Clear skies, 34 degrees and very humid at the port, 22 degrees
at Antigua
Yesterday’s unscheduled sea day got us to
Guatemala earlier than planned,
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| Antigua main street |
but the excursions still didn’t depart until
the afternoon. The advantage to this it that we can take a relaxing
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Volcán de Fuego |
morning,
but the con is that we get back late and rush a bit to dinner. It also meant blogging would have to wait for tomorrow.
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| Antigua's main street |
Antigua in Guatalama’s central highlands
is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. From the port it is about 80 kilometres but
takes a couple of hours to get there. The bus isn’t the best we’ve been on but
isn’t at all the worst – the AC works and
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| Antigua old city |
there is room to spread out. The road
wasn’t the best we’ve been on either…bumpy is an understatement.
Along the way we are can see dormant as
well as active volcanos – very cool. The active one (Volcán de Fuego) spews quite
a few times on the way there, which because it daytime we
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| the main church |
can only see smoke,
on the way back it is dark, so we can see the lava spew…again…COOL! What isn’t
cool is that in 2018 this volcano had a huge eruption where 165 people were
killed, it was the Guatemala’s most severe volcanic eruption in 45 years.
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| Antigua old city |
Antigua, being an old city doesn’t have
the wide roads necessary for even the ricketiest coach bus. To access the old
city we transferred to smaller bus/van type vehicles that got us into the heart
of the old city in about 10 minutes.
The requisite shopping stop was at a
jade factory…Guatemala jade is culturally significant for its indigenous people
and the highest quality is pricier than diamonds. There were many nice pieces
here, but since I know next to nothing about jade, we drank some Guatemalan coffee,
then a
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| in Antigua's main square |
mimosa, and toured the jade museum.
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| main church |
22 degrees with very little humidity was
just about perfect for a walking tour of old Antigua. The old city is made up
of colonial architecture with many old and some ruin churches. The city had an
election yesterday and today the main square was full of dignitaries and hoopla
for the new mayor.
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| looks hip enough to me! |
Our last stop was at The Antigua Brewing
Company. This local craft brewery is set up and designed just as you would
expect a craft brewery at home to be – a bit hip, a bit grungy, a bit too cool.
Here we tried 4 of their beers accompanied by local snack foods. The food was
the most interesting part. Beer is beer the world around, but food isn’t. We
had ceviche, pulled pork, plantain in mole and
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| how they make their beer |
a Guatemalan enchilada – this was
a fried tortilla (tostada) topped with lettuce, pickled beet, a slice of boiled
egg and a sprinkling of dried Guatemalan cheese – it was like Guatemalan borscht!
By the time we were heading back to port
the sun had set and the temperature dropped to about 18…very similar to Calgary,
I thought.
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| civeche |
During dinner there was a PA
announcement for a ‘code mike’ - we had to look this up to learn that it was a
medical emergency. The surprising part wasn’t that there was a medical
emergency, but that there was an announcement. In all the time we’ve been on
cruises, I can’t remember once when there
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| Guatemalan borscht |
was a ‘code’ announcement. We hear
them during drills, but never ‘for real.’ I
didn’t expect to hear what happened
and ultimately we didn’t.
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| looks right at home |
