Guatemala, Part Ten: My Hat

This post is out of chronological order, as usual. It begins on our third full day in Guatemala, when I bought myself a hat.

On New Years Day we five went into the center of Antigua to see things and do things. Up to that point some of us had been out on an errand or two, while others had not strayed far from the house. The affair of the empty cistern and the overheated pump had run its course. It seemed like time to start behaving like tourists.

It was almost noon. We piled into the Jeep. (I don't think we had yet figured out how to get into the back seat without contortions. That would come later.) Tesi drove. We parked near a pedestrians-only street that looked like a good place to start. The mid-day sun was beating down, and I bought a hat. We entered an old church, with its shrines and chapels and elaborate Nativity scene, trying not to intrude on the believers. (I took my hat off.) We bought two wooden flutes (one for Gerry, one for Asa) from a man who showed them off by playing old Simon and Garfunkel hits, including "El Condor Pasa" of course but also "Sounds of Silence" and I forget what else. We wandered through a big store full of lovely woven fabrics, oddities, and tacky tourist things, but we were not yet ready to buy much more than postcards.

Then it was time to make our way, hot and tired and hungry, on cobblestoned streets (Ha! Now I'm thinking of another S+G song, "For Emily Whenever I May Find Her", because it has cobblestones in it. Except that it doesn't have any explicit cobblestones in it -- I just looked up the lyrics -- isn't that funny?-- in my mind that song is set in cobblestoned streets) toward the square, the Parque, in the center of town, beyond which was the place we had chosen to have lunch. Actually, the heat and the cobbled bumpiness were such that, on second thought, we decided to travel those few blocks by car rather than on foot.

Let's look at the restaurant's website: "Cafe Flor is a beautiful Thai restaurant and piano bar located only 1/2 block from Antigua's Central Park. Our delicious menu, friendly service, and our unmistakably warm and intimate atmosphere are what makes us famous." That was all true, except no piano at lunch. I half-expected to see our faces at the site when I went there just now, because the owner snapped a few publicity pictures with our permission, but we don't seem to be in their current slideshow. I wonder if we ever were. Oh! Asa has found us on the restaurant's Facebook page!

After a brief encounter with an ATM, we split up, Tesi and Asa walking to La Bodegona while Gerry, Amadi, and I waited at the Park. We watched people and stray dogs, and I got at least five shoe-shine offers in 15 minutes. I wasn't even wearing the kind of shoes that you're supposed to use shoe polish on. They're sort of sneakers. They're really old and beat up. They used to be shiny. Hey, what do I know about shoes, maybe I should have been shining them all those years.

Then the food shoppers returned and we piled into the Jeep and went home, to nap or do crossword puzzles or walk around the neighborhood as the spirit moved us.

I have a lot more to say about the hat.