whole country (but where I still found a comfortable hotel room for
about $12/night.)
It is a beautiful place, though unfortunately, about as far from typical
as you can get without actually leaving the country. Although there are
probably ritzy neighborhoods in Guatemala City and Quetzaltenango which
are worse, though probably not by much.
When I was in Quetzaltenango last summer, I was really struck by how
many tourists there were in town, even though people told me that Xela
(as a the locals call it) was a fairly non-touristy place to study. I
saw what they meant, however, when I got to Antigua. While there were a
lot of pasty faces in Xela, those people were younger, and pretty
comfortable traveling--people that were interested more in the local
culture than the fine food and drink they might consume while abroad.
In Antigua, however, the tourist class was very different. People
walked around town as if they were outfitted for an expedition--wearing
their Gore-Tex floppy hats, wearing camera vests (looking like a bunch
of lost fly-fishermen), zip-off travel pants, and more supplex nylon
than I knew had ever been woven.
The age demographic was also older--people in their 40s (at least) with
relatively few young people (though, of course, young people come
through here as well.)
Last time, I spent too many days in Antigua. Hopefully, I'll have a
more positive experience here this time. I should say, however, that
aside from a little shack beside the road where a Guatemalan gentleman
sold coffee and espresso as he roasted his own coffee beans in a tiny,
wood-fired roaster (with coffee bushes growing out back and all around),
the best cup of coffee I've gotten in Guatemala was here in Antigua.
They know how to make it for us Gringoes.
Although the best coffee I've had is still from Bolivia. I don't know
how they make it so strong, and still can have it so smooth.
I'm still getting used to the humidity here. It's hard for my skin to
adjust to a place with so much drizzle when I've been living in the rain
shadow of the rockies for so long. But if that's the worst that happens
to me all day, I'll be doing all right.
Once in Antigua, after finding a place to sleep and a place to eat, I've
spent some time dealing with my case studies. I have to wait to be
certain about exactly where I'm going to go--I'm going to talk to some
academic connections in Guatemala City on Wed., after which I'll
probably have a pretty good idea of what's next. But for the time
being, I think I'll head up to San Miguel Dueñas, a village above
Antigua, to get started. It looks like a pretty typical case, based on
some scatterplots and partial regression plots, and it's close. I may
go tomorrow or Sunday, though I expect I'll have better luck on Monday
when people are working.
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