Typical Rainy Season Vistas from Antigua Guatemala
Believe or not, there are some benefits to the rainy season in Guatemala. For one, because the rainy season engulfs the hot …
Believe or not, there are some benefits to the rainy season in Guatemala. For one, because the rainy season engulfs the hot …
Panes con pollo, chevere hot dogs and shuco hot dogs are the sandwiches that are present at every town fair and velación, …
Basically, plataninas are green platano/plantains chips. Plantains are like bananas, but much bigger and with a unique flavor. Guatemalans eat platanos in …
Today we will begin our Spanish lesson with some very important Guatemalan Spanish words: Poporopos, Plataninas, Papalinas and Churros. Poporopos: This is …
After having covered the Ecoleña fuel briquette as an alternative for the leña (firewood) I decided to ask around what kind of …
To the uneducated eye the Guatemalan Chevere and Shuco hotdogs are just exotic hotdogs, but to the Guatemalans these two hotdogs are …
Often I walk by this garden, previously shown in It’s Always Ice Cream time In Guatemala, so I was happy to see …
There are many recycling approaches that people use in Guatemala. Interesting enough, at first glance it may seem that there are NO …
Here is your Spanish word of the day: Alameda, a tree-lined avenue or boulevard. La Antigua Guatemala has three official alamedas, Alameda …
As I mentioned before, If you are the kind of person that enjoys jogging or riding a bicycle, the roads around Antigua …
If you are the kind of person that enjoys jogging or riding a bicycle, the roads around Antigua Guatemala provide an excellent …
Green should be the color that identifies Guatemala more than any other. When you’re flying into Guatemala you know you have arrived …
“I have everything I ever wanted, nothing I ever really needed,” I read in Twitter. In Guatemala is quite the opposite most …
Almost every year I like to do a “typical rainy season vista” from Antigua Guatemala. Today’s photo was captured with the iPhone …
Soon the cloud-free dark blue skies will be nothing but a memory and gray skies and rainy days will be the norm …
I am sorry to bring the sad news to you on a “Friday the 13th.” but as we say in Spanish, “Al …
Often I have shared with you the different recycling programs available around Antigua Guatemala. There are many recycling approaches that people use …
One of the benefits of living in the villages of La Antigua Guatemala is that many of the neighbors sell their excess …
This is just one of the many relaxing areas found inside the Antiguo Colegio de la Compañía de Jesús, now headquarters of …
Among the most popular foods found for dinner in Christmas Eve and during Christmas are tamales colorados (red tamales), tamales negros (black …
Often the perimeter walls for residential homes have carefully guided bougainvillea trees flowering all year long along to the top. In a …
Ayote en dulce or ayote en miel is among the most popular desserts for Día de Todos los Santos (Feast of All …
Business owners take note, how do you take something as mundane as a parking lot and turn it into a delightful experience? …
I really like these ceramic sculptures found in the green areas of Santo Domingo del Cerro. I especially like this rabbit. I …
These beautiful and playful sculptures can be found in the green areas of Santo Domingo del Cerro, one of my favorite destinations …
Guatemala and Mexico are the birth places for the delicious avocado fruit. Avocado Trivia 1: The word avocado comes from the the …
It’s been a while since I posted something in the Vegetarian category. I can honestly say that nowadays it is easier to …
Because I am a politically correct person I will say that Guatemala is one of major recycling centers for things discarded in …
Often enough I am sharing with you examples how ingenious and creative Guatemalans are when confronted with adversity or simply day-to-day life …
This is the main entrance to El Cerro de la Cruz park and mirador (viewpoint). There are two other entrances, one is …
In other places of the world, windows are just windows. In La Antigua Guatemala windows are shop displays, gardens, pet spots, plant …
RWOrange put together a very comprehensive list of the restaurants and food I have covered in AntiguaDailyPhoto in Chowhound. Here’s the list …
There’s no way to go by Día de Todos Los Santos (All Saints’ Day) and Día de los Fieles Difuntos (All Souls’ …
In Spanish we use the word café to mean coffee and brown. Coffee berries, however, begin their color palette lifecycle as green …
Contrary to popular belief, Guatemalans do have a large selection of salads in their gastronomy palette, including, of course, one of the …
A few weeks ago I introduced you to the recycling truck of La Antigua Guatemala and hi-lighted the fact that it runs …
Here’s a follow up image to Rain Drops, which because of the extreme close-up was unclear that you were looking at a …
Here’s a lesson to be learned. Even though San Pedro Las Huertas was one of the villages that was hit the hardest …
Recycling the recycling truck of La Antigua Guatemala. Keep reading and I promise the previous sentence will make sense. My dear green …
I have shown you the typical Guatemalan breakfast at least three times and each time has been somehow different, how so? Well, …
We street photographers are like hunters; often we roam the streets, stalking the city for candid, naturally looking, images. Other times, we …
Today is Earth Day so I am sharing with you a wallpaper for your computer from a typical green vista of Colas …
Exactly two years ago I shared with you the biannual procedure of pruning the gravileas trees to keep a balance between shade …
An hour for the Planet… An hour of no light for the planet; it was celebrated worldwide. Antigua Guatemala did its share, …
The two most famous Guatemalan hot dogs are shucos and cheveres. I have covered Guatemalan shucos hotdogs often enough that I believe …
I spent four months in La Antigua before I finally ventured to Mesón Panza Verde, one of the most renowned restaurants in …
The entire property of Espacioce! or the Centro de Cooperación de la Formación Española is impressive. Yet, many never venture beyond the …
This year the first official rain of 2009 was reported on April 24 with a photograph of a woman with a green …
Guatemala is such a colorful country; everything from flora to textiles, from architecture to food is saturated with the richest rainbow. If …
First of all, my apologies to all those masochist Guatemalans who live abroad and visit this humble site to get their daily …
I ‘d like to know the name of this kind of bird, which comes to tweet and chat with our little white …
On my way to lunch I caught all the Central Park photographers taking a break from the their photo-taking profession. Tourism has …
What are the aspects that make up identity and idiosyncrasy? What makes Guatemalans almost anywhere in the planet salivate at the sight …
What a beast. The journey of “flying through the forest” with Antigua Canopy Tours begins with a ride in the unique UNIMOG, …
Dangling like a spider on a web, he slightly rocks back and forth in his harness as he awaits the “okay” to go. At the cue, he lifts his legs, bends his knees… and takes off, plunging into a tunnel of thick, forest foliage. A whirring sound follows in close pursuit as he soars above the sloping forest floor, suspended meters – at times more than 100 meters – above the ground. To onlookers below, he looks like nothing more than a fragile doll that is somehow managing to cling to a nearly invisible cable as he races across the treetops.
I can remember everything about this Antigua moment except exactly where it is. All the recent discussion about water reminded me of …
The Panchoy Valley, where La Antigua Guatemala is located, used to be a lake at the time the Conquistadores arrived and when …
Yuca, also known as cassava or manioc, is root widely consumed in Latin America and Guatemala is not the exception. You can …
For me, nature’s patterns are often works of abstract art, displayed before humanity in a living, outdoor gallery. These leaves are unknown …
Pentas are among the most beautiful and prolific flowers in jardín antigüeño. In the gardens of La Antigua Guatemala you can be …
These mammoth green leaves are known as Quequeshque or Orejas de Elefante, Elephant Ears, in Guatemala because of its gigantic size. The …
The best thing about street photography: serendipity —Philip Greenspun (source: Photo.Net) “Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. …
See everything is a matter of perspectives and that’s the whole truthiness and nothing but the truthiness (thanks Manolo for the new …
I tell you, those Costa Ricans have no shame. First they made the entire world believe that Central America was them. Then, …
These delightful fruit you see above are coffee fruits being dry after they have been hand picked from the coffee bushes. You …
Greed and ambition do not know of any limits. That’s how we got ourselves into the present economic crisis… sure the free …
A while back I tease those crazy Guatemalan who have decided to live abroad (you know who you are) with a photo …
The problem with many authentic Guatemalan dishes is that they are not very portable or sometimes the recipes are so complex and …
The Guatemalan shuco hot dog comes with guacamol (avocado sauce), boiled cabbage, mayonnaise, tomato sauce, mustard, hot sauce, and one or more …
With new Municipal government in 2008 came some rather obvious nice things that were missing from the main entrance to La Antigua …
Today’s entry marks the 1000 consecutive daily pages of La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo. And I thought I wasn’t going to last …
It just occurred to me that the United States is one of the largest Spanish-speaking countries since it has one of the largest populations of Spanish speakers. Spanish has been spoken in the U.S. from a time before its independence. And at the rate at which the Spanish-speaking population grows, faster than any other, you may have to hablar español sooner or después. Remember that you can always come to La Antigua Guatemala to take Spanish classes in the more than 65 Spanish Schools available in this tiny colonial town.
Aspirante PMT printed in t-shirts means ‘aspirant’ for the Municipal Traffic Police (PMT abbreviation in Spanish). The proper word for traffic, as …
I have decided to participate on the monthly theme of the City Daily Photo sites again. You may not know it, but …
This Guatemalan stew takes its name from its yellow-orangy color. Amarillo is the Spanish word for yellow; those living in Texas probably …
Sure, you say, the traje indígena is a far out outfit, but are there really symbols encoded in these garments? Once again, …
We all live in a yellow house Yellow house, yellow house We all live in a yellow house Yellow house, yellow house …
Here’s one more entry to feed the Color palette category. You can see red, green, blue, and black… ah, let’s see what …
This photo of the illuminated garden was taken from the dining area at Quinta de las Flores, where I was lucky enough …
Enough about pondering the big questions! Sompopos are now here and thus we are now “officially” in the rainy season. Sompopos arrived …
From blue birds, to quetzals to owls; we are on a bird streak. According to Damara, in Guatemala, owls or tecolotes represent …
Since you guys are having the cravings for Guatemalan fresh fruit snacks, I decided to show you the current options. All you …
If tostadas had a kingdom, La Enchilada would be the queen of the tostadas. Good, you say, I’m glad to know, but …
There is nothing like rain water to make all the flora grow and in Guatemala we have a very copious rainy season …
Atol blanco is one of the most emblematic drinks of the Guatemalan Cuisine. Very few meals or drinks can define or identify …
A simple shot to commemorate the sunshine, the purple, the ever-present spring and to revive the Guateflora series. This photo was taken …
Anyhow, what’s got Little boxes to do with today’s entry. Well, once you listen to Little boxes or Las Casitas del Barrio Alto, you’d know it is impossible to get them out of your head. In a recent trip to México over the weekend we took the new road Carretera 14 to reach the highway that takes us to Southeast México. Carretera 14 is part of the road which will circumvent La Antigua Guatemala and some of the villages. In other words, Carretera 14 is the backbone for what will be the periférico around La Antigua Guatemala. Carretera 14 is also one the most beautiful stretches of road in Guatemala.
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.
Well, chiles rellenos are not just a Christmas seasonal food since they are available everyday, 24×7 in Guatemala. Last year I described Guatemalan chiles rellenos like this:
As of 22 hours local time of Sunday 4th of November, Guatemala’s Electoral Supreme Tribunal or Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) in Spanish has declared the Socal-Democrat Alvaro Colom as the new elected president of Guatemala.
Here is a little over-sharing, as Miss Jill would say. This is one of the views from our office window into the garden. Here we can see José, our green-thumb gardener waiting for the heavy rain to pass. By the way, rain is one of the most difficult things to photograph. Here I set shutter’s timing at two seconds, holding the camera over the window crate as a tripod, to try to capture the heavy down pour, yet I was only able to show silky lines. I’ve tried to do the same before in the entry Comtemplating the heavy rain with a little better success. We are about one to two weeks from the end of the rainy season.
As beautiful, cosmopolitan, antique and modern as it is La Antigua Guatemala, many people choose to live in one of the surrounding villages that belong to the municipio (county) of La Antigua Guatemala. There are many reasons for this decision which range from the economics, ‘real guatemalan experience’, or simply to live in a more natural and greener environment.
From the Guateflora series we take a different road to show you the lush roads around La Antigua Guatemala. By the way, the roads that communicate La Antigua Guatemala with the rest of the ‘real’ Guatemala are some of the best in the country, if not the best; they are kept in better conditions than the rest of the roads around Guatemala.
The hoja de falsa uva (false grape) or Parthenocisus inserta as it is known scientifically is a trepadora (climbing) plant. In the trepadoras category the most often used are the hiedra (ivy), uña de gato (cat’s claw), falsa uva (false grape), collar de la reina (queen’s collar), and of course the ever-present bugambilea (bougainvillea). The trepadoras (climbing) category in the Guateflora book has 34 different plants, so I have homework to do. 😉
Falsa manía or Maní forrajero (false peanut) as it is known in Guatemala the Arachis pintoi is a cubresuelos (ground-creeping) plant used often in the garden of La Antigua Guatemala. José, our gardener, told me that you can also use it a trepadora (climbing) plant if you guide it. I really like this evergreen plant which flowers all-year-round a tiny yellow flower. According to the Guateflora book, it can grow anywhere and handles well people walking over it.
Hiedras (Ivies/Hederas helix & H. canariensis) are very popular as well as all kinds of trepadoras (climbing) or cubresuelos (ground-creeping) siempreverdes (evergreen) plants in La Antigua Guatemala. Hiedras and trepadoras are found in many antigüeño homes covering the gardens’ walls.
Believe it or not, the land around La Antigua Guatemala was a very ‘fertile’ arid zone before the introduction of the coffee bush as a crop in 1875. I know fertile and arid sound like two mutually exclusive words, but they were not in Guatemala before 18th century where the Nopal and Maguey cactuses were grown in plantations. I’ve even seen photographs of the nopal plantations around La Antigua Guatemala in the CIRMA Fototeca (The Photo Archives at The Center for Mesoamerican Research).
You know you are in a Guatemalan home the moment you see the Colas de Quetzal (nephorlepsis spp.) or Quetzal’s tails (ferns) hanging in the corridors. The Colas de Quetzal bracken has to be one of the favorite ornamental plants used in the Guatemalan home. Some of these ferns or brackens are native to Guatemala, but they are considered cosmopolitan because they can grow anywhere. Colas de Quetzal can grown in hanging baskets, pots or in the ground, but they need some shadow to maintain the evergreen colors. The above photo of Colas de Quetzal was taken at Vivero La Escalonia (5a av. sur final), a very popular nursery in La Antigua Guatemala. Vivero La Escalonia is a great place to have breakfast or lunch.
We continue our Guateflora series with the omnipresent coffee bush or tree, which has manage to leave the coffee plantation to become a hedge. The coffee bush is one the most often seen plants around La Antigua Guatemala, but not often I’ve seen it used as hedge. The above photograph was taken at the Compañía de Jesús building, with the ruins in the background.