Antigua Photos

Bishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador was murdered saying mass by death squads in the Salvadoran Civil War a conflict which I witnessed. I was surprised and moved to see his portrait in the church of Pedro Hermano in Antigua Guatemala. He was a true saint devoted to the oppressed.  

This place is now a city park called Union Tank. When we were here in 2000 it was an active public laundry. 

I have a photo in an album in our storage locker of Mayan women washing their clothes here. Ancient history, and that makes me realize how much time has passed in my life.

It’s a city landmark but I miss the washerwomen. I hope they have washing machines at home by now but I doubt it.  

Antigua

First, the tooth thing.  Two teeth need to be replaced and speaking as one with an implant in the front of my face I know how unpleasant it is to have a hole there. Layne has two holes making her self conscious about smiling. Both of the holes are at stage six in the pictures below. 

The Guatemalan dentist started on picture seven cutting open one implant base to see about screwing in a false tooth, picture 8. What he found neatly embedded in Laynes’s jaw is a receptacle (pictures four and five) inserted months ago but of a type not compatible with the inserts he uses. There are it turns out hundreds of incompatible tooth implant inserts. Who knew? So…After the  dentist in Algodones did not respond to his request for information on the type of implant used in Layne’s jaw we had some thinking to do. 

If we continue south looking for a solution every visit to a dentist will require cutting open the gum to see if the insert is compatible. Or we go back to the dentist that inserted them and finish the job. Layne  had thought about flying but she does not want to be 2,000 miles away and have a problem crop up when she is all by herself. We do this thing together, the three of us. 

So there is the advantage that if we go north for a few months and then return in November the weather will be good and it will be the right season to travel. Travelers in El Salvador and Nicaragua report 100 degree temperatures and here in mountainous Antigua we get daily thunderstorms, not exactly Rusty’s delight, along with almost daily rain. 

Given that we want the tooth thing fixed we plan to take advantage of a summer in the States, visit friends and do some early maintenance on GANNET2 which will give me peace of mind. Interestingly Layne has found a pilot in Panama who will fly the three of us for a reasonable cost to Colombia so when we ship the van Rusty won’t have to be in a cage in the hold of a commercial airliner. I was looking forward to putting that to the test and we will next January I expect. Also we have paid a deposit to the Overland Embassy in Panama to get a place in line for a container when the time comes. I have set myself a deadline of November 1st to be back here so we are not planning to give up. 

“Here” puts us in the foodie capital of Guatemala, a city dedicated to foreign visitors, a city now suffering the growing pains of wealth generation that displaces locals everywhere in the world that becomes fashionable. 

We did our part having lunch at an Italian deli owned by an Italian, above, who grew up near the Swiss border and has emigrated here of all places. The prosciutto and Parmesan sandwich on crusty bread was excellent. 

Antigua is a city of ruins, knocked down by earthquakes in 1773 when the two hundred year old city was ordered abandoned by the Spanish authorities who moved the capital 20 miles away to a safer spot. 

Those that remained used the 16th century street grid as the base on which to build an 18th and 19th century colonial city around the ruins that were left in place and ignored. 

These are the ruins of the Antigua Guatemala Cathedral, open for you to wander for the low low price of three dollars a head. Quite evocative. 

Friends of ours from Bend, Oregon in a Jeep Gladiator are leaving today for El Salvador, just three hours south of here. I get a twinge hearing that but Courtney then says they are planning to take hotels as the heat will be unbearable. 

Roll on November I say.

A Day Off

Sitting around a campfire in Belize, at the lovely San Miguel Campground in the mountains, Rob with the black beard, made a point that has stuck with me. 

Overlanding is hard work. Every day you have to make decisions, there is almost no routine, from where to sleep to where to park to where to shop. Everything feels new all the time and he found it exhausting. Not tired in the hard work sense, but exhausting in the meaning of life sense. And he has a point.

The allure of travel is that very break in the routine that we crave when our daily rounds bore us. Two weeks of change and we come home ready for another 50 weeks of routine. Therefore permanent change must be fifty times better! Well, not exactly but I have to say I enjoy the uncertainties of being on the road, most of the time. I think Rob was right though inasmuch as this life is a job. Planning, decision making, correcting, deciding and making mistakes in a strange culture as an outsider and alone. Sounds fun! 

There are the bad days when errors and problems seem insurmountable. And you are still alone! Deciding about issues of which you understand very little.  These are moments I like less and they are a struggle. They are the days the job sometimes suck, just as any job can suck from time to time. However this job is one we have chosen and from which we can duck out anytime.  And some travelers do!

I’ve met overlanders who are tired of the road and crave a stationary period. Many find their hobbies require more room than is available in a vehicle. Some days I miss being among my own culture. I dislike the lack of personal space in Latin American society and the cultural need for loud music gets tiring. 

For instance in Guatemala I wouldn’t mind a smooth broad sidewalk from time to time! But I smooth through the bad bits of overlanding with Laynes’s help and we keep going. She gets her strength from a massive network of women friends she remains in close contact with through Starlink and WhatsApp. 

I’ve been struggling with our need to return to north Mexico to finish Laynes’s tooth implants in Los Algodones on the US border. It’s silly because all we do anyway is drive so taking a detour back to the US is just another drive. Furthermore we will be back when the weather is right for this part of the world  which is now hot at lower elevations on the road ahead and soon to get very wet. I am just impatient by nature when I have made a decision. I want to get on with going to  South America. That’s our goal and I want to be on the road doing it.  

We are planning to enjoy driving the States this summer as that is always fun and after we polish off South America I have a growing list of places to visit in our home country. Layne has even agreed to let Rusty and I go to Alaska alone as she doesn’t want to drive the Alcan or deal with the vagaries of the Last Frontier. I can’t wait!

But right now we needed a break in Antigua which need coincides with a three day holiday and full accommodations everywhere, naturally. So we found a rather peculiar campground for a few days on the outskirts of the city with the huge benefit of shore power to plug in and run all our appliances irresponsibly on someone else current. 

You can park an RV at $10 or 150 Quetzals per night, or plant a tent or you can rent a peculiar place to sleep provided by management. A helicopter? 

A boat next to the pool? 

A bus or a truck perhaps? 

Rustic toilets, restaurant and bar, outdoor seating, dogs welcome and the opportunity for us to just ignore the rigid for a couple of days, swing in our hammock, watch a movie, enjoy air conditioning, stop being tourists. 

We recharge more than just the van batteries.