La Antigua Guatemala

It’s usually known simply as Antigua or La Antigua (pro: “ant-ee-gwah” with the emphasis on the middle syllable) which means ancient.

In 1524 the city was founded and known as Santiago (Saint James) de Guatemala and it was designated as the capital of the Captain Regency of Guatemala, Spain’s Central American colony that included Chiapas, Yucatán and Belize until the British wanted mahogany from those forests.

It soldiered on for 230 years serving as the capital through an assortment of fires, earthquakes rebellions and floods until 1773 when a series of utterly ruinous earthquakes convinced the Spanish it was time to bug out.

Most did, to the new capital of Guatemala City twenty miles away but a stalwart few stayed behind hence its name of “ancient.” Nowadays it’s a tourist magnet with tons of gringos photobombing and crowding sidewalks. 

The city is famous for its language schools, middle class restaurants and preserved ruins amidst the faded splendor of a colonial city. All of which will be revealed as we spend time here. 

The city is at 5,000 feet (1500 Canadian feet) above sea level with a population near 50,000 people enjoying cool daytime breezes and chilly nights with the addition of some unexpected thundery and rainy weather. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site though most of the buildings are of 17th and 18th century origin. They say the city’s broad streets set in a grid are the original design supposedly built in imitation of Italian renaissance municipal planning. Which sounds dubious to me recalling the street mazes in the central Italian villages I grew up in. Anyway it’s still a very pretty place and we’ve barely seen any of it. 

Our first day at the downtown campground we cleaned GANNET2 furiously as we still had traces of our Belizean dirt mixed in with a hefty layer of dust from our more recent travels. A top to bottom clean of our home takes a couple of hours and that didn’t include the toilet compartment which gets a clean tomorrow. Then we rested and spiffed ourselves up for lunch inside this unprepossessing building three blocks up the street from our Green Events campsite.  

Rusty was welcome though I worried he might freak out other customers. I tried to convince them it was me that was fierce (“bravo”) not the dog. 

He was as usual perfectly behaved and our lunch with tamarind juice was satisfying if not startling. 

I frankly don’t enjoy walking on 18th century cobbles any more than I like driving on them but they do give the city it’s historic look. Sidewalks are narrow and awkward littered as they are with poles and utility boxes. Pedestrians by the way are fair game so I kept Rusty on his leash. 

Old school buses from the US are still being pressed into service here. 

We got our clothes washed in Coban. But now we want our sheets and floor mats cleaned if possible. Layne thought she had found a place, a laundry devoted to gardening as well it appeared.  

Layne wandered the fruit market and brought back some blackberries and strawberries while I took an impatient Rusty back to the comfort of the grass at the campground. 

The only sign outside the campground says “This land is not for sale.” Otherwise you just have to figure out for yourself which of the several large green gates is the actual one you want. We tried one other unmarked gate and got no response before we found the correct entrance. 

The entrance to Verde Eventos is the  bright green metal gate with absolutely no visible sign. A discreet metal sign with the name is hidden artfully under the shrubbery. 

This will make a good place from which to explore the city. 

Rusty loves it. 

And the book I am digging into here is the biography of a truly peculiar American adventurer who traveled Latin America trying to colonize parts of Mexico and the isthmus in an effort to expand slave owning lands before the Civil War. Not many Americans have heard of William Walker but I find his bizarreness fascinating.