A Place to Get Lost In ...

Tam

Anitgua is a gorgeous little town nestled in between 3 volcanoes, the most impressive is Volcan Agua about 3750 metres high and still active. The temperature here is plesant and even warm during the day and quite chilly at night maybe because of the altitude. The streets are set in a grid and the roads hold trafffic mostly in the mornings when people are coming into town from neighbouring pueblos or Guate (Guatemala City) and at night when they finish work. Chicken buses too are colourful old style buses with brightly coloured painting on the sides and front. This is the local form of transport as well as the tuk tuk. You need boots to walk on the cobblestone streets and the footpaths are narrow and high, sometimes you even hit the ornate barred windows dressed up with gorgeous pot plant and flowers. When we arrived almost a week ago into town from an overnight bus from Flores, all the shops were closed and there were only a few taxis driving up the confusing streets and alleys. We spent some time hungry and tired with heavy packs trying to find a cheap hostal to stay in. We settled on a not so clean hotel with cold showers and mosquitos. The family though were nice enough and the rooftop terrace had a view of the volcano which was quite impressive. Antigua is a town you fall in love with instantly. There is a small sqaure or central park where everyone meets, sits and sells you souvenirs. The plaza is surrounded by coffe shops and travel agents and there is a definite intellectual vibe here. The town is known for its university and schools. Cool Antiguenos dress up in suits as they go too and from class and you see foreigners with their take away coffees on their way to school too. The pace here is laid back and it turns out there is a thriving expat community (mostly americans, who just dont want to leave(. There are cool bars too to have a drink .. Cafe No Se is my fav and reminds me of Melbourne. After the first morning in Antigua Coxy and I both decided it would be a nice place to spend a lot of time in. Much to our relief we have been placed with the de Morales family. A retired couple, devoutly religious (they think we are married and we don't want to tell them the truth( who have a big mansion style house (guatemalan standard( with many rooms surrounding a beautiful courtyard complete with a parrot and a live in maid named Vida. We have room with a dressing room at the back of the house and share one of the cleanest bathrooms I have seen on this trip with a lovely French American lady called Barbara who is also volunteering here. We enjoy 3 meals a day, prepared to restaurant standard and always changing. In Guatemala they eat very little fort breakfast , usually just fruit and a bit of bread and then their main meal is lunch (which Coxy and I always look forward to(, for lunch we have meat, potatoes, salad and rice or a very typical dish of cauliflower dipped in egg and tumeric and baked, its so delicious .. I'll have to try it at home. Dinner is lighter which is not a bad thing and usually consists of rice. frijoles and a banana. The conversation around the dinner table is always lively. The Husband Carlos loves to talk and joke and Carmelina is sweet with her conversation about Antigua and living here life here. We are able to practice a bit of our spanish too and have even bought a better dictionary plus a book in spanish too which I will tackle later on. OUr stay here has been really comfortable but as usual am getting itchy feet , so we will move on this Saturday to a hotel / hostel several blocks away before we journey to CHichi and then through back to Mexico. The other day to fill in time we joined a tour to the nearby Volcan Pacaya, its also an active volcano and you can actually hike up into it to see the lava which has dried up a bit since its last eruption in May. The eruption devatated a small neighbouring pueblo and its forest is only now just starting to flourish. As tours go, this one was a good one. You leave and get picked up from your accomodation at 6am and then drive about 1 and half hours to the volcano. Its an interesting drive as you climb higher and higher up. YOu have a choice to walk the 1 hour up or ride a horse... After ARCAS both Coxy and I felt fit and wanted to keep our exercise up so we chose to hike. Its steep though .. in some parts I was brought back to Nepal with Suards on our everest trip .. but it only took 1 hour and not 10 days! When you get further up you can actually feel the heat under your feet.. thank god for the hiking boots .. a godsend and the 5 quetzales wooden stick we were talked into buying. The place is desolate, brown, no trees and views of the other 3 volcanoes. We spent some time sitting and enoying the place all to ourselves and climbed into a cave to feel the real heat of the volcano .. felt like a sauna in there. For our trek down we all walked and on a different route. This time descending sometimes falling and sliding down into soft dried up lava and small rocks but this time amongst regrown forest, beautiful trees and lush vegetation .. quite a poetic way to end the tour. Last but not least to the volunteering itself. I have to admit that I ama little sad to be saying goodbye to the kids, there are as always some that you cant help but bond with. We were placed at a hospital near our home and discovered that it was not an orphanage we were working in but a ward with children with a wide array of disablilities, from the blind to cerebral palsy to sever mental issues. It seems for these children they stay in the hospital and as they grow move from one ward to the next. There are plenty of nurses and plenty of volunteers too, but as can be imagined, the care is basic, some of the children are given some education and some physio but the care in not extensive nor is it specialist. Whats saddest is that there are children with no mental issues at all who are not getting the care to nurture their abilities pr attention to their developmental needs. After a few days you do start forming some real bonds with the ones that can communicate or even those that just respond (there are a lot then cannot respond at all to you and unfrtunatley these are the ones that are neglected the most(. We didnt realise we were coming to work in a hospital so all the material we brought with us and toys are unsuitable for these kids who cant sit up or hold or walk. Still I have enjoyed getting to know the kids and have my favourites in Henry, Elmer, Roberto, Carlitos and baby Manuellito. We only really work for about 2 hours at the hospital and try really hard not to get in the way of the nurses who do all the ' real ' work like cleaning, feeding, changing and preparing the meals etc. So its with a bit of sadness that I say goodbye to the kids and Antigua, it somewhere i would definitley visit again and I keep saying spend some real time learning spanish or just experiencing life outside of Oz, maybe its time to teach english again! I'll try to get some photos up of antigua too soon and will write about our trip to Chichicastenango the biggest local markets in Guatemala and beautful Lake Atitlan on our way to San Cristobal in Mexico.

Coxy:

Antigua is super cool, the old school architecture and history is something we lack in Australia but it abounds here! People are very hard working, women carrying heavy bundles of goods on their heads down uneven streets with babies nestled in a sling at their front and go out of their way to show you their merchandise in the hope you will buy one of the millions of pieces of fabric, bookmarks or worry dolls that they are selling. Children work too, they will shine your shoes in the Parque for a couple of $Q or sell you sweets from their little bags as they roam around. Every night their is music, people dancing to the sounds of traditional music in colourful costumes or the beat of the music emanating from one of the local bars as you walk home from work. Ah yes work, the volunteering, unfortunaterly I was laid up for a couple of days with a bit of ´Dehli Belly´so to speak but the 3 days I spent at the hospital with the disabled kids was definitely an eye opener. This kids smile and laugh through the toughest of times for them. They dont blame anyone or anything for their circumstances, they get on with making the best of what they have whether or not its the use of 1 arm, a dodgy wheelchair, a noisy neighbour in the next ´crib´ or the general inability of one Coxy to understand what the hell they are saying!! I think they got a kick out of me calling them by their wrong names, Carlitos was Roberto, Roberto was Carlitos and the kid who hogged the swing ride I found out was Mano after a few days! Better late than never...:)

The volcano Pacaya was fun. Hard trek up especially with the kids following us on horseback saying ´taxi´all the time, kind of inspired us not to give in and get a horse but to make it all the way which we did! Its very, very desolate near the top of a volcano, especially one that errupted in May and wiped out the nearby village and local wildlife and vegetation. It reminds me of the Lord of the Rings wastelands... kind of cool though, there was this one point where we were walking along a thin track and it was a steep fall if your footing gave way, hot too near some of the lava vents, the guide stuck some sticks near some rocks and they caught fire so hot enough!

Back in town and we were finally chased down by Mildred, the lady who hassled us to buy something from her the previous day whilst we sat and rested on a bench in the parque. She really went for the hard sell on to be refused by both of us, we were tired and had ´no money´so we kind of promised her the next day that we would buy something. 2 mins later )with Mildred sitting next to us still) a guy came over to me selling these cool magnetic volcanic rocks, so I promptly bartered with him a bit and bought them in front of Mildred! I kind of scurried away after the transaction with Tam and Mildred looking at me wondering what the heck is he doing... anyway the next day Tam bought some over priced stuff from her so a kind of karma has been restored!

Our final night in Antigua was great, we had traditional food and a show which was these guys dressed up as Spanish Conquistadors hopping and dancing around the room shaking the butts... then they invited us up to do the say but I am not sure they were ready for my rendition of the moonwalk which I was inclined to do after a few beers!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, we met an American bartender who was pretty cool and loved a chat. One of the conversations involved him telling us about his super smart brother who is one of those guys who does all kinds of experiments with sharks. One day he lived out the dream of alot of blokes - he achieved the´Austin Powers´ - thats right he actually strapped laser beams to the heads of sharks and justified it in his experiments. Freakin sharks with laser beams, how awesome is that?