Antigua
First, fun fact #1 about Guatemala!
Guatemala gets its name from a Spanish bastardization of what their Mexican allies called the capital of the Kaqchikel´s land. And so through this linguistic telephone game Iximche becomes Guatemala.
Upon Marsha´s arrival, we motored down to Antigua for a few nights. Although they switched their capital about multiple times due to earthquakes, Antigua was the capital of Spain´s Central American empire from 1543-1776. The city was abandoned because of, guess what, an earthquake and the Spanish bigwigs moved to Guatemala City, but most of the colonial architecture remains. Antigua is very nice. It has cobblestone streets, beautiful buildings, and a lot of restaurants. It might be a little too nice though. Not to sound like xtreme backpacker man, who is only satisfied when surrounded by local people in full suffering, but you kind of feel like you could be anywhere.
The best thing we did was go with a group up a live volcano. It was about a 3 hour hike to the top and there, yes, we did see actual lava flowing. Pretty fucking cool (although the pictures didn´t turn out so you´re going to have to take my word for it). Still, I don´t want to give the
impression that we were looking over a ridge into a pool of bubbling lava, which is what I always imagined when people shared similar experiences. But at one point the guide did take us up the side to an area that was fairly hot and had a little cavity that was shooting up steam with a little lava. He told us to not spend much time because it was dangerous. As we descended down some slippery scree on our way back down, I had this image in my head that someone at the top would yell, "She blew!!!!! Lava´s coming!!!!!!.¨ And then we would all scamper our way to the bottom with our melting peers ´screams in the background.
Later in the trip, we came through Antugua again for a stop over night and enjoyed it more. Maybe it was the familiarity or the fun of being back in a busyesque city. Or maybe we just were able to appreciate it more after we´d been traveling for a little. What I do know is that waiting outside for the shuttle to pick us up at 4 am the next day with the wet cobblestones shimmering in the street lamp light was DAMN SEXY!
Guatemala gets its name from a Spanish bastardization of what their Mexican allies called the capital of the Kaqchikel´s land. And so through this linguistic telephone game Iximche becomes Guatemala.
Upon Marsha´s arrival, we motored down to Antigua for a few nights. Although they switched their capital about multiple times due to earthquakes, Antigua was the capital of Spain´s Central American empire from 1543-1776. The city was abandoned because of, guess what, an earthquake and the Spanish bigwigs moved to Guatemala City, but most of the colonial architecture remains. Antigua is very nice. It has cobblestone streets, beautiful buildings, and a lot of restaurants. It might be a little too nice though. Not to sound like xtreme backpacker man, who is only satisfied when surrounded by local people in full suffering, but you kind of feel like you could be anywhere.
The best thing we did was go with a group up a live volcano. It was about a 3 hour hike to the top and there, yes, we did see actual lava flowing. Pretty fucking cool (although the pictures didn´t turn out so you´re going to have to take my word for it). Still, I don´t want to give the
impression that we were looking over a ridge into a pool of bubbling lava, which is what I always imagined when people shared similar experiences. But at one point the guide did take us up the side to an area that was fairly hot and had a little cavity that was shooting up steam with a little lava. He told us to not spend much time because it was dangerous. As we descended down some slippery scree on our way back down, I had this image in my head that someone at the top would yell, "She blew!!!!! Lava´s coming!!!!!!.¨ And then we would all scamper our way to the bottom with our melting peers ´screams in the background.Later in the trip, we came through Antugua again for a stop over night and enjoyed it more. Maybe it was the familiarity or the fun of being back in a busyesque city. Or maybe we just were able to appreciate it more after we´d been traveling for a little. What I do know is that waiting outside for the shuttle to pick us up at 4 am the next day with the wet cobblestones shimmering in the street lamp light was DAMN SEXY!
posted by chuckdaddy2000 at 12:28 pm
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