Antigua, Guatemala

We finally made it into Guatemala! Although we missed most of it due to me having COVID, we didn’t want to have to skip it entirely. As one of our favourite towns from our last visit to Guatemala, Antigua, is so close to the border with El Salvador we decided to make the short trip.

We spent our first afternoon nosing around the town, Guatemala is famous for its jade and we decided to have a window shop in the jewelers. Predictably the ‘window’ shopping became actual shopping and we both spent far too much on jade rings.

We also brought some necklaces with our Mayan birth animal on. We don’t really buy into the whole birthday dictating your personality and more just wanted a cool momento but we had to admit the description did match us quite well.. Grace is a bee, very organised but quick to anger. I am a spider, keen on learning and defending the weak but tight with money ?

After making our purchases we decided to track down our favourite restaurant that we visited the last time we were here, it was honestly one of the tastiest meals we had while traveling. Although simple food, chicken roasted over a fire with garlic potatoes and salad, it is done to perfection. It also comes with tortillas and a drink (no idea what of, but it’s tasty and refillable) for £3.50. We ate there everyday for all three days we were there.

Grace happy her hunt for her favourite restaurant was a success
Hand made Tortillas

The rest of the afternoon we spent wandering about the town.

Seeing as we’d already done the main attractions in Antigua the last time we visited, we decided to try some of the more obscure attractions this time. So on our second day we decided to hike through a national park above the city to a beautiful view point. It was so obscure as an attraction that our Uber driver had never been there before and seemed very confused as to why we would want to be dropped off at them end of a dirt road at the base of a huge hill and kept asking us if we were sure this was right and if we were going to be okay.

The hill we would climb

It was reportedly an easy hike, but myself and Grace definitely disagree. We’re not sure if it was the hot weather or the altitude but the hour long hike upwards to the view point was a hard and sweaty one. We had to limit ourselves to 20 second breaks, just enough to slow our breathing, or we would have taken most of the day to reach the top. It was a beautiful walk though, we saw woodpecker’s and beautiful little birds that looked black when still, but we’re a radiant blue when the sun hit them in flight. We also saw two rainbow coloured moths, which a friend who is a moth and insect enthusiast has since told me are either new to science or very very rare. So I present to you the Alice moths ??

Once we made it to the top we had to pay a small entrance fee to locals to access the view point. We paid ~40p to a man with a hook for a hand, wondering what we were in for but the view point was really cool!

A knackered me at the end of the hike

After traipsing down the hill again, which was almost as hard as the way up and more of a controlled skid, we had a cool shower and then headed into town for the evening to meet up with Santi, Tod and Tom who we’ve met several times in Mexico. We went to a few cool bars including one Irish bar where we got chatting to the owner. He was teasing us that he had moved to the other side of the world to get away from the English and we’d followed him here. He treated us to his home made scotch eggs followed by a more regional shot of tequila. We continued on to more bars and eventually a local club until the early hours.

The next morning Grace felt really ill and kept throwing up, I gave her very little sympathy believing it was just a hang over but when she was still throwing up at 8pm that evening it was clear it was probably something more. We stayed in all day and unfortunately missed saying goodbye to the boys before they headed back into Mexico, but Grace was just too ill go out in public and I don’t think I’d live it down if she keeled over while I was supposed to be looking after her. Finally the next morning she was starting to feel better and passed on her supply of snacks and painkillers to the girl in the bed next to us who had started to show the same symptoms as Grace, clearly something was going around.

We decided to take it easy on our last day and signed up for a ‘bean to bar’ chocolate course. We learnt about the cacao tree and got to gut out the cocoa beans from the fruit and try them fresh, the pulp around the beans is lovely but the seed themselves are very bitter. Our guide explained how the beans were fermented with banana leaves and then left to dry out, which can take a few weeks. We were then given pre fermented and dried beans, (as we didn’t fancy the 3-6 week wait for one bar of chocolate) which we roasted and de-shelled before grinding them into a paste. The paste was then melted and sugar and milk added ready to pour into our chocolate bar.

While our bar was cooling in a fridge we also got to try making traditional hot chocolate drinks. We tried the spicy drink the Mayans drank, made with the Coco paste, honey and chili. It was quite nice and the spice actually really worked well with the chocolate. Spanish invaders learned how to make the drink from the Mayans and both groups discarded the waste shells from the Coco beans. However Spanish slaves used to use these to make a tea, which we also got to try, the tea was actually really light but a little bitter. We also tried the drink made for European royalty from imported Coco, with milk and cloves, this was also very tasty and smooth. I think a combination of milk coca and chili would have been my favourite of the lot.

It was a fun afternoon and we got two bars of chocolate from it, although someone ate half of Grace’s when she left it in the hostel fridge so that was less fun.

Next we’re moving back into El Salvador, tell you all about it soon, love Alice xx

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