It's great to fall into bed exhausted from a day of tromping around a different country and seeing all the things there are to see and soaking up the sunshine and sharing stories over bread and wine with friends and family. Susan and Katy have already retired for the evening and Chris and I are not far behind.
We split up this morning; Katy was gone for her mountain bike tour before I even arose. She had to be in town by 8 a.m. and there she met up with her guide, Juan, who fitted her for a bike and then they headed out of the city. She went to several small towns, including one that until very recently was only accessible by boat, and some larger towns around the lake. Juan is 23 and lives in Santiago and shared a great deal about his experiences with Katy as they rode. He would ultimately like to go to college but is unable. There is a university in Guatemala City that is free but he has no family there and would not be able to support himself in living arrangements. There are closer schools, one in Solola, but they are not free. NSF is a chronic problem, and he is disappointed to discontinue his education as a result. I assumed that because we split up in the morning, we wouldn't see Katy until we all returned home in the afternoon. I was wrong.
Chris, Susan and I didn't have to leave until a bit later; a boat picked us up at our dock at 9 a.m. Our captain was a man named Demetrio and his first mate was a boy named Daniel, who I suspect was his son and was maybe 10 or 11 years old. Demetrio was more talkative than our other drivers and pointed out a number of sights along the way. A sad reminder of Hurricane Stan was one house he pointed out that had slid right off of its foundation and the remains continued to lie in a ditch.
Our first stop was San Marcos, a small town known for meditation and yoga centers. Demetrio came off of the boat with us and it was a good thing because we mightn't have found the town on our own. We had to walk along the shore to a small break in the coffee plants and then wend our way through crops before finding the town. San Marcos is the only town along the lake that has trees in town (the rest were cleared for habitation) and is the least like an American town of any I've seen here. Roads are more like footpaths and appear to have been laid with no rhyme or reason. As we walked along these narrow paths, Demetrio pointed out flowers and trees and fruit trees to us and answered questions, as well. We saw papaya trees with huge fruits hanging high above us and also learned about a fruit that the people here created by grafting the orange and the limon together, which addressed our question about the huge limes we were buying in the market that appeared to be orange in color on the inside. We visited the church in San Marcos and Demetrio told us that the people in the town raise much of the money when a Catholic church is built but people in the United States and other countries also contribute. In the church, there was a statue of Mark that was guarded by a vicious dog (also a statue!) and there were Mayan candles and rose petals on the ground in front of the retablo.
Our next stop was in San Juan, which appeared to be a wealthier town or at least one that had a greater sense of civic pride than most of the places we have been. It was very clean and there were freshly painted murals on the freshly painted buildings. There, we visited a collective of women weavers who had several showrooms full of luxurious textiles in softer colors than we have seen in other towns. We learned that they die all of their threads themselves using indigenous plants.
Right next to the collective, there was another shrine to Maximon, the evil saint, and it was a much, much safer setting than the one Jessica and Katy visited. Ours was in someone's house, we think, and there were not dozens of drunken children and men outside. There was only one old man who ushered us in and explained that what we were looking at was not Maximon at all but a depiction of San Simon and that Maximon was the curled up saint reclining next to him in a locked cage. Underneath the shrine was a print of the Last Supper and the man pointed to the picture of Peter and said that San Simon was Simon Peter and then pointed to Judas and said that was Maximon. This made a little sense but then didn't make any sense at all later when we read in Frommer's (thank goodness Susan brought a book that wasn't yet another copy of the Rough Guide!) that Maximon was an ancient Mayan god. Everyone seems to have a different story on the evil saint and it is hard to sort out the truth but it does seem clear that the Guatemalan Catholics have incorporated the Mayan god Maximon into their practice and that the Mayans have incorporated the whole idea of saints into their practice. It was also in San Juan that we saw a group of men building a church. They had been at it for two years and expected it would take another year, at least. Their scaffolds were all made of wood and the rungs on their ladders were at irregular distances and they were piecing huge stones together this way and that for the best fit. It was a remarkable sight.
We were descending a hill when we saw a flash of white streak past us on a cross street and it was Katy. We called after her, shouting her name as we hurried to the corner and rounded it, but she was too fast. We continued to the dock where it started to rain and our thoughts were with her as she was on her bike on paths that were probably not safe in the rain. It rained for our whole ride from San Juan to San Pedro and we decided to have lunch first and try to wait out the weather. We picked a place right off of the dock just to get out of the rain, but because it was right off the dock it was also right on the water and quite a lovely place to pass the time. It was while we sat in the restaurant that a woman came in selling breads and we were finally able to purchase some coconut bread, which Jessica had been searching for during her stay, and it was also while sitting there that we saw another flash of white streak past us. Katy moves fast, but this time Susan ran through the restaurant and caught her before she got on the boat back to Pana. She joined us for just a bit and filled us in on her adventures and after she returned to the boat, we wandered around San Pedro for a time. It was good.
We returned to Panajachel in mid afternoon and discovered that there was a festival there and that Calle Santander had been closed to accommodate the townspeople. There was music in the streets and a new game being played, which seriously resembled volleyball but instead of a net the teams had to get the ball through a ring. We picked up some supplies and arranged our day trip for tomorrow before heading home.
Susan and I joined Katy at the pool and Chris did something else... maybe played his guitar? Did some work? Took a nap? I'm not sure but I just looked over at him and he has a big grin on his face and is fast asleep, so whatever it was he did this afternoon I think he had a good day.
We all had dinner together here and chatted until bed. And now I'm off there myself.
P.S. We saw a duck called a poc with a blue beak and I think Susan would make note of it here if she were writing so I'll do it for her!
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