A journal of a journey to the central-western highlands. |
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[another pile of trivial transcribed journal notes - slightly corrected & expanded - written as a stream-of-consciousness travelogue, hence the curious style - oy]
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Sunday 11 May 2003Sounds of the night: dogs in the distance, roosters nonstop, a neighbor snoring loudly, Maureen in the can. She doesn't think that she was POISONED at Guajimbo's, just that the roast chicken and potato and veggie mix was a bit too exciting for her now-wasted guts. (A happy dog-begger got lots of the garlic bread) She says it's oatmeal (MOSH) and waffles for the forseeable future. Meanwhile she's resting. Sleeping all day, actually. Morning: A bumblebee explores the shady veranda. A hummingbird flits around the lime tree outside our window, takes off for others nearby. A bigger darker bird, a red-headed guy, lands on a twig next to what looks like a lemon amidst the limes. He looks around, jumps to the adjacent tree-agave (25 feet high, leaf clusters at top and midpoint) and pokes at its bark awhile, then heads for richer pickings. About this lime tree: Our second-floor room overlooks the formal garden of neatly-trimmed lawns crossed by straight wide flagstone paths lined with shrubs, trees, flowerbeds, and with various trees erupting from the lawns. Disturbing those flagstones, this gnarly lime issues up to about 35 feet high. The lower half was pruned, de-limbed. The bottom core is burnt-out and -through, a charred hole gaping in several dimensions. Other lower brighter limes abound. But this guy is the BULL GOOSE LIME TREE in these here parts, pardner. Yup. | |
Sounds of GringotenangoOdd beeps. (Many Guatemalans have wired car-alarms into the horns of their cars, trucks, vans, taxis, jeeps, pedicabs, etc, so hitting the 'horn' gives some fragment of the electro-alarm cycle.) Police whistles, at the three intersections in town where traffic needs direction at times. ME blowing a whistle, when a wandering vendor won't leave after being told "No, adios!" 10+ times. Birds everywhere. Cellphone and pager beeps. Birds that sound like car alarms and cellphones. Music of varying quality issuing from various locales. The occasional mini-diesel bellow or canine contention or fireworks blast or blaring sound truck. Wandering flute-panpipe-drum vendors exercising their wares. Gleefully screaming children. The vendors' chant: "Buy one from ME'ee! Good price for YU'uu!" Chatter in various languages, primarily 1: Mayan (21 languages, several heard here), 2: Spanish (good, bad or ugly), 3: Other.
The whoosh of bicycles. Odd shouts. Up on Calle Principal, the chicken-buses' toxic roar. But mostly it's pretty quiet here.
RIC'S VIEW OF PANA: A lively town (if overcommercialized), full of energy; different and quiet and subtle just a few steps from Calle Santander, the main drag; a melange of sounds, sights, scents, scenes, vastly various persons, etc. MAUREEN'S VIEW OF PANA: Bad food and two motel rooms. Sunday AfternoonMaybe the wet season IS at hand. The late afternoon breeze and mist are cooler than a couple days or weeks ago. I'm in the Monterrey's thatched gazebo, above the now-empty beach where the chill chased children by the hundreds back to catch the last lancha or bus to wherever. This stretch of the playa from Calle Santander's spur to the north docks is mostly overwatched by fenced private compounds; only the Monterrey's lakefront is open, and its thatched shelters below sure are inviting. But now all that stands between me and the volcanos are a palm, a pine, and the mist, none completely opaque. Yup, yonder be volcanos! Back up on the veranda now (that breeze IS chilly) the garden colors smite my eyes, birds singing in the lime tree nearly deafen me. Somerset Maugham moved to the south of France early in the last century and found that the view from his window so distracted him from writing that he had the window boarded up. Perhaps, being an Englander, he was unable to face beauty not washed with grey - the glare was just too much for those fog-softened eyes, eh? Ah, the cost of being a working writer. There probably aren't many who relax in their luxurious gardens, dictating best-sellers for others to transcribe. Isaac Asimov wrote 500+ books and described his life as having been spent in a small dark room hunched over a typewriter. Put Isaac on the Cote d'Azur or Lago de Atitlán, would he have boarded up his window too? Which leads up to the question: why haven't I posted any pictures yet? Well, so far I've snapped about 1800 digital images that I haven't deleted out-of-hand. Because I'm using a cheap camera, each picture needs to be run through color-correction software - slightly tedious. Then the pictures have to be cropped, edited, etc - all slightly tedious, and all of which has to be done inside a fairly dim room. 6 minutes per picture times maybe 400 good pictures equals 2400 minutes or 40 hours in a dim room, WHEN I'D RATHER BE RELAXING AND READING OUTSIDE (like today) OR BE OUT EXPLORING MORE OF THE DAMN PLACE (like the rest of the time). So your only hopes for quick pix are that I break a leg or am placed under house arrest. Soon. Very soon. Early Sunday Evening etcMaureen pops up - she's HUNGRY! What a cracker an a cup of oatmeal (MOSH) weren't enough for you today? OK, we trudge into the village for a healing meal - but they won't cook waffles this late, so she settles on a big peanutbutter-honey-fruit sandwich whilst I slurp my spicy shiitake mushroom Sechuan soup. Yummy. Then it's down to the playa to watch the world disappear, listen to the evening sounds, make plans pending recovery - another tour of the Lake in a couple days, maybe a short eco-tour of the Eastern Highlands before we return to the States. Nearby, a Maya infant padded like a psychedelic hockey goalie tries to make his escape, but no luck... Heading toward the Monterrey we encounter Brian, a Canadian 'trader' (think of Sting, fried) who after some preliminary chatter assures us that Guatemalan cops are great, they don't bust tourists for pot, HEY I've got a nice Q50 bag here, you can keep the bag... Me: Well DAMN Brian, I just sucked up all this dust and crap on the road, we've got a couple great Havana cigars we've been dying to smoke and I just focking CAN'T, if I smoke ANYTHING I'll just DIE right at your feet! But thanks for thinking of us... (and we leave thinking, hmmm, could a burnt 'trader' maybe be pressured to try to set-up some naive old gringos?) Later I stroll back through Pana in the dark, restless for more input. The sky is cloudy, stormy, lightning in the stygian volcanic distances, bright bolts searing lines in my retinas, MY EYES! MY EYES! Ok, so don't look up, dummy... In town it's a mellow Sunday night. I pass Miguel (el jefe) at Toliman Excursions, he says the rathouse manager can't decide anything without talking to HIS boss who's away for the weekend, so try again tomorrow. OK, yup. Barrio Alto (old town Pana) is lively, I see and greet familiar faces - something big (or at least loud) is happening at the old Catholic church, everything's jumping - and tomorrow, everybody goes back to work. Back at the Monterrey: across the clear Lake, old San Pedro village gleams like a pile of distant embers. Flashcubes blink in the sky's cloudy canyons. The birds and dogs and snorers have finally shut up, and the wind is high. Anything could happen. G'night. Today's songs: | |
WHAT A CHICKENBUS ISMy youngest sister asks, What's a Chicken-Bus? Well, here's what I've learned: Take an old old old norteamericano diesel school bus, the kind that wasn't even very clean or comfortable or safe back when we had to ride them to Chino High School, Barbi. Run it until even a cheap and budget-crunched school board can't stomach it anymore, then sell it for scrap. Ship the scrap the Guatemala. Now revive it. Pour some tar into the engine to seal up any leaks. Pull out the seats, put them back in closer together. Knock out the side windows, they interfere with ventilation. Paint it a hypnotic pattern of eye-searing colors, outlined with reflective tape. Prominently display religious slogans (and the owner's name) in reflective letters. Weld a ladder on the back and a rack on top. Replace the horn with a car alarm or train whistle. Now hire a deputy, the guy who shouts at prospective passengers from the back door, and who sorts out stuff in the roof rack while the bus is rolling, and who serves as ground control, bellowing to direct the bus through nearly-impossible intersections. He is very important. Now the hardest part: select the driver. Comb the insane asylums, look for someone with great spatial acuity and manual dexterity combined with suicidal, homicidal, psychopathic and sociopathic tendencies. Or just take an average guy, crank him up on speed, and put him behind the wheel. Whichever's easiest, do it. Fill the bus with passengers. The fare is about 10 centavos per kilometer, so crossing Guatemala costs roughly ten Yankee bucks. Fill the roof rack with luggage, freight, produce, poultry (it's a chicken bus, right?), spare tires, fuel cans, furniture, appliances, whatever. Now give the driver another hit and you're ready to roll. The driver will always stop for more passengers, no matter how many are already aboard. If another bus is there first, the drivers will fight over the passengers. On the road, the driver will pass all other vehicles, even in the most suicidal situations. The driver will play 'chicken' with oncoming traffic (it's a chicken bus, right?) (Note: The status of bus drivers is notably different in Italy. There, they're treated as and behave like airline pilots, always ultra-cool and professional. After a notably brilliant display of technical expertise, the passengers (especially if elderly British tourists) may applaud the bus-pilot, who doesn't deign to acknowledge the appreciation.)
The driver will spew toxic black clouds from the exhaust onto every living thing by the roadside. The bus will occasionally plunge into a ravine with few if any survivors. But most chicken buses arrive safely most of the time. I hope this answers your question. Much of this information may even be true.
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Monday 12 May 2003A beautiful cool quiet day. After healing pancakes (Las Chinitas offers freshly-ground whole wheat or blue corn) and fine coffee we slowly stroll around Barrio Alto, cool off in the quiet basilica, and stroll some more. This looks like the type of calm, prosperous village we'd HOPED to find in a postwar Guatemala. We then stop in to see Miguel at Toliman Excursions - AND WE GET OUR REFUND! IN US DOLLARS, CASH! He had to pressure the moronic management of Chichi's ratty Hotel Chugüilá, who even lied as to whether we'd stayed a night. What a STUPID way to treat international travelers, especially in a Web-connected world! And we have a receit from Posada El Arco for that night, to disprove the lie. Documentation is power, folks. Here is our official recommentation: The folks at Tolian Excursions are honest, and honorable, and hard-working, and they're good folks to do business with. Find them at TolimanExcursions.Com So now we feel much better, in many ways. Back at the Monterrey we munch cheddar and fresh whole bread on the veranda, read and relax, listen to the birds and the wind. All the volcanos are emerging from the mist, teasing us without details yet. Tomorrow maybe we'll boat around the lake and get up-close-and-personal with them. Well, not TOO personal, no lava burns, no climbs, just skirt around their bases and revisit their villages. Monday, Late AfternoonYes indeed, the rainy season has arrived. It rained lightly for at least 15 minutes. Maureen snored, I strolled, the rains came. I returned, Maureen awoke, the rain stopped. So she missed it. Better luck next year. Ha ha ha. Maureen's guts still hurt a bit, so maybe tomorrow isn't the best day to do a Lake and Villages tour. Looking out the window now, that rain (and the remaining heavy air) seem to have calmed the Lake a great deal. Usually it's windy and choppy by now, but it looks very smooth and heavy like a creamy pudding, or Maureen's favorite oatmeal (but without the raisins, apples, bananas and cranberries). The calm before the storm, or after? We walk in for an early healing dinner and partake slowly. One aspect of eateries in Guatemala - the staff usually isn't anxious to clear you out and free up the table for the next sucker, er customer. Things happen slowly, meals wind down slowly, and you usually have to ask for the check - it's rarely volunteered. We return past Guajimbo's. A talented mixed trio is playing nice jazz - we stop and appreciate. The waiter recognizes me, smiles and waves. The dog we've fed garlic bread does likewise. You know you've been in Pana too long when the dogs know you by name.
A beautiful cool afternoon-evening in this Mayan town that's also a global village.
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Seen Around Pana* Two little Maya girls in total traditional garb and bright fluorescent plastic Zorries (sandals), walking down the roadway identically with arms around each others' shoulders, their headphones plugged into a single CD player..* Travellers sitting in vegetarian restaurants and fresh-juice bars, smoking cigarettes... * Tourist Police who patrol everywhere but don't appear to look TOO closely at tourists... * Young Maya girls telling Mama that they just HAVE to keep the kitten they found THERE,,, * The old Gringa ex-pats walking around with their Chihuahuas snugged under their arms... * The local guys playing checkers on home-made boards with bottle-caps as checkers... * The old-fart Gringo ex-pats hanging out on a cafe porch playing poker and smoking... * Local kids kicking little plastic soccer balls just about anywhere... * Hippies and rastas kicking little woven hackey-sacks almost anywhere... * The varieties of Space Cowboys, guys in traditional garb from just up the hill in Sololá - each with a straw stetson and psychedelic shirt, stripey pants (long or short) and short starry-night apron, but with varying footware - barefoot, or sandals, or boots, or Oxfords, or hush-puppies - and with the usual woven tourist-style woven bag, worn around the neck or over shoulder or as a trumpline (over the forehead) - and almost always walking, walking... | |
Health And AdventureTo those who find the details of mortality tedious, I apologise for boring you with reports of our infirmities. A travelogue should describe the places visited, not how bad the visitors felt, right? Alas, these documents are diary as much as roadlog - but our spirits remain high. For an example otherwise, read MUSIC IN EVERY ROOM: Around The World In A Bad Mood, wherein the author and his girlfriend(s) travel Asia cheaply and miserably. Possibly further too, but I quit reading after their depressive stay in Nepal, or wherever. But I digress. This trip has been physically challenging, even more than we expected. The ill effects we feel are likely due as much to our prior stressful-slothful lifestyle as to Guatemalan realities. Six vigorous weeks in Sicily, Greece, Slovenia, Armenia, Ceylon or Arkansas could have been equally painful. We find much here to love, much yet to explore. We'll work to prepare ourselves for further adventurous travel. Of course, if we were FULLY prepared, it wouldn't be an adventure, would it? No need to lose weight, firm up, convert measures or learn languages when visiting WallyWorld, right? OK, scratch the above. Maureen thinks Guatemala is polluted, its food is polluted, and she could do without a return visit to the highlands. | |
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