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I came across this list of Five Reasons to Spend Christmas in Antigua Guatemala, which basically mentioned the weather as top reason number 2. I would say the writer got most of it right, except the temperature can go as low as 5C/41F around six in the morning; people do give Christmas cards, except they are given personally because we don’t trust the mail system or by email; and last but not least, the winter solstice was not even mentioned. And don’t forget that the December 2012 solstice will be very important. Even if it’s not the end of the world as we know it, check out the Tikal Solstice Maya Rainforest video made by Thor Janson.

• Christmas in Antigua Guatemala Reason #1 – Low Crassness Factor

  Antigua Guatemala keeps a light hand on the Christmas throttle. It’s not like the in-your-face fake and be merry season, which starts before Halloween and is endured in our more Northern climes… Overall, there’s less tinsel and more gentle feeling as citizens and visitors alike coast into the season…

• Christmas in Antigua Guatemala Reason #2 – The Weather

  … Antigua Guatemala is a yuletide paradise. Even during the December days when daylight is at its shortest reign of the year, it’s usually about 75 degrees F (24 C) during the day and about 55 degrees F (13 C) in the evening…

• Christmas in Antigua Guatemala Reason #3 – No Christmas Cards

  It seems that sending Christmas cards is not a tradition here… After, I’d gone to the third stationary shop (duh) it finally sunk in that this is not the done thing here…

• Christmas in Antigua Guatemala Reason # 4 – Christmas Festivals

  December 7 kicks off the season with the burning of the devil… Our Lady of Guadeloupe brings solemn as well as merry folk through the calles and agendas… “Las Posadas,” which reenacts Mary and Joseph looking for a room in the inn…

• Christmas in Antigua Guatemala Reason #5 – Its Really a Family Time

  …when it comes down to it, December 24 is really family time where church, a great meal and modest gift exchanges happen… families go back home and eat and party until 3 or 4 in the morning. Christmas Day is very quiet here with people sleeping off the festivities of the night before… continue reading the COMPLETE Five Reasons to Spend Christmas in Antigua Guatemala

Simply awesome! Check out the Tikal Solstice Maya Rainforest video made by Thor Janson:

Okay everyone, I am in the Santa Claus mood, so I will send a beautiful set of three 11″x14″ photos from AntiguaDailyPhoto.com to the most creative caption/story for these three photos. Everyone is welcome to participate and I will not close the contest until there at least 10 proposed captions. Be as creative as you can be. Good luck to all participants!

La Antigua Guatemala is quite possibly the most photogenic town in Guatemala and it comes as no surprise to find photographers, sometimes entire groups, to be walking around the colonial time capturing enduring memories and vistas to share with family and friends. In the picture above, we see two such photographers comparing their shots.

La Antigua Guatemala is very culturally rich and enchanting town; thus it comes as no surprise that La Antigua Guatemala is the premier touristic destination in Central America. Antigua Guatemala has evolved into a cosmopolitan city to accommodate travelers and tourists who choose to spend some time in this 500-year old Spanish Colonial Town embedded between coffee plantations, flower farms and volcanoes in the highlands of Northern Central America.

So far most of the visitors have come from North America and Europe. However, it is quite common to see Asian tourists stroll around town; and when I mean Asians, I mean the entire continent.

In the words of Jeannine who recently commented about Antigua Guatemala:

…it feels sooo good to know that I’ll be back in one of my favorite cities in the world !! ( though for me it’s more like a nice little village actually, cause people are so kind and open, everyone says hello, you can always find strangers to chat with in Parque Central and when you’re there for two weeks, you always seem to meet the same people all over town almost every day. I so love Antigua and reading your blog every day makes the time till the next vacation shorter ;o) !

How about you, do you feel welcome when you’re in La Antigua Guatemala?

Call it synchronicity or better yet, serendipity because that’s the story behind this simple rainy season vista. For a while now I have decided I wanted to take a photograph of a corner while leaving enough of the perpendicular street and the next block on the frame to make an interesting composition. Think of it as more refine corner shot than the one appearing in Quotidian Corner Life; which is by the way the diagonally opposite corner from where I took this photo. As I have mentioned before, corners are among my favorite places to take daily snapshots of La Antigua Guatemala since there’s so much going on at the crossroads.

Anyway, here I am coming back from a mandado, errand, as I see a picture forming in my head with the repetitive patters of the water bottles, perhaps a new take on the Agua Pura Salvavidas post from 2006 I said to myself; the yellow corner, and the following street with the houses at a perpendicular perspective. That’s it, I pulled out my camera, moved closer to wall so the rain would not fall on the camera, configure the aperture, shutter speed and white balance to capture the scene and begin framing the composition. In the viewfinder I saw the silhouettes of some girls walking by so close to me that I could not see anything else. I was trying to recomposition the photo when I heard one of the girls saying “Take my photo,” as she walked across the street and stood next to the water bottles. Certainly she was not talking to me so I got my face out of the viewfinder to see the other girls standing next to me with a camera on hand. Fine, be part of my photo I said to myself as I put my eye on the viewfinder and just as I was ready the press the shutter button, a line of people with umbrellas formed on the perpendicular street.

Just as the Universe sometimes aligns against you, other times the Universe just puts all the pieces in place for us to steal an image from the never-stopping chaos which we call life.

Synchronicity click.
Serendipity click.

Today’s photograph could be considered a follow up to Monk in San Francisco El Grande Church photograph taken during the dry season. Don’t you agree?

Since there are so many wireless Internet access points (Wi-Fi) available in La Antigua Guatemala, it’s not unusual to see people calling back home via Skype from gardens and patios. Of course, a headset is still needed if you want to keep your Skype-conversations semi-private.

Have you used Skype while in Guatemala to call back home?

Debido al hecho de que hay un sinnúmero de puntos de acceso al Internet inalámbricos en La Antigua Guatemala no es extraño toparse con viajeros llamando a sus casas a través de Skype desde jardines, patios y restaurantes. Por supuesto que los auriculares son obligatorios si se desea mantener la conversación medio privada.

This was the very first time I became aware of the location of the table with the antique map on top. The table’s got a map, a nice one at that, and Rudy took a very pleasant photo of it with a cup of coffee next to it.

Can you guess where in La Antigua Guatemala?

Hint, they make excellent coffee, excellent chocolates, the food is great, and the ambience is plain antigüeña authentic!

text and photo by Arturo Godoy.

Bike riding is among the best ways to get to see all of Antigua Guatemala and its villages. For a long time I wanted to photograph tourists bike riding since they always seemed to have a big smile on their faces, but for one reason or another I never got the chance or a good shot. Interesting enough, this photo was taken with the iPhone, my new carry-at-all-times camera.

Have you taken any bike rides during your visits to Guatemala?

I did it again. I spotted an image I like and then just waited for life to walk into the frame. You might remember I have done that before with Monk in San Francisco El Grande Church.

In this I liked the compression of the depth of field caused by the extreme zoom and the resulting repetition of the electric posts and the façades, I just needed an element of life, which in this case was a woman passing by.

How do you like it?

In my quest to bring you the most complete photographic library of the people, things and events that you may encounter while visiting or living in La Antigua Guatemala I have set myself to include more photos of tourist and traveler stamps since they represent an omnipresent vista in town.

For instance, almost everyday you can see tourists set against a wall or in a restaurant checking their paper travel guides to get an overview of things to do in La Antigua Guatemala.

Paper travel guides will always be outdated for sure, I know now since I often see how often things change in La Antigua Guatemala.

A web site like AntiguaDailyPhoto will be a better resource, I believe, for travelers in the near future since it’s updated often and because of its multimedia content. I know some of you already use AntiguaDailyPhoto as a travel guide since you mentioned it to me in your emails and comments.

If you have used AntiguaDailyPhoto as a travel guide for the things to do and see in Antigua Guatemala, would you please share it in the comments. Thanks!

Guatemala is a tiny little country with a tremendous wealth of things to do and see.

From La Antigua Guatemala, you can travel to any part of the country in a day (more or less). You can visit the hundreds of pyramids of the ancient Maya in Petén. You can swim in the Caribbean sea and the Pacific Ocean on the same day. You can take daily trips to many villages in the high lands and be back on the same day. There are 33 volcanoes to hike: rivers, lakes and lagoons to take with you as memories or photographs.

However, Guatemala is not an easy country to travel, the geography of the country is up-and-downs, zig-zagging roads with lots of curves that make interesting road trips, but at the end of the day or before if given the chance, you want to take a nap on the nearest couch or bed to recoup the energy for another fascinating trip through the land of the eternal spring.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. —Ernest Hemingway

Often I think I belong to the last generation that will have an appreciation and enchantment about paper books and notebooks. Even though I belong to the overlap generation; meaning we can as easily keep a travel blog but have no problem and even enjoy keeping a paper travel log. I mean there’s something irresistible and enchanting about a Moleskine journal with drawings, clips, post cards and real handwriting entries «- Click the link to see what I described.

Oversharing Aside: I don’t overshare often, but what the heck. Even though I am proud member of the La Antigua and Guatemala Geek Squads and I own lots of gadgets, I still keep a weekly paper agenda and I use college ruled notebooks to write my ideas and sketch possible designs and photos. Furthermore, I still read paper books. Please, do not tell anyone because these secrets might be grounds for expulsion from the Geek Squads.

What about you, what’s your relationship with paper? Do you still use paper notebooks?

We street photographers are like hunters; often we roam the streets, stalking the city for candid, naturally looking, images. Other times, we seat or stand in a corner until we become invisible or at least until the people around us become oblivious about us. We set the light, aperture, and shutter speed ahead of time so we are ready to capture the fleeting images into our camera oscura. Of course, the hunter can also become game!

The best thing about street photography: serendipity
—Philip Greenspun (source: Photo.Net)

“Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.” —Walker Evans (source: Photo.Net)

It looks like I am not the only one who enjoys photographing corners. Here I captured a fellow photographer who was photographing the opposite corner and this sun-powered clock.

Visiting the El Carmen ruins folkart market is among the top things people do on the weekends and holidays in La Antigua Guatemala.

Here’s a little secret. One of things on my to do list is to capture through time-lapse photography the contrast between the stark, almost monochromatic muted colors of the El Carmen ruins and cobblestone streets and the colorful handicrafts sold at the market.

Can you imagine watching the time-lapse video beginning with just the ruins and cobbled streets as backdrop and then how the color is added as each new vendor sets up shop and displays the colorful Guatemalan handicrafts?