Cloth and Jade and Many Miles

Darrell & I took separate tours again today.  My tour promised an indigenous village and textile factory."  The "many miles" comes in for both our tours, since the places we were going were about 2 hours long on small buses with poor suspension on rough roads.  Guatamala is a poor country, at least for most people.  My tour stopped at a country club for lunch.  The setting was breathtaking with views of volcanoes on both sides.  Many of the people who played there or stayed there flew in on their own jets or helicopters.  The "village" we visited had about 50,000 inhabitants in crowded looking buildings, all in bad repair.  When we could look into an open door at a little store, there was a narrow space, then floor to ceiling bars with a small window to pass out goods, all of which were displayed on a wall behind the bars.  The town inhabitants were mainly from one indigenous tribe.  The village laundry was a series of stone tubs on the town square.  The textile factory was a showroom where one woman showed how they wove beautiful cloth on a sort of loom.  They weave in such a way that the design is the same on both sides.  It could take more than 2 months to weave a piece of cloth.  There were 2 stories of booths where women were selling their goods.  Each stall was stacked floor to ceiling with goods.  There is no way that one woman could have made everything in her shop.,  I bought a couple of scarves, probably machine made, just because the 8-year-old girl was so cute and enthusiastic.  Her mother was couching her on the correct English words.

On our travel into the interior of the country we saw several volcanoes.  Some of them were spouting smoke or black clouds.  Very impressive!

 Darrell's bus by-passed the town of Antigua on the way to a jade showroom, where they got the real lowdown on jade, what it is, how it is worked, and more about it.  Guatemala is also famous for coffee.  According to them, the type of bean, which is the same type grown in Kauai, only grows at high altitudes and only in the shade of tall trees.  Most of the city was destroyed in an earthquake a couple hundred years ago, so all the buildings are architectural gems. surrounded by beautiful gardens.  Most of the church was also destroyed, but they saved the facade and built a new church onto it.




The central square, actually about 4 square blocks, was like a botanical garden with many beautiful plants and crowds of people escaping the heat of Guatemala City and vacationing in the cooler mountain areas.  There were the usual vendors selling local handicrafts.