AntiguaDailyPhoto’s Top 12 of 2010
12. Colorful Guatemalan Balls, 11. Cathedral Spot Lights Zooming, 10. Sunday Mornings Begin with Coffee and Online Newspapers, 09. The Ages of …
12. Colorful Guatemalan Balls, 11. Cathedral Spot Lights Zooming, 10. Sunday Mornings Begin with Coffee and Online Newspapers, 09. The Ages of …
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 never a dull moment in La Antigua Guatemala. Let me explain. The other day as I am driving back home, I …
At the end of the mass service for the Feast of Out Lady of Guadalupe while I was trying to get out …
La quema del diablo (Burning of the Devil) used to be this tradition, little known outside of Guatemala. I say “used to …
This is another perspective to the Flowers and Fountains post from a week ago. In today’s photo I focused tightly and managed …
I like the ceramic “doble vía” signs and metal frames in La Antigua Guatemala. To be honest, I like all the ceramic …
Once again Leonel “Nelo” Mijangos is sharing his photographs with us. Yesterday Nelo showed us some his photos for the student parades …
Today, I continue learning about the Guatemalan coffees. In the past I have mention how I thought coffee plantations were beneficial for …
What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken …
Today while doing some banking mandados, errands, out of curiosity I ask if they already had the brand new Q200 bill (200 …
According to Foursquare, I hold more mayorships than anyone in La Antigua Guatemala, including the current elected Mayor, Dr. Vivar. 😉 So, …
Don’t ask me, but how did the venerable utilitarian pila (water tank) and lavadero (washbasin) became decorations elements or design accents? In …
Last week Jonathan Gold from LA Weekly and Evan Kleinman host of KCRW’s Good Food program did a review of La Cevicheria, …
A few months ago, I posted as part of the Theme Day some Maximón effigies made from wood, now holly wood really …
Often I have said that La Antigua Guatemala is not Guatemala. I still hold this thought, mostly. However, there are cases or …
Exactly two years ago I shared with you the biannual procedure of pruning the gravileas trees to keep a balance between shade …
The making of sawdust carpets, alfombras de aserrín, with its vivid colors and eye-catching patterns are among the most prominent elements of …
Have I told you how much I love the dry season in Guatemala (November through April)? Well, I do for so many …
These pilas go for a little over Q500/$60 because they use higher quality paint and more cement in the concrete mixture. Cheaper …
Women. They are the subject of these pictures. Why? The gruesome brutality hasn’t stopped. In fact, it has barely dipped. The Latin …
It was only last week that I told you that often during December or the Christmas season, there are several free concerts …
The last time I showed you a sampler of Guatemalan bread was on May 1, 2007. Wow, times flies! Today’s photo was …
I have talked about the recycling done in La Antigua Guatemala before with Haves and Have-Nots, Public Enemy Number 1, Guatemalan-style Salt …
All year long he hides under the bed or in the junk piled up in the corner, casting misfortune or worse on …
Since La Antigua is the wedding capital of Guatemala and very often used as wedding destination for couples the world over, it …
I spent four months in La Antigua before I finally ventured to Mesón Panza Verde, one of the most renowned restaurants in …
The 2009 rainy season that officially began on April 24 is now over. Nevertheless, before the end, we received 1″ (over 25 …
There are so many things that could be said about this photograph of two men, both in soldiers uniforms, even if one …
Here are the elements of a weekend photo of LAG on a weekend afternoon: The Bride and Groom The SUV The locals …
So who’s fit to go on such a daredevil adventure of soaring like a bird? Antigua Canopy Tours assures that anyone from …
“The three most important factors for the canopy tour are security, a family-oriented experience and promoting nature,” Antigua Canopy Tours Manager Pascu …
“We could see the topography was just perfect,” Victor Gallo confidently asserted. Victor Gallo is the expert Antigua Canopy Tours hired to …
Back in April the Guatemalan government, following the lead taken by Colombia and Venezuela some years ago, issued the Ley de Transito-Motocicletas …
127 cities around the world orchestrated a global effort to show the different manifestations of the concept of BIG. I could have …
Back in January Rudy marked his 1000th post with a pic of pacaya cooked in egg batter and duly polled readers for …
First, Blame the trabalenguas, tongue twister, title on emromesco, who said that water will be the oil of the 21st century. Second, …
Today, as in colonial times, these public water tanks and washbasins serve as the places for doing the laundry and for water …
Coyoles, that’s something I haven’t figure out what to call them in English; or Spanish outside of Guatemala for the matter. I …
Blame this photo on Eric, who just yesterday invoked the tortilla-making ladies. It is interesting how the aroma of freshly-made tortillas can …
If you are a fan of people watching you are hard-pressed to find a lovelier place than La Antigua Guatemala to enjoy …
One of Antigua’s many attractions is slowly discovering the piled and jumbled beauty of ruined buildings scattered throughout the old city. The romanticism and nostalgia of shattered architecture has always drawn traveler’s and tourists to places such as these- from the 19 Century grand tours taken by Europeans through Ancient Greece and Rome- to present day seekers of lost cities in the Guatemalan jungles.
This little girl, who looks to be no more than five-years-old, is calmly sitting by herself watching the daily activity and buzz on the cobbled street before her.
We continue with the repetition theme. The Guatemalan Catholic iconography is rich in colors and shapes, like everything else in Guatemala. In …
Colorful Guatemala, I tell you, colorful Guatemala! Si ni los mismos guatemaltecos logramos entender la complejidad cultural en la que vivimos… —Ale …
La Antigua Guatemala is known as the Ciudad de las perpetuas rosas, the city of the perpetual roses. Well, surely you can …
Oh life, you blink and it’s gone. A while back I read in the New York Times Sunday edition of the Prensa …
As more houses of La Antigua Guatemala are turned into business, the old architectonic spaces are converted for new uses. Here for …
See everything is a matter of perspectives and that’s the whole truthiness and nothing but the truthiness (thanks Manolo for the new …
In my quest to bring to you ‘new’ vistas of the same ‘old’ places around La Antigua Guatemala, I present to you …
The kitchen area in the casa antigüeña usually has a high ceiling provided by cupola which in most cases served as chimney, …
Okay, let me break the bad news to you guys. The Burning of the Devil tradition in Guatemala is disappearing. Even though, …
If you come to this web site looking for artistic or touristic photographs from Guatemala, you’ve come in vein because here you …
Lucky me that I learned to have new aesthetic values for things antique and old. Lucky me that I find beautiful and …
Central Park and the streets nearby were militarized for about 10 hours, beginning around 5 a.m. because El Señor Presidente of Guatemala …
It seems like Claudia and I are synching our thoughts lately. She makes a comment regarding her nostalgia and memories and I …
You can tell Ceviche is my favorite Guatemalan Cuisine dish if you search for the word ceviche or just browse the five …
I have decided to participate on the monthly theme of the City Daily Photo sites again. You may not know it, but …
Here is gift for those of you who like to collect the desktop wallpapers for your computer (18 so far). From here …
Lo que no se conoce no se ama One can not love what one does not know — Julia Montoya Source: Interview …
Not only in walls can you find textures in La Antigua Guatemala; sometimes even wooden beams can provide moth-eaten textures. If you …
As part of La Antigua Guatemala’s town fair celebrations of Santiago, there are books stands right on Central Park. These book fairs …
A simple photo of the doorway to Licuados Claudia in La Antigua Guatemala generates over 15 comments; I take one as the …
Somethings or their absence, really, make the lifestyle of La Antigua Guatemala very pleasant. The absence of billboards, banners and large signs …
La Antigua Guatemala’s sidewalks were not meant for walking. Sidewalks in La Antigua Guatemala are narrow and uneven, with so many 2 …
A couple of weeks ago I showed the Beer and Hamburger Combo from Flan Antigüeño and I mentioned how Guatemalans have a …
All kinds of textures are available at the tables in the patio of Quesos y Vinos Restaurant; from the ceramic table tops …
Photography 101: capture contrast. Well, that’s another easy task around La Antigua Guatemala. Here you can find contrast in color, between the …
ACT 1: So there I was, consumed by own thoughts, after having had a few moments at the Benches at the Museo …
What’s so special about the Esquisuchil trees around La Antigua Guatemala? For starters, the esquisuchil trees (bourreria huanita) are very old and …
The fresh produce available at the Farmers’ Fair and at the market are so irresistible. As you can see in the picture …
Today’s is Earth Day and to celebrate it, I am posting a desktop wallpaper photo for your computer which shows the harmony …
Other colonial measurements still in use in present-day Guatemala are: Una mano (one hand or five of anything), un manojo (a bunch), una libra (a pound; this one may hurt many of you, but for sure, the civilized world now uses the kilo), una picopada (a truckload), una fila de frances (a row of french rolls), una arroba (@ or 25 pounds) un quintal (100 pounds), una cuerda (a cord equals 1/6 of city block), una medida (a measurement of whatever fits inside a small can or basket), una penca de banano (that’s a banana cluster), et-cetera or basically that’s what I can remember right now. I am sure the Guatemalans visitors will share other colonial measurements being used in Guatemala. There was a recent article about colonial measurement in Prensa Libre’s Revista Domingo under the title of Costumbres que pesan {ñ}.
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, you may be wondering what SAT office means. Behind this placid view of this government building hides one of the reason why Guatemala is so poor; a beggar really if we consider that Guatemala begs money for road repairing, road building, new modern national identification card, fertilizers, schools, libraries and the list goes on and on. The picture above is the local office of the Superintendencia de Administración Tributaria, SAT for short and the equivalent of the IRS.
Rellenitos (little fillings) is the name given to a food made from plantain dough which molded into a semi-round shaped and filled (thus the name) with a black beans sauce or stuffed with manjar (custard). It is a sweet meal and normally eaten as junk food or as dessert. It is one of my favorite Guatemalan desserts and I am sure I am not the only one with a soft spot for this kind of meal. Check out this close-up shot of rellenitos to see the black bean sauce filling.
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.
eck, sometimes we even do some local recycling too. For instance, all those empty hard liquor bottles can have a fulfilling second life as salt and pepper shakers.
What I like about the people of Café No Sé is that they know when they are onto something; at once they apply the Café No Sé branding, and just in case, they make sure it is registered. These are my kind of hippies! 😉
Even though the new Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom Caballeros, a 57-year-old industrial engineer and textile businessman, was sworn in for a 4-year term in Guatemala City in a ceremony at the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Theater, ceremonies and celebrations were held in the rest of the country too.
Have I told you about my sign fetish… I don’t know if a cure exist for this sing disorder, but for sure La Antigua Guatemala signs do not help; there are SO MANY of them.
Do you know the etymology of fetish? If not you can find in this site… go happy h
Sometimes you just have to ask yourself what kind of strange brew are the Canadians brewing way up north, heh. See, first they steal our bright minds; then they take our gold and buy out our postal service; they insert strange things into our antigüeño breakfast (bacon they call it); even our money is now Canadian (it reads Canadian Bank Note on the brand-new Quetzal bills); just to name a few things. In return they send salsa-dancing-craze Spanish students and the horrible and hostile weather. Come on, this is Guatemala, a tropical country in Central America, you know, the tiny land that impedes the Caribbean Island from moving over the Pacific Ocean. So what business does it have freezing-cold-ice-capping winds in La Antigua Guatemala. See, we don’t need no sticking ice-capped mountains and volcanoes in our gorgeous temperate-always-sun-shining-eternal-spring weather. Those volcanoes you see in the background are ice-capped (see larger image).
New Year’s Eve Celebrations in La Antigua Guatemala:
For starters there are many things that make New Year’s Eve similar and different than Christmas’ Eve. If Christmas’ Eve is celebrated with the family at home at your parents’ home; New Year’s Eve can be celebrated anywhere: a discotheque, a park, the beach or La Calle del Arco, a popular venue in La Antigua Guatemala
Well, for starters you need ‘real’ nixtamalized maize dough (nothing of the maseca flour that Manolo uses), a ‘real’ comal (baked clay griddle) and you need to use ‘real’ leña (wood logs, quite possibly pine). After that, you need a good pair of hand to tortear (hit into shape) a real looking tortilla. You don’t need no sticking mold to shape your tortillas ma’am. 😉
One important aspect of this particular Nacimiento is the fact that Santo Hermano Pedro de Betancourt managed to get himself in the picture of the Nativity shrine. For those who are not well verse in Catholic imagery, myself included, normally the Nativity scene shows Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus along with a few animals. No, Santo Hermano Pedro could not be present there since he was born about 1600 years later, give or take a few moons. Rather, the inclusion of his image, on the right, is to celebrate and to remember that is was Santo Hermano Pedro de Betancourt who introduced the Nacimiento and Posadas to the American Continent, to La Antigua Guatemala if you want to be precise, and from this old town, this celebration was taken to the rest of the continent.
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!
Computer stations are also available at the Compañía de Jesús Library in La Antigua Guatemala. Patsy mentioned that many people opt for the computer instead of grabbing the old-time-tested book. Well, the times are a-changing, you know and everyone needs help with a new system. If you don’t believe me, just take a look a the video clip below that show us how difficult it was for the book to get accepted as the new medium for holding texts.
We will begin a mini tour of the library at the Compañía de Jesús building under the care of Cooperación Española NGO or Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional as it is called in Spanish.
But first the disclosure: I love libraries; even chicken bus libraries! 😉
In the picture above you see two foreigners taking Spanish classes in a Restaurant/School named Korea with omnipresent beer posters. Here’s the Spanish word/phrase of the day: Quiero más cerveza por favor (please, I’d like to have more beer). Life is though for the Spanish students in the Spanish school capital of Latin America.
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.
This picture is like a summary of the Guatemalan Idiosyncrasy. First we have the giant kite with all the Mayan motifs, which for a long time represented the pagan rituals as the dominant catholic church used to call them. Anything that represented non-christian religious rituals was denigrated and prosecuted under the pagan label
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.
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)
This is very simple image will allow us to play a creative game. Taking the two women as our characters we will write up one of many conceivable dialogues as the interaction between them. This would be similar to what we did in Opposite Ends of Life #2, which you should look at and read to get an idea. The apparent age difference could be used to set the pair as mother and daughter or sisters or simply co-workers of the newly opened Subway; it is up to you. I will submit the first plausible dialogue.
I think this Subway franchise will have to use its second slogan: The Way A Sandwich Should Be because the Eat fresh may not work in a place like Antigua Guatemala, where most places serve REAL fresh food. With all of these transnational fast-food restaurants in La Antigua Guatemala, we still have to make a run for the border or drive to Guatemala City if we’d like to think outside the bun while enjoying a bean and cheese burrito.
The Guatemalan Writers Side Note:
For being such a tiny banana/coffee writers republic, Guatemala does produce and export quite a few good writers. I have mentioned some of them in this site like Luis Cardoza y Aragón, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Pepe Milla, Ronald Flores. But, I have not done enough to talk about the great Guatemalan Literature written by its many excellent writers. Thanks to a comment by Coltrane_Lives about the possibility of his adopted Guatemalan daughter becoming a writer, I can point out a great Guatemalan novel written in English by Francisco Goldman, a respected journalist whose work appears often in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books and Harper’s (source: literaturaguatemalteca.org [ES]). “Francisco Goldman won accolades and international recognition with his extraordinary first novel, The Long Night of White Chickens, the winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts… ” (source: amazon.com). Another great contemporary novel is Ruido de fondo (background noise) by my dear friend Javier Payeras. Javier Payeras is one of the clearest and loudest voices of this generation and his poetry and prose has won the recognition in and outside Guatemala. Ruido de fondo has been reissued by the Guatemala’s Government Editorial Cultura to be required reading for High School students in Guatemala. For those who are fluent in Spanish, I leave the link to one of my favorites poems by Payeras: Soledadbrother.
I have said that I really enjoy being in this building so many times that you might actually believe that I work …
This coming Sunday Guatemala will be holding general elections for president, vice-president, congress curule seats, and city mayors throughout the country. It is sad to read the news feeds and news headlines regarding Guatemala. It seems like this tiny ‘paradisiac’ banana coffee republic has an innate quality to generate bad press. Like Tarzan, Guatemala jumps from bad stories to worse stories. It is a true jungle out here.
In the meantime, Guatemalans will cross their ballots to exercise the democracy Mayan ball game. But, before that, they must know where exactly they will cast their vote and for that, they have to go to one of the many citizens’ registration booths; like the one pictured above in the entrance to La Antigua Guatemala.
Recently while reading the National Geographic en español, I learnt that not all instances of the use of wood as fuel are bad. According the article about barbecuing wood and charcoal do indeed pollute the atmosphere with smoke and ashes, but it is a recycled-type of energy when compared to other energy sources like gas or electricity.
The charcoal-grilled meat stall has gotten so hip that you now find it not only in fairs, but around La Antigua Guatemala in parks, markets and sidewalks. Back in February 20th, 2007, I showed you an extremely popular stall of grilled meats in Tanque de la Unión park from a bird’s eye point of view. In the picture above, chicken and beef steak were being offered along broiled potatoes. Q10 ($1.25) for a portion of the meat of your choice, chirmol (read the side note), guacamol and potatoes; definitely, not too bad of a deal.