La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo

The Spring Season began a few days ago, so I’ve read somewhere {ñ}. Guatemala’s slogan is the Land of the Eternal Spring, yet in this country Spring has never showed up. As a matter of fact, Guatemala’s weather does not follow the ‘normal’ seasons. Instead, Guatemala has a dry and a wet seasons. The wet season begins in May and ends towards the last days of October; the remaining months are the dry season. So in about 40 days the rainy season will begin in Guatemala and the whole country will be wearing an intense verdurous foliage dress. If you ever decide to visit Guatemala, make sure you bring dark sunglasses because the adjective intense accompanies every shade of the color hue.

Gotcha!

Yet the title is correct, the technique it’s different than yesterday’s photo though. Honest, I have never liked this kind of paintings; costumbrista would be the category for this kind of painting, but I don’t know what term to use in English. Would you guys mind lending a translating term. Thanks!

Well, like always, not everything is bad about the Holy Week in La Antigua Guatemala. If you can obviate the crowds, the traffic, the massive processions, the gorgeous sawdust carpets, the thousands of paparazzi photographers, et-cetera, then you see the city benefits from a makeover through thousands of new paint jobs for façades, window crates, doorways, street repairs, and so on.

La Antigua Guatemala wants to look its best for the most important celebrations of the year: The Holy Week. Sometimes, it seems like all other celebrations throughout the year are simple after shakes of the Holy Week, which begins with Cuaresma (Lent). As you may already know, the Holy Week is celebrated in many places in the world, but very few celebrate with as much grandiloquence as La Antigua Guatemala. The Holy Week celebrations in La Antigua Guatemala is something you must experience for yourself at least once. As a matter of fact, The Holy Week celebrations in La Antigua Guatemala should be very high in the list of to-dos before one dies. All of us should have a list of things to do before dying, like the character Ann in the film My Life Without Me.

So what are you waiting for? Pack your bags and head down south where you can be free!

Happy Birthday Chata! (I-heart-U) Go rent this movie and let me know your feelings about it.

The quality of the sunset light during the winter months in La Antigua Guatemala is the best of the year. Almost anything you photograph has this warm feel. If you are in Antigua now, click away like crazy. Even a simple shadow can be warmth, don’t you think so?

The Guatemalan word for kite is barrilete. Papalote is the most often heard word in Spanish for kite, but in Guatemala barrilete is what people use. The kites on sale at this convenience store or tienda are Q2/$.25. The kite that the little boy was holding yesterday was bought from this store.

Kites have a very special meaning for many Guatemalans, especially the indigenous. Kites and Giant kites are used to help guide the dead ones back to their love ones and to the cemeteries where they are remembered. Giant kites are flown over the cemeteries of Sumpango and Santiago Sacatepéquez. If you can read Spanish you can browse this photographic tour of the giant kites. Giant kites are flown on November 1st and 2nd; so if you are around, grab your camera and backpack and head up to one of those towns.

Here’s a summary of what you can expect for this celebration:

On November 1st and 2nd Guatemala, like many other catholic countries, celebrates the Day of the Dead (Día de los Difuntos) and the All Saints Day (Día de los Santos). The cemeteries, from the most exclusive to the most modest and humble, become overwhelmed with people bringing flowers, crosses, food and even music (sometimes Mariachi music) to their dead relatives…

Fiambre, a salad made from cold cuts, all kinds of meats, fish, vegetables and pickled vegetables, is served on November 1st, after a visit to the cemetery. Fiambre is a cold meal of Spanish origin, possibly from the Extremadura provinces in Spain. Fiambre is a very special meal for Guatemalans and it is only available on November 1st and 2nd. Because fiambre is an extremely rare and unique meal which can include over 50 ingredients, I decided to show you the final part of the preparation through a slide show.

Sometimes bad things turn good. Guatemala’s postal service is so slow, expensive and unreliable that in Guatemala the concept of junk mail is non-existent. El Correo, Guatemala’s postal service, is a Canadian private company with the support of the Canadian Postal Service. El Correo is the result of the infamous recipe prescribed forced onto poor countries: Privatize everything! For better or worse that’s what we got.

El Correo is slow: to receive our telephone invoices printed and mailed in Guatemala City (La Nueva Guatemala) to our P.O. Box in the postal office of El Correo in La Antigua Guatemala can take up to three weeks or more.

El Correo is expensive: to mail a Revue magazine (about the size of the Readers’ Digest) to the U.S. or Canada can cost about Q70/US$9. Post cards about $1 and letters depends on the weight.

El Correo is unreliable: Once I sent myself some post cards from the postal office to our house, which is about 2 miles away, and they never arrived. El cartero, the postman, only delivers once a week or once every two weeks in the communities surrounding La Antigua Guatemala. Because of this we have now a post office box.

But, we get no junk mail. That alone is a fortune. Furthermore, El Correo is reliable for sending and receiving mail and post cards from abroad as long as you have a P.O. Box; even if it is expensive and slow. To send a letter to the U.S. or Canada can take up to three weeks; almost the same time it takes for the invoice mailed in GuateCity to reach La Antigua. El Correo can be inexpensive too, mostly inside Guatemala, since sending a normal letter or post card (20 grams or less) can cost only 20 centavos (Q.0.20/US$0.025). You can download their price list as a PDF file here. But please, don’t expect the tracking service to work, especially in Guatemala.

The Post Card Request Side Note: With the excuse of an experiment and that I would like to know about you and your home town I am requesting a post card from you. I would like to receive a simple hand-written note on a post card, with stamps if at all possible, showing a landmark from your city in my p.o. box. My mailing address is on the Contact the author page. Once you have mailed the post card, please come back the Contact the author page and let me know you have sent it. I will write back to you the moment I receive it and, perhaps, I will send you a hand-written post card in return (it all depends on the how many I receive and how expensive is to send it to you). Come on people, let me know you really like the work I put in this web site through a simple hand-written note on a post card. I will be waiting for your post card!

Credits: This photograph was my wife’s idea and it will appear in the Homenaje (tribute) column of Revista Recrearte in the October edition. Posdata (postscript) was written by Beatriz Zamora as a tribute to the postal service and the hand-written correspondence. It is a great read if you can understand Spanish.

Helados Sarita, on 5a calle poniente, is the meeting place for these three kids and their joyful smiles. Sometimes life can be beautifully simple and full of joy (even for adults).

These are some of the most often used ingredients in the Guatemalan kitchen. This photo was taken on Calle del Arco in front of La Fonda de la Calle Real at a booth that the restaurant put out to showcase their flavors and the ingredients they use in their kitchen. You can take this photo to your local Latin market and start cooking some of the recipes found in this site under the Food and Drinks category. Bon Appetite!

You can see here one of the façade of Fonda de la Calle Real; they have three different location all around Calle del Arco. Or you can see one of the kitchens of La Fonda de la Calle Real here.

Best wishes to everyone for this coming weekend!

I am glad El Calvario Church provides a nice transition from the white cemetery series back to the rich antigüeño color palette while maintaining the death theme going on. El Calvario or Calvary (Golgotha) is the name of the mount on the outskirts of Jerusalem where it’s believe Jesus Christ was crucified. This church with its three arches provides a symbolic representation of the crucifixion; with each arch representing each cross.

As I have explained before, the natural lime-stone based paints have a transparent shine, similar to pearls, which reflect some incredible colors as the different temperature of light is bounced back from the walls. This effect was very obvious the day I took these shots. In less than five minutes, the time I was there, the yellow wall went from a pale yellow to a gorgeous orange-yellow as the clouds moved in and out to let the late afternoon sunshine hit the wall. I wish you were here to witness such a spectacular color show.

This niche and the surrounding walls was basically the only color I found at the San Lázaro Cemetery. This piece was between two sets of above-ground crypts; the set on the right was empty and the set on the left was not vacant.

Perhaps it is not too late to introduce some of the wonderful Antigüeño color palette into the La Antigua Guatemala’s main public cemetery.

Often as you stroll around La Antigua Guatemala, you come across walls with lots of texture made from the many layers of natural lime-stone-based paints. Below is a quote from an previous entry about Natural paint textures.

Because the high levels of humidity around Antigua, people have to paint their walls often. Not every time the walls get painted they use the same color and after so many years when the paint peels, you get the gorgeous texture where the different colors peek through. The Antigua Protection Agency recommends that people use lime-stone-based paints because they allow the walls to breath. The lime-stone-based paints have shine, similar to pearls, so that is how you get some incredible colors as light changes through the day.

Some people may find this kind of photographs boring and uninspiring; others get their kicks from the yellow texture on the wall. To which kind of people do you belong?

Once again, La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo is participating in the theme day of the Daily Photo community. This time the theme is about the color red. Here you can see the Compañía de Jusús building under care of the Cooperación Española which is a huge red building; one full block to be specific. This building has had many uses through history, like the home of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, home to the Jesuits of Central America in colonial times, thus its name, and more recently it houses a public library, culture center under the administration of Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional. You can see the big entrance of the building, the interior gardens and arches and one the side wall of the ruins. I decided to photograph this building because it’s the biggest red thing in La Antigua Guatemala, but I was lucky to have a red motorcycle and a red jeep enter the viewfinder at the moment I snapped the shot; how lucky, indeed.

I had to break my coverage of the San Pedro Las Huertas town fair for this theme day. I will continue with other aspects of a Guatemalan town fair tomorrow and through the week. Come back tomorrow for the follow up. In the mean time, I leave you with the links to the other Daily Photo sites which decided to participate in the theme day.

Over 100 Daily Photo City sites are participating in the July 1st Theme Day: The Color Red, please use the links below to visit them.

Due to time zone differences and other factors, the theme photo may not be displayed until later if you are viewing early in the day.

Shanghai, China - Mumbai, India - New York City (NY), USA - Manila, Philippines - Albuquerque (NM), USA - Hamburg, Germany - Stayton (OR), USA - Los Angeles (CA), USA - Hyde, UK - Oslo, Norway - Brookville (OH), USA - Melbourne, Australia - Stavanger, Norway - Bellefonte (PA), USA - Bucaramanga (Santander), Colombia - Joplin (MO), USA - Singapore, Singapore - Selma (AL), USA - Cleveland (OH), USA - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Chandler (AZ), USA - Stockholm, Sweden - Seattle (WA), USA - Boston (MA), USA - Arradon, France - Evry, France - Baton Rouge (LA), USA - Maple Ridge (BC), Canada - Boston (MA), USA - Grenoble, France - Cottage Grove (MN), USA - Greenville (SC), USA - Hilo (HI), USA - Nelson, New Zealand - La Antigua, Guatemala - Brisbane (QLD), Australia - Singapore, Singapore - Tel Aviv, Israel - Hong Kong, China - Sequim (WA), USA - Paderborn, Germany - Saarbrücken, Germany - Rotterdam, Netherlands - Tenerife, Spain - Kyoto, Japan - Tokyo, Japan - Sydney, Australia - Naples (FL), USA - Cologne (NRW), Germany - Wassenaar (ZH), Netherlands - Saint Louis (MO), USA - Cypress (TX), USA - Ocean Township (NJ), USA - Mainz, Germany - Toruń, Poland - Menton, France - Monte Carlo, Monaco - Singapore, Singapore - North Bay (ON), Canada - Jakarta, Indonesia - Montréal (QC), Canada - Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina - Minneapolis (MN), USA - Baziège, France - San Diego (CA), USA - Prague, Czech Republic - Ampang (Selangor), Malaysia - New York (NY), USA - Kajang (Selangor), Malaysia - Sharon (CT), USA - Newcastle (NSW), Australia - Port Angeles (WA), USA - Nottingham, UK - Villigen, Switzerland - Chicago (IL), USA - Torquay, UK - Brussels, Belgium - San Diego (CA), USA - Mexico (DF), Mexico - Saint Paul (MN), USA - Cape Town, South Africa - Paris, France - Seoul, Korea - Manila, Philippines - Milano, Italy - Austin (TX), USA - Chennai, India - Madrid, Spain - Seoul, South Korea - Wailea (HI), USA - Toronto (ON), Canada - Ajaccio, France - Buenos Aires, Argentina - Silver Spring (MD), USA - Zurich, Switzerland - Sydney, Australia - Budapest, Hungary - Moscow, Russia - Auckland, New Zealand - Torino, Italy

In Guatemala the rainy season brings the rainbow season too. The rainy season in Guatemala wets the months or May through October, sometimes even November which are basically the summer and fall seasons in the Northern Hemisphere where Guatemala is located. Most Guatemalans equate the wet months of May though October with winter, so they call it invierno, winter, even though we are in the summer season. Are you confused yet? Well read up my entry on The Land of the Eternal Spring for some clarification or to totally give up on logic.

Tomorrow is Father’s Day in Guatemala, always on the same date, June 17th. I hope to catch something for you.

UPDATE: For a humoristic look at the weather and weather forecasting in Guatemala and to see an unbelievable photograph of thunderstorm in Guatemala City, please read El Canche’s entry on Predicting the Weather in Guatemala.

Okay, not much time today and you need something light every once in a while. Here is a little niche, nicho in Spanish, found at Posada del Ángel, which is a small luxury hotel in La Antigua Guatemala. I have shown other photos of this gorgeous bed and breakfast.

Here are the other photos:
» Guatemala Sells Light and Color
» Really Green Garden at Posada del Ángel
» Rusted Plant Pot
» Plant Pot at Posada del Ángel

Guatemala is a football-playing country and thus it is obvious that balls are the favorite toy for young and mature kids . The most popular balls are the small striped sitting on the left against the plastic baskets. You can find them everywhere, from Guatemala City to Playa Grande Ixcán (the first the largest metropolis in Central America and the latter one of the most remote communities in Guatemala, because they are very cheap and kids can buy them in any convenience store or tienda as they are known here.

Through these balls you can also appreciate the fact that Guatemalans like a bright and vivid, in-your-face color palette for all aspects of life. You can browse the Color Palette category to see samples of how color permeates everything in the daily life around La Antigua Guatemala.

Have a ball of a weekend; my best wishes to you and your love ones!

Tags: Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo / Antigua / Guatemala / balls / plastic balls / color palette