 |
| Tuileries Garden, Paris. Photo by C.G. (sitting in this chair reading my postcard) |
“[He] marveled at how the fruits and vegetables that grew in a place — the ones that gave it a particular flavor — amplified his experience of having been there. How taste made the vividness of certain landscapes resound, long after he had left them. How the truck-farm ingredients of a place, sold by poor women with cracked hands, could be so rich and expressive.” — John Birdsall
To La Antigua, Guatemala, circa 2012. At La Guardia airport waiting for my Spirit Airlines flight, with connection in Fort Lauderdale, to Guatemala City, summer in New York was a time for a getaway. I had read about the street tamales and white corn soup in guidebooks, but self-discovery of other culinary gems was what I was after, albeit the romantic understanding of history and culture was beside the point. I got a middle seat on the plane and it was cramped. I read all through the flight, with straight back, and arms folded near my face. Arrived at last, I had to take an hour bus ride to my desired destination, and conveniently, with the porters direction, it was just outside the terminal. It was an old tank, with open sides, and seats across the bus like church pews. Wow. Let the adventure begin. I must’ve conked out exhausted on the trip but when I woke up, the driver announcing our arrival, I was wide-eyed beholding a Spanish colonial town around a dreamy square with a gorgeous mermaid fountain.
And then there was the vibrant food. Just around the corner from Casa Hotel, my charming B&B accommodation, welcoming you to a front garden with climbing violet hoyas and shady ornamentals, was a vender wearing a traditional handwoven traje, purple, red and white, and selling the steaming famed chile relleno tamales. The novelty of this Central American recipe was its requisite powdered cheese on top of the tamal and a side of fermented red cabbage slaw eaten all at once together. Standing on the sidewalk joyfully chewing, I struck up a conversation with a local and was told to try it with sopa de mais — and that I could find it just up the road behind the old cathedral at an unmarked garage, and that I couldn’t miss it because of a line of folks waiting their turn to buy the soup snaking about. The delight of washing down food with hot soup elegantly simple (the white corn juice thickened with its corn masa and pureed, and nothing more was added but salt and hours of stirring) was a palate sensation that made you think of a country’s bounteous identity.
La Antigua is a mountainous village surrounded by three stunning peaks of dormant volcanos, and the last destructive earthquake that hit the town a century before left behind church ruins and bell towers that to this date remain scattered around town, yet cleaned up and transformed into an open space installation-museum of what was once the glorious standing of a religious city. But it is a Mayan country in its roots and its indigenous beauty colors the scene everywhere I look. I sent a postcard to my cousin in Paris from La Antigua. It was a photo of delicacies and market fruits I took and developed at a small Kodak print shop near the square, and I wrote about where I was (the impulse of my travels wasn’t a surprise to her) and what I was eating. I could've sent a photo of the mermaid fountain, but it was hard to picture a dream.
Post a Comment