TOUR WITH HISTORY ANTIGUA

Now it's time for history 101 The city I am in, which is Antigua,

was the ancient capital city of Guatemala back in the colonial days when all of Latin America was a Spanish colony. But then somewhere around I think 1776 there were lot of other things including a massive earthquake that really destroyed the city which caused people to move into other places, ultimately leading to Guatemala city being the capital and the largest city in Guatemala.

 

TOUR WITH HISTORY ANTIGUA It's a pretty cool place over here .Even though it's a very small town, I'd say less than 50,000, it still has that colonialvibe of an old city that you'd expect from many other earlier cities from Latin America.It's got some pretty cool architecture too.

I am in the central park of Antigua right now.And right in front of me is this fountain with statues, which is very similar to some statues that I saw in Manaus way back in 2012 when I was visiting Brazil. I wonder if there was a  pattern there of people from the Iberian peninsula coming in to Latin America and creating these fountains.

 

May be there is a deeper meaning behind them. I like your teeth. Yeah.  What is that? Is that.. .like.. golden ? Oh that's really cool. That's really cool I got this whole room to myself for less than $20. It's the view from the rooftop.It's  a little wet .It is There's probably going to be like 1 massive droplet of water blocking the whole video.

 

I won't know about it till I look at it on a computer screen I didn't realize I'd be swimming up the mountain but..At least we can do a water slide down .. all the way .Took a while but I think we finally made it to the top of the volcano .

 So I am going down the hill now The coolest part is there's like a pack of dogs following us everywhere we go Starting off my second day right now in Antigua. And it's almost noon.But I had to sleep in after all the walking and hiking and going out last night. The hotel I was staying at recommended this place called Fernando's Kaffee,

supposedly one of the best coffee places in Antigua. That was definitely some great coffee back there, and this is the part where I pretend to know what I am talking about. but no. It was a latte, and it was delicious, and it got me energized.

 

RIght behind me are the ruins of a cathedral built more than 400 years ago. Used to be the main cathedral in Guatemala back when Antigua was the capital. but it was destroyed in the 1770s by the major earthquake that happened back then. So I'm about to try Guatemala food for the first time ever.

 

which is pretty late considering that I have been here for more than 24 hours now.But the only food that I really got to eat yesterday were the peanut butter sandwiches that I brought from LA, then for the volcano hike, the only food (available) there was pringles and hershey's bars.

 

And by the time we got back around 9 30 last night, after I took a shower, the only place, and I looked around for a while around the city, but the only place that seemed to be open in Antigua was a Wendy's. So I had Wendy's for dinner in Guatemala after spending about 40 minutes looking for authentic food.

 

About to go inside Rincon Tipico which is a restaurant that was recommended by my hostel. Hopefully it's gonna be good So my food just got here. I think I got something with chicken in it because it had  "pollo" in it. And this drink right here, according to the gentleman next to me, is called something that translates to Jamaica Rose.

 

It's some sort of flower infusion. Really just tastes like a sugary sherbat. Black pita bread tastes a little strange but it's still pretty good nonetheless.

 

I have to say this is pretty amazing. I know I am going off a very small sample size of just 1 meal, but if this is what Guatemalan food tastes like then this is the second best food I have had in Latin America, only next to Mexico. I'm pretty biased because I don't think anything for me will ever beat the tacos in Mexico city.I'm about to enter the chocolate museum. Chocolate actually used to me one of the main exports in Guatemala back in the early days.

 

Holla. Try some chocolate tea Have a look. Here's a fun fact for anyone who's not too familiar with ancient American civilizations: both the Mayans and the Aztecs used chocolate widely and the Aztecs called hot chocolate the drink of the gods. Actual cocoa beans

 

That was a better view than I certainly expected and I  wasn't expecting to see the town/city, and the volcano, and the cross. I would definitely recommend coming over here. It's a bit of a hike, it's probably around 20 minutes from the northern edge of the city but it's definitely worth it. because how often do you get to come to Guatemala to see a massive volcano, an ancient colonial

 

city in 1 view. This is exactly like Bangladesh. There's a massive power outage because of this huge thunderstorm you can hear in the background and I just got completely drenched outside as I was just going downstairs to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Hopefully the power is gonna come back at some point in the night...