Three days in Antigua, goodbye to Loring, on to San lucas Toliman

Three days in Antigua

This old city, along with Lake Atitlan, are the two top tourist destinations in guatemala.

Loring and I spent four three days near the north end of the Lake, and have spent his last three days in Antigua. A few minutes ago, his uber picked him up to take him to the airport.  I am sitting in the “outside” living room, which is in a courtyard. Very pleasant.

 We have an inside living room too, plus two bedrooms  and two bathrooms. It’s a nice place in a very convenient location. We have walked all over town over the last few days.

Antingua is replete with ruins, from different periods. Thee have been numerous earthquakes and volcano eruptions over the centuries. 

One hotel is built amidst of the grounds of the former Convent of Santo Domingo. Very atmospheric. And very expensive. The rooms start at about $300 nightly. There are several museums as well as several shops and workshops on the grounds. The most interesting one features ancient Maya pottery and artifacts paired with  temporary glass pieces  that bear some similarity. Unusual concept. I really liked it. The glass pieces were from a number of different international glass companies, like Orrefors in Sweden, along with some individual glass artists. 

The hotel setting is stunning, but I am not sure I would have wanted to stay there. The public spaces didn’t seem appealing, the pool area was totally empty, not just the pool but all the lounge chairs, hot tubs, etc. 

Our place here is quite nice. It’s one of four apartments that originally was one large home. According to the landlord, his family owns two apartments, one tenant is a long time resident, and the owner of the building lives in the fourth, and lived here for many years with his wife and family. The only  people we have met are a couple of staff, plus the owner of our apartment nd the other short term rental apartment. 

I am awaiting Cindy, one of the two mosaic artists organizing the project I about to join. She broke a tooth the night before leaving the States, and is currently at the dentist. Hopefully  her problem will be resolved without too much more work. I am not particularly  antsy, since it is so pleasant here. And I will be spending two whole weeks in San Lucas, so don’t feel rushed to get there. But I do feel bad for Cindy, and hope she doesn’t need too much work. There is a third person coming with us from here in Antigua, and most of the others will be arriving from Guatemala city.

The ride here from Panajachel a few days ago was tortuous, at least for me. The road is very windy and twisty, and my stomach did not appreciate it.  Several times I thought of asking the driver to stop. Towards the end of the three hour drive, another person asked for a stop on behalf of his wife. She looked as bad as I felt. When I came out of the bathroom Loring was eating a bag of potato chips. I waved him away, just the thought of them was more than I could bear.  He had felt fine the whole way, in fact was happy to have much more legroom than on our previous shuttle.
 The shuttles are vans that hold about ten people, and are arranged in advance.  Our companions were from different countries, including an Australian couple with huge packs who were travelling through Latin America for a number of months. 

This is the first time I can think of, in all my travels over many years,  that I have ever suffered from car sickness. Although it is possible that I have had the experience before, and just blocked the memory!

Yesterday afternoon, our second day in Antigua, we visited a house museum, Casa Popenoe. It was originally from the 16th or 17th century, but had been mostly destroyed and abandoned after an earthquake in 1916.  At that point, an American businessman with the United Fruit company bought it, and renovated it along with his architect wife. They worked to restore it to its original authentic state, building or repairing in accordance with traditional methods. 

The family owned it until recently, and one of the daughters, now in her late 80s, lived there until 2006, I believe. Our guide, who was not a regular guide, but an architect volunteering, for his first day, has had  a number of conversations with the now elderly daughter(who apparently conducts many of the tours herself. ). Despite this being his very first tour, he had an enormous amount of knowledge about the house. There was a printed guide, but he seemed to barely use it. He was Guatemalan, but had lived in the US for a number of years, first in New York, then in Chicago, doing historic restoration.

The grounds were beautiful, with many flowering trees and plants, and an herb garden. After the tour the staff served us tea made from herbs from the garden.  

Later, and in a new place:

I am now writing from San Lucas Toliman, back on Lake Atitlan but on the southern end, across from where Loring and I spent a few days last week. This is the second part of my trip. Loring left yesterday and is now home after a long day’s travelling.

I am in the charming hotel San Lucas Toliman, where I will be for the next two weeks. I am here for a group mosaic project. Actually two. There are two one week sessions, and I have signed up for both.

Cindy, her friend Susie ( they had been internet friends but only met in person a couple of days ago) and I took a private shuttle from Antigua to here yesterday. Cindy had part of her root canal done yesterday, and returned to Antigua this morning to have the work completed. She had been determined to be here and set up for the beginning of the project today, despite being in pain. And although she was in pain, one would never have known it. She ate breakfast with us this morning, then left with a private driver who will wait for her and bring her back tonite. Hopefully all will go acccording to plan.

So she, Susie, and I had a nice drive here, about two and a half hours and not at all tortuous. It was on a different road than Loring and I came to Antigua from Panajachel a few days back. Susie is Guatemalan, but has lived part of the year in Boston for many years, splitting her time between the two places. She is also a mosaic artist. She has joined us for a few days and then will be returning to Antigua. She was a wealth of information about Guatemala, along with our driver, and showed us coffee and other crops, and also a town on the way that had been wiped out by a volcano eruption a few years ago. She was very critical of the government’s lack of responsibility for pollution control but had hope for the newly elected president. , 

And I was glad for the chance to get to know Cindy a bit before the whole group convened last night.  She is the originator of this project, and has worked in a couple of other places in Guatemala before creating this one a few years ago.  She lives in Western Massachusetts. 

I was exhausted when we arrived, and knew the others wouldn’t be arriving for several hours. So I took a little nap, well, okay, a long nap.  I was awake and hearing music, (which turned out to be a percussion band of local boys.) But I was so relaxed and lazy, didn’t head up to the restaurant here until I got a message from one of the newly arrived people that they were all at dinner. I missed the whole introduction thing and arrived at the table when everyone else had already ordered.  I think Cindy had forgotten to wake me as I had asked, and who could blame her, with all she had on her mind.  No real problem though. 

This morning after breakfast we all gathered at the spot that they use for the mosaic making. It once was a helicopter pad!  This place was once a coffee factory or plantation or something. I am guessing the pad dates from then, but don’t know for sure. 

There were tables set up, covered with tarps. Cindy and Deb each had a design for a large mosaic mural. Deb had made some changes to hers, and Cindy had awakened early since she knew she wouldn’t be there for the day, and wanted to set things up. So we began working on Cindy’s project first. The design depicts the view of the lake from the restaurant, with some beautiful flowering trees, one with orange flowers, another with purple ones.  Then there are several men carrying things on their backs, (sacks of coffee?  I will have to find out) and some more trees, birds, flowers, etc. 

All the tiles we used are from Guatemala, purchased in  Guatemala City. Boxes of them. Plus some broken pieces from a ceramics factory that is in one of the towns here on the lake.  Those pieces are my favorites, but I am not sure they will find a place in the murals.  

There are already several mosaics in the town, made by previous groups organized by Cindy and Deb.  And when we are finished there will be four more, the two that this group is doing, and two more that the second group will do next week. 

Many of the participants are experienced and talented artists. But one or two have never done them before, and then there are a couple like me, relative novices. 

It was Cindy and Deb who organized and directed a beautiful mural a couple of years ago, at the Society of Mosaic Artists convention in Boston, which I attended. The mural they created there was an ocean scene, which was later installed at the Rose Kennedy Park on Boston’s Greenway. It was supposed to be a temporary installation, but apparently they liked it so much they decided to keep it permanently.  I need to go see it, never did except at the conference itself. 

A  serious mishap occurred this afternoon, when we were all at lunch. Deb was the only person still working, when a sudden wind came up and blew over Cindy’s design, that most of us had been working on all morning.  One half folded over the other. Luckily for me, the parts I had worked on were hardly damaged, but some beautiful work had to be recreated. Some of the more experienced and talented artists had worked on foliage and birds, very painstakingly. Deb told us not to let Cindy know, and I think it all got recreated this afternoon.  We had already sent her pictures though, so she may or may not notice.  

Deb was absolutely devastated, but as she and others said, at least it happened on the first day, rather than when the design was closer to completion.  Everyone seemed to deal with it very well, though. Now we are covering the work with tarps weighted down with some of the large uncut tiles.

I am heading up to dinner now. Probably everyone else is already there.  I haven’t heard any music though, don’t know if the boy band will be there again.

Next I will describe some more of the process of making and eventually installing the works, which is the same process we used when I worked on my very first project, in a Paris housing project, some years ago. It’s called the indirect process. But now, to dinner. More later, most likely tomorrow.

Hasta pronto!  Back soon!

The next day…

It is midday, our second day of mosaicking.  This morning I worked again on Cindy’s design, with about a half dozen of the others. Yesterday I was working on branches and clouds, this morning I was doing sky. We are working with large floor tiles, about 12x12, which we cut with nippers into smallish pieces. Some people are doing pretty intricate work, making birds and flowers and grass. I don’t have the skills to do that, although I think I am improving a bit, even in just a couple of days. Cindy keeps telling me what a good job I am doing, but I think she is just trying to encourage me. 

The indirect process involves laying the design out on paper, then covering it with a sticky mesh. The tiles are laid on top of the mesh, and can be adjusted to an extent because it is only slightly adhesive. When the design  is complete, we will lay contact paper over it, cut into several panels that can be more easily handled, then remove the mesh, adhere the sections  to the wall, and grout it. We will apparently be able to reuse the mesh for next week’s projects. 

I just realized this morning that I haven’t left the premises of the hotel at all for the two days I have been here.  I could easily  just continue to do that, especially where much of the day is taken up with mosaicking, and the rest with eating and talking to people. 

I am surprised at how many people in the group speak some or fluent Spanish. Cindy of course, and Susie from Guatemala/Boston. Then there is Inez, who is originally from Chile, but lives in MA on the South Shore.  I didn’t even realize at first that English wasn’t her first language.  This morning she taught a few of us an idiom for not wanting to get out of bed, which translates to “sticking to the sheets. “ I have to get the exact Spanish from her.  

Inez, like me, is a fan of Jim Braude and Margory Eagen,  although I can’t remember how that came up in conversation. Like me, she has been to the Boston library to watch them live. She’s already suggested we meet up there some time. 

Then there is Lauren, who spent summers in Mexico as a child. And a couple who are from the US, but have been talking to each other in Spanish, which they try to do when they are in a Spanish speaking country. Their Spanish sounds pretty good to me, although it does seem a bit odd to hear them speaking it to each other. But whatever works. And I guess it works for them. They are avid birders, and have already gone out with a guide on a night hike.

And then there are a few like me, who can understand a lot and make myself understood.  I am fine speaking the language when the other people don’t speak English, but get a bit shy when there are others who are bilingual. But I  do think I get a bit better on each trip.  One of the group told me he thought I was fluent, which of course flattered me, even though it isn’t true. 

Well, most of the group has headed back to work, so I guess I should too. The schedule is kind of loose, some people work both morning and afternoon, some just one or the other. But even though I am here for both weeks, right now I want to work both shifts, at least at this point. I may change my mind later in the week.  

Back to work!