The van from San Cristobal to Antigua was a slight nightmare. It took 13 hours after several delays, and required changing vans three times.
At least the border crossing was easy. On the Mexican side of the border, the van driver took each person’s passport into the immigration office (as well as a required $20 ‘exit tax’ if you’d been in the country more than one week), and returned 10 minutes later with our exit stamps. On the Guatemalan side, the process was again quick and easy, as I received a 90-day tourist visa after paying a 10 Quetzal fee ($1.33 at exchange rate of 7.5Q / USD), and was in and out of the office in five minutes.
The van dropped me at 3 Monkeys Hostel at 8:30pm. I checked in and then headed out for dinner.
My first impression of Antigua was, “Whoa, this place is old.” In Spanish, Antigua means ‘ancient,’ and that’s exactly what the city is. Buried in the southern central highlands of Guatemala, the city is surrounded by tropical, forest covered hills and towering Volcán os. It was the capital of Guatemala until 1773, when massive earthquakes destroyed much of the city and the Spanish ordered the capital to be moved to Guatemala City. Many ancient buildings in the city are in ruins from the 1773 and subsequent earthquakes. The city has been designated a World Heritage Site so the ancient buildings are unable to be restored. Ancient ruins are intermingled with normal flats and shops throughout the city. Like many other Latin American cities, Antigua has distinctly Spanish colonial architecture: buildings painted earthy and pastel colors with red clay roofs, bay windows, balconies, courtyards, and rooftop terraces. Few buildings in the city are more than two stories tall. The cobblestone streets are legendary—they are extremely rough with many micro potholes and loose or missing stones. It’s common to see people trip or fall in the middle of the street due to the unkempt roads. Antigua is the main tourist destination in Guatemala, particularly popular for its Spanish language schools as the Guatemalan dialect is considered neutral and easily understood the world over.
Famished, I found a place called Pappy’s BBQ with a savory smell emanating from it. I had a plate full of a 2/3 lbs of pulled pork, smoked brisket, and chorizo with three sides and two beers. I could barely move on the way home, but it was just what I needed.
It was Friday, and I had wanted to go out for a couple of drinks to explore the town, but the huge, meaty dinner put the kibosh on that idea. I went back to the hostel and ended up watching Guardians of the Galaxy with a few others who decided to stay in.
Saturday, I woke up early and went exploring town. I was looking for a yoga studio to stretch my spine which felt out of line after a few weeks of travel with little to no bodily maintenance. I found a couple yoga places, but I had missed the only, early morning, Saturday class at each of them.
Instead, I met a local, Gus, who smoked me up on a side street. He then gave me a tour for about an hour and showed me around the center of town.
I loaded up on eggs, vegetables, and grass-fed beef from a local organic shop (good food available in Antigua!), and made a big breakfast at the hostel. On the rooftop terrace I did some yoga and meditated. Before long, Nick from New Zealand joined me. He had been living in Guatemala for 8 years and owned a hostel at Lake Atitlan. He smoked me up, then we went out to a café for lunch and beers.
In the afternoon, Nick went home for a nap, while I continued to explore the city. I visited a large outdoor market, parks, and another café. In the evening, my hostel was dead. I headed out for dinner, and found Toku Baru, an Indian food restaurant. I gorged on a beef swarma and plate of tandoori chicken.
I returned to the hostel, and found a few people having beers. I joined them for a while, however most of them were hiking the Volcán o the next day and retired early. I was left with a German girl, Lena, and asked her if she wanted to go out, but she was leaving on an overnight bus at midnight. She asked if I wanted to watch a movie, and we watched True Story before she departed to catch her bus.
Sunday morning, I moved into an Airbnb to relax and play poker all day. I cooked a beef stew with rice. It felt good to have a home cooked meal. It was a blah kind of poker day, and all my deep runs ended uneventfully, but I still managed to profit a few hundred on the day.
Monday, I headed to the office of the language school I had booked accommodations with, Antiguena Academia. I met my host family, Oscar and Chuiqi Perez and their children Rosio and Oscar Jr., and moved into their house in the northwest of Antigua. Oscar and Chuiqi are sweet, spirited Guatemalans of about 45 who both teach Spanish in Antigua. Their English is limited, but after years of dealing with Spanish language students, communicate in simple Spanish remarkably well.
At lunch, I met my other housemates: Elissa (19, Virginia), Jan (18, Germany), Luisa (19, Germany, did not know Jan before the homestay), Michael (~28, Ireland), and Jan (~65, Palm Springs, CA). I had asked for a home stay with no other English speakers for total immersion, but this was the luck of the draw. Of course, we all mostly communicated in mostly English over the next couple weeks, boooo.
After lunch, I went back to the office of the language school and met my Spanish teacher, Eugenia or Sheny as her friends call her. Sheny is a sweet, wise Guatemalan lady of about 60. She has been teaching Spanish for 20 years. We walked to ‘The Garden,’ an old colonial building with a large garden courtyard scattered with tables and chairs to sit one on one with your teacher.
Sheny was cool. We spent most of our time talking about random things: life, our families, our respective countries, and ghost stories. We would generally converse in Spanish for 2.5 hours before moving to a book lesson for the final hour of my daily session. Generally, after 2-2.5 hours of talking in Spanish, I started to get mentally exhausted. The final hour of the daily lesson was usually difficult because I was so mentally fatigued.
After beginning the homestay and Spanish school, my days generally went by with a regular normalcy. Breakfast at 7:30am, followed by my Spanish homework and then head to a café or to explore Antigua until noon. We’d have lunch at 12:30pm, then I’d walk to the garden for Spanish school from 1pm until 4:30pm. Then I’d hang with the crew at the homestay or run errands until dinner at 7pm. After dinner, we’d usually play cards or watch Netflix for a bit before I retired to read and go to bed.
That’s how the week progressed until Thursday night. Thursday is Lady’s night at a couple of bars, and it was also Luisa’s last night to go out after having been in Antigua for more than a month.
We met up with about eight of Luisa and Elissa’s friends and walked to Café No Se, a trendy café/bar that’s a staple of Antigua nightlife. There we all had a pour of mescal and beers. I got to talking with Luisa and Jennifer from Sweden, who is a shrink, about psychedelic therapies and their efficacies and effectiveness on treating a number of psychological problems. She was incredibly interested in the topic and amused and impressed by my knowledge and advocacy of such things, promising to research it further when back in Sweden.
Later the group went bar hopping and things got crazy. We first stopped at a salsa bar, Las Palmas, and had a couple of beers and did some dancing, before heading to The Snug, an Irish pub. Then came clubbing, going to La Sala and Lucky Rabbit for beers, shots, and dancing.
After close, I walked Angelica, a Dutch girl, home to her homestay. I returned home to find Jan sitting on the curb in front of the house playing guitar and smoking up. We hung out shooting the shit for a couple of hours. Eventually Luisa and Elissa showed up and we all sat on the curb singing songs until Luisa and I retired at about 3:30am.
The next day was a bit rough. I sleepwalked through my Spanish lesson and took a siesta afterwards. After dinner, Jan Elissa, and I played cards until about 9pm and then went to a rooftop terrace bar at Roo’s. We had a couple of drinks, but were all still exhausted from the night before and went home at about midnight.
After breakfast Saturday morning, I took a ‘chicken bus’ to Guatemala City. Riding on a chicken bus is quite the experience. It is basically a tricked-out looking school bus. As many people as can fit squeeze onto the bus, and you have to sit three to a seat with the aisles jam packed. Sometimes people bring chickens, goats, or whatever else they’re trying to transport aboard.
The ride took about an hour, and I got off in Miraflores to go to a mall to buy a new pair of sunglasses and look for a tablet PC. While there, I serendipitously got a message from Rosio, who I met in Mexico City and lives in GC. It turned out I was about 10 minutes away from where she works. She came by and we spent the afternoon hanging out.
In the evening, I got a message from Andrea, who I met in San Cristobal. She had arrived in Antigua and wanted to hang out. Jan, Elissa, and I headed to Roo’s to meet Jennifer and Angelica, and Andrea met us there. With the crew assembled, we all started turning it up and headed to Lucky Rabbit and then La Sala until close.
Every Saturday, after the bars close at 1am, there is an after party 20 minutes outside of town. It’s called the ‘Pool Party’ because it takes place on an abandoned property with a huge empty pool. Inside the pool is a bar and in deep end of the pool is a DJ that plays trance music all night until 9am. Around the pool are outdoor tents with lounge type seating. In the pool, it’s basically a rave scene with people trancing out all night long. It’s pretty fucken cool (can’t believe I didn’t take any photos!). I made it home at about 5am (and was one of the first of our group to leave).
Sunday, I moved to an Airbnb for a poker session. I slow cooked a pot of chili with grass-fed beef, and ate all of it to help revive myself. I won a little bit on the day, but sadly busted out of the biggest tournament of the day in 16th place.
Monday, I resumed the normal grind of homestay living and Spanish lessons. I spent the week mostly laying low, recovering from the weekend, and watching Black Mirror in the evenings with Elissa. Thursday, we again went out for salsa, but I wasn’t really feeling it and headed home early.
Friday was my last day of Spanish school. It was a little sad saying goodbye to Sheny. We had gotten to know each other and become good friends over the past two weeks. I gave her some gourmet chocolate as gift and promised to study my notes a lot as we hugged and parted ways.
That night I went to bed early as I had booked a tour to hike the Volcán Acatenango the next morning.
I was picked up at 9am, and the tour group set off for Acatenango an hour away. In my group was Kevin who I met in Mexico City. He had arrived in Antigua the day before and I told him I was hiking the volcano on Saturday, and he decided to come along as well. We spent the ride bullshitting and catching up.
At the foot of Acatenango, we met our guide, Provencia, and loaded up our gear (tents, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, water, and food) before setting out for the climb. It’s an overnight trip. We started off at about 2400m above sea level and hiked about 6km up to basecamp at ~3200m over the course of 4.5 hours.
The hike was challenging because you had to carry about 40lbs of gear and it was quite steep for a lot of it, but there were several stops for rest. Along the way, you ascend through changing environments on the volcano, starting in warm pastures and pine forests, up through damp, cold cloud forests, and finishing above the clouds in the crisp, cold, barren volcanic ash forest.
At about 5pm, we pitched our tents at basecamp. At camp are beautiful views of the active Volcán Fuego about 4km away, and Volcán Agua far in the distance.
After the sun set, the temperature dropped precipitously and it was soon bitter cold with gusts of wind to further freeze us all. We started a fire, and had hot chocolate and our ramen-like cups of soup for dinner, along with hand rolled cigarettes and Tamarindo, an almost schnapps/cider-like hard liquor said to be good for warming you up in the cold. We had a cool group of about 20 people, and it was fun hanging out with them all around the fire. By 8:30pm, it was so cold everyone had to retreat to our tents to stay warm.
At 4:30am, Provencia woke us and we readied a fire and coffee. At 5:15 the group set out for the summit of Acatenango, hiking the final 800m upward to 3976m. The final hike was through fine volcanic pumice stone. Every step upward slid backwards about halfway, making for a difficult go of it. We summited just after 6am to watch the sunrise. Watching the sunrise was cool, but the wind was so fierce at the top it was hard to fully enjoy it.
After sunrise, we returned to basecamp for breakfast before breaking down our tents and hiking down the mountain. The hike down took about 3 hours. It was challenging to manage descending the steep grades with the weight on your back, and especially difficult on the knees. I made it in one piece, only losing footing and falling once.
I was dropped off at my homestay at about 11:30am. It was my final day, so I had to immediately pack up. Being Sunday, Oscar and Chuiqi were away visiting family, so I didn’t even get the opportunity to say goodbye and Thank You to them. I wrote my thanks in their guestbook before taking off.
I settled in an Airbnb in the center of town. I ordered takeout, getting a giant burrito and double cheeseburger to replenish the caloric deficit experienced during the hike. I spent the afternoon resting and playing poker, and had a decent day finishing 2nd place in a tourney (ran a big bluff heads up and my opponent tanked for 90 seconds until the final second and called grrr) and profited about $2300.
The next morning, I woke early to hike Cerro de la Cruz, a lookout over Antigua that I felt remiss for not having been to already. My legs were tight and sore from Acatenango, making it more difficult than it should have been, but it was still worthwhile. I meditated for a while at the top.
Afterwards, I ran a couple of errands then sat in a sauna for an hour. I ran back to the house to make final preparations before leaving Antigua. At about 1pm I caught a shuttle to Lake Atitlan.
Although I enjoyed my time in Antigua and would happily return in the future, I was glad to ‘escape’ as it is an extremely touristy and relatively expensive destination on the spine of the ‘gringo-trail.’