You better hope the chicken dances-Part 1

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This one is a doozie, folks. Brace yourselves. We’re still in Guatemala, but we’ve covered a lot of ground since we last blogged. And being that we’re not so good at editing things out, that means that there are lots of stories and photos for your enjoyment, perhaps even more than you would like. Bear with us.

We last left off in Livingston our port of entry into Guatemala. And it was a really good place to transition from Belize. In Livingston, the folks by and large speak Spanish, but English is pretty regularly used, and we still got to listen in on colorful conversations in Creole. The people in Livingston are more diverse than in other parts of Guatemala and the Garifuna culture (black Caribbean) is still prevalent. This was great for us as we finally got to hear an incredible live performance of punta music which involves a lot of drums, some maracas, and a turtle shell. The performance was in a Garifuna bar where many locals frequent, and Paul and I were reminded of a certain evening in Mali when some of the local women started to shake their glorious behinds.

Paul and I spent most of our time in Livingston catching up on some sleep, blogging, and wandering the streets talking to the locals and taking photos of everyday life. On one occasion, Paul asked a couple of older women sitting out front of their house if they would mind being photographed. Although they obliged, I overheard them chatting to one another how they were going to be famous and how Paul better pay them if he’s going to use their photo in a magazine. They seemed a little disappointed (and embarrassed that I had understood the conversation) when I interrupted to inform them that the photos were only for our own memories of our trip. We figured at the very least we ought to post the photo and give these sassy ladies a few seconds of very marginal fame.

From Livingston, we took a boat ride up the River Dulce, and what a beautiful ride it was. The river goes through a gorgeous jungly canyon and then opens up into a massive lake. Our tour took us up little tributaries where we got to witness men fishing from their hand-crafted wooden canoes and women doing laundry on the river banks. We stopped to take a dip in an area where a hot springs enters the river. The water was burning hot on top, cold underneath, and just about perfect if you swirled it around lots—pretty neat, I thought. We also visited a part of the lake that was covered in beautiful lily pads and where a funny little, long-legged, big-footed birdie danced around the tops of the lily pads.

When we finally arrived to the town of Rio Dulce we had hoped to casually enjoy a bit to eat and then find out about our bus north to visit my friend, Mario, where he works at the Finca Ixobel. Apparently nothing happens casually in Rio Dulce. The town is full of touts, and we fell victim to one of them just minutes after stepping off of our boat. This guy convinced us that we had to get on to his bus immediately because it was just about to leave and who knows when the next one would leave. I probably should have picked up on his little game when he had no idea what I was talking about when I told him to drop us off at Finca Ixobel which is quite a popular tourist stop. Turns out buddy’s bus’s trip ended about 50 kilometers before where we needed to get dropped off.

In whatever town we were dropped off at, we were shuffled onto another smaller bus where they tried to squeeze in the same number of passengers as a regular one. So much fun! And this would be only the beginning of our bus adventures in Guatemala.

When we finally got to Finca Ixobel (a working farm/ranch and guest house near Poptun), we settled in, ate heaps of delicious, home-grown, home-made food, and caught up with Mario in between the petulant requests of crabby presumptuous guests (I won’t tell which nationality—you have to guess!). The next day, I talked Paul into a little horseback ride through the gorgeous forests and mountains of the stunning Peten region of Guatemala. A really friendly and talkative German horse-lover and her seven-year-old daughter joined us on the ride, and even though the woman’s loud unending voice didn’t do much to help with the tranquility of the ride, they were lots of fun. That was, except when German lady’s flighty race horse tried to get frisky with my pretty little filly, Caramelo. The last place I wanted to be was in between two horses’ love. Horses are big. That’s a lot of love.

That night, things got a bit crazy as we sat in the bar while Mario did his shift bartending. It’s off-season for tourists so Paul and I were pretty much his only customers. Let’s just say we were well-served. And Mario even provided us with entertainment. First, it was salsa lessons which involved me trying to stay on my feet and look graceful while Mario flung me and spun me around. Then it was hula hoops where I rediscovered a favorite childhood toy. (Rebeka and Rhiannon, we’re going to have to get ourselves some hula hoops when I get to Australia, and we can learn all sorts of neat tricks together.) The finale of the evening was when Mario and two of his co-workers treated Paul and I to our own private fire show. I so loved hula-hooping earlier that I just had to give the flaming hoop a try. Thankfully, no flaming hoop tragedies to report. Just one heck of a hangover.

The next day we said our good-byes and made our way out to the highway where we had been told we’d have no problems flagging down a bus. After an hour and a half of crossing our fingers and holding our breath as crazy drivers careened their trucks down the highway at incredible speed, we finally got the right bus to stop. Our sighs of relief promptly changed to gasps of horror upon seeing how full the bus was. And somehow the sadistic bus assistant managed to keep cramming us in. At one point of the journey, we got lucky and were able to snag seats, but there were already a mother and two children in mine and I still had to endure the butts and crotches shoving into and rubbing against my shoulders and head, the woman that found my hair the most convenient thing to hold onto in order to keep from toppling over during the buses high-speed turns, and the poor, sick, little girl who kept staring at me as she puked into a rag her mother kept shoving in her face. It was a long ride.

Upon returning to Rio Dulce, we were prepared for the touts, but they were no less annoying. Thankfully, we had arranged to stay in a jungle lodge only accessible by boat where we’d be free of them and able to relax for a day or two in our luxurious pool. And the pool was lovely, as was our quaint, little cabana in the middle of a spooky swamp (which got even spookier when the lights went out for over an hour one evening), but the lodge’s prices for food and drinks were ridiculous and we found ourselves having to boat back to Rio Dulce and the touts more than we would have liked.

We took a day trip from there through miles and miles of banana fields to the stunning waterfalls of Finca Paraiso. On the bus ride there, more tourists of the aforementioned nationality ticked off the bus driver so badly that he stopped the bus until they finally consented to paying the price of the ticket. These folks were convinced that they were being taken advantage of when they were asked to pay a little over a dollar for an hour and a half bus trip—ay caramba!. Finca Paraiso isn’t a ranch at all (like the “Finca” part of the name suggests), but it is surely paradise. Nestled in the beautiful jungle, two waterfalls meet at right angles to one another. The thing that makes this especially unbelievable is that one of the waterfalls is a cascade of a chilly, crystal clear river, while the other is an amazing taller falls from some hot springs high above on a rocky cliff. (Paul climbed up to take a peek of the springs and also got a peek of two Mayan women bathing. I’m not sure they were very comfortable with that.) Swimming in the pools below the two falls is a delight as the water temp works out to be just about right. And right at the point where the two waters meet, there are a couple of submerged boulders where you can sit and feel the whirl and swirl of the freezing cold and very hot water, and it feels marvelous.

From Rio Dulce we took a luxury bus to Guatemala City where we would have to change and take one of Guatemala’s famous chicken buses (converted ex-American school buses with awesome paint jobs and insane drivers) onward to Lago Atitlan. We thought finding the station to catch the right bus was difficult enough (Guate City is the hub of all transportation for the country and there are more than 20 different places to catch buses around the city depending on where you want to go), but realized that this was only the very beginning of a very long and humorous adventure.

Once at the station, which was really nothing more than a garage with a bus and a bench, we bought our tickets and watched as our bags were loaded on top of the bus. Then after a twenty or thirty minute wait, all of a sudden the driver assistant guy asked all the 15 or so passengers that had accumulated to follow him out to the street. While standing there I worked out that due to some strange law, we were not allowed to board the bus from where we were. Instead, as a group, we would have to board another chicken bus and take a 15 minute ride to a big roundabout on the suburbs of the city where we saw several buses waiting. But not our bus, nope.

Next we followed our bus assistant dude down through a park, over a pedestrian walkway and down another street where we saw a few other buses, but again not ours. I was sure we would never see our backpacks again. Then after being duly warned to keep a firm grip on all of our belongings as robberies were rampant in the area, we stood on the sidewalk until our bus arrived (with our backpacks unbelievably still sitting on top). At last we boarded and I thought we were on our way, but, oh no, we just sat and sat until the bus had filled to quota (ie. sardine can) and then stopped at every street corner, intersection, dude standing on the street that we passed. Total time from when we found the station until we actually left the city: two and a half hours. After that, the rest of the trip, being smushed three to a school bus seat with someone’s baby thrown on our lap, was a gas. These are the days that make traveling so much fun.

And I haven’t even mentioned the gorgeous scenery: the impossibly steep ravines and massive green mountains and the beautifully colored clothing of the traditional Maya that dot the fields and roadsides. Guatemala truly is one of the very most spectacular places on earth, and we were on our way to one of the most gorgeous spots there, Lake Atitlan.

We spent the first night in Panajachel, the jumping off spot for the rest of the lake. Being that it is a bit of a gauntlet for travelers who want to visit the other little villages around the lake, there are all sorts of restaurants and bars and tourist stuff. Fun for a night, but we were anxious to get out of there early the next morning and enjoy some of the tranquility of the lake.

Each of the little villages (or at least the touristy part of the villages) around the lake has its own feel largely due to the type of tourist that it originally attracted and now more or less caters to. Anyhow, we decided to stay in San Pedro which is the backpacker hangout, especially for those who want the adventure of climbing the volcanoes, renting bicycles/kayaks/horses, and for those who really like to party—it’s ridiculous just how many bars there are in such a small space. (Last time I stayed in San Marcos which is the new age/vegetarian town where you can go and meditate or get reiki and stuff—very different than this time.)

We had big plans of doing some of this adventurous stuff, but after such a long day of traveling the day before, I got lazy and decided to hole myself up in our fantastic room with a massive picture window view of the lake and two of the several volcanoes which surround it. I read and relaxed and enjoyed the glorious tranquility of the place. I know that it’s hard to believe, but this place is so stunning that I actually got up not once, but twice to see the sun rise over the top of the surrounding mountains and splash the lake with gorgeous shades of peach and purple. Sure it helped that I could admire it all while snuggled up inside our cozy bed, but for me any sunrise witnessed is a small miracle.

This is probably as good of place as any to describe the lake which is a pretty special and magical place and not just because it’s quite possibly the most beautiful lake in the whole entire world (and not just according to me). I’ve heard that the lake was formed by a volcano that collapsed and while I can’t substantiate this, I do know that the lake is surrounded by volcanoes and very, very deep and doesn’t have any visible outlet. Archaeologists have been studying the lake for decades and have found all sorts of Mayan artifacts and even an ancient village twenty meters below the surface. I’ve also heard that the lake has been known to transform into a whirlpool during powerful storms—pretty impressive for a body of water 50 kilometers in circumference. Even today the people of the area believe the lake to have special healing powers and a unique energy field (thus the new age/alternative healing stuff in San Marcos). Paul and I can definitely vouch that swimming in the clear turquoise waters feels pretty great.

In order to get a better perspective of the place, we decided to take one of the recommended hikes between some of the most remote pueblos (villages) around the lake. And wow, what a walk it was. We took one of the little public boats across the lake to the town of Tzununá and then followed the “road” onward to the towns of Jaibalito and Santa Cruz de la Laguna. It really isn’t much of a road at all, though. In fact, in some places it was nothing more than a narrow dirt footpath that we lost track of a few times when crossing streams or following it over rocky ravines. A couple of things made this walk so good. First, the views were incredible. Our little route led us up and down the edges of the mountains that frame the lake giving us unbelievable views of the lake and volcanoes. But even better was walking along the trail that all the locals use to get from town to town and to walk to their little plots of corn that they farm precariously on the incredibly steep terrain.

The towns we walked through don’t see as many visitors and some are only accessible by boat or footpath. This led to some pretty special experiences and encounters with the local folks. We played soccer with some kids and chatted with a friendly couple as we downed pineapple sodas on the wood plank used as a bench outside of their little shop. Best of all, we ran into two Maya women and a young girl hauling enormous loads of wood that they had gathered. The little girl was really struggling with the weight she was carrying, so we decided to offer some help. The little one happily handed her load over to Paul, and we followed the women several kilometers until our paths diverged (only Paul didn’t carry his bundle on his head like the women did). It was so remarkable to see not just these women, but all the people we passed carrying these enormous loads as they scrambled up and down the rocks and across the streams and along the steep cliffs of the trail. I only had a light daypack, and I was sweating and puffing hard.

The next day we had planned to go to Quetzaltenango or Xela (shay-la) as it is more commonly referred to. Guatemalans like to give their towns nicknames (likely because the real names are impossible to say even for the folks that live here). Xela is famous for the big fair that they put on to celebrate Guatemala’s Independence Day, and we wanted to witness the party firsthand. Trouble was we didn’t figure on the fact that all bus service from San Pedro to Xela would be suspended . . . all day. So we got creative. We took a public boat (after waiting more than an hour for enough passengers to make it worth the captain’s while) across the lake back to Pana (Panajachel), then caught a tourist shuttle to a crossroads where we waited an hour or so to board another tourist minivan which finally brought us into Xela albeit very slowly with all the crazy fair traffic. The total trip time was about seven hours. The normal bus from San Pedro is allegedly only two. What was I saying earlier about the fun of traveling???

At last, we arrived in Xela and then wandered the streets for another hour or so before we finally found a hotel with a free bed. At that point we were so tired that we couldn’t really be bothered with the fair and party we had worked so hard to get there to see. And if we had known how hard it was to go to be to get out to the fairgrounds on the edge of town, we probably would have thrown in the towel and curled up in bed for the night. But no, we persisted . . . (To be continued—We wrote so darn much we thought we’d break it in two.)

(And what about that dancing chicken?)

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Photos

Paul trying to get the perfect photo
I came back from the public toilets and found Paul climbing on buses.

Comments

[Darwing]

NICE
oK.. you guys are so lucky!!! you get to see all of that? thanks for the great pictures you posted. I had decided to stop travelling myself but you guys just make me continue doing it... but for now I have to put up with brats! Awesome description of things... Godd luck and lots of hugs!! Dar