11-20-05
It was a nice day for walking around. I went to a little restaurant for breakfast and had the special of scrambled eggs, bread, beans, butter I think and a little slice of cheese as well as two pieces of fried plantain (?) or something that looks like a banana. I have a little trouble with the fried banana thing but it actually goes down fair. Here at home I have had it in the morning also. I walked over to where the jade factory was supposed to be and found it closed. I decided to go back home and get my camera that I had forgotten to take along. I had spied several nice doorknockers and wanted to get some photos of them, which I did on the way back later. I like the little barred windows so they can look out and see who is knocking.

one of my favorites with the little cross in all hand made and clinched nails

I really liked the ring on the finger of this one.

I came across this new little VW pickup truck and again thought of my VW buddies. Isn’t this one a nice looking little truck? It is nice to see vw making pickups again.

I saw this African Twin at the town square and met the guy that owns it. It has only 500 kilometers on it. It is brand new and evidently they are importing them into Guatemala. This is a really nice looking dual sport bike.

The square has a nice fountain in the center with four maidens giving. This sort of remindes me of when I was in the market yesterday a woman was nursing a baby in her lap and needed to get up and wait on a customer. She just took the little kid off and left her breast out while she waited on the customer. It sure seemed so natural.

I finally did make it back to the jade museum but found it was only a shop that made reproductions of the old jade. I took afew photos but was not happy with most of them. Here is one of turtles that I will put in here for Tova.

There was a very nice salesman that walked around with me that spoke excellent English. I know he was disappointed I didn’t buy anything.
One thing that they had of interest were these drawings of how the Maya worked the jade.
In this one they are using rubbing or a cord with grit on it to cut the stone.

They had to use jade tools to cut and incise the stone. They had nothing harder than jade to work with so jade was what they used.

They used wood and leather with the grit on it to polish the jade.


I met the guy I met on the highway coming into Guatemala who rides motorcycles. I never did get to post the picture with him and his friend, so here is that photo. His name is Estuardo and lives in Guatemala City.

He came late in the afternoon with his beautiful wife Elizabeth and his daughter Lisa. Elizabeth’s parents have a weekend house here in Antigua and we went to that house for our visit. Her dad is has coffee plantation(s) and has owned sugar cane plantations as well as cotton farms in the US. He has money and has turned this place into one of the most beautiful places I probably will ever see. It was a real treat to be invited into such a special place. We pulled up to the big doors of the place and were let in by one of the housekeepers. I had to take a photo of the doorknocker, as that is what I had been doing all day.

There is this cool little look through window and I got a picture of it opened with Estuardo looking through it. This seems to be very common and this one was nicely done in hand wrought iron.

Evidently he bought the hose from an American lady who built the house taking it some of the Colonial remains of the house that was there. When her father bought it he also bought the property next door that had been used for many years as a place to dump dirt. Estuardo said that they took out 1700 truckloads of dirt to clean the place up. They cleaned up until they got down to the original Colonial floors and walls that were still left. Evidently there was a huge earthquake in early 1700’s and they moved the capitol 40 miles away to now what is known as Guatemala City. In one section of the floor they found this mural made of cow bones (the front leg joints). The dark brown ones are original and the more white ones are new but still following the original design. The design it of a two headed eagle. This was just a small piece of the floor but this design was the focal point. It was in an area that I would guess would be more like an outdoor entertainment zone that was covered but open on the sides.

These carved stones must have been built into walls in temples by the Mayans.

The walls of old colonial buildings.

This shows the different construction methods.

This was a nice area that shows the original road surface. The wall on the right is of newer construction.

You can see the same double headed eagle in this old fountain.

This was inside one of the rooms of the house. It is a jade neck yoke that somehow was used by the Mayans. I have seen a plain one and a broken one before at a museum but here there were two of them and both of them were carved. They figure that they must have worn them during special ceremonies. They weigh a lot and couldn’t have been much fun to wear.
On the table was a basket with several flowers on long stalks. I didn’t know what they were but Elizabeth identified them as orchids. Evidently they will be beautiful lovely blooms for several days or even more than a week at which time they are taken back someplace and taken care of for another year and brought out again when they bloom.

On one wall of the room was a display of outstanding Mayan artifacts. The pottery displayed here was very superior to that that I have seen in the museums. Sorry for the weird photo but I stitched two photos together to make it.

Estaurdo said that he had bought them from a collector. I had to get up close and take a photo of this one pot that had monkeys on it.

We sat in this room and had a cup of tea or coffee that Elizabeth and Lisa had made while we were out in the grounds. I asked for a cup of tea and realized later that I should have asked for coffee, as this was a coffee growers house. Elizabeth poured me a half-cup of coffee when I had finished my tea. It was like no other coffee I have ever tasted. Elizabeth apologized for making it too strong, and it was very strong, but it was the smoothest coffee I have ever tasted. It was similar to drinking whiskey in that cheap whiskey is drinkable but with a shudder while this coffee was just a smooth as the very expensive whiskey. With access to this coffee I think I could become a coffee drinker again. I only drank a half a cup but I could feel the effects until very late into the night.
Lisa is 17 years old and is going to the American school in Guatemala city. This school is taught by American teachers and is evidently very exclusive. She sounds like a very busy girl and at the present time is studying for the SAT test. She will have to take that test to get into the universities that she has applied for. She is interested in going to art schools. When she has time and Estuardo lets her, they go motorcycle riding.

I went to a local restaurant and had some supper cooked by a chef that said he spent 25 years in Toronto, Canada and then came back here and opened the restaurant. It was very nice meal and a really pleasant little restaurant. After eating I went back home and worked on trying to get the road log that I had written deleted of the photos and the photos separated so I could publish them to the blog site. I was able to do that as you probably know by now and then noticed that there was Front Page program on the computer I was using. I had completely given up looking for that program on the internet shops as I haven’t found it in many tries. I thought I would try it and was able to load some of the photos I took at the market the other day. I see if I load a photo directly into a page in Front Page, it comes out very big and will probably load very slowly for those with dial up lines. Even with a fast line it took a little to load on that computer which I think has a very fast line. So, I am going to try to load the last road logs with photos to the website to try to make a complete record.