My past travel experience had not prepared me for my week in this colorful and impoverished country.  It felt as if extreme wealth for the very few contrasted heartbreakingly with the masses struggling but with cheerful hearts.  I think I saw my first machine guns here.  Guards with huge automatic weaponry were in front of a wealthy home which was behind gates and our hotel had guards in front of the walls which used to house monks.  In 1542 the Dominican Friars built the Santo Domingo Monastery.  Today it is called the Hotel Casa Santo Domingo.  It is a noted five star hotel and museum in Antigua, a city once the capital of Spain’s South American confederacy.  I have been fortunate to stay in some lovely hotels, but this by far, for me, was the nicest and most interesting.  The picture above was taken outside of our room where my husband and I had the privilege of staying.  We were there because his cousin was marrying a Guatemalan.  I think the hotel fulfilled every notion of romance I have ever had.  Shadows reflected the light of hundreds of burning candles that were literally everywhere — from the echoing corridors of old stone walls to the crumbling outside steps of one of the many gardens.  Upon our arrival I slipped down a mossy stairway and got the worst bruise of my life coupled with a nasty scrape on my arm.  I kept defensively telling everyone I had not had a thing to drink; and I hadn’t as we had just gotten there!  The poor maid must’ve nearly fainted the next morning; after I woke up I noticed what appeared to be a ton of blood smeared all over the pristine white bedsheets.  It would seem my scrape was superficial but a real bleeder.  I was appalled and embarrassed.  But part of what made the hotel so charming was the precise lack of obvious, superfluous, cautionary safety signage.  And it was perfectly sound; I just had an accident.  The views were unspoiled, with no railings or gates to mar the sight of old courtyards and cloisters surrounded by lush bougainvilleas, huge parrots peeking from between long, flowered vines, and the delicate scent of rose petals changed daily that floated in old stone bowls throughout.  I’m sure the bowls had a name and I tried to look it up but could not find what they are called.  Watering troughs?  Perhaps if you are reading this you may be laughing at my lack of knowledge.  But I do know sumptuous beauty alive when I see it.  I felt it everywhere as I walked the once hallowed grounds.  Instead of a big block behemoth, rooms were located by twisting and turning in the winding old monk’s maze.  I remember we always passed a big fountain in the wall and a compelling, lifelike statue of Mary Magdalene I instinctively knew was at least last century and incredibly valuable.  She was not encased behind sterilizing glass, but rather seemed to look beseeching as she reached out perpetually perhaps for our Lord.  I wanted to touch her but I respected her sanctity to much to do so.  And so this protected earthly paradise would be what I got to see, hear, touch, smell, taste and experience during our stay.  And it was a memorable one.

“To love.  To be loved.  To never forget your own insignificance.  To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you.  To seek joy in the saddest places.  To pursue beauty to its lair.  To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple.  To respect strength, never power.  Above all, to watch.  To try and understand.  To never look away.  And never, never to forget.” ~ Arundhati Roy, “The Cost Of Living”