Tuesday 4th April

Arrived at Puerto Quetzal in Guatemala, on the Pacific coast at 9am & walked to our buses to leave for La Antigua at 10. It was quite hot & very humid at the port & the bus wasn't a great deal better but after passing through large fields of sugar cane, we started to climb into the hills. The ground looked very fertile but the people appear to be quite poor & the houses are quite third world.

We arrived at La Antigua at about midday at the 'Jade Museum’, a workshop & sales place selling various locally made jade items.

The city is a classic example of Spanish Colonial architecture with all the houses built around courtyards with a gateway on to the street. It had been the original capital of Central America & has many fine churches, convents & monasteries although some are now in ruins. We wandered along the pebble paved streets, which reminded us very much of Mompos in Columbia & in & out of some of the old houses which now contain shops & cafes.

The main square was bounded by a large but closed, cathedral on one side, & fine arcades on the other sides & was very neat & well kept with people trying to sell us local items. From here we walked to a large Monastery with another huge church fronted with a handsome facade picked out in yellow but this was for worship only & tourists were not allowed in.

On the way we passed a roofless, ruined church with just its walls standing, in which were the large floats to be used in the Holy Week processions. The floats carry scenes leading up to the crucifixion of Christ with full size statues of the participants, which were being touched up & repaired. As we walked then down towards the markets we passed a shop selling the purple robes to be worn in the processions & further on, a workshop where the robes were being sewn. In yet another shop we found miniature displays of the people dragging the floats together with masses of miniature models of them for sale. It must be an incredible sight to see the processions which presumably are similar to those in Seville.

At 4pm we made our way back to the bus for our return journey to the ship & it was with some regret that we hadn’t more time in this time capsule of 17th century Spain.

At the port there were massive black stockpiles which we were told were of coal or charcoal but were not clear on which. Lines of trucks were bringing it in & whatever it was it must be exported in large quantities. Also in the port was a smaller cruise ship but again we couldn’t identify it although it certainly looked very smart.

We sailed at 8pm on our way to the Panama Canal, one of the voyages highlights.