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Who owns the water in Guatemala?

All Guatemalans, of course, just like the air. Water belongs to the Guatemalan people and it’s managed by the government; national and …

A Room with a View

The view above of Volcán de Agua is from our studio’s window and balcony. I said before, in many listings for rent …

Having Lunch by The Garden

As more houses of La Antigua Guatemala are turned into business, the old architectonic spaces are converted for new uses. Here for …

Follow Up to Façade Facelift

Since I showed you, just the other day, how the façade of house from La Antigua Guatemala was being repaired and painted …

Cathedral’s New Look

Well, it looks like 2009 will be the year of the new paint jobs on all the major churches around Antigua Guatemala …

Lent Decorations over Doorways

I really like the Lent decorations you find over doorways and windows in La Antigua Guatemala. Lent or Cuaresma in Spanish is …

Antigua’s Window Grate

Details, details, details. Often you find little windows on the doorways of the houses of La Antigua Guatemala and most often they …

Casa Antigüeña: The Balconies

What better photo to wave goodbye to the Casa Antigüeña series than an image of the balconies against cloud-free deep blue sky, …

Casa Antigüeña: The Attic

Finally, we reached the loft in the second floor… oops, I meant the attic. Remember the building codes in La Antigua Guatemala …

Casa Antigüeña: The Kitchen

The kitchen area in the casa antigüeña usually has a high ceiling provided by cupola which in most cases served as chimney, …

What in the World is a Búcaro?

Many times, when foreigners are looking at listings for houses or apartments for rent or sale in La Antigua Guatemala, they come …

Nispero Tree in the Garden

I’m amazed by the abundance and variety of fruit in Guatemala. My chapí­n friends lament the relatively poor selection here, and miss …

Little gray boxes on the hillside, Little gray boxes made of ticky-tacky

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.

What’s killing La Antigua Guatemala

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.

Hippie Hole in La Antigua Guatemala

One by one all the houses in La Antigua Guatemala are becoming business like cafes, spanish schools, offices, travel agencies, folk-art stores, et-cetera. Above you see the corridor at Café No Sé, which was converted into a dining area by placing a few tables and chairs.

The Ecological Way to Celebrate the Burning of the Devil in Guatemala

For those who would rather break a piñata than playing around with fire, I present to you the Lucky 7 Burning of the Devil Piñata for you to fill it with all your frustration and negative vibes and virtually burn it or break it with your mouse, trackball or tablet until your let it all out. Happy Burning of the Devil everyone!

Dog School in Antigua

The reason the photo above brought memories back from an old forbidden song in Latin America was the lyrics of Las casas de cartón (the carton houses) which had something about dog schools where the canine were given education so they don’t bite the newspapers… but I rather leave you with part of the lyrics and the song below it.

Public Water Distribution System

Central America and Guatemala especially have an abundance of water resources, many are groundwater. La Antigua Guatemala is located in a valley irrigated with over six months of a rainy season per year. La Antigua Guatemala is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes that collect even more water. Much of this collected rain ends up as groundwater.

Window view of Mountains around La Antigua Guatemala

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.

Guateflora: Falsa Uva (False Grape)

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. 😉

Guateflora: Falsa Maní­a (False Peanut)

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.

Guateflora: Hiedras (Hedera/Ivies)

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.

Guateflora: Cactus Pot

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).

Guateflora: Colas de Quetzal

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.

Guateflora: Close-up View of Gerberas

Gerberas (gerbera jamesonii) are a very popular flowers in the gardens of La Antigua Guatemala. Gerberas are found in yellow, white, red (like the picture above), orange, purple and pink. Gerberas grow in temperate-cold climate and give their beautiful flowers throughout the year. This particular shot was taken at Vivero La Escalonia in the south part of La Antigua. (source for technical information: Guate Flora)

Jumping over the cables

Here is a vertical shot of a biker doing a jump in the atrium of the Jocotenango church. Jocotenago is one of the communities very near La Antigua Guatemala. Jocotenango is so close to La Antigua that you might walk and cross over the municipal borders without realizing it. Jocotenango and Ciudad Vieja are the two municipios (counties) where most of the antigüeños moved after they sold their houses in La Antigua Guatemala. Some antigüeños sold their house under pressure from buyers and because the incredible prices buyers were willing to pay. Ciudad Vieja and Jocotenango is where most of the workers of La Antigua Guatemala businesses live. Jocotenango and Ciudad Vieja are ‘REAL’ Guatemalan communities, unlike La Antigua Guatemala. Soon I will post an entry with the following title: La Antigua Guatemala is not Guatemala (which I’ve been saving for a long while now). Stay tune!

Family Mausoleum in San Lázaro Cemetery

JM Magaña, La Antigua Guatemala’s second conservator and the pen behind the architecture column in Recrearte Magazine, pointed out that until 1976 La Antigua Guatemala was painted all white too. At the time the cemetery was created in the 1800s, there were a couple waves of plagues and thus every thing was white-washed with live limestone to disinfect and maintain the town virus free. This coincided with the introduction of coffee in 1875 (more or less) and thus an abundance of wealth which provided the necessary fund to build all those mausoleums. There was a massive earthquake that hit Guatemala in 1976 and destroyed a great deal of buildings and houses in Guatemala. In fact, it is said that the 1976 earthquake changed forever the look and feel of Guatemala. La Antigua Guatemala was not saved and thus reconstruction began after the quake and with it, the color lime-stone paint came. This change in color did not reach the cemetery.

Theme Day: The Color Red

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 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.

Electrified Barb Wire

This shot could be anywhere in the world, except for the fact of the blue in the sky can only be Guatemala; …

Theme Day: Men at Work

Architecture arose from man’s necessity to shelter from the environment. First, he used the caves where he left registered scenes from his daily life, to then build, with the materials found in nature, his home. As humankind organized socially and the jobs became specialties, the first masons appeared and transformed the natural materials such stone and wood, and invented others like adobes and bricks from clay. (fragment from La mano de obra en la arquitectura from JM Magaña in Recrearte Magazine, page 8, available in Spanish as a PDF download)

Every Corner is Different

If I walk around Antigua Guatemala and photograph all the street corners, I could do a series for a long while just …

Antigua’s Cathedral at Sunset

The quality of the light has been fabulous. I feel the urge to re-shoot almost all the buildings, houses, churches and ruins …

Pick your color #2

If you love the bougainvillea flowers as much as Pamela does, and you don’t want to move to a secret island called …

X-ray of a Guatemalan House

This is the shot of a Guatemalan house at the very early stages of construction. I know this is not what you …

Palo de Izote tree

Palo de Izote is a relative of the Yucca Tree. It is present in almost all gardens and fences here and everywhere …

Arch and fountain of El Jaulón

Arch and fountain of Jaulón, originally uploaded by rudygiron. Okay, here is another fine example of a building restoration. Most buildings in …

The Mesón Panza Verde’s Pet

The Mesón Panza Verde is one the best Bed-n-Breakfast in Antigua. It houses a very fine restaurant, an art gallery and the …

Hotel Aurora garden

Once the Antigua became a popular tourist destination, many old houses were converted into hotels. Hotel Aurora is the opposite corner to …

Compañí­a de Jesús Fountain

Compañí­a de Jesus Fountain, originally uploaded by rudygiron. Here is another example of a fountain and a patio. This is the inside …