La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo

Maybe we will get it right this election. —The Brunscheon, Oregon

We hope so. —The rest of the world

Well, as some of you may already know, my birthday falls on September 11th and like everyone else, I like to receive presents. I was very lucky to have received sweet and nice wishes from many of you. I was also fortunate to have spoken with my mom and sisters who lived in the United States. My beautiful, rich and famous sisters decided to give me an iPod Touch as present for my birthday (Thanks). Besides an ordinary day at work, the day progressed quite peacefully, which is to me, one of the best gifts from life. My wife and I had a lovely dinner and talk.

On my way to the office, I stopped to pick the mail at our post office box and there I received the very first present of the day. My very dear friends from Oregon sent me a hand-written post card and an Obama button. Interesting enough the card was sent on August 11th, but it was not in the p.o. box last time I checked on the last days of August.

I am going to take this opportunity to let you know why La Antigua Guatemala is Barack Obama’s territory. Regardless of their background or economic status, just about every expat I have spoken to, tells me that for the first time ever, they will make every effort to either go to the U.S. to cast their Obama vote for a positive change for the United States and for the rest of the world. Those who can not travel to U.S. for election time will be able to cast their vote at Doña Luisa Xicotencatl (I believe so).

That’s right, synchronicity is real and not just a The Police song. See, yesterday I posted a photo of Guatemalan Independence Day Bunting I photographed at the doorway entrance of Doña Luisa Xicotencatl. I know there’s a campaign in La Antigua Guatemala to provide voting information for U.S. citizens living in Guatemala through the www.VoteFromAbroad.org web site.

I do hope you guys living in the U.S. and those living abroad get it right this coming election; that would be the best birthday present ever!

Modernity has arrived to the quincentennial Antigua Guatemala.

Surely you remember all the talk about the cellular telephones available from Q100 with Q150 of air time and NO contracts or the sim cards (chips) available from Q25 that you can put in your flashed (liberated) cell phone to get a Guatemalan telephone number while in the country, right?

Well, my friends that was with old second generation (2G) cellular networks; that’s probably what you have now with your mobile phone in the U.S., Canada or Europe, unless you have a Blackberry or an iPhone.

Starting tomorrow, Friday 22nd of August, La Antigua Guatemala will be joining the cities of the world with third generation (3G) cellular networks and what better way to use this high-speed telephone networks than with an iPhone 3G in your hand. That’s right folks, two of three mayor mobile telephone companies will be selling the ubiquitous iPhone.

However, for now, only Claro (Telgua) will be sporting the 3G cellular network. But MoviStar (Telefónica) is said to be right behind it. Tigo (Comcel) is rumored to be in their last testing phase.

According to news published by Oscar Mota, a Guatemalan technology blogger, in DesdeGuate.com the iPhone 3G will be available from Q4500 without contract from Claro. That’s about three months of minimum wages. Nevertheless, I am sure the Guatemalan gadget and geek community will buy it like hot bread out of the oven. Other contractual plans will be available with both cellular carriers to bring down the price of this gadget.

So now these are some of connectivity options available in La Antigua Guatemala: ADSL Access, Cable Internet Access, Satellite Internet Access, WIFI, Edge, 2G, and 3G cellular networks. Am I missing something? Not too bad for a nearly-500-year-old colonial town.

Acknowledgements: I want to thank my good friend Nelo for agreeing to model with his iPhone in front of the San Francisco El Grande Church.

If you have been following La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo (LAGDP) for at least a year, you would know that the patron’s day celebrations fall on 25th of July for La Antigua Guatemala, also known as Santiago de Guatemala (Saint James of Guatemala), short for its original name La Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for, go read last year’s gigantic entry on Saint James Celebration, Santiago de Guatemala and the zillion variations on Santiago/James name in the different languages and time periods.

Now, in the picture above, there are two flags waving over the Municipalidad (City Hall) building, can you find the background information on each flag in the archives of LAGDP; I will send the Tecolotes photo as a post card to the first person that comes with both answers. Let the games begin!

Day one of year three. Are you ready for the new tour of 365 days around La Antigua Guatemala? If you do please, bring your pasaje en mano, dónde caben tres caben más.

Every time humans arrive at a milestone, we tend to review what we have traveled thus far. Two years of consecutive blogging is not much or even important in the big scale of things. Nonetheless, it is a big achievement for me since I have never done anything like this before. I am very happy to have reached this time mark and to have helped others in the process. I thank all my regular visitors for your support, comments, feedback and donations.

Now let see the La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo in numbers (like Edgar would put it): In the last 731 consecutive days, there have been 744 entries, 6 pages, 13 drafts, 5037 comments, over 1,000 emails with feedback or questions, 624,604 visits (80,099 in 2006, 371,172 in 2007 and 173,333 so far in 2008), 120,616 spam comments. The website began its life with Blogger under a sub-domain and in less than three months moved to its present home of antiguadailyphoto.com and platform of Wordpress 1.2 (now version 2.5.1). All in all there have been over a thousand photos published here in the last two years.

More Numbers Updates: About 1,300 sites linking to antiguadailyphoto.com according to Google, 1,442 blog reactions according to Technorati, over 1600 hours invested in maintaining this website, 4 plagiarized photos that I know of, over 100 photos used with permission or proper photo credit by other websites, 2 newspaper articles, several photos found its way into magazines and 1 photo found its way as a book cover. Not too bad, don’t you think so?

What other numbers do you guys think I should shared with you?

It was Patsy Poor who requested photos of Guatemala chickens. Well Patsy, you are served. These garden chickens are known locally as gallinas criollas (creole hens) or gallinas del país (native hens) as opposed to the chicken grown in farms.

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.

Yes Manolo, the weather gods are on LAG side. Above you see a group of tourists having the Sun for lunch and enjoying it too. Yes the temperate weather gods have been given La Antigua Guatemala temperatures between 68 and 74 degrees Fahrenheit in the harshest Winter month. Oh boy, life is wonderful in La Antigua Guatemala…

Don’t you wish you could be in La Antigua Guatemala having a bath of this wonderful sunshine?