MAYA-HO! _{Guatemala, Easter 2003}

Thursday, 24 April 2003

We left Antigua just after noon Thursday, shuttling along the longer but safer Chimaltenango-Los Encuentros route (avoid the bandit-infested Patzún shortcut unless you're on a motorbike). We passed time chattering with first-time and experienced Pana-bound riders.

Jennifer and Michael (Genevera y Miguel) from Phoenix Arizona were enroute from Peru and Costa Rica, wanted to see the best around here before heading homeward through the Maya lowlands. Karin from Dublin (but resident in Frankfurt) was to stay in a quiet lakeside village awhile before going to a Carib island to learn and practice diving. Howard from somewhere USA has been coming here since 1990 to collect weavings and artifacts; he sez our Pana abode (Hotel Regis) is his favorite. (Genevera y Miguel take a room here too but are gone by Saturday). Everyone in the van is more Spanish-fluent than I. Duh.

Many loco chicken-bus drivers endanger us on the highway; our pilot curses them. The country looks greyish with drought and dust and despair. The air is thick, both with clouds and smoke from farmers' burning cornstalks in the fields. Otherwise it's a pretty safe run, considering.

We arrive, unpack, stomp all over lower Pana ('Gringotenango') 'til our huge heated feet wear out; we dine at eateries both good and not so good, fend off numerous vendors, collapse. And our first night alone in Pana is laid to waste, er laid to rest.

Friday, 25 April 2003

A half-decent breakfast at Cafe Oralé, but Maureen isn't feeling too well. In blazing sunlight we stomp around past a police checkpoint (friendly cops) and a roaming circus (poor llama!) and a motel with a POOL! and WATERSLIDE! (both unoccupied). We finally find the firestation, in which parking lot we'd been told that hillwomen gathered Fridays to sell fine huipils. True. We walked away with four beauties.

Back at the Regis, Maureen felt worse, and took to bed. I naturally stomped around some more - out to the north dock, back to the checkpoint, past the circus to the old town, etc. NOTE: When a llama facing you tilts its head back, it's about to spit on you. Hopefully it's just started chewing green foliage, and aims for your legs. Hopefully.

I explored further, bought some small pots ('aged' repros), wandered out the Santa Catalina road past great bustling and construction. If the air clears, I may rent a bike and pedal my ass off in that direction, south along the east shore of Lake Atitlán.

Friday PM - Maureen's sick

I returned to the Regis regularly to check Maureen's condition. Upper (not lower) intestinal upset, headache and backache, chills and fever. Her temperature hovered around 101.5°f all afternoon.

Early evening: I asked the Regis staff to recommend a good English-speaking physician. Instead the deskman fetched the doc.lady quickly - Madama Doctora poked and queried and prescribed a reasonable-looking list of medications. A Regis bike-courier pedaled to two farmacias to fill the scrip. Impressive help from everyone, and Maureen's feeling a bit better.

There are many worse places than Panajachel, Sololá, Guatemala, for an old Gringa to get sick, even in the states.

Saturday 26 April 2003

Maureen's sleeping quietly. I stroll over to The Last Resort on Calle el Chali (look for the red dragon) because the ROUGH GUIDE sez: "Looks vaguely like an English pub, but does the best American buffet breakfasts in town. Also pasta, steaks and vegetarian dishes, served in huge portions." I'm satisfied with the Q17 (US$2.13) breakfast - here's my take on the place, noted onsite:

"The Last Resort: On a small table near the bar, large bowl of boiled oatmeal, rice with veggies, black beans, a coffee urn, red-clay cups and small bowls, various spoons - help yourself. Your order for eggs is taken - revuelto means 'scrambled', not 'revolting', eh? Quiet space-rock synthesizer music plays. The proprietor sits out front drinking coffee, reading a paper. An old sax hangs above the fireplace. Old and new art adorns the pink-lavendar walls. Lightbulbs hang in straw sombreros above most tables. El Ultimo Refugio. Clean."

Saturday afternoon

M's still feeling shitty but her temperature's down to 100.5°f and she's awake. Nice clear satellite TV here so at least she's somewhat entertained when awake. It looks like we won't be exploring the lakeside villages for a couple days at least. And Maureen will sure be a cheap date, what with subsisting oatmeal and rolls, fruit juice cartons and boullions and teas and Gatorade, celebratory mashed potatoes. Bland pulps and salty liquids, oh wow.

There's not much for me to do in present circumstances but walk around, explore within a mile or two, look ever-more-closely at the same old handicrafts, and check on Maureen every couple hours. By early afternoon her temp's down to 99.6°f - much better! And the doctor, with her daughter in tow, are strolling by for a snack down the road, so she stops in to check on Maureen. Just imagine a stateside medico doing a next-day followup, gratis!

I walk down to the lakeshore and over to the mouth of the Rio Pana. Many more comedors (eateries) and vendors and action along the bluffs, party plazas, etc. Down along the river's now-dry floodplain, hang-gliders are circling and landing. A fresh breeze off the lake, very recuperative for fried Gringos and locals alike.

Just across the river ('Jucanyá') is a big enclosed garden-like plot - above that, a grove or forest - and parked on the headland is a chicken bus with BIG loudspeakers blasting a long spoken message (I hear 'hermanos' a lot so may it's preaching) followed by some nice loud poppish music.

The playa (beach) between the lakefront piers along the streams bounding Pana is traversed by very beautiful stonework walkways, with some shops and eateries, many trees and even some thatched huts, shade shelters ('sombras') erected by the state tourist agency INGUAT. A very nice area to stroll, watch the people and lake and sky and volcanos (if the haze clears). Skiffs and kayaks and miniferries and launches decorate the shoreline, along with the odd stuffed elephant, sombrero-topped burro or zebra, and mini airplane ride.

Saturday night

Back to Las Chinitas for another tasty repast. Ling's daughter comes in crying to the cooks. Ling bikes in later, spends many minutes soothing that fragile spirit. Two little Mayan girls try to sell me a shirt, have a wonderful time listening to me strangle as I pull their poquito offerings over my gordo head-neck-body. After they leave (promising to get me a larger shirt mañana) a nearby diner asks if I've been to Arabic lands, that the Mayan and Arab vendors are just alike - intrusive, persistent, insufferable, etc. Yup.

Maureen's temperature is up a bit, from 99.6°f to 100.4°f, but that's to be expected for evening and otherwise she feels better. We'll see what mañana brings.

Sunday 27 April 2003

Morning: Maureen's temp is way down this morning, 98.6°f (her usual is 97.6°f) and she feels much better, but dizzy. So it's a-biking I shall go! But first I must search around Pana...

Midmorning: Maureen's temp is down to normal, 97.7°f! And I have a bike for a half-day!

So I'm rolling down the low-rise capitalism-gone-feral chaos of Calle Santander (Gringotenango's main drag) like all the other mad bikers, then across the cobbled walkways above Pana's playa to the rise above the river's mouth, then stopping to rest. Crowds are gathering along the lakeshore on both sides of the river, fed by scores of Chicken Buses from all over the region. South of Gringotenango, this is where poorer Guatemalans come for a Sunday at the beach.

Now I slowly ride on past the bus parking lot (one lone 'premier' cruiser amidst all the converted discarded US school buses) and down to the river, across the foot bridge and up a narrow roadway into the Jucanyá (across-the-river) district. It's totally a surprise, very Amalfi-like in a jungle-barrio sort of way. Properties are bounded with high walls, or fences of chickenwire woven into trees and shrubs. A maze of trails, some paved with the ubiquitious interlocked cement blocks (less capital-intensive than asphalt), some dirt.

Carefully, I thread the maze. Hint: follow the trails with overhead wires.

Another surprise: the 'park' I saw on the Jucanyá side of the Rio Pana (now a small rivulet) is a landscaped modern wastewater treatment plant. Very pretty. And maybe the offshore waters aren't so polluted, but I'm not about to test that.

As I ride to the lakeshore I hear music, see small ferries bringing in scores of folks from the Lake Atitlán villages. The Jucanyá beach is a low-budget holy resort with many stands and comedors above the jungle-edge dirt road, and many singing worship services along the shore. There are groups of singing Maya women at or in the water, other groups a few feet up on dry land so their amplifiers don't get wet. The amplified groups have electric guitar and bass and drums, maybe with an organ and playing two chords and one rhythmic note (Mayan congregations, mostly female), or with trumpets and playing polka-coplas gospel (Ladino crowds, ditto).

Further south are some very nice lakefront villas, their walls topped with concertina wire but without the armed guards so common in Antigua. The dirt road ends at a fancy residential complex, Condominium Jucanyá, with a nice solid (private) skylane walkway for beach access. No pasar. Trespasar prohibido. Go away. So I do.

Back at the river's mouth another group has formed around a greatly-amplified supplicant wailing his anguished sobbing prayers to "El Señor" in the sky, supplemented by some slightly less impassioned preaching. Time to get those souls revived, folks.

Tiredly I ride (and walk+push) upriver to the paved Santa Catalina road, glad to be off dirt and rocks and cobbles. The road winds through a jungle past some more rich residences and the clifftop Hotel Don Moisés. But it's hot, the road is steepening, the bike is too small, I ache. I head back to Pana. Dos horas en bicicleta es basta para Gringo viejo. (Two hours biking is enough for this old Yank.) Oh my butt!

Sunday afternoon

Maureen is doing much better. We walked slowly around the hotel's jungle-garden grounds, then up Calle Santander shortly for some shopping - a couple blankets, a Mayan dufflebag, some 'ancient' pottery. This is the first time in two days Maureen has walked further than the bathroom. Maybe tomorrow we'll take a pedicab to the docks, catch a boat to a village.

I separately ecounter Karin and Howard (from the Antigua shuttle) nearby, and other familiar faces. Some of the wandering vendors call me by name. Have we been in Pana too long?

The little Mayan girls show up at the hotel with the promised shirt that after a bit of rough tailoring does indeed fit. I buy it, they'll get to eat, everyone's happy, right? So what if I got rooked?

Friday-through-Sunday seem to be the hot'n'hopping days in Gringotenango. Feral dogs (and vendors and wayfarers) roam the streets, wander through all the open-door eateries, plop themselves anywhere or hop up for action. Self-created wild indians pound drums and dance avidly while their cohorts offer Deadhead paraphenalia to passersby. Every light is lit.

At all times Pana's roadways are furiously filled with pedicabs, motorized tricycle taxis, shuttle vans, loaded pickups with speakers blazing, smoking sedans - up on the Calle Principal (Panajachel's main drag) the Chicken Buses pollute the pedestrians. Construction is non-stop. Every concrete and/or cinderblock building has rebar sticking out the top, waiting hopefully for further funding so another level can be added. Nothing is ever complete, nor will it be. Improvement is eternal. So are the firecracker blasts.

More later.