Ushering Susan in.

Susan has arrived!

I didn't have a chance to blog yesterday evening because of the celebration we had to commemorate her arrival.

We split up from Jessica and Katy in the morning yesterday and they took a shuttle to Chichicastanango, which resulted in their having a very fine day. They shopped (including getting a very special gift for every single member of their softball team!) and visited the church there and had lunch in a second story restaurant that afforded them a bird's eye view of the marketplace.

While they were in Chichi, Chris and I did some major shopping of our own. We hit the market to prepare for a Guatemalan dinner party. The first time we went to the market, there were several things I was comfortable purchasing: pineapple, carrots, bananas... mostly things that were extremely familiar and/or had peels. After multiple repeat visits, my comfort level grew to include the purchase of fruits I had never seen or eaten before, like the dragon fruit or the lychee, and all manner of vegetables that were well loved and newly discovered. It's interesting what staying in a place for several weeks will do and yesterday I didn't think a thing of buying our shrimp for dinner in the marketplace. It did give me pause, however, to have to behead them myself and so Chris asked the woman to do it for us. She just nodded her head and started ripping the heads off. When she tired of it, she nudged her daughter to do it, who rolled her eyes a bit but finished the job.
We had decided on fish and shrimp tacos with guacamole and mango salsa and stir-fried fajita vegetables for our menu and we were able to get everything we needed and all of it is pictured above.

Chris and I spent a considerable chunk of the afternoon chopping vegetables but also enjoying one another's company, and we were done in time to finish the afternoon in the pool.

Katy and Jessica returned from Chichi safely and we did some show and tell about our purchases and theirs. Susan's shuttle was scheduled to arrive at 6:30 and it did. Her first flight of the day was at 5:30 in the morning, so she had been up since 2 a.m. and was utterly exhausted so we had dinner as soon as she arrived and it was decent food with delicious conversation and hearty laughter. While we were only able to share one evening all together with Katy, Jessica and Susan, it was a good one. I think everyone slept the sleep of the contented afterward.

We broke bread again this morning, having a simple meal of bread and jam and peanut butter while we waited for Jessica's shuttle to collect her for the return trip to Guatemala City. I was sorry to see her go but so impressed she came in the first place, and I hope that in the end she feels it was worth it do so.

We went into town today so that Susan could get a sense of Pana. We wandered up and down Calle Santander and in and out of stalls, where our eyes danced from one beautiful textile to the next and Katy helped us drive down the prices on several things in which we were interested, at one point bringing something down from Q2800 to Q700--a great savings. We had lunch in town which I thought was very good, and if I could remember the name of the place, I would recommend it to others who were coming here but I can't.

After a morning in town, Katy spent the rest of the day at the pool, Chris was a bit under the weather and kept to himself and Susan and I went to the nature reserve up the road. Chris and I were there the first week we spent in Guatemala but it is worth a trip back and another trip back just to see the monkeys. Susan, like me, had little experience observing monkeys in their natural habitat and was captivated by them. We brought some dragon fruit for them and it is amazing watching them come down to the ground from the tree tops to collect their booty, eat some at the ground level, wrap what is left in their tail and then climb back up to the tree canopy to eat the rest. It is so neat. We walked the short trail and passed in front of the waterfall on a hammock bridge and visited the butterfly breeding ground, as well. We finished our afternoon in the swimming pool.

Chris still wasn't feeling well at dinner time so he begged off and the three of us went downtown first to investigate possible curatives in the pharmacy for him (found one--antibiotics here are unregulated!) and then to make some travel arrangements for a mountain biking tour Katy is going on in the morning and then to have dinner. We walked down to the water and cut across town at the lakefront to eat at one of the restaurants that sit right on the lake and, in the dark, the tiny twinkling of lights from the towns on the other side are like tinsel on a distant tree: gorgeous.

Now, it's time for bed so Katy can be up and out and on her mountain bike at 8 a.m. and a boat is picking Susan and I (and hopefully Chris will feel better enough to join us) at our dock for a tour of four different towns on the far side of the lake that we have not yet been to see. Everything suggests it will be another great day for us so I look forward to my dreams tonight.

I was a Mayan Barbie Doll.

Best blog fodder ever today!

Because we are entertaining multiple visitors while we stay in Panajachel, Chris and I knew there would be some things we did twice during our stay here. Although the two of us had already visited Santa Catarina, San Antonio and Santiago on our own, we thought they were great towns that Katy & Jessica would enjoy visiting, as well, and we decided to join them for a second visit.

We chartered a private boat to take us to all three towns and the hot springs outside of Santa Catarina and the boat picked us up at the dock of our hotel this morning at 9 a.m. None of our travel accommodations have been terribly uncomfortable but this was a luxurious way to travel because the four of us had the boat to ourselves and we weren't on a time line: the captain waited for us at each of our destinations until we were done.

We had been told to bring our swimsuits for the trip to the hot springs and each of us did as instructed. This was our first stop outside of Pana, but it was not exactly what we expected. The hot springs are used by the Mayans for prayer ceremonies, so the area, which is very small, was full of women in traditional dress, in the water, laying hands on a rock and chanting. It seemed disrespectful of their tradition for us to jump into the water to play while they were practicing worship. I mean, we thought it disrespectful: the boat captain didn't see any problem with it. Because we aren't jerks, we opted to just observe.

The first town we visited was Santa Catarina, which was as lovely as on our first visit. It is a small town and we saw the women working their hand looms in the streets and visited the church and a crafts co-op where we found some gifts for people we love (who knows, you might be one of them!), and Chris fell hard for some of the little girls selling trinkets he didn't want or need but we now own. Who knows, maybe we'll give some of those trinkets to you! Katy, I think, was pleased to buy some textiles for her Spanish classroom.

The second place we visited was San Antonio and taking the boat there today drove home to me how long the walk was between the two towns that we did last time we visited them. I'm glad we walked it once.

We weren't in San Antonio 10 minutes before we stumbled upon a woman who was sitting at her foot loom in the broad doorway of her shop. None of us had said a word when she said it was fine for us to take photos of her at work. I was a little confused because she then got up from her loom and disappeared into the bowels of the shop. Katy moved in and for reasons that aren't clear to me I believed Katy was going to sit at the loom, but that wasn't the case: she also moved into the shop. If Katy was seeing something, I wanted to see it, too, so I followed her in and fingered a scarf while she and the woman negotiated a price for one of her textiles. There was no foreshadowing and there were no transitions. One minute I'm idly looking at scarves and the next moment these two small Mayan women in full indigenous dress are pulling a huipile over my head. In the time it took for them to throw the huipile over my head and then for my eyes to emerge from the neck hole, Chris and Jessica had joined Katy and me and the two Mayan women in this tiny shop. A second after that, the women were lifting a skirt over my head to wrap around me, over the huipile and then they were tying it all together with a belt and tucking and pulling and primping and priming. By this time, Katy has explained to me that said they would dress me up like a Mayan for picture. The huipile, skirt and belt wasn't enough and they pulled a stunning hand embroidered apron off the wall and wrap that around me and you might think that was the full outfit but then I'm suddenly sitting on a tiny wooden chair close to the ground and one of the women is weaving the traditional headdress into my hair and *** wah-lah *** I am a Mayan Barbie doll! They dressed me up, over my own clothes, in minutes and then promptly tried to sell me the outfit. A blink, and they dress Katy completely in a similar and equally gorgeous dress. I'm not entirely sure how Jessica made it through the experience untouched, but it likely saved her money. Katy and I both agreed that we had been interested in the pieces when we were just looking at them on the wall but once we were wearing the whole she-bang we wanted to bring every thread home with us... and Katy did! She got each piece: the two pieces of headdress, the huipile, the skirt, belt and apron. It will be such an excellent teaching tool in her Spanish class and was a special purchase. I couldn't justify buying the whole thing for myself, knowing I would never wear the skirt again, but I did keep the headdress and the huipile. I think part of the reason I am so tired this evening is because I laughed so hard the entire time we were in the women's shop today.

In Santiago, we stopped for lunch at a place recommended by the Rough Guide and our sandwiches weren't particularly good but we had the most excellent macadamia nut and blackberry mango pies that made it well worth the stop. We visited the church where there were additional statues draped in Mayan robes and adorned with scarves and ribbons and ties in celebration of the Feast of Saint James so the setting was all the more festive than even when Chris and I were there a week ago. Katy and Jessica decided to visit a shrine to Maximon, the evil saint, while Chris and I shopped for a particular style of huipile with quetzal birds we had decided we would like to bring home with us and our experience was better than theirs, I think. The shrine was about 10 minutes outside of town and the towns themselves are relatively desolate and poor by our standards and so heading outside of town is intense. Further, the shrine--like the hot springs--is a place where people go to practice worship and so it is awkward to visit as a tourist. Finally, according to Katy and Jessica there were dozens of drunk children outside the shrine and the atmosphere was grotesque in the literary sense. The creeps descended and they came back to town as quickly as possible.

The boat ride back to our dock was relaxing and it was refreshing to be on the cool water after spending hours wandering in the hot sun. We spent a bit of time at the pool and then I did some writing and Chris did some reading while Katy and Jessica spent some time in the tuj--a Mayan sauna on the property here.

We went into town for dinner and to arrange for Katy and Jessica's trip to Chichicastanengo tomorrow and when we got back, everyone else was just about ready for bed and, now, I guess I am, too!

It isn't true that there are only so many pieces of fruit one person can buy.

We've been having a bit of trouble connecting to the blog today so it's later than I would normally write, and I cannot be held accountable for anything that might come out of me at this point!

It is a gift, I think, that Chris and I get along marvelously and enjoy one another's company enough to spend a month together. Before we left home, several of my married friends suggested they wouldn't be interested in embarking on such an adventure with their spouse. I'm glad my husband is my favorite person to be with and that I'm happy to travel with him any chance I get. I'm lucky.

All of that being said, Chris and I looked forward to visiting with friends and spent the early part of the day shopping the market for treats with which to entertain. We have finally found the women in the market from whom we can access all of the ingredients for a really terrific guacamole (the first time we made it we couldn't find any jalapenos or cilantro), and we stocked up.

It was a stunning day, clear blue sky beyond eternity after those aggressive rains on Monday and, after the market, we sat at the pool for the rest of the afternoon--Chris playing his guitar and I still reading that epic about the northwest passage. There is something wicked and delicious about reading such a cold book in such a warm place. On PBS the other night, which comes in here from Colorado, we saw a documentary about a small group of sailors who were navigating the passage from west to east and there was a section of the documentary about Franklin's ill-fated expedition and the loss of every man aboard the Terror and the Erebuss. I was amazed by the coincidence of it being on while I was reading a book about the very issue and Chris suggested there may be a show like that on every six minutes but my thumb never would have paused while clicking the remote before. True that.

Katy & Jessica arrived in the late afternoon after a harried day of travel, but they climbed out of their tuk-tuk wearing smiles, and we were glad to see them. They had spent two nights in Antigua and while there had climbed Pacaya--one of Guatemala's active volcanos--and visited a coffee plantation among other things. We relaxed for a bit before heading into town to walk up and down the main drag, Calle Santander, so they could get a feel for the town a bit and then found a place for dinner. Recommended by the Rough Guide... I should interrupt myself here and remind everyone that the Rough Guide has steered us wrong once or twice... Bombay is a vegan restaurant that has an eclectic menu. The dining room was very small and to make the most of the space, the chairs were small, so small that butts were numb. The kitchen was also small, so small that only one meal could be cooked at a time. By the time Chris got his meal, Katy was done and her plate had been cleared. The food, I would say, was unremarkable but the dinner conversation was rich.

We wandered up the street after dinner for a drink or two (happy hour lasts from 7 until 10 and means 2 for 1 specials) before returning to our place for a solid night's sleep.

Katy and Jessica were hell-bent for fruit, a condition that is treatable in this city, so first thing this morning we headed to the market so they could have their way with the vendors there. Kids in candy stores: they pooled their money and split up and met up and split up and touched base and split up and compared notes and rued their lack of rucksacks to fill with yet more fruits and vegetables. They got guavas and bananas and plantains and red peppers and tomatoes and cucumbers and zucchini and dragon fruit and strawberries and pineapple and Hawaiian papaya... imagine any other fruits and vegetables you can and you will have completed the list.

When we returned home, Chris and I sat around feeling useless while they washed, cut, mixed, dressed, fried and served us a great meal of fried plantains, fruit salad, a tomato/cucumber salad, bread and cheese. Delightful.

After lunch, I walked over to the nature reserve with Katy and Jessica and left them there to see the monkeys, walk up to the waterfall and take the zip lines down. They had fun. While they were there, I did some writing and then Chris and I went into town to arrange a shuttle for Susan who will be joining us on Thursday. We all met back at the pool for a few hours of chatting and basking in the warm sun before dinner, a reprise of lunch in that Jessica made pasta and a fresh primavera while we sat on our thumbs.

Early to bed so that we are ready when the man comes in the morning to take us on a tour of several villages around the lake, including a trip to the hot springs.

The rains came!

For the last 15 years or so I have been completely, totally, utterly loyal to the plain black Land's End swimsuit. In fact, I was loyal for so long I forgot why and for reasons I can explain (pretty blues and greens and some online shopping at work in those last days of school after final exams and a dynamic sale) but that now don't seem quite good enough, I went ahead and bought a bathing suit from Old Navy for this trip. I threw it in my bag when Chris and I headed to the lake for the Fourth of July, but we only stayed the day and it rained, so I wore it for the first time here in Guatemala. As of today, we have been in Panajachel for two weeks; two days ago the stitching on one of the straps came loose. Curses to the Old Navy swimsuit, I said as I shook my fist at the heavens. First errand of the day: find someone to fix my swimsuit. Well, easier said than done and not even really easier said since my Spanish doesn't include navigating a trip to the tailor. We tried a place in Pana where we had seen a man in the back of a store with a sewing machine but he wasn't there on Sunday. We were told to check back tomorrow. Florinda told Chris that there were seamstresses behind the market, but when we walked up there we couldn't find them so we decided we would have to bench the goal for another day.

We were lucky to arrive at the dock just in time to board a boat bound for San Pedro, a town at the base of one of the three volcanoes and known for its large population of expats. Sunday seems to be market day just about everywhere and San Pedro is no exception. We arrived in time to walk through the streets crowded with carts and tables and people who just spread their wares on the ground. Something different about our trip to the town of San Pedro and the market there is that no one asked us to buy anything. We wandered around a bit and tried to visit the church; it was closed, but we did see a nun entering the rectory and she was in habit. The Rough Guide really let us down on San Pedro because it was not clear to us that the nature reserve there was only the volcanic trail. It's quite far outside of town and we took a tuk-tuk up there to check it out but were not prepared to climb the volcano (bad shoes, no water, I'm carrying my broken bathing suit around. You know, stuff like that). The entrance to the reserve is well above the lake and we stayed for a time taking in the view and then decided to walk back to town, which ended up being lovely. It was quiet but for the constant soundtrack of roosters that accompanies us everywhere we go. I guess I should say it was traffic quiet. We passed few cars along the way but did see a lot of chickens that re-defined free range for us. Coffee grows wild here, like grapevine in Michigan and like mulberry trees drop their fruit onto Oak Park sidewalks every summer, here there are wild avocados and limes litter the path. We picked avocados straight off of the trees on our walk and tucked them into our bags for later.

The second time through town, we happened upon an open doorway and inside was a man, a boy, a sewing machine and a picture of a woman breastfeeding on the wall. There was nothing else in the dark shop with cinder block walls. Chris asked the man if he would fix my swimsuit and he did, on the spot and for a dollar. Better than new: still and all, I'll be resuming my relationship with Land's End.

We've been told again and again that the rains were coming and today they came in full force. We were probably two-thirds of the way back to town when the big tentative drops began and we were at the edge of town when a gentle rain started and we were within sight of the lake when the torrent hit. We ran from doorway to doorway hoping for refuge but so many places were closed on Sunday. Just at the water's edge we found an open bar and ducked in just before the wind began to whip the rain in every direction. The joint we stumbled into was owned by a Brit, and another Brit was running a restaurant of sorts out of the first Brit's front yard. The sum total of his restaurant was an industrial-size grill and a lot of coolers, but he served us up his vegetarian plate (think a plate full of side dishes at a backyard barbecue) and we had some beers while we waited out the storm, a pleasant enough way to do so.

We had taken a wrong turn at the top of town and while the bar we sat in was next to a boat launch it was not the one we needed to be at so we took a tuk-tuk to the other. A new thing we experienced was a man jumping into our tuk-tuk and joining us for the ride. I don't know who he was or where he was going, but he did help direct our driver to our destination.

We were lucky again that there was a boat ready to leave and we didn't have to wait at all. By my estimation the boat was already full but the captain didn't agree, so on we climbed. Because of the rain, a large sheet of dirty, opaque plastic was draped over the passengers which was really creepy to be under. That was creepy, what was startling was when the captain pulled away from the dock and then threw the boat in reverse and slammed into the rocks on shore. A man from a nearby restaurant came down to shove the boat back into the water. This was perhaps not the best experience for a man who was deciding quite literally to test the waters again after the whole kayaking thing, but it wasn't Chris who was concerned. There was an entire party of Australians on the boat with us who made rather a lot of blather about it. In any case, we arrived home intact and picked up some vegetarian tamales in the street for our supper.

Our friends Katy and Jessica join us here tomorrow and so I'm sure this adventure will take yet another turn...

Really? The United Fruit Company?

Yesterday took so much out of us that we dropped into bed almost as soon as we were through the door so I didn't have an opportunity to post. After sleeping soundly for almost 10 hours, I'm ready.

We were picked up from our hotel at 7 a.m. for our trip to Huehuetenango and by the time the minivan arrived, it was quite full so we anticipated a relatively uncomfortable ride. There was another American couple in the van, from Oakland, who were interesting. They were in Guatemala because of a particular interest in Mayan culture, but because of their political activism had taken a side trip to San Salvador in order to pay their respects to Archbishop Romero. We only had a short time to speak with them, because it turns out, actually, "directly to Zaluceu" doesn't mean exactly what one might think, and, after only an hour and a half, we stopped at a Texaco station in a town about 15 minutes outside of Quetzaltenango, where everyone else in the van was transferred to other vans.

We waited for about 15 minutes before being loaded with all new people from Quetzaltenango who were headed to the Mexican border before we were on the road again. One of the party who joined us was a girl from the Netherlands who was in Guatemala for five months working on her Master's thesis about the short and long-term effects of Hurricane Stan. Thanks to Florinda, once again, because until this week we had never heard of Hurricane Stan or known about the devastation it left in its wake. We stopped at another Texaco station, this one in Huehuetenango where a taxi was waiting to take us to the ruins.

The best possible thing we have ever done is to confirm our arrangements for return to Panajachel before getting into the taxi, because no one was going to come back for us. Here on the blog I will attribute this to a "miscommunication" but in my private musings I might consider we were the victims of a shakedown. Oh wait... this is the blog, not my private musings so it is too late to keep that idea to myself. In any case, after an angry phone call from the Texaco station to the travel agent in Panajachel and lots of back and forth in fast Spanish triangulated between the minivan driver and the taxi driver and Chris, we were compelled to pay an additional $40 on the spot for the taxi to return us to the Texaco and the van to return us to Pana after seeing the ruins. Those of you who know Chris know it wasn't easy for him to remain courteous throughout this exchange (but he did!) and it wasn't easy to reclaim the day.

The current Rough Guide is wrong about how much it costs to gain entrance to the grounds. If you are Guatemalan it is only Q5, but they charge extranjeros 1000% more. Not 10% or 100% but 1000% more... sort of funny.

A small but valid part of the reason Chris and I picked Guatemala this year is because we were struck by the enormity, grace, beauty and architecture of the Mayan ruins in the Yucatan. We realized last week that because of the arrival of our friends and family this week and the distance between here and there that we probably would not get to Tikal, the major Mayan ruins in Guatemala. That was the motivation for our trip to Huehuetenango yesterday, to see the ruins at Zaculeu.

The site was occupied as early as the 5th century and there are six large structures and probably a dozen more that are still unearthed beneath the grassy knolls that dot the landscape. Thank goodness for those that are still unexcavated because if ever the government itself has money or a university receives a grant to do it, they will hopefully do so well. In the 1940s, in an act of preservation, the United Fruit Company covered all of the exposed structures at Zaculeu with white plaster. That doesn't make them the idea of them less neat, but some of their beauty is lost under all that plaster.

Because Chris and I have the luxury of time here, I don't think the trip to these ruins was a waste, but if anyone out there is using our ramblings to put together an itinerary of their own for a shorter trip--leave Huehuetenango and its associated ruins off your list.

Because of the confusion about our return trip to Panajachel, we were required to stay at the ruins for a full hour longer than our original plan dictated. The grounds are lovely and I had my book and journal and Chris had his iPod and his uncanny ability to nap anywhere in any circumstance so we lounged in the grass for an hour or so waiting. It was a pleasant enough way to pass the time but I hadn't expected to be out in the noonday sun for quite so long and my skin suffered a bit as a result. It was also a long time to go without any real food, having had our breakfast before we left at 7 a.m. The only concessions near the grounds sold chips and soda and grilled meat. There is a picture of one such concession stand in the slide show to the right of this text... notice the extremely long extension cord powering it?

Finally, our taxi driver returned which was a small victory: I only half believed they would come back for us despite paying them the $40. He took us back to the Texaco where we waited, again out in the sun, again not believing we would ever get home, for another half an hour or so for the minivan.

Again, it was not a direct drive. We stopped about a half an hour from where we were picked up for a 20 minute rest which was maddening to us but probably necessary for the people who had been in the car since the Mexican border. Unlike the trip to, the trip from brought the passengers directly to Quetzaltenango, which is about a half hour out of the way, but at least every other person was deposited there so we had room to stretch out. From there, it should have been an easy drive back, but we were stuck in a very bizarre traffic jam for over 30 minutes and then encountered a storm of rain and fog that made visibility so poor my stomach hurt as we made those steep mountain turns at a speed I didn't think advisable. It took us about four hours to get home.

Neither of us had the energy for groceries or cooking, so we stayed in town for dinner and walked around a bit in the cool night air which was a relief from the figurative and literal heat of the day. By the time we got back here, like I said, we dropped into quiet stupors and readied for bed like zombies. Chris is now patiently waiting for me to finish this so we can jump on a boat and explore San Pedro. Hold on... is it patiently waiting if he just composed lyrics to a song the refrain of which has to do with my constant blogging?

What will we do without Florinda?!

Today marked the end of Chris's class with Florinda and her swan song didn't disappoint.

It isn't clear how they got on the subject, but Florinda described the Mayan traditions regarding courtship and marriage today. When a man decides he would like to marry a woman, he brings one beer and one soda and presents them to her father and makes his intentions known. After a few weeks pass, he goes again with both of his parents, and he brings two bottles of beer and two sodas. After another month passes, the man brings his parents and his aunts and uncles, and he brings a basket of bread, a case of soda and yet more beer. This visit lasts four to six hours and the man and woman kneel in the center of a circle comprised of their elders who bestow advice upon them. Some more time passes and the man returns, this time with his parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents. At this point, there are usually about 70 to 80 people all in the house and the man also brings a basket of bread, soup, 20 pieces of chicken, a big basket of tortillas, four cases of soda, two cases of beer(and juice for those people who don't drink beer or soda). Again, the man and woman kneel in a circle of family and this time they move on their knees from person to person thanking them and kissing their hands. The fifth and final time, everyone the man knows comes with him and he brings 400 quetzales worth of bread, a huge pan of tortillas, chocolate, sugar and cinammon, soup enough for all, 40 pieces of chicken, five cases of soda, four cases of beer, many juices and a cooked turkey. Under the wing of the turkey, the man places 200 to 300 quetzales as a gift for the parents in exchange for the difficulty they must have endured bearing and raising a girl. Throughout the last three visits, advice is given from the elders to the soon-to-be-wed couple. They tell the woman her responsibilities include washing her children, feeding them and getting up early and making breakfast and lunch, among other things. They tell the man that some of his responsibilities include getting up early, educating his children and giving his wife money, among others. On this fifth visit, her mother gives the woman three pieces of fabric: one for carrying her goods on her back, one in which to pack her husband's lunch and the last for carrying her baby. Then, they are married. Not then they have a wedding. Then, they are married. There is no call for a civil ceremony or even a sacred one, although some people do eventually have those, as well.

In fact, Florinda herself had a civil ceremony, but not until she had been married to her husband for seven years. Unfortunately, they had problems in their marriage. Remember... Chris and Florinda have talked to one another four hours a day for five days in a row. Florinda and her husband had problems; Chris was practicing his Spanish and asking all the appropriate follow up questions and so he stumbled into this: Florinda's husband is a dog. He cheated on her more than once, and she finally put her foot down and demanded a civil ceremony in the hopes that he would straighten out and maybe, too, so that she were to leave him she might have more rights on departure. Chris changed the subject as tactfully as he could in a foreign language.

At different points in her stories, it seemed that Florinda practiced Mayan ways and at others it seemed she was Catholic, so Chris asked her explicitly today. The Catholic Church would probably be distraught to learn that according to Florinda, Maya and Catholic are the same. She goes to Catholic services a few times a year and uses Mayan shaman as often and she says they are equal. He got the impression that she didn't consider herself to be practicing both but that for her they were the same.

Tomorrow, our first day free to travel in a week because of Spanish class, we go to Huehuetenango to see the ruins in Zaculeo. Arranging this trip wasn't easy. Three different travel agents told us three different things. There was some confusion about whether we could take a shuttle directly to the ruins or whether we would need to take a bus headed to Mexico, jump off at some point and then arrange for a taxi the rest of the way. That one didn't seem like a particularly good option, somehow. One man offered to personally drive us anywhere we wanted tomorrow for $175, but we ended up booking with a place that would just take us to the ruins and back for $30. It is a three hour drive so it means being picked up at 7 a.m. so early to bed this evening.

Corpse story.

I'm tired this evening and don't have a lot of brain energy left for the blog, so this will be a quick post!

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about our trip is this process Chris is engaged in with Florinda. For those of you nearest and dearest to us, you know how absolutely improbable it is that Chris would willingly engage in a chat with someone, period. And then to do so for four hours in a row and then to do that for five days. At this point, he has probably talked with Florinda more than he has talked with most of you, and likely she knows him better than most of you do, too.

Today, he mustered up his very best Spanish to tell her about the kayaking debacle and what he considers his near-death-by-drowning experience. She listened with interest and then explained a little bit about living with the water here. In immediate response to his story, she told him that years ago, before Florinda was born, her grandmother and one of her uncles were doing laundry in the lake, a common practice we have seen many people do, and the boy started to swim. Obviously the people stand at the shore and use the rocks there to assist them in their chore, so the boy was not in terribly deep water, but he was still caught in a current and drowned. She went on to explain that when she was a girl, no one in her town had running water in their homes. They had to traipse to the waterfall, fill their pots and carry those pots home on their heads. It took almost an hour for her to get to the falls and back each time her family needed water. They were aware that the water in the falls was not fit to drink, but it was the only water available to them so they used it. She said that they were sick often, sometimes extremely so. She told an awful story about a time when she and her sisters and mother walked to the falls to do laundry. They brought their lunch with them to eat while they washed their clothes and they drank from the falls while they ate. When they returned to town, they saw the firemen heading out in the direction from which they had come. A man's body had been discovered, decomposing, in the falls just above where they had been washing their clothing and drinking. Again, she mentioned that they were made sick from the water time and again.

Today, there is running water in their town but the houses do not receive it 24 hours a day. In the summer (our winter and their dry season), Florinda's house has running water for about eight hours a day. Where her parents live in the hills above her town, they receive running water for two hours a day. Unfortunately, those two hours sometimes come in the middle of the night and so the women wake to do their chores at that time and then return to bed until it is time to start the day.

Florinda is currently living with her husband and two children in her father-in-law's house, but she and her husband are having a house built in the same town. They saved 6000 quetzales (about $750) to do so and planned a 30 foot by 60 foot house with four rooms. Much of the work was done when it flooded, and the walls were destroyed. It is uninhabitable and needs to be rebuilt but they spent their savings having it built the first time.

Tomorrow is their last day together, and I don't know who we will get to answer all of our questions after that!

A Guatemalan Rosa Parks.

Chris asks Florinda more and more probing questions about her life. He says her experiences are an excellent motivation for him to practice his Spanish and he is eager to make his questions for her clear. Today, he came home from class with some fascinating stories.

Last night I asked Chris to find out about Guatemalan folk tales, but Florinda told him today that their children are tired at the end of the day and do not need to be told stories to fall asleep! When he pressed her, she did tell him one old story her father told her when she was a little girl. It is about two (ahem!) Mayan children. When their mother dies, their father remarries a wicked woman who doesn't care for them in the least. She has such disdain for them, she brings them out into the forest and leaves them. The children are clever and bring corn with them, leaving a trail so that they will be able to find their way back. Unfortunately, the birds and the forest creatures eat all of their corn and so they are ultimately lost until they find the oldest woman in the world. She is so old, she is nearly blind and cannot fend for herself in the same way she once was able so the children help her with her tasks and in exchange for their service she feeds them tortillas. At this point, I was expecting the boy to grow plump and juicy off of those tortillas and... but instead, Florinda's story ended here with a "happily ever after." I guess at least one Mayan storyteller found the cannibalism in the original Grimms distasteful and away it went.

Because Chris and I have been shopping the markets and cooking dinner each night, he asked Florinda about recipes and she shared with him some ideas for soups (lots of lima beans and peas) and said that mint is the primary herb used in Mayan cooking. People don't have ovens here so their cooking is all stove top which makes me wonder a bit about the fact that there are cake mixes in almost every store we visit. This is probably not an issue I can convince Chris to ask her about! She also talked about the natural remedies they make for all sorts of illnesses, although each remedy she told him about was to treat a belly ache. They dry the leaves from the apasote plant to toast with garlic and wrap in a banana leaf as a compress on the abdomen. They also make a paste from the colla de zorrio plant which they rub on the abdomen. It sounds like perhaps there are a lot of abdominal illnesses here that they treat in any number of ways.

Chris likes to talk about food and can relate to discussing illnesses, but he really leaned forward when Florinda began to recount tales of her own educational and social experiences as an indigena in a ladino world. She and her siblings suffered terrible discrimination in an educational system where the overwhelming majority of maestros are ladino and hold their Mayan students in low regard and measure the two groups using a double standard. Florinda suggests that there is absolutely no intermarriage between the two groups and that when she was in school there weren't any play lot friendships, either. She recounted to Chris a time when she was a senior in high school (called escuela specificada, it is a three year vocational program that rounds out their preparatory education), she arrived to class and the teacher presented the students with a seating chart in which all of the ladinos were in the front of the room and the indigenas were in the rear. This injury was the worse because the people of Spanish descent are much taller than the Mayans and so it was impossible to see past them to the instructor. This was intolerable to Florinda and so she stood up in class and commanded the attention of those around her and told her teacher that the Guatemalan constitution guarantees the equal rights of both groups. She said the indigenas were not animals and that they had rights. She created quite a stir and her teacher was furious. The next was a part of the story I had trouble understanding but it had to do with some sort of teacher/student council to which only ladino students were invited. In any case, the time Florinda went to class, the seating chart had been redone and several of the indigenas had been moved forward. Her seat, however, remained in the rear. Florinda still sees the woman today but they do not speak to one another.

She went on to tell her sister's story. The girl is now 21 but experienced terrible frustration when she was 15 years old in escuela basica. That year, she had several issues, the first when one of her rubber sandals broke in class and her teacher called her to the front of the room and to dress her down. Florinda made it clear to Chris that her sister was wearing the very best shoes their father could afford but they were admittedly very cheap. The teacher used Florinda's sister as an example and informed the class that the students should all be wearing much nicer shoes than she was wearing and certainly should be wearing shoes with heels. She went on to say that the girls should change their hairstyles each day for class, despite knowing that the indigenas where their hair in a traditional style. The girl was debased and returned home that day crying.

Another time, the teacher stepped out of the room and several students were having difficulty with their math work, a subject in which Florinda's sister was quite gifted so she moved to help them. When the teacher returned to the room, she accused the girl of doing her homework in class, took her notebook and refused to return it. When the girl tried to explain what she had really been doing to her teacher, the woman slammed a door in her face. Florinda went to the school to talk to the teacher and she was treated in the same way: a door in the face. Florinda persisted, banging on the door and finally the teacher returned the notebook but threatened to destroy it if the girl caused her anymore difficulty.

Florinda's sister is in law school now in Solola, with the goal of protecting the legal rights of indigenas. She attends classes on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and it will take her six years to complete her course of study, for which she has a scholarship for books but has to work during the week to pay her tuition: 700 quetzales a month--an enormous financial burden. She is still a minority student; there are few indigenas in law school here, but the nickname the other students have given her is Rigoberta Menchu, after the 1992 Nobel Prize winning promoter of indigenous rights. Needless to say, in addition to buying school supplies for Florinda's children, Chris and I are thinking about kicking a little something in for her sister's law school education. Our relative wealth is embarrassing.

Florinda shares these stories with pride, although admits her husband says that hers is a familia of nerds because none of them ever have to repeat any grades!

We're having a party! Who'll bring the bombs?

I’ve been having trouble getting and/or staying online all day, so this post may end abruptly! Chris had class again this morning and learned more Spanish from Florinda but also more about her life and this place.

We frequently hear what sound like explosions, and today I awoke to this before 7 a.m. Chris and I assumed these were the sounds of mining, but Florinda says that in fact it is common practice for people to blow up firecrackers (sure!) and bombs (really?!) at parties, and the early hour didn’t surprise her at all. As I write, these same explosions are the soundtrack to my evening.

It might not appear so at first, but there is a vague logic in the way Chris and Florinda’s conversation flowed from the last topic to the next and to the one after that. Florinda’s husband is a volunteer firefighter in their town where there are only two professional firefighters, and here in Pana there are five. There are few fires to contend with so the job is more akin to being a paramedic. Women—even the indigenous Mayan women who live in the hills—give birth in hospitals and this is a free service the hospitals provide. The nearest hospital is in Solola, and there are local clinics for those women who cannot get to Solola in time. Whereas we say that a woman is delivering a child or giving birth, here the phrase they use is “dar la luz” or to bring the light—lovely.

The Rough Guide refers to earthquakes as a plague to this area of the world, but Florinda says there hasn’t been a major quake in Lake Atitlan in her lifetime, and she is 31. She does say that they experience tremors periodically, and some of them are quite startling. She argues that the bigger natural threat to their well being is the hurricane, which surprised me since this isn’t a coastal community. Chris reminded me that the whole country is smaller than the size of West Virginia so the coast isn’t all that far away. The area was devastated by Hurricane Stan in 2004 and 500 people were killed in the small town of Santiago where we spent the afternoon last week. The hills were flooded and people evacuated into the town, but the roads were impassible so they had to use the boats to ferry supplies to the lake towns where people were without access to food and water for days.

I’m not entirely sure how the conversation shifted to derogations, but future travelers to Guatemala should be aware that the phrase “chicken bus” offends the native people because it implies, one, that every Guatemalan who rides the bus is carrying a chicken around with them and, two, that there is something wrong with someone bringing a chicken on the bus. It will probably come as no surprise that the local people simply refer to their buses as buses.

We spent the afternoon in town picking up food supplies and fabric shopping. Chris cannot be slowed in his drive to round out his wardrobe with Guatemalan camisas: today, a blue one. After having purchased unrefrigerated eggs each time we have been to the market and each time putting them in the refrigerator when we returned home and each time having had the majority of them freeze and break… we did like the Romans, bought some eggs and left them sitting out on the counter. I am trying to step outside of my own epistemology, but it isn’t easy, and I think I hear those eggs right now hatching a plan to kill me with Salmonella. I’m glad I sleep downstairs where they can’t get at me in the night!

Triple Word Score

Well... this week our posts will probably take a different tone as we practice living here more than we visit. We'll get back to touring next week, but Chris is in class four hours a day this week and so our options for jumping from town to town are more limited.

About his class: his tutor's name is Florinda and she is Mayan. It won't surprise anyone to learn that Chris quickly discovered that she has a genetic renal disease from which her mother and daughter also suffer. He is probably the only student at Jabil Tinement whose first vocabulary word is kidney (rinon). Her family lives above Panajachel and worships in a cave in the hills just above our place. Her parents both work for the same American man who has a vacation property here, and they have for 25 years; they are gardeners. Her mother--who is illiterate and speaks only Kakichel--gave birth to 12 children but only eight survived, and she has two children of her own: a two year old and a five year old. Both of her children go to school for now, but she told Chris that many Guatemalans drop out of even public school because of the expense of school supplies like pencils and notebook paper and probably the income lost from the children not working. At the end of the week, Chris is going to bring some basic school supplies for Florinda's children.

Because he didn't defy death enough yesterday in the incident that will heretofore be referred to as The Last Time Chris Ever Kayaked, Chris rented a rickety mountain bike in town to get back and forth from his class, and the chain fell off on his first trip up the hill. He is going to see about an upgrade tomorrow, but I would be surprised if they had anything that was much fancier than falling apart.

I spent the time Chris was in class writing, and since I had more than five hours of uninterrupted time I started at the beginning and read through the whole piece before putting any new words down. It has been a very long time since I have had the luxury of time to do that and I had forgotten, actually, some smaller scenes, including one about Frank McCourt. A sad irony.

Something that is hard to understand is that everyone claims it is winter here right now, including Florinda. I don't really get it, because we haven't passed the equator and we are in the same hemisphere, but they call this winter and it is their rainy season according to our Rough Guide. We experienced only one staccato burst of rain last Monday, but in the late afternoon today there was a slight shift in the air, the temperature dropped just a bit and right now there is a fantastic lightening storm outside as I write this. Our second floor has huge picture windows at either end, with the lake on one side and a mountain on the other and it is spectacular: the sun is setting, there is a pink swath beyond the volcano and beneath purple-grey clouds. I wouldn't be shocked if the power goes out here in response to storms, and the thunder and lightening is like a call to arms: each time the sky lights up, we both sit up a little straighter and take stock of our surroundings again.

Last night we played each other in an online Scrabble club Chris registered us for and if that makes us sounds lame, consider this: a person who decided a great user name for herself would be SUSIESUQ (yep, not susie q but susie suck) thought it was interesting enough to pop in and watch us.

P.S. Congratulations to Liz John on her engagement!

Chris says he'll be chilling on land from now on.

When I was a little girl, I loved the water: in the summer, I could spend all day in the Stroth's pool next door, at Ridgeland Commons, or, once Stevensville became a part of our lives, up at the lake. In the winter, I took swim lessons at Concordia year after year, through to the lesson where they make the kids jump in fully clothed and make (piss-poor!) flotation devices out of their own jeans then lug another person to the side of the pool. I remember bathing suits I had because I spent so much time in them. There was a maroon Speed-O with three thin white stripes I particularly liked in grammar school, and I remember that Katie O'Keefe had the same one. I wore it until the material at the belly and the butt was fuzzy from rubbing concrete hauling myself out of the pool.

I still love the water, which is why I was excited when Chris was interested in renting a kayak. I was also surprised, because he doesn't share my delight with all things wet. In defense of the rest of this story, I am a swimmer: I don't know anything about kayaking. And among the things I don't know about kayaking is that a tandem kayak may very well be more difficult to navigate than a single. Who knew?! It is clear at this point that we rented a tandem; I climbed into the front and Chris the back, and away we went. The lake is stunning from our patio, gorgeous from the shore and absolutely sensational from the lake.

We spent some time curving along the shore before heading further out into the lake. The views were amazing. The property on which we are staying is even better looking from the water than it is from the road and there are areas where rather than shore there is sheer rock face. We had read that at its greatest the lake is 1200 feet deep and becomes very deep very quickly because of its volcanic origin and size. This may not seem particularly deep to those of you who regularly fish the Great Lakes, but consider this: Lake Michigan is only about 900 feet at its greatest depth and has a surface area of 22,278 square miles while Atitlan is 1200 feet deep and has a surface area of 50 square miles. It is because it is such a small lake that its depth is so striking.

All of this a fact-based lead in to the part of the story where we tip the kayak, both of us fall out and we can't get back in. And then it occurs to us, there were a few things we probably should have done while we were still in shallow waters. Like practice getting back in the kayak if we fall out. But we didn't. And you know when you and the person you are with have just a completely different reaction to an event you both experience? Well... my very first thought was to see if Chris had lost his glasses and when I saw he had not, I thought the whole thing was hilarious and was laughing so hard that my mouth filled with water (which we had previously learned is full of hydrochloric acid from the copious amount of pesticides they use to grow avocados as big as softballs here), and I found it exhilarating and fun.

Chris didn't. In fact, he failed to see any humor at all in the situation. We got the kayak turned right side again (do not picture here some sort of sleek colorful kayak made out of a material NASA developed... it was big and hulking and made of something as heavy as that lake is deep), but it was full of water. This afternoon, we found a million videos on YouTube that explain how to get back in a kayak when you have tipped mid-lake, but that was this afternoon. We fell out of the kayak this morning. This story is not without valiant attempts to regain the kayak, but it is full of failed attempts. Further, the current was not in our favor so while we tried to swim the kayak back to shore (while holding the paddles--not easy), it simply was not possible.

So... what to do? Wait until someone will help you, but you are not in the middle of a crowded market; you are in the middle of a lake. Eventually (and this was one of those life experiences that seems an eternity but was probably only 15 minutes or so of treading water), another tandem kayak came along with some gracious Guatemalans who agreed to tow us in which proved to be extremely difficult because of the current and their attempts not to capsize due to the weight of Chris, me and our kayak full of water behind them. Chris and I each had a hand on their kayak and a hand on ours. Despite the inherent difficulty of the situation, we had a rather nice conversation. They were both of Germen descent but live in Guatemala and are vacationing in Atitlan. They made some great suggestions about places around the lake we haven't yet been. I'm not sure Chris was really a part of this conversation... he was on the other side of the kayak, but in my book it will go down as one of the most fabulously awkward, bizarre and pleasant conversations I've ever had.

Eventually, pulling us became a bit too much for them, but we were able to flag down a bigger boat to tow us all in. First, there was a ridiculous exchange while the man in the boat suggested I climb into his boat which was never going to work in a million years and then he agreed to just toss us a line. Throughout this exchange, the man in the kayak kept telling me to watch not to get my feet chopped off by the propeller of the big boat. It was a stressful moment. When we got back to shore, the man we rented the kayak from and another man were on the dock shaking their heads. I'm sure we were a sight as we pulled that kayak from the shallow waters up onto the beach: did I mention we failed to wear our swimsuits for this adventure?

It's short for forecastle.

I'm a little late to join the game with this thought but I find it fascinating how different the computer has made travel. When I was 19 years old and leaving home for Europe, I promised my parents I would try to call every couple of days or every couple of cities and even that wasn't always possible. Now, we are able to go anywhere in the world and instant message an old neighbor we haven't seen or talked to in years. A person can maintain constant communication if they choose to. This is both a change for the better and a change for the worse. In either case, it is definitely a change for the safer.

It being Saturday (I think!), we took the day off and enjoyed ourselves in a more relaxed manner than we have so far. We went into town for a breakfast of crepes, which they do very well here. They understand that a crepe is not just a thin pancake and we had them with fresh cantaloupe, papaya and yogurt. So good. Guatemala's chief export is coffee and the brew here is known for being delish. Unfortunately, they don't really do anything decaffeinated in this country other than Fanta, so I just savored the smell of Chris's cup, which he said was excellent.

I didn't want to do nothing but I also didn't want to do anything today, so we wandered aimlessly and the walk took us past the town church which was open for the first time, and it is lovely--very similar in decor to St. James in Santiago which we found so beautiful yesterday. From there we walked the road out of town for a spell and saw better where the people here actually live and the shops that cater to locals rather than tourists. It is safe to say we were off the beaten path, at least the tourist beaten path.

The avocados here are the size of softballs and we can make a huge bowl of guac using one aguacate (ahem--I always thought avocado was the Spanish word for avocado), one tomate and half a cebolla so we stopped at the open air market for supplies and today also found some cilantro and basil that is so intense in its flavor that our whole house smells of it now. The vendors in the market are patient and kind and answer every question Chris has about the Spanish words for the different peppers and vegetables and spices.

We planned to rent a kayak this afternoon but when we returned to our place to inquire about one, we were told that it is really only safe to do so in the morning so we spent the afternoon at the pool, where a very nice man brought us drinks.

I started The Terror by Dan Simmons today and couldn't put it down which may be why I got a little too much sun this afternoon. It is this huge book my friend Eric Jones recommended, a fictionalized account of an arctic exploration in the mid 19th century, and it is chillingly (yeah, yeah... it's a pun) atmospheric. Plus, when I was in high school I fell in love with Philip Larkin, in large part because of Poetry of Departures, and today marks the only other time I have seen the word fo'c'sle in print so it reminded me of that, my favorite poem.

Right now there is a bird outside making a noise like I imagine the pterodactyls might have made and it is kind of cool that I just can't see it even thought it is so loud and seems so close. I think I'll stop looking for it, just enjoy the noise and see if I can help Chris with dinner... Kayaks in the morning.

Mystery vegetable.

We went to the Spanish school today to arrange for Chris's classes next week. He will go four hours a day for five days and work with a one on one tutor for $90. He asked for a maestra who could sing and the woman said that people only sing in the shower. He starts Monday at 1 p.m., and I bet he will get his teacher singing before the week is through! I was torn because the school seemed so charming... there are tables for two set up all around the garden... but I'm going to spend the time writing instead.

From there, we walked to the shore and found a boat to take us across the lake to Santiago where we spent several hours wandering.

We didn't find out until we returned to Pana that today was a designated market day in Santiago but it was relatively clear because the streets were filled with vendors, again selling everything one could imagine from Bic razors to wood carved masks to shrimp. The markets are surprisingly quiet. On rare occasion, someone will bark their wares but mostly no and so the natural sounds of the women and men at their tasks are audible, like the sound of the women making tortillas: they are a small standing ovation to the rest of the vendors, surrounding their small grill clapping masa from one hand to the next and then throwing the patties down to sizzle on the stove. The smells are powerful and rich.

We also visited Saint James Church which was lovely. Chris commented and I agreed that aesthetically this was the most beautiful church we have seen yet in Mexico or Guatemala and was in very good repair which helps. The statues of saints that line both sides of the church are all covered in traditional Guatemalan attire, which is colorful and beautiful. The church has a tragic history, as does the country--one of their beloved American pastors, Father Stanley Rother, who served the parish from the 1960s until the 1980s was assassinated in the rectory in 1981 by death squads on behalf of an aggressive right wing faction of the Guatemalan army, who was not in favor of the church or the sanctuary it provided the people of the region during the war. He was killed in 1981; 10 other Catholic priests were assassinated the same year.

Each village we go to is marked by a distinctive style of dress and Santiago is notable for the purples the women wear in every shade from pale to deep and the men wear white short pants with black stripes and colorful woven belts.

We stopped for lunch at a taqueria (not to be confused with the Prosser student of the same name) and had vegetarian tacos that were so good Chris asked the man behind the grill to show him what all they contained. We won't easily re-create them because they had some vegetable in them that we had never seen before and probably will not be able to pick up at Jewel.

I finally decided, after being faced with such skillfully hand-woven textiles in every direction, to buy a huipile, but my gargantuan head wouldn't fit through the neck holes of any that the woman showed me at the booth at which I inquired. It probably didn't matter because I am more likely to hang the fabric as a decoration in my home than to ever go to a tailor and have the sides sewn up to wear (in the smaller villages, the huipiles come unfinished, as long rectangular pieces with neck holes), but in the moment I declined and moved on. Not much time had passed, but Chris and I were back at the shore looking for a boatman to take us back to Pana, when the same woman shuffled up with several more huipiles for me to try, having left her "store" and followed me in the hopes of making a sale. These were made for the big-headed among us so we bought one, and it is lusher blues on lush blues and just gorgeous.

The boat ride back would have caused a trip to the emergency room for anyone with hemorrhoids: the lake was choppy, the boat small, and we were sitting right at the front, but it provided a stellar view of the mountains and volcanoes and the town of Panajachel from the lake.

It was another good day, in a string of them. Chris made a nice dinner of cold salads and bread and wine and I'm off to bed to dream about what tomorrow will bring...

Does malaria start fast or is it like Lyme disease?

Today, we went to Chichicastenango on a tour bus which was really just a minivan and for the first time I really wished to know another language. There was a small group of Germans on the bus behind me and a woman tapped on my shoulder and asked if I was cold and then tapped again to tell me it was windy in the back of the bus and could I please close the window. I was struck by her fluency. I mean, ventana might mean window in Spanish but I certainly wouldn't know how to say that it was windy in the back of the bus. It just wasn't a part of the telephone conversation script between Paco and Marta in my high school Spanish textbook. I think maybe they were going to the disco and wind wasn't going to foil their plans.

In any case, the trip was long, made longer by another traffic jam, this one the result of road construction. We were on a two-lane mountain pass that was being re-tarred and the crew needed to alternately suspend the flow of traffic in one direction and then the other, but the two ends were not within sight of one another and no one in the crew had a walkie talkie. On the way there, it wasn't such a delay but on the way back we were stopped for almost an hour.

People are primarily drawn to Chichicastenango for its huge market on Thursdays and Sundays and the market is fantastic: fabrics hand woven in every color, bead work jewelry dazzling in the sunlight, artisan masks, trial-sized toothpaste, anything you might wish for. We were reminded again of Chris being twice the size of the locals; I wasn't concerned about getting separated--he towered over the vendors. Wandering the market was fun, but it was not what I loved most.

In the church there--San Tomas--I saw something that made something in my angry Catholic heart melt. Guatemala is the least Catholic country in Central America. The majority of the people here still practice indigenous religions. In Chichi, when the Catholic priest came, in addition to reading Christian scripture in mass, he also read from the Popol Vuh, a sacred Mayan text. As a result, the Mayans felt welcome in the church and began to worship there. They did not become Catholic, they simply moved their Mayan practice into the building and the church made room for them. The center aisle is used for Mayan worship and the sides are for Catholics. In the center aisle there are very low platforms on which the shaman perform their rituals, lighting candles and sprinkling rose petals and pouring liquor sacrifices in homage to their gods, of which there are six for corn. It is a beautiful introduction to the Catholic altar. In the cases along the walls of the church (I'm sure they have a name and I'm sure my word friend Becca Manery would know the name), the space was also divided evenly between the Catholic and Mayan iconography and statues. Chris and I have sixty gazillion pictures of churches from all over Mexico and Puerto Rico and Europe and this was the neatest one I have been in and there were no photos allowed out of respect for the worship.

After seeing the church, we left town to visit Pascual Abaj, a place up in a pine forest where the more traditional Maya worship outside. This was another climb that was harder for me than for Chris, although we determined that my short stature was probably a benefit on the way down; however, the more important part of the story (in this case) is the destination, not the journey. We were fortunate because when we arrived at the top a ceremony was being conducted. There was a large fire pit with a blackened altar at one end and shaman burning incense in cans they swung around the area. It was an incredible natural setting in which to worship and it was so sacred I was uncomfortable in my role as an observer because the practice of religion is an extremely bizarre tourist attraction.

We finished our stay by eating in the Chichi equivalent of the mall food court. It was an open air cafeteria with long wooden tables and benches, dark under fabric ceilings and hot from the grills every 10 feet. We had delicious vegetable soup, homemade tortillas and Orange Crush and lunch for the both of us was under four dollars.

It was a great day, and we were home in time to sit at the shore watching a spectacular sunset until the mosquitoes drove me inside (for some reason, they don't eat Chris) to wonder what tomorrow will bring.

P.S. Congratulations to the Prosser AP team for great scores this year!

Is tuk-tuk to truck bus an upgrade?

We took a tuk-tuk to the next town over--Santa Catarina--which was similar to Panajachel but smaller and the manner of dress was slightly different. The women there wear a headdress that is made of something that appears to be velvet and is wrapped like a fluffy turban around their heads. Getting out of Pana was eye opening. While the Rough Guide suggests that these towns are inundated with tourists, it doesn't seem so. We wandered around Santa Catarina for a short time and, in what appeared to be an alley that deposited at the lake edge, found ourselves in front of a corrugated tin panel structure that we first thought was a school until a young girl came into the yard--again fenced in by barbed wire--and told us it was her temple. I think Chris already put a picture of her up on the blog. We also went to the cemetery at the edge of town. The graves were similar to those in Mexico: hand painted with bright colors and tokens left for the dead, but the layout was quite different. There was kind of a central path, but the graves were plotted in a haphazard and helter skelter way, making us think that there were as few regulations adhered to here as in Burr Oak.

On the map, the next town around the lake, San Antonio, appeared to be about an inch away so we decided to walk there. Turns out the map was very small. It took us over an hour but we made it. We made the journey at high noon and the sun was intense. There were few patches of shade and we forgot to bring water so I nearly died of dehydration. Needless to say, Chris was fine. At just the moments I thought I couldn't take another uphill step, a breeze would come and God would whisper, "see, the sun and the heat will not kill you" and then my next step would be rewarded with a breathtaking vista, these views shifting as we moved around the lake. There were natural walls of flowers along the road, explosive in their pinks and whites and reds and oranges all jumbled together like fruit salad. It was one of the more beautiful walks I have ever taken.

Our arrival to San Antonio was met with a traffic jam, the likes of which I have not seen before. The streets are so narrow that only one car can pass at a time, but the streets are not one way. Instead, today we stood aside as several trucks backed down the road in order to let oncoming traffic pass. At just the same time, school let out. The town is nestled between the lake and the mountain and there aren't three feet in a row that are level. In fact, it is like an Escher print with stairs going everywhere and nowhere so when school lets out there are children above and below you, cascading like lava from the volcanoes that created the valley. The Rough Guide warns that couples traveling alone are viewed with suspicion because they may be in Guatemala to steal children. Well... they shouldn't make their kids so cute if they don't want people to steal them. San Antonio is very traditional. In the other towns, the majority of the women and girls wear indigenous clothing but here the men and boys do, as well. The males wear brightly colored striped tops (one of which Chris is now the proud owner of) and woolen kilts; the little boys coming from school in their kilts were dear. We stood out in this town, and the children pointed and giggled at us at almost every turn.

We understood it was possible to take a boat back to Panajachel from San Antonio but apparently this was a huge misunderstanding, so we took a bus back. I didn't know they even had buses since I didn't see a single one while we were in the smaller towns but then we discovered that the pick up trucks we saw full of people sitting and standing in the bed were the buses, so I climbed on to the back of a pick up truck with Chris at my heels. There were 11 of us total: nine sitting on the six-inch planks that lined both sides of the bed, one girl sitting on the tailgate and a boy who stood on the rear bumper for the entire, long ride back to Panajachel.

When we got back, we found yet another market... a more traditional supermarket although it had a bizarre collection and again we were foiled on buying fresh fish, which is weird for a town in which fishing is a major industry, but we were able to get some frozen fillets and everything else that we needed for a good meal. We are to bed early this evening because we are heading to another town tomorrow--Chichicastenango--and we leave in the sevens.

The dark amplifies.

We planned to cook much more than we actually did in Merida but it was so easy and cheap to go out that we ended up doing it. Because we are outside of town here, it is a bit more of a project to grab a quick bite. So we dined in last night. Chris made pasta and we had bread and wine with it and during the meal we realized some essential items we failed to pick up--napkins to start the list.

After dinner, Chris snazzied up the blog with some select pics from the day and also a video. I have no idea how long that took because I went to bed and listened to the night noises for a while before falling asleep. They aren't terribly different from the daytime noises but the dark amplifies them. The trickling water we hear all day running into Lake Atitlan from above sounds like rain in the night and the cries the birds make to one another sound more desperate in the dark.

We spent the morning today at a nature reserve just across the road that was spectacular. In addition to a butterfly garden, there is also a trail up and around a waterfall. We took the long trail and my calves are remembering each step now but it was worth it to see monkeys being monkeys. We went several places in the Yucatan that promised monkeys and we never saw a single one, so we were skeptical when we saw the sign indicating a monkey habitat along the trail. But there they were. Chris and I were captivated and stayed put much longer than the Guatemalan school children who were there. It was hard to take our eyes off of them, and the reason I finally moved on was because I thought I might get a better look at them farther up the trail. Such was not the case, but we did take in some incredible views of the waterfall, passing over hammock bridges to get as near as we could.

As I mentioned, we took the long trail which was steep for my short legs and slippery in places. We had to pass through a creek at one point, which is harder on a mountain than it is in the flat of Illinois, but we got across with only one fall.

We spent quite a lot of time watching people on zip lines in the nature reserve and trying to decide if it was something we would do on another day... and I'm still deciding: stay tuned for more on that adventure.

This afternoon we went into town for a visit to the real market. I approached with trepidation--the market in Merida is to date the most disgusting place I have ever been in my life--but this was a thousand times cleaner and we stocked up on fruits and vegetables which were in great abundance. We were hoping for fish and after some industrious hand-gesture Spanish on Chris's part learned we must get to the market much earlier in the day for that, which means pasta again this evening and a trip back to the market in the morning.

I would meet you anywhere the western sun meets the air.

Today we walked into town and Natalia, the property manager, was correct about it being a 15-minute walk. What she failed to mention was that it is all hill and not even all uphill so that at the end of the day you have an easy lope home. It was a relatively pleasant walk although I take seven steps to Chris's every one so I had a lot of catching up to do.

The edge of town was like the edge of most things, both ephemeral and eerie because for a moment you are neither here nor there but really just in between. The roads are all either cobblestone or dirt and I'm glad I brought some gym shoes; it is agonizing and amazing watching the women navigate the stones in high heels.

Chris mentioned yesterday that the outfits the people wear belie their poverty and it is true. Their tapestries are so beautiful and so rich in color, majestic really with the reds and blues and purples everywhere you look. The women practice their crafts next to their booths. We saw one woman kneeling on the cobblestones working a small loom who said to us, "I do this day after day."

We walked around town for several hours and saw some neat things... We passed the same school several times and at one point saw music class which met in the courtyard and consisted of drums, bells and trumpets. The children seemed to just play whatever they wanted and we couldn't identify the Guatemalan Chris. I may be partial, but the scene was dear.

We also found ourselves ambling along a trickling riverbed full of people prospecting--many by hand but some with shovels and screens. We were not close enough to see what they were pulling out, but it was interesting nonetheless.

I didn't see any dogs having sex though it would seem that is all they do given the abundance of mangy mutts in the streets. We saw literally dozens of them and while they seemed relatively docile, more than once I thought of Tim Johnson coming up the street in To Kill a Mockingbird. Except that instead of the dog being taken down with a spot-on rifle shot from an incredible distance, Chris and I would both just contract rabies and die horrible deaths. We made it through today, at least, without that happening.

We had breakfast and lunch in town, a place where it is easy to be vegetarian and where--unlike Mexico last summer--there are salads, and we found quite a nice market and bought just the basic supplies: wine, cheese, eggs and chocolate. We took a tuk tuk back to our place (not sure if this is always death defying or if Chris and my combined weight makes it all the more so), which is practically deserted. I saw one person this morning and we saw two others when we returned this afternoon but sat by the pool for some time in the early evening and had the joint to ourselves.

Now Chris is playing his guitar upstairs and I'm settling in to do some writing (the other kind) downstairs and I have him belting out Tear-Stained Eye as my accompaniment. It's a good life.

From GC to Panajachel

There were clowns and a British woman and two minivans and parts of the mountain were falling off...

Strange dreams last night which included a show my students were performing without me and a co-worker who was extremely upset because his mother's eye was bloodshot, but I realized in the light of day that I had not dreamed the barbed wire that completely surrounded our hotel in Guatemala City. In fact, as we drove through the neighborhood this morning, we saw it atop all of the walls that bordered people's yards. I suspect we were in a pretty good neighborhood; in fact, I think we were in a gated community and that the armed guard we passed last night was a sentry for it.

We booked a shuttle from GC to Panajachel through the hotel we stayed at last night and a minivan picked us up at 10 a.m. this morning for a short-ish ride to Antigua. There was one other couple in our van who were quite pleasant to chat with and then who quite pleasantly realized there was no need to chat the entire way which would have been an agony. She was British and they both spoke English but didn't; instead, when speaking to one another, they spoke some other language that wasn't English or Spanish.

Along the way, we stopped for gas at a station with another armed guard and Chris reminded me that we have armed guards all over the place at home; we just don't see them because they are ours. True enough... we have them at school. On the road, we also saw clowns in the roadway knocking on the windows of people's cars and cows (today Chris coined the phrase “skinny as a Guatemalan cow”) and goats and horses and chickens and dogs.

We had an hour or so in Antigua, which was enough time to realize we would like to spend some more time there and so we will make a plan to return before our stay is done. It was charming and, from the cursory look as we walked around a bit, reminded me of Merida. We switched minivans in Antigua and the rest of the trip took about two and a half hours. It would have taken less but our driver stopped once at a roadside grill for some corn and then again later to pee by the side of the road.

I realized as we drove higher and higher on narrow little roads, some of which were full of the parts of the mountain that had just recently fallen off, that I haven’t really been in the mountains before. I’ve driven through Pennsylvania a million times back and forth to DC and Chris and I were camping in West Virginia, but the climb today was nothing like those other. There was a point where I was hyperaware of my organs, not in the terrified way that makes me hyperaware of my organs hurting, just a general awareness. It was like I could feel my liver knockinng up against whatever the hell my liver is right next to. There were moments as I was looking down at where we had come from and up to where we were headed that I was nervous about what we had chosen for ourselves. It was clear to me while we were still in the minivan that this was going to be a different kind of trip than we have taken.

And then we arrived.

Chris said when we were walking around the property earlier that it was like the Garfield Park Conservatory only real life and outisde. It appears that every single plant is in bloom and they come in hot pinks and bright purples and yellows and oranges and every other color imaginable. The property sits right on the lake and the lake is surrounded by volcanoes which are peaked with clouds. The buildings are red brick and two-story. Our first floor is bedroom and bath and small patio and our second floor is living room and kitchen and terrace. We have a woodburning fireplace and a television that gets more channels than we do at home… here we are in Guatemala and we are picking up Channel 2 from Atlanta; makes you wonder why we can’t get Channel 2 from Chicago in Chicago. We may never come back.

We walked up the road to the next hotel for dinner which was lovely. The dining room looked out over the lake and we watched the sun set over the volcanoes while we ate huge plates of huge shrimp. It was a beautiful sight but it meant that we had to walk back to our hotel through a pitch night and I was a vice grip on Chris’s hand the whole way.

Not quite there yet...

Chris and I stopped eating meat in January in the hopes that a change in diet would reduce his disabling adventures with cysteinuria. It remains to be seen whether this will help or not, but we are pretty much willing to try anything so in the past six months we've both been searching out protein alternatives and meat-less recipes.

For my birthday, my sister Kristen presented me with a Mennonite cookbook, not because they are universally vegetarian but because they practice moderation and consider carefully the personal and political, local and global implications of the food choices they make and so often do not eat meat. The book is actually quite an education and dense with data between the recipes, so I was glad to find a section of easy menu ideas organized around themes in the middle of the volume. And when these brilliant people explained that there is no reason to add the fat and calories of ice cream to a meal as a dessert when ice cream makes a calcium and protein-rich meal in and of itself I was so delighted I was almost drawn back to organized religion.

Our flight from Chicago to Miami today included a huge group of Mennonites on one leg of their journey from Winnipeg to Chicago to Miami to Sao Paolo and then on to Paraguay; their itinerary included three flights and a bus trip. We chatted with members of the travel party on the ground in Chicago, where they were made to wait in quite a long line at the risk of some members of the group missing the connecting flight, and their attitude was so positive. The men were members of the only choir from North America to perform at an international Mennonite meeting in Paraguay, where there is--according to the man seated next to me on the plane--quite a large contingent, including some members of his family he had never before met and with whom he was eagerly anticipating spending some time. I'm sure it is more than an astoundingly smart philosophy of ice cream that defines these people, but the ones we met today seemed like good people.

We spent four hours in the Miami airport waiting for a connecting flight, and I fell in love with my Kindle. I read most of On Writing by Stephen King and suggest it to anyone, writer or no, because it is as much about him as it is about what he has written, and the man tells a good story.

The flight from Miami to Guatemala City was short and intense. We were in a huge plane--eight seats across and full--and we came through a bit of lightning but landed safely. We were led to believe that our hotel was arranging transfer for us, but such was not the case and we took a taxi. We were stopped by an official of some sort who had a huge gun slung over his shoulder, but apparently it was a routine stop and we were allowed to proceed. Our dinner at the hotel was six quetzales apiece which is about 80 cents, and now Chris and I are just like Lucy and Ricky, lying in twin beds in an 8 X 8 room for which we were given no key and where we will stay here until a shuttle comes for us in the morning to take us to Panajachel.

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Anticipating a Month in Guatemala

Last summer, Chris and I were fortunate to spend three weeks in Merida, Mexico, a cosmopolitan city with vast European influences, in the heart of the Yucatan. On the streets there, Chris's height was much celebrated and he was referred to as "two Mayas," hence the name of our new travel blog. This week, we are reading our Rough Guide, dusting off our suitcases and frantically looking for our passports in preparation for our month in Guatemala's Lake Atitlan region.