Day 20: Ornate Churches, Little Kids, and Flowers in my Face!

On this day we were taking a tour of a couple of the towns around Antigua. I must say, this was a very photogenic day. In our first town, Santa Maria, we stopped at a very traditional market and checked out 2 schools they had there as well as a church that was beautifully crafted with gold and images of saints. At the schools we were swarmed by kids who beckoned us, the gringos, to take pictures of them. Short of being attacked by a mob of cuteness we left them and went to another town where we got to try homemade chocolate…and I mean homemade! Three ingredients was all it took to make these brown tortillas of amazingness: sugar, cocoa  and your choice of additives (rice, cinnamon, chilis, anise, coffee, etc). Next we stopped into a jade workshop that had beautiful hand crafted reproductions of Maya artifacts and stelae and got to see how they made the jade art. I even placed an order for a jade earring! Lastly we stopped in a town to visit a womens weaving cooperative (sounds like a cult of some kind to me lol). The women made us lunch, did a little dance, threw flowers in our face, and then tried to sell me on a piece of clothing…they got me to buy something….oh quetzales where do you go.