We took a walking tour of La Antigua offered by Elizabeth Bell of Antigua Tours; she moved with her parents from Palo Alto, CA to La Antigua when she was 14 years old. She provided some neat anthropological and archaeological context to some of the things we saw around town, but US$20/person is a bit steep (IMHO).

We started out in Parque Central, went to City Hall, saw a church and some ruins, and walked around town.

One of the stops on the tour was a jade factory, where we learned that there are two types of jade in the world, mineralogically completely unrelated to each other: jadeite and nephrite. Jade is formed by tectonic plates smashing against each other. Guatemala is one of the principal sources in the world of jadeite, and not coincidentally has suffered from earthquakes. La Antigua used to be the capital city of Guatemala until it was destroyed by earthquake in 1775.

That evening we went to the rehearsal dinner at La Casa de la Fonda Real:

We left San Francisco around midnight Thursday night / Friday morning. This was my first-ever red-eye flight. Normally I read on the plane, but for some reason I slept on this flight.

We arrived in Guatemala City later that morning. The international airport there is still being built. What struck me immediately was a similarity to something I noticed on an earlier trip to Bangalore: human labor is very cheap. The airport was filled with an army of people with floor mops and brooms keeping the place immaculately spotless. One could probably have eaten off the floor of the restrooms and suffered no ill effects.

We took an hour-long bus ride to Antigua, dropped off our bags at the Casa Santo Domingo and went into town to exchange some currency and look at some of the buildings.

I’m not sure whether the banks or jewelry stores in town have alarm systems; instead, each bank had a few men with shotguns and handguns guarding the doors. It was fun “shopping around” for the best exchange rate; however, my plans for currency trading were nullified by the fact that none of the banks would do any buy-backs of Guatemalan Quetzales. We found a bank offering an exchange rate of Q7.6/US$1. I would later learn upon return to the States that it is probably better to purchase foreign currency at home a few weeks beforehand (Wells Fargo purchased my leftover currency at a rate of Q8/US$1).

The Casa Santo Domingo is on the grounds of what used to be a monastery. Today it is a 5-star hotel with a few museums, crypts (with real human remains in them), manicured landscaping, and lots of museum-like artwork.

But even a 5-star hotel is subject to the heat and 100% humidity. The landscaping and windows keep the rooms from getting too hot (no air conditioning), but the humidity renders things like the carpeting with a perpetual semi-damp feeling. The Casa Santo Domingo is a very nice hotel, but there are much better deals to be had in town (more on that in a later post). The hotel restaurant had decent but over-priced food: not bad, but nothing special.

Later that night we met up with other wedding guests (and the wedding couple!) for dinner at a restaurant in town:

Antigua is a name shared by two popular destinations: a Caribbean island, and a town in the central mountains of Guatemala.

Some comparisons:

I will soon post my own pictures. For now, enjoy the Pepsi Mary: