Guatemala Part 12 — Antigua

Drove from Pana to Antigua, the old colonial capital. Quick history so the photos make sense: the Spanish built their Central American capital here, earthquakes knocked it down repeatedly for 200 years, and after the big one in 1773 they gave up and moved the whole capital to Guatemala City. What’s left is a town full of gorgeous half-ruined churches with volcanoes standing over everything. It’s a UNESCO site now, and it earns it.

First priority, though, and I make no apologies: Taco Bell. I’d heard about this location — it’s built into a centuries-old colonial building with a courtyard, wood columns, and tile floors, and it might be the most beautiful Taco Bell on Earth. So yes, we crossed two borders and half of Guatemala and I took my family to Taco Bell. Everyone loved it.

Then we earned it with ruins. Every church here charges admission and it adds up fast for five people, so we developed a system: send me and one kid in with the camera to get footage while the rest hold down the plaza. Rotating ruin duty. The Cathedral’s front half is still a working church, but the back half is a forest of massive brick arches holding up open sky — domes just gone, blue sky through the holes. Below it are crypts, which the boys were excited about and then rated “not as creepy as we hoped.” Sorry, boys. Not every hole in the ground can be the candle cave.

Santa Clara convent had long stone corridors and gardens growing inside the ruined walls. La Merced, the big yellow one, has that giant star-shaped fountain in its courtyard — and I went up on the roof, where you can see straight down the cobblestone street to the Santa Catalina Arch with Volcán de Agua looming behind it. That view is the Antigua postcard and it’s real.

Plus the plaza fountain with its mermaid statues, pigeons and ice cream carts everywhere, and the boys posing with quetzal wings and under the conquistador Santiago on his horse — the guy the city’s actually named after.

Still more Guatemala ahead. This country refuses to end and we’re fine with it.

#unpavedparenting