Once in La Antigua, we headed over to McDonalds for a quick lunch. Following lunch, we headed over to the mercado to continue our hopeless search for the elusive dining ware. We also tried a number of shops along Alameda Santa Lucia, the main road that runs past the mercado, to no avail.
After a consolatory soft-serve ice cream at Pollo, we decided to follow the directions given in my Rough Guide to Guatemala and walk to San Felipe de Jesus. On the way, we stopped in the park in front of La Merced to rest and watch the crowd. Afterwards, we toured the monastery attached to La Merced for a Q5 admission fee (60 cents). The ruins are in excellent shape and within the central courtyard, there is a massive and well preserved fountain, much like the one at San Francisco El Grande.
From the second floor (that's all there is up there), you can get some good views across La Antigua, such as this apartment building that the owner thinks may need to be expanded,
this courtyard surrounded by church offices,
or this language school that labels their study areas in both Arabic numerals and one of the Mayan dialects.
You can also get close enough to the dome of La Merced to see the animals that have been placed around it. Can you tell what they are?
They animals around the dome are actually lions created by artisans who obviously had never seen a lion.
From La Merced, we continued our walk following the directions in our Rough Guide. Obviously, I can't follow directions, as we soon found ourselves on the highway to Jocotenango. After a consolatory chocobanana (frozen banana dipped in chocolate), we hopped on a chicken bus heading for Joco.
At the Azotea Cultural Center (where we went last Saturday), there was going to be a traditional Mayan ball game. The only difference, of course, being that the losers would not be sacrificed. Actually, most Mayans disagree with the opinion of many scholars that such practices took place. They think it paints their culture with a bad brush and say that more research is needed to determine if indeed such practices did take place. It always comes back to needing more research, doesn't it. Here is the backboard with the goal (ring).
The game consisted of three parts. The first was preliminary invocation to the Mayan gods.
The second part is what we usually think of as a Mayan ball game. The warriors taking part can only use their elbows, stomachs, knees and forearms to move the ball. The object was to get it through the vertical hoop on the wall.
The third part was called "fire ball" and looked much like hockey, but with a burning ball in place of the puck.
Following the conclusion of the game, we walked back to the highway and took another chicken bus back to La Antigua. Since it was late, we went ahead and went to a restaurant for supper. Afterwards, we went looking for a chicken bus to take us back to the apartment. While walking through the chicken bus terminal, we spied this heavily modified bus.
It wasn't long before a chicken bus heading for Dueñas appeared and we headed home. This trip was strange, since we started off with few passengers and, once filled, every passenger except us exited before our stop. We expected to be dumped somewhere in Ciudad Viejas, but our driver dropped us off at the cemetery as we had requested upon boarding. He then headed back to La Antigua for another load.
We relaxed, did on-line research and watched another movie in English with Spanish subtitles. We're starting to critique the Spanish subtitles. Often, they say something significantly different from what we're hearing in English. What do you know, maybe we're learning something.
