you can still see some of the detailing and get an impression of what it might have looked like in another life. It reminds me of that Planet of the Apes when the Charleton Heston character (except I think it’s the 2nd movie and played by a different actor) stumbled upon the ruins of a New York City subway platform and realizes that the Planet of the Apes is really Earth! Really, the only similarity here is that they are both ruins and they both represent another era. The implications of the Cathedral’s ruins are far less diabolical and have nothing to do with Apes taking over the planet.





The tour also included a tour of a couple Antigua hotels of historical significance and a visit to the Jade Museum where we learned about its history and then had some time to check out the gift shop. I’ll have to return when I have more time because I have a feeling that might make a good source of birthday/Xmas gifts (Mom and Christina.) One of the hotels we visited had a couple of art/artifact collections, one of which featured a combination of Guatemalan art side-by-side with new glass art and crystal pieces from all over the world, but mostly France. I recognized a lot of their
pieces in the collection because they came from Daum, the French crystal company I worked for when I first moved to New York. The hotel collection included Daum frogs, alligators and some larger art pieces that used to be such a nightmare for me to have to ship around the country. It was like a visit to my old showroom. Overall, the Antigua tour lasted over 3 hours and I ended the morning feeling like I have a much better understanding of this place I’ve been wandering around for the past 6 weeks.



Sunday morning began with a 7am shuttle pickup for a trip to the market at Chichicastenango. Lucy was advised by a friend that she would not want to endure the hairpin curves, steep inclines and switchback mountain roads in an ancient school bus, so we instead opted for a comfortable $18 roundtrip shuttle that picked up at our doorstep. The Lonely Planet guide claims the trip to Chichi is 3.5 hours from Antigua, but our driver managed to get us there in 2 hours and 15 minutes. I don’t know if I can attribute it to his Otto-like driving style (Simpson’s reference) or if the book has a typo. Either way, we got there plenty early to scope out some good bargains.


The marketplace on Sunday affords the same kind of personal space you can expect on a Saturday afternoon in Chinatown. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad and since the indigenous people are tiny, I didn’t feel so engulfed by humanity as I normally would in a crowd that size. I am amazed how the village women can manage to keep track of one or two little kids, with a baby cradled in a blanket and tied to her back, while carrying a bundle of personal effects on top of her head. These women are really good at carrying things on their heads and one good thing that results, is that they all seem to have good posture (until the osteoporosis sets in, anyway.)

I managed to spend all my allotted cash within the first hour, so fortunately I ran into my friend, Sue and we found a hotel with lovely garden with marimba player, where we could hang out and compare our bargains. I found some really beautiful beaded bracelets, belts and evening bags and talked Sue into going back to look for a belt for herself. We found a different bead guy from where I had made my purchases and he offered her a much lower starting price from which to haggle. I felt kind of sorry for him because I thought maybe he’d had a bad day and was desperate to move some goods. I bought a couple of items from his table as well, which left me with about 70 cents, which was perfect since it was time to leave. In the shuttle bus home, Lucy and I were comparing purchases and when I started going through my bag of sparkly goodies, I realized that a hole had developed in the bottom of my bag and I was missing about 4 bracelets. I couldn’t imagine my not noticing dropping shiny objects on the ground and someone I was with, not noticing. Then I remembered the table where Sue bought her belt and while I was trying on a necklace I thought I had knocked some of the bracelets off his crowded table onto the ground. I felt bad because I didn’t want him to think I was over there carelessly wrecking his jewelry selection, so I took care to dust off everything and add them neatly back to his table. I realized that the bracelets that I put back on the table were my own purchases, which had fallen through the hole in my bag. Normally, I would be frustrated with myself for not having noticed such a thing, but in this case, I was feeling sorry for this bead guy and once I made the calculation, I realized that the dollar amount that I paid for those bracelets was the same differential in the dollar amount that he discounted Sue for her belt (which I felt he had under-priced.) So I just reimbursed him in goods to re-sell, so he could make up the difference. I suppose it was like a donation in a way and I think my karma will profit just the same from such inadvertent giving.

This past week has been full of activity and I will have to post my pictures of my volcano hike in the next couple of days. I have lots of great photos of flowing lava!

posted by Angie @ 8:24 AM