hi, my follow-on story from my last post will have to wait til later; i've got another experience to share with u now which relates to easter.

11 years ago i was working in sydney in the travel industry, and i got a free ticket to l.a. from an airline. having previously been to the u.s. & mexico and having heard good things about guatemala, i decided to go there. plus my visit coincided with easter & i heard this was highly celebrated in guatemala, in towns like antigua.

i had a 14-hour flight then a 12-hour transit in l.a. i decided not to get a hotel room but take a trip to venice beach (bad option). late that night i caught a 6-hour flight to guatemala city, arrived early morning & took a 1-hour minibus drive to the colonial town of antigua. i found the small, family-run hotel where i'd pre-booked a room. needless to say i was tired & jet-lagged! plus antigua is in the mountains so the altitude also contributed to my fatigue. i slept most of that day, woke up late afternoon and took a walk around the cobbled streets where lots of locals were busy making amazing, detailed "carpet murals" using coloured sawdust. here's an example from a pic i pinched off flickr:

there was a lot of activity & excitement in the air. i walked around town then got some dinner and went back to bed, still tired. next morning, good friday, i woke before dawn and went out onto the streets to catch the first of the town's amazing big easter ("semana santa" / holy week) parades. huge processions of people, brass bands, lots of people dressed in purple robes, some carrying huge floats depicting stations of the cross, complete with statues of an african-looking jesus! incredible stuff.

and what's more, all the carpet murals got completely trampled and ruined! but this was always how it was planned to be, and the people who make them know that will be the case. then the next day/night they make more (sometimes stayuing up all night to do so), all for the next parade to trample those! it's a lot like those tibetan buddhist monks who make those amazing, intricate coloured sand mandalas then destroy them, as a metaphor for life. this making of murals and parades trampling them went on for several days in antigua. i've never experienced anything quite like it, before or since.

i spent a little over two weeks in guatemala (took me nearly a week to get my sleep patterns in synch), visiting a big mountain lake, climbing a dormant volcano, catching old crowded buses, going to markets and mayan villages; but those are other stories ...

anyhow, that's my little easter story for now. for me personally, it's as much a celebration of a change in season & opportuntiy for more time with my family, as anything. have a good one! ;-D

~