Antigua

Another long day driving. I had charged up the batteries at the marina and was charged $2 usd. The road to Antigua passes through the capital, Guatemala City, and is well paved, but is mostly single lane except for a few hills where there are up to three lanes. The traffic is heavy with semi trucks struggling to get up hills and it takes an unbelievable 6 hours to go 140 miles. That's an average of 23 mph. Fortunately there are no speed bumps or severe potholes on this road. As we approached Antigua the temperature dropped to 68F and I turned down the air conditioning. The cobblestone streets were very bumpy and we slowly crawled over them to our campground a couple blocks from downtown. It is called verde eventos and it is a green space to hold events like weddings and such, but allows people to camp there. It is walled and gated and grassy and is nice and quiet even though it is in town. There were a couple other travellers there. We met Jason and Ruth, from the Bay area in an Earthroamer traveling since March. They have been in Antigua for three weeks taking Spanish immersion course. There is a Chilean/Swiss family whom we did not meet yet in a Fiat Ducato RV. They are sick apparently. So we might stay away from them. The city is very pretty at night. It is a preserved former capital that was nearly destroyed by earthquakes and has now become a tourist attraction. Christine wanted some gluten free pasta and the Dd wanted pizza, so we went to an Italian place and celebrated our arrival. It was our most expensive meal at $70. The pizza and pasta were very good. Christine had zucchini pasta with prosciutto and cream, Ellie had penne Bolognese, and Dd and I shared a salami pizza. We also had beef carpaccio. We walked around the night food stands at the parque de La Merced and we bought some rellanitos de platanos (pocket of refried beans stuffed with plantains sweet). They also had pupusas (stuffed tortilla pockets) that Christine wanted to try. We would come back tomorrow night for them. The campground is not attended to at night and we had borrowed the door key from Jason and Ruth and so we returned the key when we got back. The kids and I watched adult league soccer through the fence and they played with glow sticks until bath time. We did not need to run the AC and we were able to fully charge the batteries on our drive. We will stay here for three nights.