La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo

Tomorrow the La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo (LAGDP) will be two years old. About 744 consecutive daily photographs and descriptive narratives of a Spanish Colonial Town embedded between coffee plantations, flower farms and volcanoes.

As a pre-celebration party, I am making available another desktop wallpaper for you computer (1600×1200 pixels) of a set of bougainvilleas colors. Like always, by clicking the photo above you will be presented with a high resolution image that you can use as a desktop wallpaper. If you are interested in the other wallpapers available for download, please, browse the wallpaper category.

Second Anniversary Side Note: By the way, I forgot to tell you that La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo (LAGDP) will be celebrating its second anniversary (731 consecutive days of entries) on May 1st. I hope you come to celebrate this amazing milestone (at least for me).

Today’s is Earth Day and to celebrate it, I am posting a desktop wallpaper photo for your computer which shows the harmony between the human habitat and nature. Wow, what a pompous description for an old-looking wall and the bougainvilleas and jacaranda trees that crown it.

Today’s entry is the desktop wallpaper number 9 which I made available to all of you. You can browse the Wallpaper category to see the other 8 photos.

I hope you like it!

Please be kind to Earth today and everyday.

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.

We continue our tour of the remains of the Holy Week by showing how flores de papel (paper flowers) are use to embellish windows and doorways around La Antigua Guatemala. Above, can see the entrance to the handicrafts and jewelry store El Quinto Sol.

Well, it seems like the color purple will be with us for a while longer. The flowers above are known colloquially as Flores de papel (paper flowers) because their petals are so dried that they look like if they were made from paper. I looked up the flower in the Guateflora book, but I did not find it there, so I can not help you with scientific name. Perhaps, some of the other visitors know its scientific name and can share it with us, anyone?

A simple shot to commemorate the sunshine, the purple, the ever-present spring and to revive the Guateflora series. This photo was taken at my favorite green house: Vivero La Escalonia.

I wish everyone an easy starting week!

P.S. I forgot to mention that we went over 700 entries six days ago; Today’s photo is the 706 consecutive page posted at La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo. No wonder I’m so tired.

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.

Just like the Christmas Season comes with its own set of smells, flavors and color palette, so does the Holy Week celebrations. I can bring to you still photos, slide shows, video clips and sounds. But I can not bring you the smells. Like I said back in the Virgin of Guadalupe Day, … the incredible power of the sense of smell can detonate nostalgic memories… if only the smells could be seized like Patrick Süskind suggested in his masterpiece Das Parfum (Perfume). How could one go about imprisoning the mixture of the smells of copal incense, corozo palms, fireworks, pine needles, moisten saw dust, fresh tropical fruits, palm flower arrangements and sweat into a digital format readily available to download onto your own computer?

Only in Star Trek that is possible… we must wait for the future to arrive. In the mean time, we wave good bye to Arthur C. Clarke as we thank him for allowing us to dream of the future. Until the future arrives, you must pack your bags and head down south where you can be free!

Today’s Palm Sunday or Domingo de Ramos as today’s known in the Catholic Realm. Last year, Domingo de Ramos fell on April 1st and the photo of the day was the palm flower arrangements available in the La Antigua Guatemala’s market.

Today’s photo is very similar to last year’s, but this time the photo was captured in the atrium of San Francisco El Grande Church.

Today’s photo also marks the official beginning of the Holy Week or the Semana Santa. Stay tune we will be covering the big business of Semana Santa!

This is the kind of road the motorcycle riders arriving to La Antigua Guatemala may find. Even I would like to ride a Harley-Davidson chopper on this road… if it wasn’t for the other uncivilized drivers whom I would have to share the road with. I, like Woody Allen, don’t mind dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Come on, just because you’re dead it doesn’t mean you can not have access to good coffee. This coffee field is right behind the San Lázaro Cemetery in La Antigua Guatemala. This photo was taken from this crypts in San Lázaro cemetery.

You do remember the series about the San Lazaro Cemetery, right?.

So what makes La Antigua Guatemala the best coffee in the world? To get the best cup of coffee of the world, one must start with the right altitude; somewhere above 1,500 meters above the sea level; add lots of fertile volcanic soil; mix in plenty of rain (about six months); stable temperate weather (about 76º F / 25º C); once you have the above, make sure you plant the best possible Arabica coffee.

Below you can read a summary of the whole process by Eve Andersson and if you visit her web site you can also see pictures describing every single stage.

Growing
The plants start out in pots for the first couple years of their lives, then they’re transported to high-altitude fields where they grow in the shade of large [Gravilea] trees that let just the right amount of sunlight through.

Processing
The beans fruits are picked, pulped, washed, dried, sorted by size, sorted by density, hand sorted for defects, roasted, and packaged.

Tasting
This is the best part. It’s like a wine tasting; you take a sip and then spit it out. The high-altitude Arabica coffee grown in [La] Antigua [Guatemala] was by far the best coffee.

Come back tomorrow to see a coffee plantation for the dead!

Breaking News Side Note:
MiPeriódico supplement of the Guatemalan Newspaper elPeriódico [ñ] is covering the La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo in their Sunday edition for March 2nd, 2008. If you want to see what pictures they chose to highlight and to read the introductory text (if you can read Spanish), you can visit them online at MiPeriódico supplement or purchase the Sunday edition of elPeriódico.

Yesterday’s photo was a close-up of the coffee bush in the lower left corner of today’s photo. If you click on the image above you can the coffee bushes (the small trees) being harvested under the shadows of the Gravilea trees in San Pedro Las Huertas, La Antigua Guatemala. Around La Antigua Guatemala you can find coffee bushes everywhere, including as part of the hedges of La Compañía de Jesús ruins.

Come back tomorrow to see a coffee plantation worker while collecting the cherry red coffee fruit.

The other day we heard many voices on the other side of the fence; voices of children and women just talking and laughing. We approached the windows on the second floor to see what was all the commotion; then we saw men, women and children harvesting the coffee. At this moment, you can see the turning point of coffee from green to golden yellow and finally cherry red.

Come back tomorrow to see the next door coffee plantation and the different colors of coffee.

Manolo and Carmen were reminiscing just the other day about the smells associated with the Christmas season in Guatemala. Pine needles have a very peculiar smell and indeed its smell its burnt in the Guatemalan collective memory of Christmas and birthdays parties. Flor de Pascua or poinsettias are a visual cue of the upcoming Christmas as well. Shops know this and they use pine needle and poinsettias among other Christmas decorations to reel in the customers; it seems to be working just fine in this shop.