You will regret having asked me to maintain this blog. The product of the next three weeks will be the mother of all boringness. Like, do you know why this city is called La Antigua? That’s right! You guessed it! It means (in essence) The Old Lady. It was Guatemala’s first capital, you see, before Guatemala City took that title. Are you having fun yet?
Little has changed in this part of the country since I last visited a few years ago. The ruins are still ruined, though possibly more beautiful. The cobblestones are still bumpy. People still switch to English when they hear my Spanish, unless they can’t switch to English, in which case a) they chide themselves for not having learned English when they still had a chance, and then b) resort to exaggerated body language.
A noticeable difference is that in Antigua, it is now illegal to honk your horn (if you have one). This city used to be horrendously noisy 24 hours a day, with motorcycles, tuc-tucs, cars and chicken buses blasting their presence, but now all you can hear are hundreds of chassis shaking from their moorings as they pound across cobblestone. The other big difference is the massive invasion from the biggest, meanest American businesses: K-Mart, Walmart, Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Subway and others. Don Toí±o told me they’d promised jobs and benefits for locals, but that’s all been mentiras [lies]. When I go to other countries I wonder how any citizen of the world can be so warm to an American, when they consider our systems of business and politics, which generally haven’t been kind to them. You know, like those little wars we funded here, and that old chestnut.
Another change is that the telephone pole that had puta written on it—where Molly once stood for a photo—is gone. Yet another is la crima. As en otros lugares en el mundo, including EEUU [that’s the U.S.], it is much worse: The crashing global economy has made everywhere more dangerous. To be safe, I’ll come home by 4:30 each day, just before dark. That can be inconvenient, like if I want to eat dinner.
I tried to go to the doctor today, but once I arrived I saw the wee sign that said he’s on vacation until January 2. That’s the third and final time I’ll try to see a stupid doc, uncomfortable spots and innards be damned.
I went to a travel agency and was disheartened by what I learned. I can’t get to the places I wanted to go, for a variety of reasons. Well, I ain’t staying here in Antigua the whole time. I’ll see what I can figure out. It shouldn’t be too hard to get to the Maya ruins in Honduras, and maybe visit the rainforest on the other side of the country. But I can’t get to the northern highlands, and I’m sorry about that. There are several reasons for these limitations. One is that an agency can’t book a ticket for a person traveling solo. Another is that I won’t take the colorful chicken buses that cross the country. Not these days.
One thing I don’t want to do, which I did last time, is to hike up to the active volcano, Pacaya. It has a nasty habit of belching chunks of magma, and killed someone recently. As you know, I can see two volcanoes from my windows here; actually, it looks like three, because the child of El Volcí¡n Fuego is nearly as big as its daddy. This morning before the sky got cloudy, I watched the youth puff dense billows of smoke and steam: solid round masses like chicks that had been playing in the dust. Very, very big chicks. Mean chicks. Chicks you don’t want your kids playing with.
Molly: thank you for your comment! Wheeeee. Today I had a Santiago Omelette, and also a licuado con jugo de naranja y papaya at Cafe Condezza en el parque central. ¿Recuerdas?
You know what’s a pain? When you have to walk out of your house and sit outside another person’s (like last night) to piggyback on their Internet. But when you do that, your mouse thinks it belongs to them, so behind your back it abandons you and signs on to their computer, and when you try to find out what’s going on, you see that Ginna’s Mouse has changed its name to Maria’s Mouse. It’s a little-known hazard of traveling.
I am having fun yet; thank you for asking!
Bizarre about honking being illegal now — I can hardly imagine Antigua without that.
We have the same phenomenon here with big U.S. businesses coming in — but it’s even more sneaky, because they’re always not *called* by their U.S. names. They have their own special South American brand names: for instance, one of the main supermarkets is owned by Walmart, but you’d never know unless you sifted through their website.
Try a few other travel agencies, perhaps. I had the same lone traveler problem in the Atacama. Sometimes you just must poke around until you find someplace that has a trip or tour already going someplace, and then you can book your thing and tag along. Maybe.
Me encantan los licuados! Quiero beber licuados y solo licuados por toda mi vida.
Mi nií±a. Today I walked by an adorable little girl who handed me a blank piece of paper, I don’t know why, and I said, Hello, little boy.
Me gustan los licuados tambií©n, si tienen agua pura o jugo sin agua. Num num, as we say round these parts.
Another bad thing about traveling, aside from disloyal mice and absent doctors, is waking up to a nice warm shower that stays that way exactly as long as it takes you to get soaked and lathered, and then turns not cool, but icy.
limesv relevance
The child was in fact a messenger, giving you a sign that you may have a fresh start in life, and all you need to do is be so brave as to draw on this new sheet of paper without fear for where the next sheet may come from.
My shower does the very same thing. In fact, my shower won’t even get warm unless you rest the showerhead gently down near floor level before turning it on, *then* hefting it to shower-height. Such is life.
Yo tengo tí© ahora, pero no tengo un licuado. Es la vida.
“the eigneta”