Museo de Ciudad Viejo

First of all, we had a massive influx of new students today so now I have lots of people to do activities with! (yay!) I've been hanging out with a few people in particular, Wesley (a 17-year old high schooler from Houston who happens to have an awesome name), Melody (a 20's something law student from Phoenix who shares my fear of sharks and dolls), her boyfriend John (also a law student, but he's from Georgia), and Tamra (a mostly-retired lawyer from Los Angeles). We're up to ten people here now and we're expecting another two this week. The really cool thing about this (aside from the fact that I get to meet more people) is that now we can go on bigger activities together since there are more people to absorb the cost. So that being said, guess what we're doing tomorrow???? Hiking up an active volcano!! I've been chomping at the bit for this, I seriously can't wait. We need to have at least six people go in order for it to be a possibility, and I have five definites and two maybes, so tomorrow I'll be doing my best job to peer pressure everyone else.

So anyway, with that being said, today's activity was to go to a town that had been totally annihilated by a volcano. It's actually quite interesting. Originally the capital of Guatemala was in the north of the country but there was a ton of fighting between the local indians there and the Spanish conquistadors, so they moved it to a town further south, Ciudad Viejo, in 1527. Things were a lot more stable there, but in 1541 Volcan Agua (the one near my school that I take pictures of all the time) erupted and destroyed the city. Along with the lava and ash, the eruption caused a huge mudslide which completely covered the city. The capital was reestablished in Antigua and the people of Ciudad Viejo were left to rebuild their town from scratch. Today the town is relatively small, but very beautiful. It's a farming town and doesn't get a ton of tourists, but it does have a museum dedicated to the incident in 1527.

First, some shots of the town:

And lucky me, the museum was having a reptile show!! Totally awesome. These snakes are all native to Guatemala:

And the other native of Guatemala that I hope to NEVER EVER see outside of a glass tank, la tarantula

Here are some of the cool artifacts that have been found as people have done construction around the town. This first one is similar to a mortar and pestle. People used to (and still do) use this to grind corn, nuts, grains, etc to make flour and stuff. It's basically the original food processor.

Some arrow and spear heads

Here's a bowl from 500 AD. Oh wait a minute, I guess these things aren't from the volcano. I need to start paying better attention during these tours. But look! An old bowl!

Here's another bowl!

And here's an old letter from before the volcano. I'm adding it in here so that once my Spanish is better I can read what it says.

And then BOOM. Volcano stuff.

Those are all pics of the volcanos around here erupting. The last big eruption: May 2010. Guess which volcano... Yup, the one I'm climbing up tomorrow! I CANT WAIT!

(Yeah, and that's it. The volcano museum ended up not having all that much in it. Lesson of the day folks: volcanos take no prisoners. They'll destroy everything)