Advertisement
Published: July 16th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Lots to say, so, you know, if you have to pee, go now.
Friday morning waking up in Panajachel I take a boat across Lago de Atitlan figuring I'd spend a few hours in a little local town. After an incredibly picturesque ride, I arrive at a beautiful little town with a few backpacker hostels, little cafes, two tiny markets, some cliffs for rock jumping and sunning, and 5000 Quat'chi'chel indiginos, children and dogs just sunning themselves and growing coffee and avocados.
This is compared to Panajachel, which is like one long street from the main highway to the lake with nothing but Guatemalan stands of native blankets and t-shirts, internet cafes, tourists, and italian restaurants on a dirty and ugly stretch of lake. Realizing that spending shabbat in San Marcos is a MUCH better idea, I get back on the 4pm boat to Pana and catch the 6 pm boat BACK to San Marcos, stopping only to buy grape juice and bread. I got a beautiful hostel room with gardens and a sauna and a balcony with a lake view for $11 (thats considered 'splurging' here in Guate), and bought fruits and veggies for shabbos lunch.
¿How
does one make Shabbat while travelling (warning: Halachic sheilah coming up for those of you rab colleagues)? I buy local bread and local grape juice and fruits nuts a veggies, get dinner before sh'kiah/noche, and take walks and swim. San Marcos is pressed between the mountain cliffs and the lake, making (from my understanding of the eruv I learned at Ramah Darom) a natural eruv, so I can bring my water and sunscreen with.
Two sheilos: 1) Is it better to make kiddush on local unhechshered grape juice, or should I make a she'ha'kol on Jack Daniels? 2) What do you do about sunscreen on Shabbos? I put it on, figuring both that had the rabbis had sunscreen in their day they would have allowed because of oneg shabbat, and that if there is even a 1% chance to prevents skin cancer, then pikuach nefesh is in play. Whaddaya think?
Anyhoo. Shabbat was amazing. I met two travellers, Matt and Brooks, playing chess at dinner. Matt starts med school in Greneda (that country Reagan invaded) in a month, so him and his g-friend brooks DROVE down from San Francisco. Thats 4000 mi. Unfortunately they got rear ended outside of
Lago de Atitlan3
Chillin with the locals. Panajachel, so their car was in the shop for a week. Really nice folks: Matt took up my guitar at the end of the night and was awesome at it.
Saturday I davenned on my balcony and then walked around town, taking in the scene and talking to the locals a little. Very friendly, and they told me (more than once) that the tourists never talk to them and they liked to chat. It was a bonus that Spanish is both of our second languages (I met folks who speak spanish worse than me, if you believe that.) Most of villagers are Quat'chi'kel indians, the rest speak Tjul'lil.
I ate and went to the rock cliffs for swimming, starting off with jumping off a 45 foot cliff into the aqua waters below, which was awesome (I watched someone else do it the day before. Of course, a local kid told me people get killed doing it once in while, but the local kids aren't very trustworthy- more on that later.) A brit caught a digital photo of it, but I didn't get to dwnload it. Swam in the cool waters and sunned and hung out with packers on
the rocks, went back for minchah and hung out with a pair of British 5th year med students on their way to serve for 4 weeks at a hospital in Dangribe, Belize; really really wonderful folks. Relaxed in the garden by the lake and then made havdallah and drank a lot of beer by the lake with the doctors.
There we met a British woman, about 45 yrs old, in the 1st month of a yearlong trip around the world. Amazing people, these traveller types. Although being a rabbi has been something of an oddity here.
3 local kids in the afternoon stopped to bother me and ask for money, so I promised them some $ the next day. They told me that two were orphans, and they even had a convincing story to go with it, but they were little hustler-urchin kids (8 yrs to about 11). So, feeling bad, I gave them my bread and promised dough the next day. Rabbi Dorff and I both have agreed that its generally better to give tzedakah and let the onus be on the individual to make a good decision about its use.
On my way out of town
I chatted again with some local woman after giving the kids money while I awaited a boat back to Pana: they told me the kids weren't orphans but that their parents were all drunks. Sad.
It'll be a while till I write again- I'm heading north to a town called Nebaj in the mountains and then across a dirt road in the mountains to Coban for river rafting caving and hiking. It should take two days at least to Coban.
A last thought: I've been buying the Guate paper to improve my spanish and follow the news about Israel. The lead stories are all about shootouts with the police, robberies, and gang violence here, which apparantly is a fairly serious ongoing problem, in addition to government corruption and constant freeing of former war criminals convicted of atrocities against indiginos during the war. A few days ago talking with Isai, I asked him about the Civil war, and he said he didn't know much and was really little, and mostly it was indiginos who were killed, but once or twice his parents had to hunker down while living in Chimaltenago during artillery fire. He went on to say,
Brooks and Matt
They drove here. Drove! "It makes no difference. The former rebels all gave up their arms (in 1996) and went to the city and there was no work. So they became thieves and began 'maras' (gangs). Its the just as bad as a war."
Its hard to see the violence in Israel and see it here too and feel the world is horribly horribly broken. Nobody in Israel, Syria, Hezbollah, Fatah or Hamas seem to have any sense or restrait, proportional response or sanctity for the live of others and escallation is only going to continue a downward spiral. May we be the more rational and just nation, seeking peace and pursuing peace.
Yihi shalom be'chelecha, shalva b'armenotayich There should be peace in your midst, calm in your strongholds.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.15s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0974s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Shalom
non-member comment
A Holy Man...
Rav Mark, I just want to say that you are one of the few people I know in the world that really work hard to practice what you preach and that is an amazing quality!! May you be blessed in all that you do Shalom