the town square and Volcano Agua

Antigua, Guatemala - Is a larger version of Copan with it's cobble stone streets. The buildings are less interesting from the outside: they look like one long wall with varying sized wooden doors and small business signs. Inside some, however, there are BEAUTIFUL open air, stone courtyards with lush plants and flowers and intricate woodwork. These used to be houses and you could tell how much money the owners had by the size of the doors since they kept their carriages and horses inside - so if you could afford a carriage you had a wider/taller door. Jorge hired us a local guide to take us around town for a couple of hours. He explained how there was a large earthquake in 1973 that 26,000 people died in. There are a number of churches and the town doesn't have the money to repair all the damage so they are just left them they way they fell, of course cleaning up as much as they needed too. One church has a couple of statues in precarious places that survived the earthquake! Antigua was the capital city of Guatemala (and the 2nd most important in Central America) but after the earthquake all the people who could afford it moved to what is now Guatemala City which is now the capital city, so there are a lot of native, less wealthy people in Antigua now-the natives do all the crafts so it is like any city in America that starts as an cool hip artsy town that turns into more expensive destination town. Our local guide shepherded us into a jade factory/store; it was interesting to see how they make all the pieces and to see all the different colors of jade and to find out Guatemala has different and rarer kinds of jade then the rest of the world. The jewelry is made by hand with help from basic machines such as stonecutters, polishers and such. All the intricate pieces are carved by hand. I bought a small pair of earrings..... We also got shepherded into a textile market, which was interesting to see, Scott found a shirt to buy. Kay & Jim had Jorge take them to the textile factory which they said was interesting. We opted to walk around town on our own- there's everything you could need including a number of textile stores, photography stores, internet cafes, coffee cafes and alot of restaurants: Burger King, Pollo Compareo (local fried chicken), a proper Irish Pub, Cuban, Puerto Rican, a Mediterranean restaurant where we had a light lunch, a Thai restaurant for dinner and had authentic Guatemalan food (the Chile Rellnos are stuff with meat here) at another restaurant that also had live music and traditional dances. We were mostly interested in bookstores and looking at digital cameras. Local language is Spanish and their money, the Quetzal (after the bird), was Q 7.30 to $1 US so the math was a little easier here.