World Guatemala Sacatepéquez Antigua

Ruddles' Travels

Antigua Guatemala Feb 2, 2011

Our next port of call was Antigua – the old capital of Guatemala. Built under spanish colonial rule, it is a beautiful and graceful city, nothing like the current capital, Guatemala City, which we drove though on our journey here. This was a noisy, dirty, smelly, vast sprawl of urban development. We were happy to pass on through. Antigua is clean, bright, well laid out, and chock full of churches. Unfortunately the city suffered various earthquakes and volcano eruptions (it is close to three), and many of the original buildings have been left exactly as they were after the earthquake. So you can wander round a roofless cathedral, with columns and some arches intact, and great big chunks of masonry lying around all over the place. There is also a massive market here, where we spent a long afternoon browsing! The Parque Central is the place to go for people watching – courting couples, inevitable tourists, local people trying to sell their wares, kids coming out of school, and so it goes on. You could easily spend a day here. We spent a coupe of days in Antigua, doing very little, still waiting for Les to get the better of his Dengue Fever.

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