Flight

After breakfast our guide offered to take any who wished to see some nearby villages. These turned out to be more like barrios or neighborhoods of the city of Antigua, rather than rural villages. Along the way, the guide had the bus stop to celebrate the birthday of one of our group members in traditional Guatemalan fashion -- with a very large string of powerful firecrackers!

The birthday celebration: Before

After (yes, our guide survived -- he merely ran quickly)

In the first barrio, we visited the general hospital, which treats Guatemalans who do not have private health insurance (most of the population). The waiting room was crowded, and there were even more people (mostly family members) waiting outside.

A national hospital, free for all.

Nothing looked very advanced, and there was a “funeraria” (undertaker) right across the street -- an ominous sign! There were also several “pharmacias” (pharmacies) nearby, as the national health care system often doesn’t include medications, even for in-patients in the hospital, so family members go down the street to buy prescribed drugs and then bring them back to the hospital to be administered. There is a pharmacy in the hospital, but shopping around can mean getting a better price on the medication your loved one needs.

Crowded waiting room.

Many family members wait outside, including this little girl and her dad.

We visited an “art school” where a woman and her husband make almost nothing but various ceramic birds, fired, and then painted in bright colors. The studio and shop doubled as the family garage, with both a car and motorcycle parked inside. The gasoline smell was so strong that we were glad no one lit a match. We weren’t much interested in buying birds (though some in our group seem to have a compulsion to buy something(s) every time we stop!) and we needed to get outside for some fresh air.

Clay birds at the "art school."

Down the street we visited a very pretty little church that had been reconstructed after being completely destroyed in the 1976 earthquake. Though in traditional style, it was quite new. The main feature was a life-sized “dead Jesus in a glass box.” The statue, wrapped in a white shroud but with head and feet exposed, is above the main altar. We were told that on Good Friday the glass box is removed and taken on a long procession throughout Antiqua, which lasts from 3:30 in the afternoon until midnight. It was interesting, however, that this was very similar to the statue we had seen in the shaman’s house in Attitlan.

Note the glass box above the altar.

From there we went on to another barrio, and this turned out to be the Hector Heritage Tour -- our guide’s boyhood home, the church in which he was baptized, the liquor store run by his sister, his grandniece (very cute -- about the same age as Harper, our own granddaughter), his daughter’s home (exterior only), etc.

Hector's neighborhood church.

Hector with his grandniece.

We returned to the hotel a little after 11 a.m. and had time before our 1 p.m. lunch for some more walking around the city. We got into some areas we hadn’t been before, bought some snacks for the evening in a couple bakeries, and visited a few high-end art galleries where we saw some beautiful things, and even bought one small and inexpensive item for our house. On the way back to the hotel we visited a church only a block away that we had not previously noted. It, too, had a life-sized dead Jesus in a glass box (it seems to be a thing around here). This one was only in a loincloth with the crown of thorns still intact, and a good deal of blood and gore around the wounds.

Yet another dead Jesus in a glass casket.

Another of Antigua's many churches.

After lunch at the hotel we boarded the bus for a 90 minute or so drive to the Guatemala City airport. This airport, though small (probably about the size of the Des Moines airport), has more duty-free shops than Heathrow. Several were offering samples of the local rum, and we went from shop to shop, scoring three samples apiece. No one else in our group seemed to know this trick.

The plane was a twin engine turbo-prop seating 48 people. It was smoother and quieter than I would have predicted. Even though it was only a one hour domestic flight, we were served a snack and a small sandwich, along with a soft drink -- even followed by an after dinner mint! This was unexpected, but we were glad we had our bakery pastries anyway, to make a full meal.

Arriving at Flores, an even smaller airport, the most notable feature was the humidity, which felt like Iowa in July to us, but felt quite oppressive to some members of our group from Arizona or California. The bus driver here was much less personable and energetic than the one we left behind, so it took awhile for him to get around to loading our baggage. Because our hotel is out in the jungle and charges exorbitant prices for everything, our guide had us stop at the Guatemalan equivalent of a QuikShop to stock up on water, beer, and snacks. We already had plenty of water (not sure what other group members have been doing with all the free water from previous hotels, as it has been far too much for us to drink) but we got a few 50 cent beers.

The highway to the hotel went from awful (many deep potholes) to terrible (bumpy gravel) but we arrived by 9 p.m., and after waiting longer than usual for our luggage to be delivered, got ready for bed in anticipation of a long day tomorrow.