You'd love it here in Antigua. Everything is built so beautifully, from
the heavy wooden doors with old wought iron bolts and reinforcements to
the cobblestone streets and colonial period courtyards filled with lush
green hanging plants. The weather must go from hot and dry to intense
rain with puddles staying over night as all the stonework is worn and
rough with tiny holes and the streets are bumpy with shallow holes. The
decorations of several hundred years ago look like they were built for
this climate, bold, clear geometric patterns and iconographic
representations of faces and animals and leaves adorn all the
architecture and give the whole place a simple magisty.
Right now the weather is hot and the air thick but moving, it's fresh, at least in the shade which there is lots of and the morning clouds have disapated to reveal a deep blue sky. I woke up with the calls of the roosters - they must live somewhere in the mysterious terraces that surround the countless courtyards of this Old City. Going out to find some food and get my bearings I walked around the streets surrounding the central Park - an ornamental garden of wide stone pathes, benches and a grand number of great trees filled with calling birds. The locals passing by wishing me and one another 'Buenas dias' in their musical latino voices were an eclectic mix of workers, traders and old folk. In one of the street off the square, peolple of - at least - a Mayan aspect were setting up stalls (I don't know how to clasify someone as Mayan or not but they looked Mayan to me, short, smooth chocolaty skin with straight black hair, gently laying out coloured woven cloths or arranging street level exhibitions of small wooden carvings, babies tied to mothers waists and small children giggling as they got involved in the daily work.
By 7:30 I'd walked half the streets of the central area and was easily encouraged into a cafe resteraunt for some breakfast. Orange, yellow, yokey eggs scrambled with green chillies and chorizo. Delicious, refried, black beans, sour cream, a hunk of white, salty crumbley cheese and a small bowl of sweet syrupy plateno. Oh plus a bowl of three different soft breads and delicious black coffee fresh from the plantations. The kinda breakfast which reequires you to take a little break part way through, and without the coffee would send you straight to sleep. With one meal like a day, I thought, no other meal would be needed.
Since then I've been to the bank to withdraw money, armed guards and metal detectors mixed with good manners, slow moving queues in a sun drentched courtyard and one of those visa machines where they slide the plastic slider across the card to print an impression of it onto carbon-copy paper.
Then I rolled a five and a six and that's when things got really interesting ;)
Expect some more meso-american drawings from Dog soon.
Wishing that you all go well.
Right now the weather is hot and the air thick but moving, it's fresh, at least in the shade which there is lots of and the morning clouds have disapated to reveal a deep blue sky. I woke up with the calls of the roosters - they must live somewhere in the mysterious terraces that surround the countless courtyards of this Old City. Going out to find some food and get my bearings I walked around the streets surrounding the central Park - an ornamental garden of wide stone pathes, benches and a grand number of great trees filled with calling birds. The locals passing by wishing me and one another 'Buenas dias' in their musical latino voices were an eclectic mix of workers, traders and old folk. In one of the street off the square, peolple of - at least - a Mayan aspect were setting up stalls (I don't know how to clasify someone as Mayan or not but they looked Mayan to me, short, smooth chocolaty skin with straight black hair, gently laying out coloured woven cloths or arranging street level exhibitions of small wooden carvings, babies tied to mothers waists and small children giggling as they got involved in the daily work.
By 7:30 I'd walked half the streets of the central area and was easily encouraged into a cafe resteraunt for some breakfast. Orange, yellow, yokey eggs scrambled with green chillies and chorizo. Delicious, refried, black beans, sour cream, a hunk of white, salty crumbley cheese and a small bowl of sweet syrupy plateno. Oh plus a bowl of three different soft breads and delicious black coffee fresh from the plantations. The kinda breakfast which reequires you to take a little break part way through, and without the coffee would send you straight to sleep. With one meal like a day, I thought, no other meal would be needed.
Since then I've been to the bank to withdraw money, armed guards and metal detectors mixed with good manners, slow moving queues in a sun drentched courtyard and one of those visa machines where they slide the plastic slider across the card to print an impression of it onto carbon-copy paper.
Then I rolled a five and a six and that's when things got really interesting ;)
Expect some more meso-american drawings from Dog soon.
Wishing that you all go well.