August 2007 -- It is 5:00 a.m. in Antigua, Guatemala and the town has not yet woken. The security watchman at my hotel lifts two boards that he had wedged earlier against the courtyard doors to prevent night-time entry from the street. "Gracias," I say, as he opens the heavy wooden doors for me, and step through the opening to the narrow sidewalk outside. I look in all directions down empty cobblestone streets. They constitute a grid throughout the town, an anachronistically modern feature created by the founders more than 450 years ago. Stone walls border the streets on both sides, now richly … [Read more...]