MAYA-HO! _{Guatemala, Easter 2003}

Saturday 12 April 2003

From Antigua: Another warm day, a day for breakfasting on bread and coffee, then walking to the Parque Central to get my boots buffed so I wouldn't disgrace the wedding party. I snapped pictures of that mammilary fountain; and pictures of a Mayan musical family playing coplas with their hat out (and yes, I fed the hat); and pictures of other people gathered around the fountain. It's easy to burn out a camera lens here.

Enroute I'd stopped at the Rainbow Reading Room & Travel Agency & Internet Cafe for a soda and ambiance; but now I must scurry back to the hostelry to de-grunge and suit-up and shuttle first to the reception site (La Casa de los Suenos) where the rest of the party would spend the night, then to the wedding site, the vast ancient fortress-like Escuela de Christo church and monastary. (Nope, not at the Cathedral - I got my signals crossed again.) That beautiful old edifice is across from a park where cannabis smoke wafted through the air, ice cream vendors trundled by, and the usual heavy traffic thundered past.

the Wedding, etc

The wedding was traditional, solemn but fun. Members of the wedding party proclaimed biblical readings in Spanish and English. A cello-viola-flute ensemble in the balcony played old and modern wedding tunes, Catholic and Protestant and Jewish and secular. Bubbles were blown at the enchanted couple (Christian and Mayari, remember them?) as they made their brief escape.

Then to the reception, with much gaiety and refreshment and picture-taking and dancing, in a behind-the-walls parkland filled with canopied tables of many shades of happy well-wishers from many lands in the Americas. Eventually Maureen and I wore out, walked to our hotel, back to the reception a few hours later (it was still in high gear) and then into town.

Heart of Antigua

Central Antigua was moodily magical at the dusk commencement of Semana Santa (Easter week), especially with lightning filling the skies. The narrow cobbled streets lined with luxurious shops and courtyards (on the east side) and travellers' conveniences (on the west) stilled their bustling as the rain fell. The thronged Plaza emptied. Arcades around the Plaza filled with refugees. We took refuge ourselves on the west side, at Casa de Conde / Cafe Condessa, for a great light dinner seated beside a rainy garden court. The Sunday brunch there is called an 'Antiguan Institution.' It sez so right in the guidebook.

The rain slackened - we ventured on back to our hotel and finally called an end to this day, aided by a bit of scotch pinched from the reception. Skoal, y'all.

Palm Sunday, 13 April 2003

As I recall, we arose early, stumbled up Calle de Santa Lucia / Calle Ciudad Vieja (gassed by Chicken Buses) to the west side of town, breakfasted typico (Guatemalan style) at La Polla Samba A Las Brasas (Chicken Dancing on Hot Rocks), then made our way to Elizabeth Bell's ANTIGUA TOURS office.

En route we saw the premiminaries of this ultimate processional week (of a crowded month) - crowds surging towards their preferred or appointed locales - and EB led our group deep into the heard to the activity, a swirling chaos around Iglesia La Merced (church). We got our palm branches, we threaded through the congregation in the sanctuary. But I felt distinctly uneasy at being trapped within this press of humanity ("I've got a bad feeling about this!") so we bailed out and wandered.

We spent the rest of the morning criss-crossing Antigua's west side, watching as the ALFOMBRAS (floral carpets) were constructed along the processional routes. Thousands of folks, with more or less organization, filled the streets with these tapestries of colored sawdust and flowers and fruits and veggies and miscellenia. Some alfombras were 3-meter square or round individual productions; some extend a dozen blocks unbroken.

Palm Sunday - lunchtime

The rest of our party had spend the night at the reception site. We'd left word for them to join us for brunch at Casa la Conde but they never got the message. Ratz. The Plaza and surrounding streets filled with multihued humanity although today's main procession, leaving La Merced around noon and slowly winding all over the city, wouldn't reach the Plaza until after 10 PM - and return to La Merced well after midnight.

So we rested, cleaned up, headed over to the west side again in late afternoon. We dined wonderfully at the Rainbow Reading Room, poked through all the shops between the main marketplace (El Mercado) and the Plaza, observed the observers once more - then returned to our hotel in a light rain - to find the rest of our party polishing off some take-out Domino's pizzas (GREAT polenta crusts here!) They told us of their adventures in alfombra-making, and probing the depths of El Mercado and its hidden artisans' market, and of the great Nim Po't fabric-artifact collective. Soon...

Holy Monday, 14 April 2003

Our party rose early to stuff ourselves into a van for the long shuttle to Panajachel (aka Pana aka Gringotenango) on Lake Atitlán. The route runs through the most apalling hard-scrabble villages, excruciating extended bus-stop mini-cities, and sublime wild and cultivated mountain country of delirious beauty. A tropical paradise. kept in abject subjugation and poverty by decades of US-backed fascist regimes. You think I'm ranting? Check the records, see just which CIA director's brother ran the United Fruit Company. The Banana Republic system still functions.

Hamlets line the InterAmerican Highway, innumerable homes and farms and shops in the high valleys and higher ranges. Brightly-garbed Mayan women wait at dusty corners; they and white-clad men toil in shop and field; children toil or play or tend animals. Cattle and sheep and pigs are tethered by the roadside to graze. Oncoming traffic grazes itself and pedestrians and rocky walls and sometimes manages an impact. Cops and troops and guards in various uniforms appear almost anywhere, solitary or clustered or with occasional traffic checkpoints. Clouds and volcanos dance above, creeks flow below.

Holy Monday - descending

The turnoff to Lake Atitlán cuts down a sharp ridge into ever-more exotic farmed country, through the dense village of Sololá, down increasingly steep grades past waterfalls and views across the stupendous lake, until we finally, butt-achingly, reach the mini-urbanity of Pana. We decamp at our luxury (ie, HolidayInn-class) hotel, the Porta del Lago (formerly the Barceló del Lago). Poor people stare through the wrought-iron gates at the rich (ie, middle-class) partyers. In Guatemala are those with no money, and those with money; some of the latter have LOTS of money, but they ain't HERE.

After a snack, we and our party head for the pier to catch a shark boat ('lancha') for a swirling spin across the lake. Maureen and I haven't been on a small-boat ride since our Amalfi-to-Positano voyage on Easter Sunday 2001 - and this ride feels eerily similar, especially later on the return past steep cliffs, villages clinging like epiphytic orchids to the rocky cliff faces or spread like tumbled gravel or dice along the shoreline and creeks. Lone boatsmen pole or row their carved-cedar-log canoyas (canoes, piroughes) across the windy chop.

Santiago y San Antonio

We came ashore at Santiago de Atitlán - actually at a resort outside town, the Hotel Bambu. Excellent Hispanic-Basque food, gorgeous views, a clean crisp wind perfect for kite-flying (which I did - I always carry a portable kite). Guidebooks mention other nearby resorts, some are personally recommended by foreign and domestic middle-classers.

Then we go into the village, a major habitation along the lake - and encounter extreme desperation, grinding poverty, at the edge of some of the most spectacular scenery on Earth.

To escape subsistence (and the old repression) the people produce traditionally-styled blindingly beautiful handcrafts - which look just like the last streetful of artifacts you just saw. And the few visitors just ain't buying, which situation is exacerbated by the current global political-economic environment.

So the young boys to off to Pana or Antigua or Guáte to peddle or hustle or shine shoes or toil or steal or starve; the girls and women desperately beseech visitors to buy something, ANYTHING; men an old women call from the roadside stands, and/or toil, and/or starve.

In the next village, San Antonio Palopo, it's even worse, with a drunk man (whom the vendor girls obviously fear) telling the foreign cabroñes to vamós. Adios, señor; we won't darken your path again.

Then back to Pana and its infinitely mellower streets and crows, the importuners much less insistent and desperate. We shopped til we dropped - didn't buy much but handled lotsa stuff - so we don't benefit the local economy much. Especially after a hotel buffet dinner.

Holy Tuesday, 15 April 2003

After a hotel buffet breakfast we walked up into Old Town Panajachel, the traditional village, on its vibrant market day. The experience was delightful, probably because the locals enjoy some measure of prosperity fueled by tourism. Pana as a resort is favored not only by Gringos but also by the middle classes of Central and South America. A number of cars here bear license plates from El Salvador, Mexico, Costa Rica, Belize - and only a few look as if they'll have to roll home gravity-assisted.

So what we've seen in a whole week in Guatemala are EXTREMELY industrious, enterprising, clever but ill-educated people, living under a government that is actively robbing and sometimes killing them. The message we get from more than one source is: there's little wrong with Guatemala that a massive ABSENSE of U.S. foreign policy wouldn't fix.

We (and others in our party) were apalled by Santiago and San Antonio; we were nearly ready to bail-out of this Guatemalan adventure early, forfeit our return tickets and prepaid posada, head straight back to the States. But we're charmed by Pana, and hopeful of the prospect of seeing the Guatemala extolled by travel writers (are they ALL lying curs?)

So this was another busy day, and the end of Phase I of this trip. Or is it? Whatever. Anyway, after returning to Antigua from Pana late Tuesday afternoon, our party was too BLITZED to do more than stomp along the short dark cobbled bus route to the Radisson for a gringo-ized dinner, then stomp back to the hotel and collapse. (The next night we stomped an equal distance in the opposite direction to the eatery of the Hotel Las Farolas for an equally indifferent dinner, but I'm getting ahead of myself.)

Ash Wednesday, 16 April 2003

This was our party's last full day in Antigua. The family of the bride (Mayari, remember?) drove in from Guáte (Guatemala City, remember?) and we stomped up the west side past El Mercado to rendesvous with them at Iglesia La Merced, whereupon our combined clans stomped all over the north side, down hot dusty walled cobbled streets thronged with pilgrims.

Highlights: Couvent de Capuchines, an old prison for impudent girls, with remarkable architecture, including a roundhouse of cells; a vast social feed at a charming steakhouse (Restaurante La Estancia) wherein many family photos were snapped and hugs exchanged; a glorious art gallery across from La Fuente (La Antigua Galeria de Arte; a great deal of friendly familial chatter; and the above-mentioned cenas typicas at Las Farolas, cheap and worth almost every centavo. But interacting with the new family was sure fun - ALL THOSE NEW COUSINS!

Maundy Thursday, 17 April 2003

So we get to this morning, Thursday, when the balance of the Carter-Barnard-O'Connell clan returns to California. (Don and Shirley Carter, Chris's father and grandmother, left last Monday.) Last minute repacking, shifting of loads, stuffing everybody and everything into their Guáte-bound shuttle, and then -- that phase of our trip is OVER. We are abandoned, left to our own resources! Time to start Phase II.

OK. We cab to our new digs, decamp into a lovely penthouse room, and go explore a new quarter of Antigua. (The new digs: HOTEL POSADA LA MERCED is a helluva wonderful place to stay, especially up-up-stairs - more on that later.)

Except that we've already walked certain of these streets before, and we're just too damn tired to explore. We take a fine pan-Asian lunch at Rocio's, stomp to the supermercado for supplies, return and collapse. After a bit we stomp around some more (closely observing Antiguan processional life, of course), ingest a fine pizza and mucho cerveza Gallo (cheap stuff) at Restaurante Martedino, then get swept away in post-processional crowds.

Maundy Thursday - after dark

Greater Antigua on Semana Santa nights is JUMPING! The scenes around the major churches are carnival-like, with neon-lit vendors' booths, kids playing and running and screaming, people weaving in all directions. Every dark street is like a moving party with laughing families and happy or sullen Ladino drunks, strutting guys and giggling girls, laughing or solemn Mayas, groups building new alfombras (floral carpets) fror tomorrow's processions.

Motorbikes, flashing pickups filled with excited kids, zooming sedans, the occasional lost tourist bus trying to negotiate a too-tight turn, all these vehicles interfere somewhat with the pedestrian-filled streets. Every eatery is open and jammed, garages and doorways are turned into snackbars, BBQs and cold drinks are offered at every door, all to nourish the surging influx of hungry humanity.

We finally return to our comfortable inn where our Kiwi innkeeper and various other mature Anglos are building a processional carpet for tomorrow's onslaught. Enough's enough, and we bid goodnight.