Guatemala 2011

I’ve been here two days now, and its going pretty well. I got soaked walking around yesterday. It rains about four o’clock each day for a couple of hours. I’m staying with Sylvia and Marvin Gonzales. They
are very nice. They speak no English, so It’s good practice. My first Spanish lesson at the school was today. The teacher expected that I spoke no Spanish, and was surprised to find that I could speak a little. I told the school that I spoke a little bit, but the teacher says that I speak a lot. We were able to talk about school and work and problems with students and the difference between here and there. There is no special education in Guatemala. The teachers just think the students are stupid. They have religious schools run by nuns, and they are very strict.
This afternoon, I went on a school activity to a macadamia nut farm. The
owner is from California, and said he fell in love with Guatemala in 1976 and
stayed here. He tried to talk me into moving here… We went there on a chicken bus. These
seem to be converted school buses, all decorated up with bright colors and
drawings. There is always a crucifix, or a picture of Jesus or a saint on the dash, I
guess to protect the bus from accidents. As I had read about, the drivers are
crazy. People hop in and out of the back door. Once an old woman was trying to
get out and the driver took off and she almost fell out. I had to hold the door
until he stopped again. She got off safely, giving the driver dirty looks.
Antigua is very beautiful, and very old. It has narrow sidewalks, but it’s
easy to find your way around, because the streets are designed in a grid work.
The buildings look old, and are painted with pastel colors. The city is
surrounded by mountains, and three volcanoes. I think that I’ll go on one the
excursions up the volcano.
It’s the rainy season here, so is cool most of the time, not so hot and humid as in the states this summer. This is winter in Guatemala. This morning started out blue and nice, but later clouded up and is a bit rainy. This doesn't stop anyone from having fun in Antigua. It’s always lively. In the central square, on the weekends, there's music and many artists painting around the fountain, and in the colonnades. There are many Mayan women selling their woven wares, and jade and volcanic jewelry... I think my Spanish is improving a little bit, because I have to speak it all the time, and the lessons are pretty intensive. There's always a lot of homework. I have to study a lot of verbs, wrote a composition, and memorize a lot of vocabulary.
So, yesterday I went with a small group to hike up the volcano. The hike was only three kilometers, they said, but felt more like ten miles. The path was really steep. When we arrived there, there were a bunch of enterprising boys selling walking sticks for five quetzals, about 75 cents. Of course there were hordes of dogs hanging around the boys. I wasn't going to buy one at first, but finally did from a boy who insisted, it's good for you. The stick came in handy. I guess I’m getting old because I kept falling behind the younger people, walking a bit slower. Up to about half way up the trail men on horseback followed the group saying taxi, taxi natural. A couple of kids gave up and rode the horses, but I was determined to walk the whole way. I could have ridden the horse for a hundred quetzals, about 14 or 15 dollars… Right up
the hiking trail there were patches of corn growing. I was surprised to see the corn growing in small rocks. The soil was little volcanic rocks about a half inch in diameter. At the top, there were no trees, all those rocks. There were holes where steam was coming out. The guide crawled into one and called it a sauna. He invited me to crawl in, but I was too hot. I didn't need a sauna. I was hot, but it was very cool on the top of the volcano. Other people needed jackets, but having lived in Minnesota for many years, I didn't need one at all. Clouds and thunder rolled in when we were up there and it started raining pretty hard. Luckily, I had an umbrella, and a rain poncho. We waited a while under a primitive shelter, and then went back down. We went down in about a third the time it took to go up. When I got back to where the van was waiting the boy wanted his stick back. I guess he just rented it to me. Going back through the villages, the van was often detained by cows in the road, or a horse that got away from someone, and of course the perpetual dogs getting in the way. These dogs are not vicious, rather friendly. They are rather small for the most part, but scrawny and mangy. I thought the chicken buses around Antigua were wild, but out there in the mountains they are equipped with a ladder on the back and a rail along the roof so that when they are full, people can climb up and sit on the roof. It’s strange seeing the bus stop and an old man climbing down from the roof...Today I went into some ruins and got some very pretty pictures. It was a museum, and the grounds around the ruins were kept up nicely with many flowers. Later I watched a futbol game...soccer... for a little while. I wandered through a market place that was like a huge flee market. You could buy just about anything you'd want there, probably for dirt cheap. I bought a tee shirt for about three dollars. I then wandered around the plaza and watched artists paint, then sat in a coffee shop and studied for a while. For lunch I bought something from a Myan woman with a stand on the church grounds. It was something like a tortilla stuffed with either meat or cheese, with lettuce, guacamole, and salsa on top. It was very good, and I had two; about two and a half dollars each. She said they were called pupuya...poo poo ya...After that I went to the internet place by the school, but it was closed, so I went in search of another. I got directions several times to an internet place, but didn't find them, so did a good bit of walking. Finally, I found this one. It costs eight quetzals, around a dollar for an hour.
Here in Guatemala, they love fireworks, and will look for any excuse to do them, celebrations, birthdays, weddings, religious festivals, which are all of the time. I saw an old man on the church grounds, with a steel tube like a mortar gleefully throwing in bombs...large fire crackers... it's not unusual to hear big booms, or a string of firecrackers going off at any time. I think it was the festival of San Cristobal when I saw the old man setting off firecrackers on the church grounds. It’s a beautiful church, and very old. I sat in there for awhile to rest while a mass was going on. A large bat was flying around the high vaulted ceiling. Tomorrow I’m going with a group to the hill of the cross...Cerro de la Cruze... I wanted to walk up there, but they recommended going with a group for safety, although Antigua is very safe generally. It’s supposed to have a spectacular view of Antigua. I've taken many pictures, but I’m not sure that I've been able to capture how impressive the huge volcano looming over Antigua is. This one is called the water volcano, Vulcan del Aqua, and is not active. It's different than the one I climbed which is active. It's huge. The Rockies can't even compare with it. ...bad grammar, because its hard to figure out these different keyboards...
I’m eating a lot of beans, rice, potatoes and fruit. Beans with every meal, and tortillas. Sylvia also serves bread she gets from a bakery. The tortillas are made from the woman across the street that stands out on her front porch with her daughters making tortillas, slapping them back and forth in their
hands. So, the tortillas are fresh, and good. I’m doing so much walking, and very little snacking that I think I’m losing weight. The lessons are difficult now, working on past tense irregular verbs. The teacher, Julia, said that she is now going to start talking more rapidly, no more slow talking. I need to practice listening to rapid talk.
I´ve been really busy today. This morning, for part of the class we went to a coffee farm that also had a museum of Myan musical instruments. After eating a big lunch of beans, chicken, squash and the ever present tortillas, I went on a bicycle ride with a group. My bicycle was too small, and hard to ride. We went to the town of San Miguel where there is a really old church...1538...then into the hills in a rural area. The farmers here cultivate the steep hill and mountain sides with hoes. It’s kind of pretty. While out there we saw a big plume of steam and smoke rise up from a volcano.
Yesterday, I visited a town that was totally Maya. I learned about their textiles and cooking tortillas and coffee. There was an old woman cooking tortillas over an open fire. I tried my hand at making a tortilla, but wasn´t very good at it. Coffee was ground on a stone, with a stone roller, then hot water run through the grounds with a sieve. I´m learning a lot about the Maya. The women still wear traditional clothes throughout Guatemala, but the men don´t so much these days. The women always carry a big, colorful piece of cloth, that they´ve woven, that has multiple purposes. When not using it for anything else, they fold it up and set it on top of their heads as a headdress. Unfolded, and the ends tied together, it becomes a pack that can hold a lot of stuff. For heavy loads they can put one loop on their heads. They use these for carrying babies, either on their back or in the front. They have a little pillow that they set on top of their heads for balancing all sorts of things, laundry, baskets of fruits or vegetables, souvenirs, etc. Their laundry in under a shelter, where there are a series of open sinks made of concrete. They scrub it by hand. The men cultivate almost vertical mountain sides with only a hoe and a machete. They make little steps up the mountain. I´ve never seen any erosion. Corn, beans and squash or pumpkin are the three sacred foods for them. These three are grown together. First they plant the corn, then beans around the corn, so that the bean vines can grow up the long corn stalks, and finally the pumpkin. The large pumpkin or squash leaves shade the ground and prevent torrential rains from washing away soil, while preventing weeds. It all makes sense, and they´ve been doing this for thousands of years. There are 23 Myan languages spoken in Guatemala. Some of these people don´t speak Spanish. Their religion is often only nominally catholic, rites and festivals are basically to the old gods, but they call them saints. It´s all very interesting...
I just finished lunch after a long morning of verbs in the preterate...with irregular and exceptions. When I finished my head was swimming. I’m continuing to speak only Spanish while here. ...yesterday I visited a museum that also has a hotel and restaurant attached. It is built in the ruins of an ancient monastery. The whole place is very beautiful. There´s a Moorish garden in the center with a large fountain. The archeological museum is very interesting. They have Mayan artifacts with modern art along side. It sounds weird, but works. The two types of art complement each other. There might be a Mayan representation of a jaguar or a fish with a modern art representation of a jaguar of fish along side... that was my favorite place here yet. It called la Casa de San Domingo. The hotel looks expensive, an unprecedented eighty dollars a night... the restaurant looks expensive too, but I didn´t look into it. If you can’t find a restaurant with a meal for five dollars or less, then you ain’t looking. You can get a fine meal anywhere for 35 or 38 quetzales, about $4.00 to $4.50. And if you look you can eat easily for a dollar fifty or two dollars.
My Spanish teacher said that the Casa de Santo Domingo was haunted a few years back. It seems that an American, or Canadian, bought the place, but while fixing it up desecrated the bones in the crypt. After that people began seeing ghosts and strange things. People working late would feel taps on their shoulders, and see specters. They had to close the hotel and grounds down for a while. The Catholic Church told them that to purify the place they´d have to build and consecrate a chapel on the grounds. Now there´s a big outdoor church, covered with sail cloth. So there are no longer any ghosts. The grounds are built among the ruins of the monastery. There are flowers and plants growing among the ruins. They have a couple of colorful parrots. Over the tile roofs you can see the mountains and volcanoes...Today, music in the park... on the weekends they block off the central avenue, so it´s wide open. I hope they have one of those South American groups like last weekend. Tomorrow, I’m going to Lake Atitlan. My Spanish teacher told me that last January they discovered a large Mayan city at the bottom of the lake. That´s really strange. Apparently, every day at the same hour a large whirlpool forms in the lake and boats can´t go out. This whirlpool is over the sunken city. It sounds pretty weird, but is supposed to be true. The Mayans only let archeologists dive down for a few hours each week to investigate, so not much is known about it yet.
I visited the ruins of another haunted monastery. The monastery was a working Franciscan monastery with the ancient ruins of the original alongside. The ruins are a vast area, and are very beautiful. I walked around the ruins for awhile then sat on a little hill for awhile looking at a pretty vista of the mountains. Pretty soon, a man in old clothing passed by and said that we are closed. So, I went to the front gate, but it had a padlock on it, and I couldn´t get out. So I went looking for the man, but he had disappeared. I was stuck. Finally I had to climb up the wall in the back of the monastery, and drop from the top onto the sidewalk of a back street. On the street side, the wall was as high as a roof.
When I told this story to my Spanish teacher, she said that those ruins where haunted, and it isn´t good to sit there. She said that the man I saw was probably a ghost...fantasma... I told this story to the family that I’m staying with, and told them what the teacher had said. They were fascinated. Apparently, people in Guatemala really believe in this sort of thing, and love to hear stories about it...
My Spanish teacher told me a story about a friend who back in the civil war was taken by soldiers, imprisoned in a clandestine prison, and tortured. When they found out that he wasn´t the guy they were looking for they blindfolded him, and took him out in the middle of nowhere and dropped him off. He was injured, tired and didn´t know where he was. He tried to hitchhike but he looked so bad that no one would stop to help him. Then an old man came by leading his animals, and gave him directions back to Antigua. Her friend turned away for a moment, then turned back and the old man had disappeared. The teacher said that meanwhile the friend’s mother had been praying to San Pedro...a miracle worker... she believes that it was san Pedro, patron saint of Antigua, who appeared to her friend. The friend made it back safely to his mother´s house... anyway, lots of strange stories around here...
I went to Lake Atitlan yesterday. It was very beautiful. The lake is surrounded by three volcanoes, and completely surrounded by mountains. It continues to seem strange to me that these rugged mountains are populated. In the United States, mountains like that would be remote and wilderness. Here there may be cultivated lands going right up a mountain side, and small Mayan villages on the mountain side, or on the top. This is the first place where I saw the majority of the people dressed in peasant clothes: baggy, colorful pants with a big sash and often carrying a machete, straw hat on head the women wearing multicolored dresses, that they had probably woven themselves. When I arrived, there were a lot of little shops along the street with some aggressive sellers, including the kids: it’s for my little sister...cute little girl standing aside. Getting away from all that the lake was wonderful. I took a boat trip to two other towns. one of which had a market place for the local Mayans, where you could see anything from modern brik a brack, to dried herbs in baskets, or fruits and vegetables known and unknown, or large baskets of dried minnows, for eating I presume. It was about a three hour drive both ways. On the way we stopped at a nice, rustic restaurant, log construction, where I had some local fare for breakfast: grilled ham and chorizo, beans, fried eggs, and tortillas; very hot sauce on the side. The meat was grilled and tasted very good...
I bought one of those panama hats. Last week the guy told me 80 quetzales, but for me 70. Yesterday, I walked up and asked if it could be sold for 60 quetzales, about $8.00. He said sure 60 quetzales. That´s great considering what you pay in the states. It´s basically just a straw hat, but was very popular when workers were working on the Panama Canal in the early 1900s. It excellent for keeping off rain and sun and bugs, and is made from some fiber that is very strong, so can be crushed in a suitcase and come out fine...
I just got back to Antigua from Tikal, safe and sound despite warnings about bandits. Tikal was definitely worth seeing, but very hot and humid. It´s in the lowlands. The jungle there is impressive; not the scrubby jungle like in the Yucatan, but with huge trees with all sorts of vines growing up. It looks like the forest in a Tarzan movie. Come to think of it, I think they shot some of those old Tarzan movies in Central America. Seeing the peaks of the ruins poking up out of the forest canopy is kind of eerie. There were monkeys in the trees. I saw a lot of spider monkeys swinging on vines and along branches. If you stop to look, and they get pissed off, they´ll shake the branch so nuts fall down on you so that you´ll move on. I didn´t see the howler monkeys, but could sure hear them. They scare some people, because they sound like jaguars screaming in the woods. There are jaguars there, but I didn´t see any. They say that there is a dump site for the hotel where a lot of animals come, and often jaguars come there to hunt the animals. Walking up the path to the ruins at sunset to see wild life was a little scary. I saw lots of wild life: a strange kind of turkey with a blue head, and iridescent feathers, one of those giant rat things that Brazilians like to eat, and a weird animal that looked like a cross between a fox and a cat. I guess it is their version of a grey fox. I stayed in a little hotel that is inside the national park. I had a little cottage with one of those palm frond roofs. I had a small swimming pool in front. It was just a short walk up to the ruin sites. I went there in bus. They recommended the overnight ride, because the traffic is better. But I can´t sleep on a bus, so the eight hour ride was pretty grueling. I should have paid the extra hundred and twenty bucks and flown. Riding buses long distance sucks. But I got to see a lot of the country side. I think I said earlier that Tikal was the largest Myan city, but they´ve discovered another that was even larger, Mirador. This hasn´t been excavated or restored from the forest yet, however. And, it takes a hike with pack horses of several days just to get there.
…On my way back home…. As usual in Latin America, I had to wait a long time for my ride to the airport to show up, then on the way there we got caught in a demonstration that was blocking the road. The driver said that the last... time this happened he had to wait till late afternoon before he could move, so he suggested I walk through the demonstration and try to find a cab further on into the city (known for high crime and murder). So there I was having to walk through a city I didn't know, with all of my stuff on my back, waiting for banditos to rob me of everything...However, after about a mile, I was able to flag down a cab. So I made it to the airport on time...

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Trip Length: 3 weeks
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