Ciudad Vieja was established as the second capital of Guatemala after the Spanish were encouraged by an indigenous uprising. The name, Ciudad Vieja, means “old city,” which is interesting, because the Spanish moved the capital to La Antigua de Guatemala, which means “The old Guatemala,” after the original Ciudad Vieja was lost under a massive mud slide. By the way, the “new” Guatemala (City) is the current capital. The current church in Ciudad Vieja was obviously built after that massive mud slide, since some guidebooks note that only a single tree is left standing of the original town. Here's a photo of the town clocktower.
Enough for that digression. We decided to walk to the church (we'll never do that again), which turned out to be quite a distance through Ciudad Vieja. The people we met were very pleasant and smiled to see us, as we were the only gringos around. We arrived at the church about 10:45 a.m. and were pleased to find out that there was an 11:00 a.m. Mass. Our backup plan, had there not been an 11:00 a.m. Mass was to go on the La Antigua, where we could have attended the noon Mass at San Francisco el Grande.
The church is beautiful and the people we met were very welcoming. When the Mass started, we were amazed to see fourteen (14) altar servers process in, followed by six or seven Eucharistic ministers and two lectors, one being a boy. The priest followed this parade in visiting with the congregation all the way.
The music was provided by a slightly too loud Clavicord with three miked singers. Actually, they did a fairly good job and at least on one of the sung Mass parts, we found that we could sing along. We found the Mass very easy to follow, as the priest and the lectors spoke very clearly. We didn't get much of the sermon, because of our limited Spanish, but did enjoy his practice of getting active feedback from his congregation. As we left the church, we knew we would be back.
Walking down to the highway, not far from the church, we waited for the next available chicken bus to La Antigua, which soon arrived. There was a detour prior to arriving at our normal drop-off spot and we ended up getting off the bus at the terminal, behind the mercado.
We immediately went to Pollo Campero for dessert (a soft-serve ice cream cone), but more so for access to clean restrooms and on the sidewalk stopped to listen to a family band.
From Pollo, we went to our favorite comedor for another helping of Chicken Pepian for only Q20 ($2.40) each.
After lunch, we went back to the terminal and found a chicken bus heading to Jocotenango, a village on the north side of La Antigua. We got off at Jocotenango's Parque Central and saw a depiction of the official village vegetable
and started following the signs to the Mariposario, a butterfly garden. On our way, we saw a woman drying clothes on top of her house
and the entrance to a gated community, just across the street.
Just when we were about to give up, we found it and immediately saw a bus identical to the one we had been riding drive right past it. Oh, well. We needed the exercise.
We were the only visitors to the Mariposario, which had a Q40 ($4.80) entrance fee per person, but the attendant gave us a fairly complete and understandable explanation of the stages in a butterfly's life in Spanish.
It felt good to know, once again, that we were understanding Spanish, even if it was “más despacio” (more slowly). After the initial lecture, the attendant led us into the butterfly enclosure, a large net tent filled with plants that attract and/or feed butterflies.
We spent about an hour trying to take photographs of mainly non-cooperative butterflies.
Often, before we could snap the photo, they would be gone.
There were some lovely flowers in the enclosure,
Including this flowering banana tree.
One brave butterfly even decided to become my buddy.
After leaving the Mariposario, we went out to the street and waited, with some locals, for the next chicken bus to arrive. As we had noted before, it was on the same route as the bus that had brought us to Jocotenango. It soon returned us to the terminal in La Antigua.
We've gotten into the practice of eating supper in La Antigua when we're there at or after 4:00 p.m. Since it was only 3:30 p.m., we decided to walk over to El Centro de Formación de la Cooperación Española, where we could sit in the shade in one of their patios and read some Spanish books we had brought with us.
After 4:00 p.m., we headed over to that famous Guatemalan restaurant, McDonalds, and had one of their combos. Once again, although I had a winning scratch-off coupon, I didn't win a free round-trip to South Africa for the World Cup (fútbol). Oh, well. Better luck next time.
We had heard a band playing earlier and had seen men, both young and old, dressed in purple robes, but had not made the connection. As we were heading for a bus back to our apartment, we saw one of the Lenten processions with the large wooden float that are carried on the shoulders of a whole bunch (hows that for precision) of men, while a band plays religious hymns. Unfortunately, it was about two blocks away from us and the sidewalks were packed, so we decided to try to catch one of these processions next weekend.
Because of the processions, the bus routes were all changed up and some buses were delayed. We finally got a bus supposedly heading for Alotenango, but were surprised when it turned around in Ciudad Vieja and had everyone exit. I guess I should have known something like this was going to happen, when the ayudante hadn't charged me as much as I had expected him to do.
We walked the remainder of the way back to our apartment and spent the rest of our evening relaxing, watching television, working on our blogs and reading. Unfortunantly, our Internet connection was flaky, so, if you haven't gotten this installment of my blog, that's the reason.
Just as I was going to save this entry, we heard a very loud, roaring noise and felt vibration. We looked out our windows and didn't see anything. I got our front door key and opened the front door to look out and saw nothing. When I got back upstairs, our neighbor Jackie was talking with Linda and told us that the sound we heard was Volcan Fuego. We had seen it smoking during the past three weeks, but had not yet heard or felt it belch. Now we have. Unfortunately, because of cloud cover, it's impossible to see anything. I'll let you know if we can see anything tomorrow. Note, for family especially, we are far enough away from Volcan Fuego so as not to be in any danger from it, however, related earthquakes could be a different story.
It appears that we aren't the only ones to be concerned about last night's belch from Volcan Fuego. Here is a link to a blog maintained by our downstairs neighbor, Mark, in which he comments on last night's noise: .
We've been smelling something that seems to be burning during the past week. It's very likely that we have been smelling "Fragrance de Fuego." We'll keep you updates, should anything else occur.
