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La Antigua Guatemala

Cloudscape from Antigua Guatemala

Here’s your illustrated Spanish word of the day: Celaje for cloudscape. The celajes of Antigua Guatemala during the dry season are the …

Dos Guatemalas by Rudy Giron

Two Guatemalas

What are your thoughts regarding this image? How would you caption this photograph?

© Conversations at Parque Central by Rudy Giron

Conversations at Parque Central

A group of friends get together to ‘chat’ with one another on a bench of Parque Central, La Antigua Guatemala. That’s modernity …

Façade of Iglesia de San Gaspar by Rudy Giron

Façade of Iglesia de San Gaspar

After several previous tries I believe I have captured the essence of this tiny colonial church in San Gaspar Vivar. Sometimes it …

Noche Buena in La Antigua Guatemala

Christmas Eve or Noche Buena in La Antigua Guatemala is celebrated by staying up all night burning firecrackers and fireworks, eating tamales, …

Gas Tanks are Ugly Too

This is what Guatemalans think of when you utter Tanques de gas (gas tanks); it doesn’t cross their mind the fuel tank …

Uniformed Tourist Queue

Often, around La Antigua Guatemala, you see long lines of tourist in uniforms; sometimes is just a t-shirt, sometimes is the everything. …

The Remains of Holy Week

Well, it seems like the color purple will be with us for a while longer. The flowers above are known colloquially as …

Fuel Home Delivery in La Antigua Guatemala

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}.

Guateflora: Duranta Lila

A simple shot to commemorate the sunshine, the purple, the ever-present spring and to revive the Guateflora series. This photo was taken …

The Old Man and the Band

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!

Holy Week: An Equal Opportunity Celebration

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.

Corozo Palms and its Smell are a Staple of the Holy Week

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?

Underneath a Holy Week Float in La Antigua Guatemala

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! 😉

Cucurucho Paying for His Turns at the 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.

Healthy Lunch: Chef Salad and The New Yorker

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.

Mickey Mouse Kite

Cross-culturization is happening so fast that Guatemala may seemed foreign to those Guatemalans who have lived a few years outside its borders. Walt Disney figures and just about any comic hero like Spiderman, Superman, Wolverine, et-cetera are being absorbed by the popular culture and mixed with their own traditional icons like kites and parades for town fairs. But this cross-culturization is happening at all levels and not only with U.S. trivial merchandise, but with Mexican culture, music, food, novelas (soap operas), et-cetera. For instance, a few year back, I took a photograph of menu board in Panajachel, Lake Atitlán, which advertised the Desayuno Chapí­n (Guatemalan breakfast) with eggs a la Mexican style

Ceviche from La Naranja Pelada

Anyhow, much has been said about ceviches and there are almost as many spellings [seviche, cebiche, sebiche] are there recipes from all the different countries of Latin America. But three ceviches styles are the most widely known: The Mexican, The Peruvian and The Guatemalan Ceviche. All seviches have their own twist and I have to admit that the Guatemalan cebiche with conchas (shellfish with dark, almost black, ink) is the least appealing of all. Yet, for those brave enough to have tried it, the Guatemalan conchas ceviche is a total delicacy. Guy from Inner Diablog has spent enough ink talking about ceviches and since he’s a total connoisseur, I rather you go to his blog and read about ceviches there.

Inside View at La Naranja Pelada Restaurant

Guy’s description of the restaurant fit it to the t: “…wood-panelled and decorated with specimens of local ‘game’ such as snakes, turtles and armadilloes.” La Naranja Pelada restaurant falls into the tacky category of restaurants or bars that have an exotic, underground sort of, appeal for intellectuals and ordinary people alike. Another example of this is the bar El Olvido in Guatemala City. I dislike most of what I saw inside La Naranja Pelada (peeled orange), but especially the animal decoration on the walls and bar. Also the full-size ‘Marlboro Man’ poster is of poor taste in my book. This weekend We rented the film Thank You for Smoking directed by Jason Reitman and there was a chapter about the Marlboro Man who was dying from all the years of smoking. Talk about synchronicity.

Don’t Take Pictures…

Even though La Antigua Guatemala is a very photogenic town and that is virtually impossible to take a bad photo of this …

Postscript

Sometimes bad things turn good. Guatemala’s postal service is so slow, expensive and unreliable that in Guatemala the concept of junk mail …

Guatemalan Fair: The Pine-needle Processional Carpets

The making of these processional carpets is such a community-forming and bonding activity since in the process participate many, if not all, of the neighbors and family members. These traditions, festive calendar dates and special celebrations mark very strongly what makes a normal human being into a hard-core Guatemalan. You break the link or access to these experiences and you only have a person that was born in Guatemala; a fact as worthless as the fact of having had a pair of boots once.

Guatemalan Fair: The Charcoal-broiled Meat Booth

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.

Guatemalan Fair: The Seeds Stall

I don’t know if you have noticed this, but seeds are very popular in Guatemala. If you recall the entries Name the seeds! or Guatemalan sweets; so it is obvious that seeds had to present in a fair booth. Okay, what do we have here? Peanuts in their shell, Guatemalan pumpkin in melcocha syrup, sesame seeds with melcocha, salty fried or roasted habas (broad beans); that’s as far as I can distinguish. Read the entry on Guatemalan sweets if you want to know what is melcocha.

Guatemalan Fair: The Games

The Latin American lottery is played with cardboards of nine images, each cardboard is different, bean or maize counts, and a person calling out aloud the name of the images: La Chalupa, El Borracho, El Catrí­n, La Campana, El Cantaro, et-cetera. Whoever gets all nine images called out and accounted for with beans or maize seeds wins the lottery, if, and only if they scream with all their lungs LO-TE-RIIIIAAAAA.

Guatemalan Fair: Fresh Fruit Stall

After all the pounds we have gained this week at the San Pedro Las Huertas Fair, it is nice to come across some healthy food. For Q5 ($0.65) we can take any fresh fruit bags and we will need the savings since we already lost quite a few Quetzales at the others fair stands. Now, even though I have shown all these Guatemalan fair food and even describe it as tasteful and delicious, I don’t want to pass it as healthy. Fair food is junk food. I am so glad these fair food vendors have not come across the Super Size Me concept!

Guatemalan Fair: The French Fries Stall

Papas fritas is the Guatemalan Spanish name for French fries. Here is the abbreviated history that gave us the Guatemalan french fries stall: first the Quechuas or Incas domesticated the potato (Solanum tuberosum) into a crop in southern Peru and northern Bolivia; the Spanish conquistadors took it to Europe where it was an instant hit and along with maize turned a famine-prone population into a healthy society; somewhere in one of the northern European states, quite possibly Germany, the potato lost its skin and got deep-fried; This Eurpean recipe crossed the Atlantic with the new immigrants that came to U.S. and since it was a foreign-looking recipe, they called it French fries (remember Coneheads); so the French fries came to Guatemala along one of the many incursions from the United Stateians (Americans they seem to call themselves 😉 ) as a side dish for the hamburger or the hot dog. Guatemalans thought that French fries were too good to be side dish and turned it into a meal by itself. That is how the papas fritas cart came to be.

Guatemalan Fair: The Pizza Kiosk

A recent addition to the Guatemalan Fair zoo is the pizza kiosk. Just like many other aspect of modern Guatemala idiosyncrasy, pizza has come to stay, but it must evolve, just like chinese food. So the typical Guatemalan town fair pizza is made from a less tasteful dough, only mozzarella cheese and ham; nothing more. You get your slice and normally ad ketchup to it. The Guatemalan town fair pizza stand is, almost invariable, managed by one or tow young indigenous teenagers or young adults with a taste for extremely heavy rock metal music which they blast from a portable boom box. The pizza booth may have posters describing their pepperoni or salami pizza even though they only sell ham pizza. Go figures!

Guatemalan Fair: The Churreria Stand

A town fair is not a fair without the churros. A churreria is the place where they make churros; [CHOOR-roh] Similiar to a cruller, this Spanish, Mexican and Guatemalan specialty consists of a sweet-dough spiral that is deep-fried and eaten like a doughnut. Churros are usually coated with a mixture of cinnamon and confectioners’ (or granulated) sugar (source Answers.com). Just about now after looking the Guatemalan churrerí­a, I got the cravings for a cinnamon-covered bag of churros, would you like an order too? If you don’t have a sweet tooth, you can always have plataninas, poporopos, chicharrines, and anillos frescos y calientes; your choice.

Guatemalan Fair: The Typical Booth

We continue the photographic tour of a Guatemalan town fair with a typical booth. Since the inflated toys and balloons are very obvious, we will play the game of naming everything else that you see on the table. I will get you started with the bags of peanuts on the left. Now it is your turn, name as many things as you can recognize. Let the game begin!

Guatemalan Fair: The Ferris Wheel

Ferris wheels are another element of the Guatemalan fair. There is at least one Ferris wheel, but more often two or three of different sizes. The Ferris wheel is known here by these names rueda de Chicago(Chicago Wheel), rueda de la fortuna (wheel of fortune) and vuelta al mundo (around the world). Fairs are made up by all kinds of ambulant stands. Fairs are like accordions, they grow or shrink depending of the size of the community or town. All these photos belong to the San Pedro Las Huertas, a small village just outside and belonging to La Antigua Guatemala. At the end of July, La Antigua Guatemala will have its massive fair in honor of Saint James or Santiago.