Wednesday Dec. 27, 2006
I looked forward to arriving in Antigua where I was going to live with a local family as part of the Spanish classes I'd enrolled in. It was a beautiful town with old cobblestone streets, a huge market where you can buy almost anything, great bakeries and restaurants, oodles of very old and impressive partially crumbled/rebuilt cathedrals (earthquakes), and scenic views down most streets (it's surrounded by three volcanoes). People can be seen everywhere carrying the most surprising items on their head. Of course all these items went on the roof of the overpacked but colorfully adorned Chicken busses. At one point on the highway I saw a man walk along the roof of one of these busses and down the ladder on the back and into the rear door - all while I was riding behind him.
The market here is smaller than the famous Thursday and Sunday market of Chichicastenango, but it runs everyday and is still very large. There are separate sections for the locals and the tourists (which is inside a nicer building and much more structured) and even a very large section specifically for fireworks and firecrackers. The brightly colored sawdust in the picture below is for decoration under a nativity scene.
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I thought it would be great to spend Christmas with a local family and experience their traditions first-hand. Unfortunately, my "family" consisted of a single woman with a small dog in a simple home on the edge of town without much family (or anything else for that matter). So we spent Christmas eve at her Aunt's home for a traditional tomale dinner (corn meal with a small piece of unidentified meat and a little tomatoe sauce all on a banana leaf) served with a slice of plain unbuttered bread, a glass of wine and a cup of warm chunky fruit drink. Her family was very kind and graciously included me in what little they had. It was especially nice to see them place baby Jesus in the manager of the small but yet laboriously detailed nativity scene in one corner of the kitchen at midnight with a prayer and then dinner followed by the opening of a single small gift for each person from under the tree.
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I'd planned to do a full service on Buzz here, because I'd heard that Guatemala City (only 64 kms away) was a good place for parts. Unfortunately, I had to come through the city to get to Antigua and I managed to get lost several times turning the average 45 minute ride into a 3-1/2 hour headache. I had seen and heard enough about the city to realize that I was definitely not going back there alone on my bike. I hired a shuttle van and driver for $50 US for a day to visit three businesses (even he got lost twice). With the whole trip lasting seven hours it was a good deal. Surprisingly, I managed to get all the parts I needed from the Suzuki dealer and a great deal on my favorite rear tire (Metzler Tourance) from the BWM dealer. But with 13,500 kms on my existing rear tire it's not quite worn out so I'll carry the new one with me until it needs to be changed - possibly in Costa Rica. I'd also been experiencing an overheating problem caused by the thermo switch occasionally not turning the fan on, so I installed a manual override switch.
I ended up only taking one week of Spanish class because the urge to roll was just too great to stay there any longer. But before I left I took an evening hiking trip up the active volcano Pacaya where I watched (and felt) the molten liquid flow through cracks in the hardened lava under my feet. I watched as another volcano across the valley plumed small puffs of smoke and the sun set from above the clouds. On the 1-1/2 hour ride back to town in our shuttle bus along a busy two-lane highway I watched in shock as large trucks floated freely around the corners between the two lanes of the busy highway at night, simply pushing other vehicles out of the way.
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