June 17, 2004 - 2.30 in the afternoon

            Mosquitoes have been snacking on my ankles, it’s a beautiful day and I’m anxious to get out. Rotten Spanish or not, I decide I must go into Antigua alone, without the protection of my kind bilingual friends and prowl around. I walk to the corner and wait for the bus. Two or three of them pass at breakneck speed, leaving a cocktail of dust. The one that stops is moderately crowded, the same jolly music is belting out the windows as the previous two.

The fare into town is a little less than 2 Q but I have only large bills. Some time during the past week, I can’t remember when now, I discovered I’d left my ATM card back in the States. This wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d brought money, but I didn’t. The only cash I had ($40) I’d changed into Quetzales and much of that was already spoken for: the shuttle back to the airport, the exit tax the Guatemalan government charges when you leave the country. What I did have was a MasterCard. But don’t ever, ever believe those commercials that tell you MasterCard is spoken here or that there are some things that money can’t buy and for everything else there’s MasterCard because it just isn’t so. At least in Antigua. With the help of Julia (Jean’s daughter) and Tere (who ferried us into town and then circled the streets while we tried to find a bank that would let me buy Quetzales with the card) I finally purchase about $100 of currency. But I didn’t think to ask for change. So when I hand the conductor a 50 Quetzal bill, he snarls out something to the effect of “why the hell are you giving me such a big bill” but makes the change.

We pass the Antigua Spa Resort a few miles outside the Antigua city limits. Julia has told me that whenever you see a gringo walking along the side of the road between Panorama and Antigua, you can be sure he’s staying at the Spa. I never go into this place but the Rough Guide to Guatemala deems it “a sumptuous environment” with “volcano views and very attractive rooms with pine furnishings and log fires”  There are “lots of opportunities for indulgence in the form of herbal wraps, milk almond baths and body massages.” [1] I don’t know about you, but milk is something I’ve always enjoyed drinking not bathing in. I find it strange to travel this far just to get a massage. Oh well.

 I get off the bus too early and walk from Alameda Santa Lucia down Cinco Calle Poniente. There are an amazing number of internet cafes and I start scouting for one with reasonable rates. Before choosing one, I wander towards the central square. As one of the first “planned” cities in the Americas, Antigua is built on a grid pattern. Even with limited Spanish, it isn’t too hard to get one’s bearings: the avenidas run north to south, the calles east and west. There are also those three volcanoes. I remember reading that Agua is the one that dominates and that it is to the south.
 
I find the Ayuntamiento—city hall—a building of heroic proportions. Its walls are one metre thick and it is one of the few buildings to survive the pageant of earthquakes that have disrupted the city. When the capital moved to Guatemala City in 1779, the building was abandoned. But it was too solid to deteriorate. For awhile it was home to the local police. Now City Hall is back and you can find administrative offices on the second floor as well as a great view of the park and the busy street. On the first floor there are several banks and two museums: the Museo de Santiago, a hodgepodge of everything colonial: scraps of pottery, a sword that allegedly belonged to Pedro deAlvardo, the Spaniard who brought slavery and racist exploitation to the country, traditional Mayan weapons and some paintings. There’s an old city jail here where condemned prisoners once spent their last hours before being marched out to the central plaza and hung.

The one I can’t refuse is the Museo del Libro Antigua. (Antigua Book Museum ). In these very rooms, the first printing press in Central America found a home. You might not have thought it, but Antigua was the Mainz of the Central American isthmus, busily pumping out books and other printed materials. In 1600, a Gutenberg-type press arrived from Puebla de los Angles in Mexico, only the third one to find its way into the Spanish American colonies.

Though the original press is no longer there, a charming replica sits in the main exhibition room. The museum itself is only three rooms and a lovely interior courtyard full of lush green growing things and flowers. Within those rooms, though there all kinds of aging books – many religious. Like many things in Guatemala, the whole collection seems under-stated. On the walls, there are aging placards describing the history of printing, the printing process and great moments in Antigua publishing. Third room has what we refer to these days as limited edition art books. These have marbled endpapers done in la manera de Japonés. (“in Japanese style,” though with all the gilding and swirling I would have thought the style was Italian).At one time, I bet they were stunning: the golds really gold, the yellows really yellow. But that’s the thing here, I keep getting the impression that once everything was bright and shiny but that it’s all been worn down by the years of heat, repression and volcanic dust.

Further back, there’s another courtyard which it appears is part of a school. I poke my head in. I’m the only person around. It would be a great place to have a nap, but I decide to look around the city some more, say my graciases to the museum attendant and pass out the door.Directly left is the Biblioteca Internacional de Antigua but I don’t know this and climb up the Ayuntamiento stairs instead. Nope. No library here though the balcony is cool and the view pleasing. After resting a few minutes, I go downstairs again to the street which is crowded with tourists and people going about their business. It’s well after lunchtime and it is hot, the kind of hot you feel on your face when you open a 400 degree oven.
 
Julia had given me some directions for the library, but there’s nothing I can see that fits her description. So I go back up the Ayuntamiento stairs. There’s someone there now and I ask, begging his pardon where the library is. Only it doesn’t come out that way. It’s more like, “Where can one find the librarian?” He offers a kindly smile and I laugh—do I sound like my Spanish grammar book or what? The librarian, he says, can be found in the library and that is over there (pointing to a huge white-washed edifice that only a blind person could miss). Oh thank you very much, and I’m down the stairs and across the street in a minute




[1] Iain Stewart. The Rough Guide to Guatemala. (London: Rough Guides) 2002.