This was my second trip to Antigua since May of 2014. Although Antigua, Guatemala, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the most visited city in Guatemala I strongly dislike it. Antigua itself is undoubtedly beautiful with its colonial style buildings and roads dating back to the 1500's. In my opinion, Antigua is not the real Guatemala. It's a tourist attraction filled with Americans and Europeans seeking to do the same exact things they can do back home. Antigua is a facade and by no means an extension of the real Guatemala. The attitude Antigua generates is that of a prosperous country where most everything is cobble roads, fancy restaurants, coffee shops, and Mayans happily plowing their fields. This, as I well know, is far from the real Guatemala.
Let me give a brief history of Antigua and then you can judge by the pictures what I'm attempting to convey about the city. Antigua means "old" in Spanish. It was the third capital city of Guatemala in the mid 1500's as a result of devastating natural disasters to the other two capital locations. In the 1700's an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 left Antigua in ruins and once again, the capital was moved to present day Guatemala City. An interesting fact about Antigua is that at some point it had over 100 churches. Some are still standing although others were destroyed by the earthquake.
My favorite part of the trip was the weaving done by the local Mayan people. I observed how they weaved and learned it can take up to one month to make one piece of elaborate clothing.
Another part of the trip I enjoyed were some of the human made gardens and plazas we were able to visit. But once again, after experiencing the Guatemalan mountains and jungle most of what I saw today was man made and not naturally occurring.
That was Antigua in a nut shell. I feel like I took a positive approach to Antigua. But once again, I left the city with a sense of regret for wasting a day in a fantasy world.
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