Arriving in Guatemala – La Buena Vista del Antigua

Too much cafeine?

 ”Definitely.” answered the shap, “but lovin’ every minute of it” he said as he gazed up to the old man who handed him a piece of paper, which he read for a change, because he fealt that some of this useless reading material that he recieves from all the people in the small towns that he visits, might actually be worth paying attention to. And it sure was…

But first, let me hand you out the lowdown as to the last 2 weeks: I arrived at “di eapoat” in the capital, Guatemala city, and wasted no time in taking a shuttle bus to Antigua – the old mayan capital which was once destroyed by an earth quake and was then rebuilt. And they sure did a great job at it – the city is beautiful. It has the usual 90-degrees-streets-avenues structure, the houses in every block are “glued” together and form a real block of cement, but each house is colored differently, and all the roads are paved from cobble stone.

Over the next few days I started hanging arround in town, looking for a spanish school and some salsa (yes, salsa. yes, me. YES, I KNOW – THE SHAP. DANCING SALSA!!!) classes as well. I climbed the Pacaya volcano, where I met the members of the Pacaya Volcano Club (the PVC) – Quinn, Landon, Craig, Kate (from the states), Hugo (Holland) and Victor (Ireland). Each of us came on his own, and I met all of them over the next few days. The volcano itself was magnificent – the view walking up their was great, and we got to stand about 5 meters away from flowing lava – quite the hot rush. Along with Henia, a girl from Israel who I met the day after, me and Quinn had some hard drinking nights ahead of us, one of them fueled by the son of the owner of the Chicago White Sox. I wonder if any of the baseball players that struck out that night, or the fans that payed to see him do it, knew that they were buying me vodka by doing so. Worth mentioning was also the hike to the cross – a point from which we saw a nice view of the whole city.

The days came and went – spanish classes to help fuel me up for the monthes to come, with a good basic knowledge to start from, salsa classes in which I actually excelled and was the teacher´s favorite, alcohol consumption, skype talks with the lot of you – my beloved friends and family, and well, that´s about that. Have I left something out?

Sure f$%&in have! A rumour was going on around the continent that one of the members of Buena Visat social club was touring in Antigua. I first heard about it in Costa Rica, in Manuel Antonio, to be exeact. The closer I got to Antigua, and in the town itself, I heard more and more of this artist, who played on a band that I don´t really know to much about. Well, I looked at that paper which the old man gave me, after throwing down a burrito and a beer for lunch (the beer was a key factor in the success that I had dancing!!), and it said that the show was that same night, in a place which turned out to be the salsa school… and boy, was it worth it. They were great, it was free, and I went to see them the following night too. Just for the sake of my readers having the actual details – it turns out that the band´s name is Buena Vista de Corazon (good view from the heart), and that the leader is the son of a member from the original group – but he used to play with them at some point of time. But who cares? The music they play is all that matters.

 Two anecdotes, to finish up. The first one, is that the beauty of Antigua could be also told about by any of the “Survivor Guatemala” contestants who won a reward and got to visit it (Gal – I hope that you still have these episodes, because I might want to check them out again). The second is the spanish word for thank you – gracias. For some unknown reason, I can´t stop saying it without doing an immitation of Poli from the gashash as Sergio Constansa in Givat Halfon, and the result actually sounds more like “agratsia!!”.

Next up – lake Atitlan, where you´ll hear about small villages, small bicycles and a very large lake. Happy new year to all