MAYA-HO! _{Guatemala, Easter 2003}

Monday 21 April 2003

Early morning - a nearby church bell rings 44 times - KLANG - KLANG x 42 - KLANG - then immediately they hit a different bell 30+ times (I lost count) - I look at the clock, it's 6:12 - we start to groggily rise - thern a more distant bell klangs 46 times - it's 6:21 - this is the wake-up call - GET OUT OF BED YOU LAZY SHITS - what can we do but obey? And now a string of firecrackers down the street, and the usual dogs, etc. These klangy bells, we heard them yesterday early, Easter morning, but not before? How long will they go on here? Now it's 6:33 and 38 more klangs. What's the pattern?

Monday night, late

This was a rest day. Some sort of breakfast somewhere; an OK lunch at Cafe El Viejo; lay around all day and enter these journal notes; great chicken dinners at Cafe Panchoy; return and collapse. What we saw in the evening streets suggests that, ever outside Semana Santa (Holy Week), every Panza Verde (Antiguans, remember?) loves to bustle & hustle & rustle after dark. Very lively town.

Tuesday 22 April 2003

More early extended klanging bells at roughly 12-minute irregular intervals after 6AM. More firecrackers in the street. Is this how Antigua awakens after Easter? Good thing we're leaving in a couple days. Well, we'd better see some museums (and post these journal notes online) today. But we're still taking it easy.

Yup, a slow day, but our feet still hurt, and rightfully so. We strode lethargically to the Plaza (nearly depopulated) and finally gained admittance to the ominous Museo de Santiago in the Ayuntamiento or Town Hall, an old Spanish fortress. (Santiago was the old name for Antigua.) Another squirty-titted-nymph fountain - dissassembled and dry now - and many cannons, swords, blunderbusses, imperial uniforms, portraits of imperial rulers and battles, implements of torture and imprisonment, and photos of processions and vigils (stationary processions). Next door is the Museo del Libro Antiguo but we can't read archaic Spanish, so we passed on it.

San Carlos University

Staying in the shade of stately arched columnades, we made our way all the way around the Plaza and past the Cathedral and old Tridentino Seminary (long subdivided into apartments) to the Moorish courtyard and ornate cloisters of old San Carlos University, first built in 1676, since 1936 housing the stupendous Museum of Colonial Art.

The museum is filled with finely-crafted art and artifacts of the Spanish-imperial era. Some of the paintings should be famous, and are, especially those by the Mexicans Cabrera, de Correa and de Villalpando, and the great Guatemalan artist Thomas de Merlo. Elizabeth Bell says, "Guatemalan colonial sculpture was the finest in Spanish America." The work displayed here is stunning.

An archivist beaconed us in to look around a gloomy restoration workshop, where slashed and darkened masterpieces are slowly being brought back to life. (No government support here - this work is entirely privately funded.) Chris Carter's new mother-in-law Kathé Dengo does such restorations of sculptural pieces - all of which is an immense amount of work. As for restoring buildings - well, there's always another earthquake, eh?

Tuesday Falls Apart

We returned to Doña Luisa's for a tidy and airy lunch, then back to the ArtInTheAmericas gallery where we decided against buying that Xiap painting - not that one, not at that price, not now. Then back to Santo Domingo (the ***** hotel) where we finally saw the church and private museums - world-class displays. Finally to the famous Fonda de la Calle Real for a so-so dinner punctuated by vendors and beggers - we won't be back. Finally we returned to the Posada to shower and collapse and snore.

Wednesday 23 April 2003

Let me expand a little on yesterday's notes, and apologize for my inadequate descriptive style. First the latter: You may have noted that I often just refer to the Plaza or La Arca or La Merced Church without telling you what that place actually looks like, its size and features, etc. That's because 1) I'm lazy, 2) better descriptions than I can pen are to be found in guidebooks and online, 3) I may post pictures one of these days, and 4) I'm lazy.

Back to Tuesday:

MUSEUM: Old San Carlos University is a vast low columnaded compound adjacent to what appear to be equally huge huge piles of rubble, some of which ARE and may be restored, others of which AREN'T and are now private housing. The large rooms Museo in San Carlos are filled with paintings and sculptures, mostly large, that adorned Antigua's religious edifices back when Antigua rules 1/3 of Spanish America, when Antigua was a world center of baroque art, when Antigua ROCKED. The set of four huge (12'x32' ??) PASSION canvases, and another passion canvas shaped to sweep over an entry arch, are IMHO the equal of any similar European masterpiece.

LUNCH: When our party was taken to Doña Luisa's for lunch back on 10 April, we were ensconsed in one of the many semi-private rooms along an upstairs passage extending back over two courtyards. But now when we entered past the bakeshop and huge message-board, we eschewed the downstairs garden tables and climbed the steep art-lined stairway to the upper level. We entered the main room, the old livingroom now featuring full-wall murals at either end (men's work to the east, women's in the west) and sat at a small table beside an open balcony door overlooking the bustle of Antigua's heart. A slight breeze dropping off the back of the Cathedral barely chilled our coffee and tea.

ART: We carefully considered the painting by Genero Xiap, a self-taught young peasant from Zunil (near Xela) who'd rendered the church-and-volcano-dominated scene of his village with such striking fine-art subtelty. His style was perhaps influenced by Van Gogh or the Chinese yet remained very individualistic, perhaps the most personal I've yet seen in local artists. We're told his work is popular with foreigners, and this sole remaining piece had been in the gallery for a year. Perhaps when we get to Zunil we'll see others of his paintings, even better than this, for less money? That's what we're gambling on.

HISTORY: For our fourth and final foray to Santo Domingo, the block-sized convento that's being fully restored both as a luxury hotel and a public-access monument, we toured the archaeological spaces now being opened and displayed and reconstructed, and the gorgeous museum spaces. The Mayan and Colonial holy pieces shown there are stunning, the displays are world-class, and the project is endless. More significant sites are being continuously (and accidentally) found, such as a tremendous painted and sculpted Calvary tableau discovered when a heavy load broke through the roof of a hidden crypt.

DINNER: Do I really want to recall our dinner at La Fonda de la Calle Real, just off the Plaza? The food was tolerable, pleasant enough, although not as tasty or copious as the previous night's similar offerings at Cafe Panchoy. La Fonda was made 'famous' by Bill Clinton's 2000 visit. But he didn't have our table at a sidewalk-level doorway.

We watched the street scene close-up, laughed away most of the necklace- and fabric- and hat-vendors. But then a young boy came begging for food. I gave him a tamale, one of the few items left uneaten. And then a Maya fabric seller stuck to us, only leaving when the manager appeared. As we walked homeward, she cursed us viciously for not buying her redundant wares. O well...

Wednesday - early morning

So now it's Wednesday morning, our final day to explore Antigua. We'll go look at the edifices in the southeast quarter. I'll walk over by El Mercado (west side) for rum and Cuban cigars to enjoy beside Lake Atitlán tomorrow evening. Tomorrow morning we'll pack leisurely, shuttle away, and start Phase III.

AFTERNOON: Today we stomped all the way down 5a Avenida to the luxurious quiet area, to Méson Panza Verde so Maureen could see that tempting wonderland. We then wandered around the southeast past various decayed colonial splendors and eventually to the San Francisco temple complex with its miraculous coves and calm interior. We passed numerous saints' sites as we returned to Casa la Conda - Cafe Contessa for a calm lunch, then crawled back to our Posada to rest Maureen's tired feet. I continued to stomp around the west side for some internetting and the above-mentioned sinful purchases.

EVENING: (If I mention STOMPING a lot, that's because I/we did so much of it.) I stomped over to the last great nearby ruins, San Jeronimo and La Recoleccion. Pretty great, pretty ruinous, both on the northern outskirts of the El Mercado & bus station district at the edge of town, the edge of exurban poverty. A rather grim stroll, not to be repeated.

Then we walked down to the marvelous Cafe Gaia for a fine Cuban-style feed and were urged to visit the Petén and Coban, to see Tikal and other huge Mayan lowland sites. (Well hell YES we'll go, it's just a matter of WHEN - like, after we've taken anti-malarials, but not now.) Then back to the posada to shower and read and sleep and dream.

Thursday 24 April 2003

Before dawn: roosters cawing all night; a string of firecrackers in the street; few trucks. 6:04 AM: 71 clangs. 6:18 AM: 74 clangs, roughly 2 per second but with some hesitations and misfires. La Merced has a really enthusiastic bell-whacker today. 6:31 AM: 63 clangs. Maybe he's getting tired. 7:10 AM: no more clangs. Maybe he's worn out. 7:31 AM: 67 clangs. Nothing can stop him. NOTHING!!!

Before noon: we went next door to Fernando's Kaffee for our final fine breakfast here for a month. We noted our favorite eateries by the number of willing or planned returns: 4+ for Fernando's, 3+ for Casa la Conde and Cafe Gaia and Cafe La Fuente and Rainbow Reading Room. We returned upstairs to rest and pack. Meanwhile a political rally seems to be taking place nearby, with reiterative speakers on bullhorns, repetitive honking car-truck horns, occasional explosions. I think we'll wait here for the shuttle, skip the excitement. That seems prudent, eh?