Antigua, The Ancient Guatemalan Capital

16/11/09-22/11/09

After our leisurely morning at the market in Chichi we headed to the former capital of Guatemala, Antigua, known in its entirity as La Antigua Guatemala. Not only was this beautiful, colonial city the capital of Guatemala, but it was in fact the capital of the Kingdom of Guatemala, which existed until independence was declared in Central America in 1825 and incorporated all of the Central American countries except Panama, i.e. Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize and Guatemala. Antigua was known as Santiago de los Caballeros at that time and became capital in 1543. Unfortunately, the city has been the victim of several earthquakes during its 400+ year history and although it managed to bounce back several times, ultimate disaster struck in 1773 when two severe earthquakes shattered the already fragile Antigua. It was decided to move the capital to a new site and hence Guatemala City became the new capital in 1776. In a way it has done Antigua a big favour, as it has retained its 18th century charm and style, and because it remained very sparsely populated for almost a century after 1773, it has avoided developing those big city qualities that can at times have a negative effect on the atmosphere of a place. Antigua feels small, charming and personal and is a big hit with the tourists, as you can imagine :)

Antigua has 22 churches, 14 convents and 11 monasteries and because of the numerous past earthquakes, several of them are in ruins, some to be left like that forever and others in varying states of repare and restoration. The cathedral ruins have to be the most spectacular, especially on a clear day when you can look up and see a bright blue sky where the roof used to be. The current cathedral is fairly small and horizontally aligned, i.e. when you walk in, rather than having the main aisle and altar in front of you, it is on the right hand side of the building, with the 'back' of the cathedral being on the left hand side. I'm not sure if the ruins were left on purpose or whether there was not enough money to restore more of the damage, but it works quite well as it is. A couple of days spent walking around Antigua was enough to visit almost all of the religious buildings, although Vic managed to convince me that it wasn't necessary to see every single one :) Another important church is San Francisco, where Hermano Pedro de Betancourt is buried. He was from Tenerife and came to Antigua to live as a monk in the 17th century. He was good, kind, generous, and much admired by the people, and his tomb is on proud display in the church. Having been post-humously honoured several times since his death, in 2002 he was finally canonized by Pope John Paul II.

Surrounding Antigua are four volcanoes: Pacaya, Agua, Fuego y Acatenango. Unfortunately we have not had the chance to visit any of them, although Pacaya sounds like the best choice by far. Although Fuego is still active and occasionally emits clouds of ash, Pacaya is the most active, and apparently, the tours that go there involve toasting marshmallows in the heat of the molten lava. One excursion we did go on though, was to a coffee plantation about 10 minutes out of town in a place called Jocotenango. The plantation has a coffee museum of course, and we were given a guided tour where they explained to us the whole process of coffee making, from harvesting to grinding and packaging. We also found out that coffee originated in Ethiopia (something I had never known) and legend has it, that it was discovered by a goat herd, who upon noticing that his goats were behaving differently after eating coffee beans, decided to try and make a drink out of the beans. The resulting drink didn't taste very good and so the goat herd threw it on to the fire, and as the beans began to roast, they obviously produced that great aroma we all know and that most of us love, and so he decided to try again, but this time he roasted the beans first.....and so the great beverage was born. If I remember correctly, I think this happened in the 15th century, and coffee was introduced to Europe a couple of centuries later, with the first coffee houses appearing in Vienna, London, Paris and New York.

The plantation has been in the same family for three generations and will probably move into the hands of the fourth generation within the next 20 years or so. The family history seems interesting and it appears that multinational marriages run in the family.....every family member to have even been involved with the plantation has married someone of a different nationality! The plantation has close to half a million coffee trees and we learnt that each tree produces roughly 40 cups of coffee!!! Here in Antigua, and I assume all over Guatemala, the coffee is shade grown (which produces better quality coffee than sun grown) and the coffee beans are picked individually by hand rather than by machine, which is also conducive to a higher quality coffee. Guatemala, along with Ethiopia and Kenya produces some of the best quality coffees in the world (of the arabica variety). Brazil and Vietnam may be the leaders when it comes to the quantity of coffee produced, but the coffee grown there is of the robusta variety, which is of a much lower quality than the arabica beans. Robusta beans are preferred in some countries because the trees start to produce coffee after just 2-3 years, whereas the arabica trees need 4-5 years. Robusta trees can also survive in a wider variety of environmental conditions and can be machine harvested, which makes higher quantity production possible. Robusta beans are used to make instant coffee and are often mixed with arabica beans to create a better tasting blend, but if you want the good stuff, always go for 100% arabica!

Another interesting museum we have been to here is the museo del libro antiguo (Ancient Book Museum). In 1660, the first printing press was introduced to Central America and housed in this very building. It was the third printing press to be introduced to the Spanish colonies, with the first two being located in Mexico and Peru. The printing press was brought to Antigua by Friar Payo Enriquez de Rivera and the first printer hired to use the press was José Pineda Ibarra. He published the first book here in 1663, and his son followed in his footsteps. It was only 100 years later that a few more printing houses emerged....we noticed at least three different names of publishers during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The museum has several old books on display, ranging from religious texts to grammar books and dictionaries, and also houses a replica of the original printing press.

Following our quiz night success in Belize all those weeks ago, we are often tempted to take part in other quiz nights that we come across, and it just so happened that sitting in an Irish bar one night, they announced the start of their weekly quiz. Just being the two of us, we knew that we had no chance of winning, but we decided to take part. It was a difficult quiz (and a lot different to the one in Belize) but we managed to get through it, and I think we came 4th place out of 7 or 8 groups, and our score wasn't that far off the winning team's either, which meant that all of the scores were pretty low. It was good fun though, and I always like the fact that you come away with a lot more general knowledge.

As our time in Antigua was coming to an end, we were still waiting for a reply to an email we had sent to a volunteer project called Arcas. They have a few different projects in Guatemala, but we were interested in volunteering with sea turtles on the Pacific coast in a place called Hawaii. With a couple of days to go before we were due to leave, we finally heard from them and they told us that there was plenty of room for us and that we could just turn up. We headed to Monterrico, the biggest town close to Hawaii, and decided to spend the afternoon there, before heading to the turtle sanctuary the next day. We were so pleased to end up in a hotel with a pool and we spent the afternoon swimming and relaxing! The food was also really good and I was reluctant to leave the next day, but the turtle experience would end up being one of the best of the whole trip. I'll tell you all about it in my next post :)