Guatemala Trip - Wednesday - Day Three

We went to Antigua which was the capital of Guatemala until earthquakes destroyed the town in the late 18th century, and it was moved to where it is now. We started out at an old convent. The gardens were beautiful.

This was the kitchen

I love these flowers, Bird of Paradise.

They had these macaws all around the garden of the convent.

They are beautiful, but very noisy.

These are pictures from Antigua.

This handsome lad was at the jade store.

More of Antiqua.

As we were walking around all of a sudden all these people started running down the street. We figured that was not the best place to head so we went the other direction. Later when our driver came back to get us he told us that some players from Real Madrid, a soccer team, were getting off a bus to look at a jade store, and all the people were running to see the players and get photos. Our driver actually got a picture with one of the players. He was pretty excited about that.

This is El Volcan de Fuego which still spouts off and has some minimal lava flow.

Here we are in front of Fuego.

We stopped at a place that was selling alot of textiles and up stairs was this museum of the clothing that the people in Guatemala used to wear. Each town had a distinct pattern that the people would wear. Here are just a couple of the styles of clothing that they wore.

We stopped at a shop called the Apple Factory and here they make beautiful wood things, fruit, bowls, plates. It was such a fun place. As we were going out, we saw this man rough-cutting this block of wood with a machete. It will become a pumpkin like he is holding.

Here he is with his paint pots and some of his work already done.

These are the fun things that we bought there. They are napkin holders. Are they cute or what?

That evening we went to the Maya museum that was next to our hotel.

This is the mound they excavated and got some artifacts out of for the museum that makes up part of the MiraFlores Mall, the mall parking lot is in the background. Apparently they excavated it and then covered it up again. Part of the museum is under this hill, including the skeleton of someone who was buried there.

These are some of the artifacts that they uncovered.

Guatemala Trip - Day Two - Tuesday

We began the day going to the Guatemala City Temple What a great way to start the day.
This is an old aquaduct that runs through the city.

Sites around downtown Guatemala City.

Presidential Palace

Catholic Church

Right next to the relief map is a grove of hormigo trees that was planted in memory of Guatemalan composers and marimba players. The wood from the hormigo tree is used in the production of marimbas, the Guatemalan national instrument and was declared the "Tree of Culture and Peace"

Here we are at the giant relief map of Guatemala

Later in the week we were taking pictures of these two volcanos

Another view of the map. This shows how we went to Guatemala, through Chalchuapa and Atiquizaya, which are in El Salvador. The welcome sign in the other post was on the bridge over the River Peace, or Rio Paz.

We all set our cameras on the wall that goes around the map and put them on the timer so we could all get in the picture. This worked out far better than we had any reason to hope.


The Relief Map

In the evening we had dinner with President and Sister Mask who are the president and matron of the Guatemala City Temple. It was a great evening.

Guatemala Trip - Day One - Monday

We left for Guatemala at 7 in the morning. Here we are already for our trip.
We travelled through Santa Ana and this is one of my favorite parts of the trip. It is very dry now and not quite as beautiful as in the rainy season but it is a beautiful part of the drive.

Some of the trees are now blossoming

At the border

In Guatemala you see a lot of these little tuc tucs.

A view of Guatemala City

Guatemala City

There was a mall right next to our hotel and we had dinner there at Chilis.

We stayed at the Grand Tikal Futur Hotel in Guatemala City. Here is looking at the lobby from the elevator.