Wandering Around And Seeing Stuff

Our three weeks in Antigua have been very busy compared to most of the other stays on our trip. Here are some of the highlights:

Ailsa and Daddy went on a street food tour. The rest of us skipped it in case they had to eat yucky things. They didn't and said everything tasted really good!

Daddy went to a cooking class when my mom took us into Guatemala City to pick Grandma Cable up at the airport.

We went to see an organic farm and had lunch there. It was up on top of a hill overlooking the town and we had a great view.

Ailsa and Daddy went to see an organic co-op coffee farm on one of the volcanos nearby. She got to ride a bicycle to power the machine to remove the shells from the beans. She also got to drink her first cup of coffee. They didn't add sugar or milk, but she said it was 'still okay'.

We went to Chichicastenango to the largest market in Central America. It was really busy! We got to buy some souvenirs to bring home to our new house.

To celebrate Ailsa's 11th birthday we went to Lake Atitlan and rented a boat for the day to cruise around the lakeside villages. We saw some old churches but here they mix Catholicicsm with the Mayan traditions. We were taken to a vigil that was set up in a local's house. The Mayans give offerings of cigars and liquor. We paid to go in and see the display. It is a big honour to have the vigil in your family's home. In one of the villages Ailsa and I got our hair braided with a long embroidered thread that the local woman wear.

We went to the weaving museum and learned about the messages and symbols that you can see in the weavings if you look close enough. Each village weaves different patterns and we were shown how to tell which village a Mayan woman comes from by what her outfit looks like. We also saw a display of back-strap looming.

We went to some other museums and galleries but they were kind of boring. Our most favourite thing that we did in Antigua was to visit a church that had been ruined in an earthquake. We got to climb over all the boulders and broken down columns. My mom said that they would probably not let kids crawl all over a broken down place like this in Canada. We made a film when we were there with our new friends Lucia and Matteo from Peterborough. We pretended Fraser was an evil mastermind trying to destroy the earth and we had to find his secret plans before it was too late. We had lots of fun watching the clips over and over again. Here is a clip where Fraser is trying to look really evil.

We head to the airport with Grandma Cable to fly home to Canada tomorrow morning. Daddy is staying on holiday for another two weeks before he has to go back to work. He is going to take more cooking classes in Mexico. We now have to think about our favourite places and activities on the whole trip. Lots to thinks about and big decisions to make....