Thewesternprovinceblog

Hola todos, como estáis? Today is my first proper day in Antigua. I awake with a mild hangover after last night’s nonsense and force myself up and about my day. First I have to find a place to do laundry so find a place put a big batch in then look to have a look round town. I see there is a walking tour at 11am so book onto that and grab some breakfast in the square and get ready to join the tour.

The tour guide is a guy called Giovanni who is very knowledgeable on the city. Antigua is very much a Renaissance city designed in the style of how Roman Architect Vitruvius planned cities – it was his work which largely inspired Leonardo Da Vinci’s works. The cities roads are built with 16th century cobblestone in the style of a Roman road and built to the same proportions – enough room for 6 legionaries at arms length apart. Another interesting feature is the spacing. This is another Roman thing and each 2 foot long space is a single step when the legion is marching – in short the message is we don’t get enough steps in!

We look around at some churches as he explains the history of the city. The modern city was founded in 1543 after 2 failed attempts in 1524 and 1527, the first time natives destroyed it, the second by a volcanic eruption. After the third time Antigua was Spanish Central America’s capital for over 200 years until 1773 a huge earthquake destroyed most of the city making them build a new capital in modern day Guatemala City. The churches and city Hall did survive however a lot of them were not fully rebuilt as can be seen how many of them are partially ruins.

Going through the city we are then told about what Life is like here in Guatemala for the average citizen and its not great. 80% of Guatemala’s economy is controlled by about 50 families who’s routes go back to the conquistador days when 80% of the people generate the remaining 20% of the wealth with most not working formal jobs and not getting any assistance from government & only have themselves or their community Life is hard here if your not born into some money much like Mexico.

We also briefly discuss the history of Guatemala’s 36 year long civil war where over 200,000 were killed and many atrocities were made against the Mayan people’s – it is a reason why the men today don’t wear the traditional costumes very much. The war itself was a guerilla conflict that largely started because the US backed a coup to remove the elected president back in 1956 because communism and the new regime went about reversing land reforms and stopping the poor from voting etc and this all blew up in 1960 leading to 36 year of guerilla warfare in the mountains between the government and different leftist and native militias. Again I’m brushing over the details here but it went on in different phases as different presidents took power with the most violent phase being in the mid 80’s and then a cooling off in the 90’s which allowed peace to eventually be signed in 1996. It’s been nearly 30 years and peace has held though there are still militias up in the mountains and autonomous towns that just want to be left alone. He said most people these days are over this but it is an agree to disagree thing. Fair play I had no idea about this one.

Our final stop was the Jade museum which we could get in free and we were given a brief tour. In short Jade is a rare stone that comes in different colors and is worth a lot of money. Imperial green was the most expensive and I forget the cheapest but even that is too rich for me. All in all was a good tour and paid him a nice tip. After this it was lunch and pick up the laundry and siesta time.

After that I went out for some dinner and went back to the vino place I escaped to last night. Met a nice Mexican family travelling through who were from Aguascalientes a few hours north of Mexico City. They were nice people and again decent Spanish practice again since the Padres spoke no English and the adult daughter had a limited knowledge from school. Still nice enough people might see them round.

Going to be a chill finde in Antigua for me. Looking forward to moving into the Airbnb and getting away from “Bro” nonsense for a bit. Might do a volcano hike tour but let’s see how we get on.