For nearly a year AntiguaDailyPhoto has been providing a daylight live webcam with a panoramic vista of the volcanos Agua, Fuego and Acatenango as seen from La Antigua Guatemala as well as the weather conditions 24 hours a day, every day. You can look at the most recent panoramic photo and weather conditions of Antigua … Read more
As my colleague Willy has said before: Willy: Is today women’s day? Again? Every day is a women’s day! We men surrender daily before you, go to war, lose friends, do crazy things for you women… Each and every day is women’s day.
Women. They are the subject of these pictures. Why? The gruesome brutality hasn’t stopped. In fact, it has barely dipped. The Latin American Herald Tribune reports that 708 women were violently murdered in Guatemala in 2009. That figure is down compared to the 773 reported violent deaths in 2008, but not by much. There is … Read more
Yes, believe it or not Guatemala is quite modern and Internet capable. Yes, Guatemala has 3.5G wireless Internet Access network in mayor cities and Edge-capable networks in most of the country. Yes, there are iPhone-capable networks from the three main carriers: Telefónica, Claro and Tigo. As a matter of fact, most of my web-savvy friends … Read more
The Panchoy Valley, where La Antigua Guatemala is located, used to be a lake at the time the Conquistadores arrived and when they founded the second Santiago de Guatemala in the Almolonga Valley, now Ciudad Vieja which is about two miles from Antigua. Then the Panchoy Lake basin was fed by the Pensativo River. The … Read more
Do you really want a long name, here’s one: “Parroquia San Pedro Apostol, San Juan Bautista of San Pedro Las Huertas, La Antigua Guatemala” If you remember at least one of the photos of the former San Pedro Apostol Church, you may say, “wait it a minute, this is not the same church, is it?” … Read more
Often, around La Antigua Guatemala, you see long lines of tourist in uniforms; sometimes is just a t-shirt, sometimes is the everything. You wonder what organization they belong to or what are they here for. In this case, I wish I had asked their reasons to wear the same t-shirt. Darn!
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
This old man and the band are the tail of the procession. There goes Semana Santa 2008… we are at end of the Holy Week in La Antigua Guatemala. Just one more day!
That is right, Semana Santa in Guatemala is an equal opportunity celebration. Sure, cucuruchos take the majority of the clicks of cameras and most of the video recorded, but children, women and dogs have a place in the Holy Week celebrations. Women’s float or andas are a bit smaller and carry virgins or angels most of the time.
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?
So much mumble jumble to present the underneath view of a Holy Week float in one of the villages of La Antigua Guatemala. Andas (floats) are not only the affair of cucuruchos, women also participate; and sometimes even chuchos (street dogs) get involved in the penitent act of carrying the heavy float! 😉
Each turn of the Holy Week Float costs around Q60 (around US$8), there are around 60 turns and each float has somewhere between 80 and 100 spaces for the Cucuruchos. That’s close to Q290,000 (US$38,000) per procession.
Every once in a while is good to stop eating Guatemalan food and eat something healthy, like a chef salad from La Fuente restaurant. A salad and the New Yorker Magazine is what I consider a healthy lunch. The article about an unknown photographer by the name of Eugene De Salignac and his photo of painters spreading out like musical notes, on the Brooklyn Bridge, over the sky line of New York, was most definitely the best dessert I have had in a long while.