Winter 2005

January 5, 2005
Panajachel, Guatemala

Sunset on Lake Atitlan

I have spent New Year’s in Guatemala for so many years now it almost seems normal. Well, no, not really. New Year’s in Guatemala is never normal.

I flew down this year just after Christmas. Not only was it very nice to spend Christmas at home with my family, I really didn’t want to be in Guatemala for Christmas. As I have noted before, the Guatemalans celebrate Christmas, New Year’s, birthdays and any other random event they can think of with explosives of various sizes and volume. New Year’s is bad enough, but Christmas is worse. I’ve learned (the hard way) to avoid Christmas here.

In comparison the New Year’s celebration seems almost sane. But not quite.

For the most part the Guatemalans prefer to get the biggest bang for their buck (or Quetzal, which is the currency of Guatemala). Colorful and complex aerial displays take a back seat to raw noise. Safety is of no significant concern; most of the explosives, I’m sure, are set off within a few feet of people, preferably against the side of a building, or in a narrow street for best effect. Being a pedestrian on New Year’s Eve is quite exciting— you have to be alert for bottle rockets, which are more likely to be flying horizontally than up, and at the same time keep your eyes on the ground for bombs about to go off. It is best to just take cover, and celebrate in more traditional ways.

An American expatriate friend here, Mike, who is truly obsessed with the subject, says that Guatemalans spend about $1.5 million every year on fireworks. Knowing Mike, he thinks that’s a good thing. That figure may have crept up a little since he came to Guatemala.

I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say Mike is passionate about coffee. But if you really want to see him excited, start talking fireworks. It was just a happy coincidence, I’m sure, that he found a place that both needed a good coffee shop, and where ridiculously large fireworks are freely available.

At first he might have been considered a gifted amateur—the neighborhood kids quickly learned they were outclassed when it came to faux warfare. But recently his pyrotechnic prowess has been getting the kind of acclaim that he has earned with his coffee-making skills.

Within minutes of my first visit to Mike’s shop this year he was telling me about a wedding he had been hired to cater—not with coffee, but with fireworks. Mike had his own photo album of the wedding, featuring his handiwork, and enthusiastically described the mayhem in great detail.

Then Mike told me he had been given a generous budget by a local hotel to put on a display New Year’s Eve. He asked if I had a camera. I should have left right then, but I’ll have to admit that a morbid curiosity led me to accept his invitation to come with him to watch the show, and document it as best I could.

New Year's Eve 2005

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January 15, 2005
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

Over the past few years I’ve written many times about the people I’ve come to know here in Guatemala, especially my adopted family--the five kids and their parents from the village of San Antonio Palopó, who now live in the city of Quetzaltenango. But also their aunts (on their mother’s side), a few others of their extended family, as well as unrelated friends and acquaintances. I spent the first few weeks of this trip catching up on the year past with most of them.

For the most part, everyone is doing fine. My kids are fine, and doing pretty well in school. No one I knew died (yet), but there was a birth—and one born a year and a half ago has been admitted to.

A Secret Revealed
Last year I heard the rumor (thanks to my kids) that Alva, one of the aunts and a student in her last year of law school, had had a baby boy. But my little informants didn’t know for sure. I visited Alva at her apartment in Quetzaltenango, where she was going to university, and saw a stroller over in one corner of her small place; there was a partially empty bottle of Gerber baby food and a baby blanket on the clothesline. It looked suspicious, but Alva gave me no indication that she had a baby, and I didn’t bring it up.

This year the baby is out of the closet, so to speak. And Alva graduated and is now a licensed lawyer. Those two things are probably related.

Yessica and Sarita

On the other end of the spectrum one old friend, Don Pedro, may be near death. He is not that old, in his 40s I think, but he was one of the first people I knew in the village. I first met his daughters when I was a language student in Antigua. They would come down from San Antonio to sell stuff to tourists. Sometimes Pedro would come along.

For the past couple of months he has been mostly confined to bed, and recently in the hospital. A doctor told him that he has an internal infection. That could mean just about any internal disorder, but probably not an infection. Pedro said he suspected his illness may have something to do with his past drinking habits. I wouldn’t be surprised. Most of the time he didn’t drink at all, but when he got started he had a hard time stopping.

When I first came to the village, about ten years ago, I rented a tiny room from Pedro, connected to a little store the family operated. Around Christmastime he went on a binge and stayed drunk for most of a week. I don’t think he went home the whole time. Instead he slept in a hammock that was hung right in front of my door. Day and night for several days I had to step across him whenever I wanted to enter or leave my room. He was mild mannered and quiet when he was sober, and fortunately he was about the same when he was drunk. He mumbled and sang, but other than that he wasn’t any trouble.

Sometimes at night Pedro’s elderly mother would come over to remonstrate with him. She spoke only Cakchiquel, the Mayan dialect of the village, so I don’t know what she was saying—but I have a pretty good idea.

When Pedro finally sobered up, his daughters told him that he had borrowed a fairly large amount of money from me to buy booze. He came to me, haggard from his ordeal, and contritely promised he would pay me back as soon as possible. He was so sincere, and so sorry that neither his daughters nor I could keep from laughing. The look of relief on his face when he realized he didn’t really owe me money was priceless.

But now, maybe the drinking is catching up with him. He was in San Antonio when I visited the village; the doctor had let him come home for the holidays. We talked for a while, and I left wondering whether I would see him alive again.

The Road Ahead
The next part of my trip is going to be something completely different. As Guatemala gets tamer and better known it is becoming harder to find places off the beaten path. Whole busloads of tourists turn up in surprising places. Next week I plan to head up into the Cuchamatanes Mountains, an area I’ve never been to before. My principle destinations will be two towns that are pretty well known; there are fairly good roads to both of them, but few foreigners travel a shorter, but mountainous road that connects them. That route is only a hundred miles or so long, but it is a two or three-day journey over rough, but spectacular terrain (from what I hear). If I run into a busload of tourists I’ll be really annoyed.
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February 1, 2005
Panajachel, Guatemala

After spending a couple of comfortable weeks in Quetzaltenango, hanging out with my godchildren (and way too many visits to McDonalds) I decided it was time to go to some parts of Guatemala I’ve never been to before. There aren’t many, but I had never been up to the mountain village of Todos Santos, or the city of Cobán, a former center of coffee and cardamom production, which is now becoming a hub of eco-tourism. On a map the two places aren’t that far apart—a little more than a hundred miles—but the mostly unpaved road that links them winds up, down and through the Cuchumatanes Mountains. It sounded just like what I was looking for.

One reason I had put off going to Todos Santos was the climate. Todos Santos is in a high mountain valley at about 7000 feet. Much of the time it is blanketed in a thick, drizzly fog, which is so common that it has a name—chipi-chipi. It is a cute name for a miserable phenomenon. But I vowed that a little fog wouldn’t stop me this time.

From Quetzaltenango, one has to change buses in the fairly large city of Huehuetenango, which has virtually nothing of interest to travelers except some mediocre Mayan ruins nearby. The bus I boarded to Todos Santos was battered and dusty. The door was broken, and some of the windows wouldn’t close. I thought that looked promising.

From Huehue the road climbed steeply into misty mountains. Mist quickly turned into fog so thick that I could see it drifting in through the open door and windows. A roadside sign pointed to a vista point overlooking the valley below, but the sign itself vanished quickly in the fog as we passed it. As I grew colder I began wishing for a bus that wasn’t quite so battered.

As we neared the mountaintop we abruptly broke out of the clouds into bright sunlight. Grassy, rock-strewn fields with small flocks of sheep gave way to rugged, pine-covered hillsides. But as we began descending into the valley on the dirt road that leads to Todos Santos we sank back into the fog as quickly as we had left it a few miles earlier. Mountains and valleys disappeared, and Mayan villagers standing beside the road took on an air of mystery.

When we reached Todos Santos the first thing I did, after finding a place to stay, was put on nearly all the clothes I had, which I had packed in anticipation of warm weather. It would be three days before I was warm enough to take any layers off.

In addition to the traditional dress of its inhabitants, Todos Santos is known for a wild horse race, held on November 1 at the end of a week of festivities. The night before the race the riders traditionally drink themselves silly on aguardiente, a potent beverage made from sugar cane. The drunkenness of the contestants is an integral part of the race and just staying on the horse is considered a real feat. There really isn’t any other point to it. It is not uncommon for fallen riders to be trampled to death. I’m sure there is a perfectly good rationale for this race, but I have no idea what it is.

As the man passed by the dog barked at him. The man stopped, then began singing loudly to the dog. The dog stopped barking, and began howling along with the drunken man. Both had pretty good voices. I don’t know whether the man was harmonizing with the dog, or the dog with the man. But they were, indeed, harmonizing. It was pure magic. As miserable as I was, hearing man and man’s best friend singing in harmony made me feel like my trip to Todos Santos was worth it.

I had expected the trip to Cobán to take three days, with overnight stops in Sacapulas and Uspantán. But thanks to good connection karma I made it in a day and a half, stopping in Sacapulas only long enough to catch a bus leaving immediately for Uspantán. (I wouldn’t have minded staying a little longer, but the next bus left about 4 a.m. the next morning.)

Near the beginning of the trip, after I had changed buses in Huehue, we came to a stretch of paved road and I was afraid I had delayed this trip too long. But the pavement quickly ran out and most of the remaining road was dirt, very rough in spots and in some places little more than a path hacked out of the mountainside. One place we had to detour off the dirt road, and drove down a riverbed for a ways. The water was axle deep and steam from the hot muffler boiled up around the bus. I don’t think there will be tour buses on that route anytime soon.

The road climbed up into the clouds, and down into fertile valleys, past villages and towns. In some places I felt like we were stepping into the past; houses were still made of adobe with tile roofs, rather than the concrete block and corrugated tin that has become so pervasive in Central America. Women knelt in front of dark doorways weaving on backstrap looms, as women here have done for centuries.

We went down more than we went up, and the road gradually descended toward semi-tropical Cobán. We began seeing banana and palm trees and I started feeling more optimistic about ever being warm again.

Cobán is a nice enough city, but for travelers it is more of a base to explore the surrounding area, which offers jungle hikes and white-water rafting for the adventurous, inner-tube floating and hammock dozing for the weary. But the only exploring I did was of restaurants and shops. Faye, my partner, is coming down pretty soon and we plan to come back and explore some of the more interesting places together that neither of us has been to.

As I walked down a side street in Cobán I saw a Cobán-Estor bus with bullet holes in the windshield, one ominously right in front of the driver’s seat. But still, I was ready to do it. I was a little disappointed with the lack of adventure on the road getting to Cobán, and riding in a bus with bullet holes in it sounded adventurous. What finally made me decide against it was learning that the bus left at 3:00 a.m. I’ve already mentioned how little I like getting up early. It would be really annoying to get up that early, and then be shot at.

Caribbean Condos

But there was a longer route, paved and well traveled, which, instead of going due east, went down, around, and back up. Longer, but faster. So, with that I abandoned any expectations of adventure.

I got off the bus at a long bridge that crosses the Rio Dulce (“Sweet River”) where a town of the same name has developed. Actually, it is not so much a town as it is a cluster of stores, marginal hotels and other services. To the west of the bridge is Lake Izabal; to the right, the wide, slow river flows down to the Caribbean.

After a few nice warm nights, I took a boat down the river through the jungle to the village of Livingston.

For most of its history the majority of residents were the black Garifuna, who have a complex and fascinating genetic heritage. (Thumbnail history: The Garifuna are descended from Africans destined for the slave trade, shipwrecked near the island of St. Vincent, and Amazonian Indians who had migrated into the Caribbean basin earlier. The Garifuna were forcibly relocated by the British to an island off the coast of Honduras in the late 1700s, and spread out along the coast of Central America from Belize to Nicaragua.) In Livingston during the last several years more and more Mayas have moved in and appear to be gaining the majority.

A beach buzzard, trying to impress his mate, succumbs to exageration.

But in spite of the growing Mayan influence the flavor of Livingston is still distinctly Caribbean. On the streets one hears a blend of Garifuna, Spanish, English, and these days, Q’ekchi’, the Mayan dialect of the region. In the street-side bars and cafés the music is likely to be reggae or punta, an infections rhythm pounded out on drums and turtle shells. And there is more conch soup and coconut bread than rice, beans and tortillas.

Often in the evenings, after the lethargy of a hot steamy day, a roaming punta band will get a street party rolling. However, when I was there this time the party was rained out, so I got to bed early, and the next day I returned to the Guatemalan heartland, back to familiar territory.

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Feb 28, 2004
Antigua, Guatemala

The Arch in Antigua, probably the most photographed thing in Guatemala

The past few weeks travels have been interesting and varied, from the exquisite to the excruciating—sometimes both at once, such as bouncing along over a rough road in an overcrowded bus through some exceptionally nice scenery.

As I mentioned last time, when Faye joined me here earlier in the month we planned to go some places we hadn’t been to before which, as far as Guatemala goes, is a pretty short list these days. I wasn’t sure what to expect from our itinerary other than being able to put a few remaining places in the “been there, done that” category.

In that respect we were not surprised to cover some ground that we probably won’t feel the need to return to. We’ve pretty much had our fill of bumpy dirt roads and most of the little towns connected by them, which start looking the same after a while.

But we visited other places that were beautiful and unlike anywhere else we’ve been in Guatemala. Instead of ending this trip feeling like we’ve done it all, we found areas we want to return to and explore more thoroughly.

Antigua to Rio Dulce
After a couple of nights in Antigua to give Faye a chance to recover from her overnight flight we bused it down to Rio Dulce, at the intersection of the main highway that goes up to the jungles of northern Guatemala and the river of the same name that connects Lake Izabal to the west and the Caribbean to the east. The two places, Antigua and Rio Dulce, could not be more different.

Antigua is the former colonial capitol of Central America and numerous ruined colonial-era cathedrals attest to its rich history (as well as to the power of earthquakes). It has long been a tourist destination, but as things get tamer in this part of Guatemala the town seems like it is being taken over by well-heeled tourists and fresh-faced language students. Mayan vendors, who used to offer shopping opportunities in the streets and in a rambling and chaotic market area, have mostly been banished to a tidy upscale facility several blocks from the town’s central plaza.

On the other hand, the closest Rio Dulce has to anything historical is a faux fortress originally built in the mid-1600s to discourage Caribbean pirates from marauding around Lake Izabal. The annoyed pirates burned the fort not long afterward. After piracy became passé the ruined fort was used for a while as a prison. It was restored as a tourist attraction in the1950s.

The main feature of Rio Dulce these days is a long, modern bridge crossing the river, reputed to be the longest in Central America. At both ends of the bridge hastily built businesses and stores cater to highway traffic going north and south, and river traffic going east and west. Roughly equivalent to Antigua’s wealthy tourists, Rio Dulce attracts the yachting crowd, of a sort. It’s not the French Riviera. While there are certainly some nice boats anchored at the docks and in the several small river bays near the bridge, many look like they have little hope of leaving this third-world backwater, as do some of their owners.

After the dry, mountainous highlands, where we spend most of our time in Guatemala, the river jungle was a nice change. It was green, warm and moist. The rich smell of tropical decay permeates the air. The wide river moves at a languorous pace, and so does life in general there. We didn’t have much time around Rio Dulce this trip, but next time we hope to spend a week or two exploring.

Jungle lodge in Lanquin

In spite of the journey, or perhaps partly because of it, once we got to where we were going we agreed that the area around Cobán was one of the best places in the country we had ever been to. The mountains north of there are indeed lush, softly carpeted with thick vegetation.

Colonial-era cathedral in Lanquin

We stayed at sort of a “jungle lodge” at the edge of the small town of Lanquin that caters to travelers. It has comfortable, if somewhat imaginative, accommodations, as well as a kitchen that served a variety of excellent food. (Good food, hot showers and comfortable beds—that’s all it takes to be a big hit with travelers like us down here.) A clean, cool river flowed by the lodge, and on the opposite side sheep grazed on a grassy hill. It was a very idyllic spot and another place we intend to return to.

Most people come to the area to explore some underground caves near Lanquin, or the travertine pools of Semuc Champey. We didn’t have enough time to visit the caves, but we did get to Semuc Champey. It is a spectacular spot. A raging torrent of a river plunges through a steep canyon, disappears into the ground and emerges a short distance later to fill a cascade of calm and clear waist-deep pools. The sun-warmed water is irresistible; we spent several hours swimming and relaxing.

Semuc Champey

On the Road Again
From Lanquin we returned for one night to Cobán, then reluctantly continued westward over more dirt roads on our way back to the highlands rather than taking the paved route south that would have taken us through Guatemala City. We’ll do just about anything to avoid Guatemala City, but in the future we’ll probably think twice about which is worse, the city or hours of bumpy dirt roads. The scenery made it worth doing once, but probably not again.

The last part of our trip we returned to familiar territory—Quetzaltenango, Panajachel and finally to Antigua—to say good-bye to friends, get some good coffee and do some last minute shopping.

On our next to last bus ride, a very crowded chicken bus to Antigua, we were robbed by pick-pockets (as were a few other travelers on the same bus, we learned later as we compared notes.) They didn’t get much of value—after all, we were on the chicken bus because we needed to economize. But it was annoying. Such small incidents remind us we still need to be careful. Petty crime is a problem here, and there seems to be an increasing number of highway robberies. We’re glad we haven’t had to deal with any major incidents. But travel here means taking the good with the bad, confident that the former outweighs the latter.

That’s the trip for this year.
Jim & Faye

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