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It is because of people like Fernando or Fernanda that the rest of us get into trouble for not showing all of our love at once. I mean what kind of nerve to plaster the whole portón (doorway) with thousands of Post-it notes with love messages.

Valentine’s Day in Guatemala is known as El Dí­a del Cariño. Cariño and caress share the same etymology and it means affection. The Day of Affection would be a close translation for El Dí­a del Cariño, thus it is much more than Valentine’s Day because it is the day to show your affection, love and appreciation to your co-workers, neighbors, friends, family, and of course, your girlfriend or wife; whatever the case may be.

Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Guatemala by giving ‘normally‘ flowers, chocolates, cards and whatever your creativity allows to show you affections. There are many gift exchanges among your peers in workplaces, schools and with your own family. February 14th is a great day to be in La Antigua Guatemala, don’t you think so?

If you were in La Antigua Guatemala, how would you celebrate El Dí­a del Cariño?

Processions are majestic, huge and long in La Antigua Guatemala. You can browse the Processions category to get an idea of the size of the processions in La Antigua Guatemala. There are smaller and more humble processions in the villages and small communities surrounding La Antigua Guatemala. This year, I will try to focus more in the Holy Week celebrations and processions in the villages where you can still observe the fervor, regardless of the size, for all these Catholic rituals. The photo above was taken in the village of San Pedro Las Huertas, while the procession made a pit stop or parada as they are known in Spanish. Well, I think that is the name, maybe somebody more knowledgeable in Catholic rituals can provide the actual name for the stops the processions make every so often at specific spots.

The cobblestone streets of La Antigua Guatemala were originally designed for horses and horse-carriages. So, it is no wonder that even light vehicles, like cars, create a lot of damage to the streets which, therefore, need constant repairing. Now you can imagine that huge and heavy trucks like the ones pictured above not only damage the streets, but the foundation of the houses and the city itself.

It is sad to see a city like La Antigua Guatemala go through a daily process not because its enchanting beauty, but because a living monument, patrimony to humanity, will for sure disappear. Does anyone care? you may ask yourself, like I do.

This is the façade of Café No Sé in La Antigua Guatemala, headquarters of the John Rexer‘s 1a avenida sur empire. His efforts to take control over the whole 1a avenida sur (1st Avenue South) are a little more humble than Pinky and The Brain Gutiérrez who want the whole world to convert to their tender, juicy and crunchy recipe of fried chicken.

Now onto other subjects, did you know that last Wednesday, February 6th, was Ash Wednesday, the official beginning of Lent or Cuaresma as it’s known in La Antigua Guatemala.

Are you ready for 40 days of religious and cultural celebrations prior to the Holy Week?

The bar man is waiting for the hippies customers to show up… even though it looks empty in the early afternoon, you can barely fit inside at night. If you like live music and a bohemian atmosphere, Café No Sé is your place in town.

One by one all the houses in La Antigua Guatemala are becoming business like cafes, spanish schools, offices, travel agencies, folk-art stores, et-cetera. Above you see the corridor at Café No Sé, which was converted into a dining area by placing a few tables and chairs.

Signs: They come with all kinds messages; some with weird information too.

If you’ve been visiting La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo for a month or longer, you will know that the sign category gets a lot of attention from my viewfinder. You can browse the sign category to see 48 samples of the different signs capture thus far.

Obviously, the sign above and the Hippies use backdoor sign, from a couple of days ago, make great decoration for the hippie hole that is Café No Sé. It adds a sort of branding to the joint where you can drink Ilegal Mezcal, add salt and pepper to your Cuban burritos from a Venado Aguardiente Añejo bottle.

Recycling is good.

In Guatemala we do a lot of recycling, not out of conscience, but rather out of necessity. We recycle retired school buses and turn them into colorful and powerful public transit buses known in derogatory terms as chicken buses. Some of these recycled buses have become mobile libraries or marimba orchestra buses. In other words, retired school buses from up north get to live a second life; a more productive life, down in the Guatemalan jungles and hi-lands.

The same goes for many retired vehicles from the rich north which are rodados (rolled) across the U.S., Mexico and Guatemala to live a second life. Rodados is the term used in Guatemala to designate old vehicles or crashed vehicles which were driven or towed all the way south into Guatemala.

The same goes for books, magazines, computers, and a very long et-cetera all the way to second or third hand clothes known as pacas for clothes that come in pallets.

If it wasn’t for all this recycling, sometimes, it feels like we are the big backyard dump for our neighbors from way up north; sort of a black hole where you can throw away all your trash, never to be seen again.

Out of sight, out of conscience!

Heck, sometimes we even do some local recycling too. For instance, all those empty hard liquor bottles can have a fulfilling second life as salt and pepper shakers.

What I like about the people of Café No Sé is that they know when they are onto something; at once they apply the Café No Sé branding, and just in case, they make sure it is registered. These are my kind of hippies!

For all those Guatemalan ex-pats out there in the world, what kind memories do you get from seeing these Venado bottles?

John Rexer is the man behind the bar-restaurant known in La Antigua Guatemala as Café No Sé (I don’t know cafe), Y tu piña también Café, Dislexia Bookstore, La Cuadra Magazine, among others.

John Rexer, New Yorker by birth, Mexican by heart and Antigüeño by choice, came to La Antigua Guatemala a few years ago and after surfing the local scene, he realized a joint was needed for backpackers, hippies, ex-pats and others looking for the other side, the flip side, of LAG. A sort of bohemian atmosphere where people were free to express their artistic vein, or simply to relax while eating the local variant of Tex-Mex food or drinking cheap beers or his own Ilegal Mezcal brand (the generic name for Tequila-like agave distills).

Now, after several years in this colonial town, his plans to take over the whole block of 1a avenida sur are actually working and working very well, I may add. It takes a ‘real’ hippie to make the best entrepreneur; at least in La Antigua Guatemala.

I found out about the sign above via Buried Mirror and I knew a mini series was long over due about this hippie joint in La Antigua Guatemala.

Do you know what place am I talking about?

Who ever came out with this great idea for a sign, for sure, was a hippie who now is very wealthy. Check out this amazing slide show that reveals all the different places where the sign has been posted.

COLOMBIA SANS FARC, the sign reads.

The very next day that the former mayor of La Antigua Guatemala found out he was not reelected for a second term, he decided he was not going to do any more work for the ungrateful antigüeños. So, within weeks the cobblestone streets began to deteriorate at such a fast rate that within a month or two, driving around town felt like driving in the lunar surface (not that I have had the pleasure to visit the moon lately). Gone was the regular vista of the Cobblestone street worker repairing the streets. Many weeks and months went by since September 9th, 2007 and the streets were more like rivers of craters that one had to drive around whenever possible.

As the new mayor took office on January 15th, he launched a new campaign to rescue the streets for the lent celebrations which begin in February. Right now there are crews of cobblestone street workers almost everywhere and many streets are closed for repairs. Let’s hope they can meet their goal since Lent or Cuaresma in Spanish is approaching soon.

These Indigenous people came from Santa Clara La Laguna, Solola, to sing and collect some money from the good Samaritans visiting or living in La Antigua Guatemala. Everything was fine until the Municipal Police decided this was too exotic and this kind of activity may seemed too third world.

I find the singing of the indigenous people extremely haunting and touching, even though, they are singing evangelical hymns. To me this singing has another layer of pain and denouncing which is above the meaning of the words they sing; something much older and more mystical than the religious hymns brought by the European Christianity.

I don’t know, maybe I hearing more than what really is there… what do you think?

Cascarones are empty eggshells that are filled with pica-pica paper confetti and then covered up with another piece of papel china (tissue paper) and finally painted in colorful ways; like everything else in Guatemala. The final painted eggshells are reserved for the Carnaval as it is known carnival in Spanish which is the ‘Sad Tuesday’ before Ash Wednesday; why ‘Sad Tuesday’?, well carnival means “farewell to meat”, you can only be sad if you are going to keep a vegetarian lent.

Actually for an in-depth and more serious explanation, I believe it is better to read Manolo’s comment and the other comments in the entry Guatemalan Carnival Cascarones. The only thing I would add to the awesome explanations is the fact that you can also purchase cascarones in the tienda (your local convenience store) for about 25 centavos each. Twenty-five centavos is the equivalent of 3 cents from the U.S. Dollar. Centavos are the subdivision of the Quetzal, Guatemala’s currency, and there are 100 centavos in 1 Quetzal (about 12 cents).

Okay, I am taking orders, how many cascarones will you need to break into the head of the cascarrabias (grumpies)?