Antigua, Guatemala: Lava and Touristy things

I went to Pacaya, an active volcano near Guatemala City. These are the pictures. I don't have much time to write though.

As if there was any question, the danger is that way.

4 month old rocks

Roasting Marshmellows


Eating a make-shift s'more


Hiking out in the dark.

Todos Santos: Life in the Highlands

I started writing this on Tuesday (its now f, apparently) when I had a bit of intestinal distress going on. I didn’t get very far as I really just wanted to curl up on the couch and stare out the windows. It was not terrible, in comparison to what it could have been, and I’ve definitely gotten worse food poisoning in the states, but I really didn’t do much besides rest.

I’m not really sure what did it to me, as I have been eating “safe food” here but that is just the thing…there isn’t a whole lotta rhyme and reason when you are in a place as rustic as this and there isn’t much you can do about it, even if there was. I emailed Joe and informed him of my distress Tuesday afternoon. His response was that it builds character. Then I got another email from him early Wednesday morning saying that he is eating his words because he just got “the distress” too. Between travelers, poop is always the lowest common denominator: it’s the one thing we all have in common and most have no shame in talking about it.

The view from the couch

I brought peppermint tea with me on this trip, knowing I’d probably want it and when I did want it that I would be in no condition to go find it, and boy was that a good move. Having it made my day.

Sick in the Hammock

View from the Hammock

Actually, the volunteer who runs the school here made my day. He bought me “bread” at the market (actually more like cake as it turned out, but delicious nevertheless), kept my tea cup full of hot water, made me a nice safe meal of pasta for dinner when I finally felt like eating, and then watched Zombieland with me. What a day. And the day before he taught me the opening notes of “La Bamba” on the guitar (we couldn’t have started with something simple like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”). Que Bueno! Like I said before, the gringos I’ve met on this trip have all been phenomenal human beings. (He’s Australian, which is why I have to say gringos rather than Americans. I also made a Danish friend).

Lizard

This past week, instead of Spanish lessons, I decided to take weaving lessons. It is debatable as to if that was a good long-term, resume-building move, but it has been fun. I’m a crafty girl and I like making things so it is kinda up my alley. It is hard though, well, it is not really hard per se (partial differential equations are hard), but there are a lot of things that can go wrong and fixing them when they do is exceptionally tedious. I almost cried once.

The whole time we were setting up the loom I kept thinking, “there has to be a better way”…and in fact there is a better way, it’s called a machine.

But, this process has been fun. I’ve been learning from these three Mayan women. They are all very nice, though I wouldn’t say the best teachers in the world. They kinda just expected that I would at least know where to start, since you know, they were born knowing, but somehow I missed the episode of Sesame Street where they taught that.

They really were good though, and what they make is incredible. After they got over the initial shock that I was 28 and still had no babies (no seriously, where are your babies?), patting and touching my blonde hair, and marveling about my blue eyes (look at her eyes they are blue, and really, you have no babies?) we did some serious weaving.

These are the ladies who taught me.

The matriarch is on the left, her oldest daughter is on the left, and her youngest daughter is the head that is floating on the bottom. The little girl is the cutest thing ever.

They all speak Spanish, though it is not their first language, Mam is, so it kinda limited our conversations. They all chattered to eachother in Mam, throwing in a Spanish word or phrase every now and then (usually numbers, and transitional words like “entonces” (well, then) or despues “after”). And Mam sounds like chatter. Seriously. A lot of clipped consonants and short, curt, sounds. And when it is written, it is full of apostrophes.

Todos Santos Cuchimatan

And now I have a three foot “scarf” ( after 16 hours of work) which I was going to give to Becka, but it is really too short to wear so I think I might just have to buy her one and pass it off as my own. Don’t tell her.

My “scarf” is actually not as ugly as I was expecting it to turn out. The ladies kept saying “oh its beautiful” and I kept saying “no, its actually pretty ugly.” I expected it to look like one of those elastic potholder things I made as a kid considering the amount of screw-ups I had during the process, but it doesn’t. It’s by no means good on any kind of objective scale, but it doesn’t look like a three year old did it either. But you know what, weaving has been killing my wrist. I think it requires a lot of wrist strength that I just don’t have back yet. But hey, I can consider this physical therapy, right?

This family is poor. I mean, the type of poor that you think about when you think about poor people in developing nations. And huge. About 10 people live in a one room, dirt floored house. There is the grandma, then two of her daughters (of which there are more, but they live elsewhere), and then the children of these two daughters (of which there are many). And there is not a single baby’s daddy in the picture.

Entitled "Pig and Calla Lily"

I have a lot of thoughts about Todos Santos but they aren’t ready to be published quite yet. It’s a different kind of experience out there. Topics include the usual about poverty: education, birth control, and gender equality, but I also learned A LOT about immigration to the US, the process, the reasons, the cost, the social cost to the towns they leave (these are huge), the benefits (many fathers go to the US to work in order to send their kids to high school and college, thus breaking the family out of poverty), and sustainability.

Several of the men I spoke to lived in the states for between 5 and 10 years. And when riding the busses in the Western Highlands, I ran into some young Guatemalan men who are by all accounts American and they look just as out of place here as I do. They spoke near perfect English and if you saw them on the street in San Fran or Denver, you wouldn’t even look twice.

The road into Todos Santos

Todos Santos' Valley

I quite simply don’t have time now to write coherently about these things, though i have been pondering quite a bit. I’d actually love to go back to Todos Santos and get some more stories, talk to more people, and really dive into it. I’ll put it on my list of things to do in the future. Seriously there is so much to think about and the webs of cause and effects so tightly woven and complex.

But on a lighter note, I went for a beautiful hike this past weekend with a Brit named Rob. We hiked to the tippy top of this overlook (elev of about 12,000 ft) and could see for hundreds of miles into Mexico, back to Lake Atitlan, and out past Xela.

The three Lake Atitlan Volcanos are on the left, the three near Xela are on the right.

Then we saw the volcano near Xela spewing more ash.

It kinda looks like high and dry Colorado with its sparse pine forests up here.

This is a land of corn, and without a doubt the best tortillas I’ve ever eaten. Ever. I tried to make some with the mom and grandmother of the family I am staying with, but I failed miserably.

I will get it though, eventually. But corn pretty much rules all up in these parts, and in fact, it is said that God first made man from mud, which was an udder failure, then from wood, but his heart was too hard to love, and then on the third try, God got it right, and made man from corn and that is who we all are now.

I left Todos Santos on Thursday morning and arrived in Antigua that afternoon. Again, a horrible bus ride, it has just come to be expected now. This time “the distress” returned and I nearly got left at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere as I pondered how to flush the toilet that had no handle. Can you imagine that? Me, with only 60Q ($7.50) and my passport in my pocket, left at a bus station in Los Encunetros, Guatemala all my belongings on the bus cause I didn’t even think about grabbing my purse from the seat as I shot out the door and into the baño (it was that much of an emergency)…that is the stuff of legends.

I want to take this puppy with a broken leg home

But I made it. As I got back on the bus, I told the driver I was a little sick and thanks for waiting, and he was this jolly man who grabbed my hand and said that I have the best luck because they would have left me there if this whole group of people hadn’t have just shown up to get on. I got a hotel room with a private bathroom and shower last night and wow, did that ever feel good.

I wrapped myself up in TWO full size towels and laid on the sheets as I dried off, it felt so good. But then I realized I had no real clean clothes to go out to dinner in, so I put on my swimsuit and a tiny sundress that I froze my ass off in but, I was clean.

I am at the laundry mat right now, paying something absurd like 5 dollars to use a washer and drier. But its been four weeks since any of my clothes have had a real go ‘round in a washer or drier (I try to do it by hand, but its just not the same) . My jeans are gonna feel so good…it’s the little things in life.

I am going to climb a volcano with real lava (Pacaya) this evening and then I leave for Copán Honduras tomorrow morning at 4, I should get there around 10 and have the afternoon to see the ruins. I’m not so into ruins, but I figure I have to go if I am there. Day after tomorrow I hope to make it to Utila, Honduras to commence my beaching, diving, and snorkeling. We’ll see how the traveling goes. It rarely goes according to plan so we will see. Maybe I will get left at a bus station in Honduras…

To Todos Santos

So apparently I get carsick now. Yeah. It has happened too many times consecutively now for me to pass it off as mere coincidence. Yep. This sucks. It looks like I might just have to walk back to the airport ‘cause the last thing I want to do is climb onto another chicken bus. And it is not just chicken busses that are doing this to me: I shelled out the big bucks for a private shuttle the other day (a minivan of sorts) and still, I got ill. Ugh. I should be sick from what I have been eating as I’ve been eating pretty much everything that sits on the list of things white people shouldn’t eat in foreign lands, yet, it’s the busses that are making my stomach unwell. I haven’t actually thrown up yet, but still, the general malaise is nearly unbearable. This could become a very serious problem if it persists…

I am currently in the town of Todos Santos, population about 3500. It is BY FAR my favorite place in Guatemala. It’s very real here. I am one of maybe 6 white people, and as The Moon Guidebook puts it: “Todos Santos is remote and largely retains its traditions. You’ll still see the men wearing traditional attire consisting of bright red pants with thin white strips and a zany striped shirt featuring an oversized embroidered collar. The women are equally stunning in their purple embroidered dresses.” I will try to get a picture of these things, though I need to develop some relationships before I can snap the photos.

Todos Santos is also exceptionally poor, so poor in fact that when I walked into a house this afternoon, it actually shocked me (and that is hard to do these days). The house I am staying in is relatively nice though, so that is nice. Most families have at least one member in the US working (probably illegally, but perhaps not). In fact, the sisters of the family I am staying with live in Oakland and it really took me by surprise when they asked if that was where I lived. Seriously, who asks if you are from Oakland? So generally the sentiment towards the US in this town is generally good and I see jackets, houses, and cars all sporting American flags. The feelings for America are much better here than it is in the rest of the country right now, but that is quite possibly due to that new bill/law in Arizona that everyone seems to know about (I don’t know much about it personally, but it has been in the national paper, and usually on the front page, for the last week).

Todos Santos is tucked into a dramatic valley with stunning cliff walls. We dropped down into this valley on my very miserable bus ride here, so we are lower than the plateau by about 1500 feet, though my lungs still tell me we are high. I would guess the elevation here is about 9000 feet. It is cold now that we are into rainy season too. In the afternoons we get these deluges of water pouring from the sky that are simply incredible. This afternoon, I saw a woman about taking some weaving classes (because when in Rome...). As we left the school it was kinda sprinkling. We walked about 10 minutes to her house and by that time it was pouring. We were there for ten minutes then walked back to the school, and the streets turned into rivers. So much water. Then we got back to the school, and it was flooded. Luckily, not more than a centimeter of water, but the street had flooded and thus, so did the buildings with doors at street level along it.

I immediately came to the rescue. I built a little levee to divert the flood waters away from the door (effectively just making it someone else’s problem) with my bare hands and in my bare feet (I took my shoes off to try to keep them somewhat dry). The levee worked fantastically, actually. Then after preventing more water from entering, we were able to sweep out the water that had already poured in. All and all it was wildly successful and gave my day a bit of purpose. Thank goodness I have all those credentials that allow me to move rocks and gravel around like a little kid playing in the mud.

I was soaked to the bone after this so stripped my wet clothes off and wore a big wool blanket the rest of the afternoon while waiting for the rain to stop before walking home. This was, on the surface, a good idea but as good as it felt at the time, I had to put on my cold wet jeans to get home three hours later and that was pretty terrible. Now I am back home, still wet, and wearing every other piece of clothing I brought along on this trip. I stopped by the store on the corner to look for something warm and dry (my jacket is soaked) and almost bought this pastel pink sweatshirt with a giant, stereotypically Latin-American Virgin Mary embroidered on the back. I kinda still want to. It would be awesome. I could wear it around Oakland.

Before I got to Todos Santos I went back to Xela for the full moon volcano hike that I’d been excited about for a month now. But when I got to Xela, I found out the hike was canceled ‘cause the volcano next door (volcán Santiaguito) had been spewing ash and gas at an above average to alarming rate.

So I was disappointed, but we all went out for some drinks that night and had fun, so it was ok, I suppose.

We ended up getting a little glimpse into the gay nightlife here in Guatemala in one of very few places where it might marginally be accepted. We went to a bar around 8:30 and stayed ‘til 1am. When we first arrived it was totally indistinguishable from any other bar, but as the night wore on, the ladies trickled out and the well-dressed men trickled in. By about midnight, my new friend Cine (see-na) and I were the only ladies. Even then, though, we weren’t totally sure and honestly if you weren’t a trained observer, you probably would not have caught on, but it was. I think subtlety still has to be the way of life here for these fellows.

I have to say, I feel like the folks I’ve met in Xela have turned into real friends. I mean, Joe I knew already, so he hardly counts, but the rest of them, they are good, solid people and I am sad to leave them behind.

Picture this: an old school bus, circa 1985. Now, paint the bus green and the blue bird logos on the top red. Add some red flames along the bottom. Black out the top third of the windshield and write something like “I go with Jesus” in that old English font favored by the hispanic world over top the black on the outside. On the inside top third of the windshield, lay Astroturf. Add a blingy chrome grill and a chrome air-intake on the hood. Plaster the inside of the roof with giant Winnie the Pooh, Looney ‘Toons, and Transformer decals. Weld handles onto the top of every seat. Then hang a bouquet of gaudy plastic flowers from the center of windshield.

Now, add the Latino equivalent of Billy Maze, the infomercial king, selling a magic snake oil that will cure ALL your troubles for the price of only 10 queztales.

But wait! If you buy today, he’ll double the offer, and you can get two magic snake oils for the price of one. That’s an incredible deal. But Billy can see you’re not sold just yet, so here, why don’t you try some snake oil. Just a little, can’t you feel it working? Yeah that’s good stuff. Anything that ails you, this oil can cure. Billy had a friend once who had a scar on his elbow and after only 10 days of using the oil, it was gone. Incredible! Billy himself used to have serious pain in his back but after only 10 days of rubbing on the oil (apply in the morning and at night) the pain went away and never returned. Ok, ok, so Billy can see that you are driving a hard bargain. This is his final offer: two snake oils for 5 quetzales. You’ll never see an offer like this again…

Except I did see an offer like that again. Three times. The infomercial hombres climbed on the bus and each gave their spiel: one for a soap, one for a cream, and one for a vitamin supplement. Each one of these wonder products possessed amazing curative powers for any ailment under the sun. Your husband snore? Slip him one of these and in ten days you will be sleeping peacefully. Your hair thinning? Rub this cream on and you’ll feel like a young man. Joints hurt? Got warts? Feeling worried or depressed? Billy has the cure…Maybe I should have bought one and tried it for my motion sickness.

My teacher and me in San Pedro Atitlan. Isn't she tiny?

This god-awful creature crows all night here in Todos Santos.