DIA SESENTA:
Domingo del Buen Pastor, 17 April 2005
Huehuetenango, Guatemala - Sunday night.
We got out of San Cristobal after the usual takeoff delays. Noonish, we were in Amatenango (the place of the wet-nurses), stretching and looking at animalitos. We drove up into the Cascade-like mountains of volcanic rock and across Comitan's great plateau, then steeply down through most of a broken kilometer of limestone layers. We skirted the end of Lago de Agonastura and Rio Grivalvo and stopped at the San Gregorio Chimac river crossing for lunch at a low hot aviary. This was hopefully our lowest point in the next few weeks.
The wide valley felt low — only 2000 feet elevation! So tropical — bananas, palms, cacti.
BORDER: We climbed the steep border country to the edge of Guatemala. We were sprayed and stamped, went back to the last Mexican town for more stamping, then back to the border for yet MORE stamping. No searches, no interrogations, just paperwork. We didn't see any Mexican border guards, and just one guy on the Guatemalan side to check our papers and operate the spindly crossing gate.
Jim and Maureen negotiated the moneychangers to pay our entry fees. A group of Euro kid backpackers waited in a bureaucratic station, heading into Mexico. Trash piles burned by the roadside; locals wandered back and forth across the frontier. For some wonderful grubby border ambience, try La Mesilla, Guatemala and its spillover on the Mexican side of the gate. Meli said she hoped the whole country wasn't like that.
It's not. Guatemala was immediately cooler, moister, greener. We drove up a long thin canyon into steep mountains. An image for those of you who have driven in California's Sierra Nevadas: this felt like the Feather River Canyon, gone tropical.
The Guatemalan transition was dramatic. A better and cleaner road. A few Sunday borrochos, some in road squadrons, some nearly toxic. Different indigenous clothing. Fewer cars, steeper mountains — chicken buses! The landscape seems neater, tidier, lusher, more humanely inhabited.
HUEHUE: In Huehuetenango we expected a moderate mountain town, but this departmental capital was livelier, bustling. burgeoning. We took small plain clean cheap rooms at the Hotel El Sexto (safe crowded indoor parking), dined at the clean adequate La Fonda, strolled around the lively zocalo surrounded by marimbas and flaming food stands — we're not in Mexico anymore.
Our quiet hotel room was at the end of a fibreglas-roofed cinderblock corrider (great ventilation), past cages filled with scores of parakeets and canaries and budgies, other cages with other, larger birds. All were screeching and squawking. Then a bell rang and they all shut up! Trained?
Ah, the quaint bathroom wiring — a demand-heater attached directly to the overhead shower pipe, its circuit box in the corner of the squat shower stall space. No burn marks, no signs of electrocution, so I ventured to take a hot shower — and I survived! Milagro!
DIA SESENTA UNO:
Lunes 18 April 2005, San Perfecto
Panajachel, Guatemala - Monday night.
Morning, there's a parking dance as I shuttle our cars around the cramped courtyard to allow another to depart. Then we stagger out past the birdcages and onto the noisy jammed streets of Huehue, for a slightly overpriced breakfast in Mi Tierra Cafe's "Antigua ambience." Oska, a beautiful Dutch intern at Adrenalina Tours next door, gives us travel questionnaires. We ask about safety; she says Guatemala is dangerous. But nobody has assaulted or kidnapped us yet.
We leave Huehue's ferment for the uncrowded Pan American highway, twisting further into high country. We're stopped briefly for a funeral procession, and then for market day and a crowded auction in tiny Polagua, gateway to Momostenango. We fly along and over the mountain crest and descend toward Xela.
We skitter through the bus-and-truck-stop chaos of Cuatros Caminos and find the turnoff to San Andres Xecul. Two years ago this three mile road was a half-hour bumpy dirt torture; now it's paved, and in minutes we're stopped before the technicolor psychedelic splendor of the craziest church in Central America. The bright yellow facade is covered with grinning painted statues sitting or cavorting, carved jaguars in the highest niche, a confusion of bright figures. Inside it feels old old old.
UPGRADES: SA Xecul's road upgrade isn't unique. We've seen many road repair and improvement projects, government funded, of which there was no evidence two years ago. Have the politicos stopped plundering the public monies, to spend them instead on infrastructure? Maybe Guatemala yet has a chance of survival.
The tidy small farms bespeak pride of ownership, not tenant-farming on large estates with tiny private plots tucked in, as in Chiapas. What we've seen of poor Guatemala looks more prosperous than rural southern Mexico. Jim suggests that unlike Mexico, nobody here is on a public dole — and from what we know, there are few government assistance programs here, just massive corruption. We must learn more.
TO PANA: The air is thick with smoke as we climb over Alaska (9900 feet by Jim's GPS, the highest point of the Pan American highway) — several forest fires, which will burn until the rainy season starts. But the air is clearer as we turn off for the steep descent to Solola and Panajachel. The road seems cleaner and tidier than two years ago. What I recall was an Army base is now a university campus. The huge old public hostpital is still there — we've been warned to strictly avoid it, seek private care instead. The Solola market is bustling, the town seems more prosperous.
We stop at a widened mirador to gaze down on Lake Atitlan and joust with vendors, then descend past the dry cascadas and shoot into Gringotenango. Panajachel looks much as it did two yeas ago — food and room rates seem a bit higher, our former lodgings look pricey in this tourist-starved season — but a bicycling shill leads us to cheap (US$18) attractive rooms in a tidy concrete posada with safe parking and lake views, over the Rio Panajachel, away from areas frequented by internationals.
We walk along Santander, the Gringotenango strip, dodging dog orgies in the streets. Meli goes shopping-crazy. We revisit our old garden-eatery favorites — lunch in Deli Jardin's tropical forest, dinner under Las Chinitas' botanical dome — and we sample just a few of many artesanias. It's GOOD to be back in Pana. Finally we retire to our rooms and listen to the cool wind blow.
DIA SESENTA DOS:
Martes 19 April 2005, Santa Emma de Bremen
Panajachel, Guatemala - Tuesday evening.
Maureen says that after two months in Mexico, Guatemala is a welcome change. Not that Mexican people (ladino and indigenous) are unfriendly, but that Guatemalans seem warmer, friendlier. I suspect that decades of Mexican governments distancing themselves from the US and espousing anti-US propaganda has negatively influenced attitudes there, from the upper and middle classes on down. Whereas in Central America, the state institutions have often been tools of the US, and anti-US feelings have been promoted by opposition groups.
And in Guatemala (as in Nicaragua) a very young population has no direct memories of the US-sponsored violence of decades past. I've noticed something of an Americanization here, not just a desire to absorb US (and other western) cultural and commercial values and icons, but a greater willingness to speak English. This latter may also be a survival strategy — the better one can speak to the Gringos, the better is one's chance to prosper.
DAYTIME: We went to Comedor Emilio on the playa near the river for a cheap satisfying desayuno (breakfast), then stomped all over central Gringotenango, shopping. Meli goes wild. Certain items were purchased; I bought a great US$12 marimba painting. In the stalls, TVs announced that Cardinal Ratzinger is now Pope Benedict XVI.
The day warmed up. We had sandwiches and drinks at El Horno, shopped more, staggered down to the coast and the Sunset Bar for drinks and guacamole and wind and waves and shadows, etc. Desultory conversation ensued. Daylight lengthened and softened and whispered 'adieu'.
So we walked the playa, checked out tomorrow's boat, dropped Jim off at the posada. The rest of us went for a slow drive south in the caldera, to Santa Catarina Palopo and San Antonio Palopo. Roadside estates, lake vistas, quiet villages of artesans and scallion farmers. NOTE: See where else in the world there are giant volcanic calderas (collapsed cones) filled with large lakes and villages.
EVENING: We took a short walk in Old Pana for chocolate, then back to pick up Jim and have a cheap excellent dinner at Joe Pinguinas. We sang Tom Lehrer songs and fended off many cute vendors, including Maria, age 32 with 7 kids, one a 17-year-old daughter. She still looked fairly fresh. Almost impossible to guess ages of many Maya females — that little girl carrying a smaller kid in a bundle on her back, is she 4 or 8? Is the next one 12 or 16 or 20? Who is a sister, who is a mother?
[Years ago, some US industrial corporation advertised that PEOPLE ARE OUR GREATEST PRODUCT. They were lying. People are Guatemala's greatest product. An ever-increasing supply...]
A large German banquet crowd drove us out of Joe Pinguinas, into Pana's quiet cool quaint evening, and back to the posada. Two beautiful Siberian Husky dogs (one each, black and white) on balcony overlooking posada parking lot, observing us closely. We're very tired, but no zzzzz — Tejano-style evangelical hymns crowded late into the night. And the dogs bark, on the balcony and in the road and elsewhere. Ay yi yi.
The room: the usual blocked toilet. Cool night but little air flow. No traffic noise. The birds sing elsewhere. Nearby resident keeps room service busy all night. Ay yi yi.
DIA SESENTA TRES:
Miercoles 20 April - Sta Ines de Montepulciano
Panajachel, Guatemala - Wednesday night.
NOTE: The following is sketchy because 1) I only took rough notes, 2) I described this trip in great detail in my journal two years ago and little has changed, and 3) I'm too hot and tired to elaborate. Some days are just like that.
Early same desayuno, then out to Das Boot: Naviero Santa Fe. Some are dodging little black scorpions on the boat. Milk run to San Pedro da la Laguna under a clear sky. We grab a back-of-the-pickup taxi up the steep hill. The San Pedro market is going strong; the saint still holds his book and key and leads his holy chicken; the town seems cleaner than two years ago. Cold drinks at Nick's steep cantina, then back on the boat for the run to Santiago de Atitlan: hazy sun and tourist toes.
[Our boatmates include a German guy and a Spanish guy; three Australian babes of various shades lying on the sunny deck; a couple from Sonoma County California; a local Maya girl excorting three old women from Baja California; and a young couple and two girls of unknown origin, all of whom sunburn quickly. Others come and go.]
QUERY: Will we be doing this (a lake boat tour) around this time next year on Lake Titicaca?
Santiago is a much better tourist trap than two years ago — more stuff, less road trash, less tension-desperation. We crawl up the hill; a few purchases are made; we grab drinks and munchies; then, back to the boat again. No cloud cover. The village stops are too short.
The long run across the south side of the lake, to the Amalfiesque east rim, to San Antonio de Palopo. Too hot to enjoy, no great crafts visible — shouldn't come here at siesta time on a cloudless day. I fly my kite; we sail back to sunny Pana, collapse into a costly playa-side comedor, buy refreshing drinks and wind, recover, collapse into the posada.
EVENING: Back to Joe Pinguinas for more good cheap fare; fewer vendors than last night; a German boatmate greets us. Then we stroll through souvenir paradise and roll to the pricey gas station for some sticker shock, and finally back to the posada. Manana: Chichi, a half-mile greater elevation; market day. Oh-lay!
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