Wonderful Antigua, Guatemala

We were sad to leave the beautiful Lake Atitlan and the cheap, friendly, indigenous town of San Pedro. Everyone there is incredibly friendly, always a "buenos dias" or "hola" from everyone you pass on the street. It was fun to hear them speaking the indigenous language and see all the women wearing more traditional clothing.

Yesterday morning in San Pedro we awoke to fireworks and really bad music outside our hotel at 5:30am. We ended up staying awake suffering to the music until about 7am, when it was time to get up and get breakfast before catching our directo shuttle to the colonial city of Antigua, Guatemala. We were happy to make it there in a little over 3 hours. When we arrived we lucked out to get the last room in our first choice hotel, unfortunately, some other folks we met ended up walking around for a few hours before finding something decent in the budget price range. Our room is pretty nice for about $15 per night with private bathroom and simple but nice decor. There is some sort of cultural festival taking place this week and the town is packed with tourists, especially gringos.

Anyways, Antigua is beautiful, probably one of the sweetest towns we have been to so far. Cobblestone streets, very colorful colonial buildings, flowers everywhere, tons of churches, most of which are abandoned because they were destroyed in previous earthquakes, and the volcano Agua for scenery. Antigua used to be the capital city of Guatemala, but after several earthquakes, destoying many important parts of the city, the capital was moved to nearby Guatemala City in the late 1700s.

Since there is a festival going on, there is nightly music and dance on the plaza. Last night it was dance and music from Panama.

Today we plan on relaxing since it is Sunday, catching up on email, doing laundry, and maybe renting bikes for an hour or so. Then we will go to see jazz later this afternoon on the square. We will hike Pacaya volcano tomorrow, but have to decide whether we take an early morning tour (6am) for good clear views, or the afternoon/evening tour to try to get a good glimpse of the bright orange lava in the night.