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Here’s the song thanks to our loyal reader Luis from SF.

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Que llueva, que llueva
Canción infantil

Que llueva, que llueva
La Virgen de la Cueva
Los pajaritos cantan,
Las nubes se levantan.
¡Que sí, que no,
que caiga un chaparrón!

Que siga lloviendo,
Los pájaros corriendo
Florezca la pradera
Al sol de la primavera.
¡Que sí, que no,
que llueva a chaparrón,
que no me moje yo!

Let It Rain, Let It Rain
Children’s Song

Let it rain, let it rain,
The Virgin of the Cave,
The little birds are singing,
The clouds are rising.
Oh yes, oh no,
Let a downpour fall!

Let it go on raining,
The birds go on running,
Let the meadow blossom
Under the spring sun.
Oh yes, oh no,
Let it rain cats and dogs,
Let me not get wet!

(source: Mama Lisa’s World)

Sometimes, often, I just feel lucky.

Let me explain.

Just four days ago I was telling you about the pruning of the gravileas trees. What I did not tell you was the those Gravileas trees were in the adjacent coffee plantation to our house. The simple fact that the trees were pruned a couple of days ago enabled a west view towards the Fuego and Acatenango volcanoes and allowed me this morning to photograph this rare event: snow on top of Volcán Acatenango [3,976 m (13,045 ft) for Pico Mayor (Highest Peak) and 3,880 (12,729 ft) for Yepocapa].

Now, my luck is your luck since I share everything with you. Do you feel lucky?

This has to be the best quiche anywhere. Although it is made from eggs, it could be considered a vegetarian dish, right?

Even though Héctor’s restaurant does not have a sign that might point you to where his place is at, most locals, including foreigners, know about this fabulous venue. His French-influenced cosmopolitan cuisine is considered by many Antigua Guatemala’s best kept secret.

Make sure you also try Hector’s roasted tomatoes, basil and cheese!
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Here’s another cosmopolitan vegetarian menu option from Quesos y Vinos, one of the oldest Italian restaurants in La Antigua Guatemala. They serve homemade pastas and pizzas cooked inside a wood-burning brick oven. I enjoy meeting people for lunch at Quesos y Vino’s patio dining area.

If you are looking for great tasting and fulfilling vegetarian pizza, make sure you stop at this venue.

We continue our International Cuisine tour with a sampler of vegetarian food from India. As I said yesterday, here’s additional proof of how cosmopolitan Antigua Guatemala has become. This Indian Vegetarian sampler can be had at Masala, the terrace restaurant of La Sala, which will change its name to La Sala Masala.

I bet you didn’t think all these international cuisine options were available in Antigua Guatemala, right?

Well, I have created the category Vegetarian under Food and Drinks to help those who do not eat meat find the restaurants with vegetarian menus. Let me what do you think of this category.

I continue my quest of showing you how cosmopolitan La Antigua Guatemala has really become. Today’s entry was listed as Oriental chicken with coconut curry and rice. To me it tasted very much like Tom Kha Gai but without the hot chili.

Guess where I had this wonderful meal!

Exactly two years ago I shared with you the biannual procedure of pruning the gravileas trees to keep a balance between shade and sun for the coffee bushes. This is what I told you then:

There is nothing like rain water to make all the flora grow and in Guatemala we have a very copious rainy season that begins in May and ends in October. During the rainy season all the plants acquire a lush green dress and grow very rapidly. Thus, right before the rainy season begins, many gardens, farms and coffee plantations undergo a pruning process.

In the photo above, you can see the gravileas trees, the shadow trees for the coffee plantations around La Antigua Guatemala, being pruned.

In Guatemala everything has to be colorful. Life is good! Enough said.

These are the very last days of the dry season. Soon, in May, the rainy season will begin and the sompopo flying ants will come again, in lesser numbers than before. We should enjoy the typical dried patios while we can!

Will you join me for lunch or a cup of coffee?

Recently, in Living La Vida Digital in Antigua Guatemala, I mentioned how cosmopolitan La Antigua Guatemala really is while showing a Philly cheese steak sandwich, French-style vegetable chips and German-style coleslaw. Well, today, I continue showing our Cosmopolitan Antigua Guatemala with a lunch that included Russian beer Baltika 9, shorma kebab pita sandwich, with three curry sauces. A lunch like the above can set you back Q50/$6.25. You can have this lunch at Toko restaurant near 6a calle poniete and 6a avenida sur (see it at Foursquare). That’s right, Antigua Guatemala also does Foursquare.

Do you think cosmopolitan is a good adjective for Antigua Guatemala?

¿Cuándo fue la última vez que participaron en este ritual conocido como la refa? When was the last time that you participated in this Guatemalan ritual known as la refacción?

I believe this is the third or fourth time I shown you a búcaro fountain. Can you tell us now what exactly is a búcaro fountain and how many búcaro fountain photos have been shown so far?

Slowly, but surely the love, devotion and passion for the world famous Holy Week in Antigua Guatemala are being passed on to the new generations. I am glad to know that there will be Semana Santa in La Antigua Guatemala for another 500 years.

I believe that Semana Santa is so much more than a yearly religious commemoration; in Antigua Guatemala Semana Santa is also a cultural and artistic manifestation. What do you think?

At 3:30 in the morning and by the light of the full moon as the rooster crowed a couple times, my husband and I threw on our sweaters and jeans, stumbled out into the quiet streets of El Calvario and into our car. We knew we were taking a chance by driving into La Antigua Guatemala on Viernes Santo, Good Friday, we might even have to walk home, but not knowing what to expect our car was our life raft. We were, however, determined to catch a glimpse of the Romans in their full armor and horses at the entrance to the city and retrace Jesus’ march along the Way of the Cross and through the Twelve Stations. It was Holy Friday, Black Friday, Great Friday and as we drove past Río Pensativo, with a few random shadows ducking into side streets, we had our doubts about whether we’d see even one Guatemalan upright and sober, much less dressed as a Roman. I thought about stopping and asking the next person, “¿Disculpeme, pero dónde están los romanos?” “Excuse me, but where are the Romans?” In our sleep deprivation—unlike other more knowing souls, we had only taken a 30 minute power nap—we just pushed ahead like late nights in San Francisco when we’d go searching for a rave or warehouse party in the most unlikely of urban places. We were not prepared for the full–scale production we were about to witness.

We turned left into Antigua Guatemala and the city was all ours with not a single car or bus cruising in from Guatemala City only to be funneled into cobble-stone streets and a bee-line string of cars into the heart of the crowded town. It’d been like that the entire week and so we’d become embedded on the other side of town, sequestered really, until this morning when space to drive was like fresh air. We drove north towards La Merced Church and as we approached, the cars began to pile up on the side of the south side of the streets [video], parked in random directions with crowds poring in from La Calle del Arco to the food stalls which had now become permanant fixtures right next to La Merced. They brimmed with churros, chuchitos, quesadillas, fried platanos, ponche, coffee, big rafts of thick smoke broken by lights that illuminated the crowds sauntering towards the entrance of the Church, the purple-caped men carrying sharp spears in one hand and a tamale in the other, the tents pitched between the stalls and the church, and the alfombras, colorful, intricate and immense.

The car pushed us ahead towards Alameda Santa Lucía, one of the main streets of La Antigua that leads you south into Ciudad Vieja and Escuintla, and on most days reminds you of a miniature version of rush hour on the Santa Monica Freeway or the San Francisco Bay Bridge if you were sharing the street with zigzagging pedestrians, stray dogs, tuk-tuks, cyclicts, motorcyles, venders, looming buses and broken down cars. But today it was silence, with the crouching bodies of people, young and old, laying down their alfombras by the light of one lightbulb and together creating a path that lit the entire street as far as the eye could see. We parked along this street and began our walk towards the church, staring in awe at one alfombra after the next [video], some long and sprawling for blocks, some depicting entire scenes of Jesus Christ, while others were laden with melons, mangos, split open papayas, egg shells, candles, fluttering butterflies, architectural buttresses, straw crosses.

My mouth agape as I stood by the First Station of the Cross where Jesus Is Condemned To Death by Pontius Pilate I heard hooves and galloping and turned towards La Merced to see the Romans on their white horses riding into town [video] with their full armor and swords. “The Romans are here, look,” I told Brad, my husband, and we got out of the way for the dark, short Romans on their white steeds. As so it was the beginning of the procession which was scheduled to leave La Merced Church at 5 a.m. much to the anticipation of the bodies piled up with their hot coffees and banana bread by the entrance of the church. Thinking ahead, Brad took a place at the front of the gathering crowd at the first bend of the procession. I went towards the church, crawling underneath Romans, food stalls, legs, and ladders to see the beginning of the procession.

On my tip-toes, I saw the bus-long float carrying a red-robed Christ and his wooden cross surrounded by dozens of orchids and flowers [video] hoisted on the shoulders of at least a hundred purple-clothed men. There was clouds of incense and the prayers by the priests were almost sung in rhythm. I could not make the words out, but I knew the journey well, I’d grown up with it as a Catholic. We were embarking upon The Passion of Christ—all the events and suffering of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion. We had been preparing for it the entire duration of Lent and now we had arrived and were faced with, albeit in an allegorical sense, the suffering of one human being. I turned back to be with Brad for the First Station and to see how far we could make it along the all-day march. We were surrounded by thousands witnessing the procession and as it made its way towards Alameda Santa Lucía, we marched with it, flanked on our left by believers paying their respect, making the cross along their forehead and across their chests. Small candles were lit one by one and then the dark pierced their multitude like pearls or fireflies along the path. We all moved as one unit as the procession made it past The First and then the Second Station, and by the third station Brad sat by the curb of the road by Alameda Santa Lucía and said, “I had no idea.”

Neither did I, I thought to myself as we drove home to the blue light of dusk over the volcanoes. I remember as a child we would go to the beach during Semana Santa (my family are coastal people after all) and then when we moved to Guatemala City. There is where I remember standing next to my grandmother, surrounded by people crying as they held small candles when this looming figure of Christ passed. That figure instilled me fear and awe. It created a narrative in my mind. Standing there my grandmother taught me to make the cross with her and to remember how one person’s suffering can impact so many of us. Even today, she reminded me, we remember together. It’s a lesson that transcends Catholicism and which I’ve taken with me into my Buddhism—how we have to be mindful of how we help to reduce suffering in the world, not perpetuate it.

Additional Links:

• Viernes Santo Flickr Slideshow
• Jueves Santos Photos Slideshow
• An Easter Slap-down in Lago Atitlán
• Associated Press’ Holy Week in Guatemala Photos

text by Kara Andrade and photo by Brad Eller

Kara Andrade is a multimedia producer and photojournalist, She is a Fulbright fellow based out of Guatemala where she is implementing a citizen journalism Web site called www.hablaguate.com

The making of sawdust carpets, alfombras de aserrín, with its vivid colors and eye-catching patterns are among the most prominent elements of the Holy Week celebrations.

The making of carpets from sawdust, pine-needles, flowers, vegetables is a community-forming tradition. People get together by block or near-by neighbors to create the carpets on which the processions will pass by. Sometimes the making of the carpets is done at night, all night so they are ready for next day’s procession. The colorful processional carpet elaboration process involves the whole family, close friends, the neighborhood and the entire community. It does not matter if it’s just grandma throwing some corozo (corozo palms) and dried purple flowers to elaborate a humble alfombra in front of her home or it is a team of members of the cuadra (the block), or if a son lends a hand to a dad to put the final touches on the brightly-colored sawdust carpet, the devotion and the do-good spirit are present everywhere you look. This is the week of the year when Guatemalans stand as one people!

Also, since Gringos are now an integral part of La Antigua Guatemala and therefore many of them participate of the preparations of the world famous alfombras de Semana Santa (Holy Week carpets) made from colorful sawdust, flowers, fruits, and anything the imagination allows.

Like many firsts of the month, AntiguaDailyPhoto is participating in the theme day of the City Daily Photo community around the world. To see how others in the City Daily Photo community have interpreted today’s theme please click here to view thumbnails for all participants around the planet.

P.S. in 30 days AntiguaDailyPhoto will be four years old. What should we do? My first thought is that’s enough… I should go on and do something else.