Jungle Trek

 

(Continued from Tikal)

 

Los Amigos is the most intriguing hostel I’ve visited yet. Located near the peak of the tiny island city Flores in northern Guatemala, surrounded by the waters of Lago Peten Itza, the owners couldn’t have chosen a better location. Apparently advertised only by word of mouth, Los Amigos has achieved impressive success and popularity in a relatively short time. Most backpackers will tell you that this is because of their kitchen. I ate several meals at Los Amigos, but the most impressive was a massive steaming bowl of vegetable curry served with a mango and milk liquado, homemade bread and fresh hummus. The fact that I had to take a break in the middle serves to demonstrate its size. However, this allowed me the opportunity to better yet appreciate the charm of Los Amigos. The kitchen is located in the very back of the long, outside garden that comprises the common space. The cooks also answer the front door with a long taunt metal cord that runs along the wall sixty feet to the entrance, which is exactly inline with the kitchen counter so that those on the outside can make sad puppy faces at working cooks in order to gain entry. Anyways, between this front door and the kitchen are several hammocks strung over sections of rock garden or vegetation, and nearest to the kitchen under a covered section are several tables and comfortable, well-loved couches strewn with books and pillows. There is a very active and well-utilized book trade and library on one side, and here I read the names and descriptions of what may be one of the best collections of diverse, open-minded, and interesting literature I’ve ever seen in one setting. During my curry break, I read and recorded the titles of many of the more promising books that I knew I didn’t have time to read but knew I would want to in the future. Nothing makes a place a home more than a warm, easy kitchen and good books.

           

While I was waiting on an Israeli named Hagai to show up, I asked a young traveler from Holland if he wanted to play a game of chess. He agreed, and as we worked through the battle, he told me about his adventures thus far in Central America, and about his plans to continue south into countries such as Peru, Chile, and Ecuador. I had heard this plan many times before, and would hear it again before even leaving Los Amigos; the diversity and enthusiasm of young travelers in the Americas astounds me.

 

I had met Hagai two days earlier in the ruins of Tikal to the north of Flores. He had told me about an excursion he and a friend were planning on taking to the ruins of El Mirador, located near the Mexican border to the north. I had planned to travel in the Peten region and try to see as many of the Mayan ruins as possible in my weeklong break of classes, and when I heard about this excursion, I was very excited. After running into the young Israeli again the following day in Tikal, he told me that it was still possible to join the excursion if he let the guide know about it before four p.m. that day. I caught a bus back to Flores shortly after to meet Hagai at Los Amigos, where he was staying.

 

After an enjoyable wait and chess game, he showed up. He was happy to see that I was still interested in the excursion (of course, more people on the trip means a lower cost for each individual) and wasted no time in introducing me to his friend Jorge (pronounced hor-hey), from Colombia. Jorge was a chatty, excited young guy who speaks French, Spanish, and English, and we were soon all talking about the logistics of the trip. It seemed that the guide who was organizing the trip wasn’t answering his phone, and as four o’clock was quickly approaching, we were a bit anxious. All this conversation took place at one of the public tables in Los Amigos, and more than one other person found it interesting. There was a couple from Australia, who were asking about prices and distances, but who were discouraged when they heard that the trip to El Mirador consisted of five days of hiking, primitive conditions, and possibly deadly viper bites. However, a smiling American from Seattle named Patrick was also listening. He was a thirty-six year old, ex-military medic working as a nurse in the states. He looked like his hobby was body-building, he had a shaved head and several aggressive tattoos from his military days, and wasn’t wearing a shirt. But seemed a nice enough guy.

 

While Hagai and Jorge attempted to call and recall the guide, I went on a walk across the causeway to Santa Elena on the mainland with my chess friend from earlier. We bought some sweet breads and ate them while wandering around searching for an ATM. Jorge had told me that the one cash machine on the island of Flores was out of order (which in Central America means had run out of money) and that the first two he had visited on the mainland were in similar condition (apparently happens every weekend.) However, after asking directions from a couple of local girls sitting on a corner, I learned that there was an ATM inside the grocery store, and figuring that this was not likely one of the places that taxi drivers would take tourists asking for a bank, I suggested that we try it. It worked, and we returned to Los Amigos, catching a brilliant sunset over the lake while crossing the causeway for the second time. There was a house fire somewhere on the west end of Santa Elena, and the sickly brown-black smoke refracted the sun’s setting rays brilliantly over the wings of basking cormorants.

 

Good news was waiting when I got back to Los Amigos. Jorge had finally gotten in touch with the guide, and we were to walk down to the office and go over the plan before setting of the following morning. Patrick the American had decided to go as well, so our group of four set out for the tiny travel office down the street. Jorge and Hagai shook hands with Henry, the Guatemalan in charge, and Patrick and I did the same. Henry went over the itinerary (in Spanish, everyone else spoke but Patrick so we all worked together communicating during the week). We would leave the following morning via Henry’s truck for a tiny village called Caramelita on the edge of the forest at five a.m. After this drive, we would meet our guide Eladio and set out for the ruins of Tintal, another Mayan site one-day’s walk into the jungle. We would pass the night there, continue the next day to El Mirador, spend a day there, and then return. Five days. Henry advised prompt sleep, and light packs. It would be hot, he said.

 

We left feeling excited. Everyone had a big final dinner at Los Amigos, used the internet to tell whoever not to worry, that they were planning on being lost in the jungle for the next five days, or went to buy flashlights or other last minute things. I packed, and went to sleep in a room filled with six bunk beds, a mountain of well-traveled packs, and a roar of suspended from the walls, pushing the heat around.

 

I was awake when Hagai’s alarm clock went off across the dormitory the next morning. We got our packs out of the lock boxes stationed on the wall outside the dormitory rooms, and went outside to stand in the dark and wait for Patrick, who was staying in another place, and for Henry. Henry got there first.

 

Everyone else slept in the bumpy, roughly three hour long ride to Caramelita. We were off the paved road after twenty minutes, with Henry trying to sleep in the very back cramped in with the supplies, and his large quiet wife at the wheel. She was very nice, it turned out to be her car, she wouldn’t let Henry drive. But she would throw a concerned glance into the rearview mirror at him every time she hit a sharp socket in the miserable road to Caramelita. My eyes were glued to the glass. The land was changing. There were more rivers. The forest was getting more and more dense. Jungle’s coming on.

 

Caramelita is a flat plateau on the far side of the last accessible river, at the end of the road. Lots of street dogs, kids on bikes, mules. We ate breakfast in someone’s tin-roof kitchen down the street while the last minute preps were being made. Patrick ate two helpings after complaining about portions, America, salt, and coffee. Our packs were already well-dusted in a fine red clay from the drive in.

 

We met Eladio. And Eladio Junior. Father and son, working together leading travelers on an indefinite series of excursions into the Guatemalan jungle. Neither spoke a word of English, but on the contrary spoke with an incredible syrup-soft accent, not bothering to enunciate whatsoever. It was fantastic practice to converse with the Eladios. Both turned out to be really cool guys. However, Jorge, who had been speaking Spanish since birth still had problems understanding.

 

And we were off. At first there was much talking: everyone had questions for Eladio, about the animals and the site, the weather, the vegetation, other travelers, et cetera. However, after an hour or two, the heat choked out the conversation, and we fell into single file in silence. The footpath meandering along the surface crust of vast mud holes that remained from last winter’s wet season. Eladio would tell me later that during the winter, when it rains regularly and daily, the trip to El Mirador is virtually impossible. The trail, like the rest of the forest floor, floods to some degree, and in some places we passed long primitive boardwalks built over wide pools of dried mud, attesting to the winter conditions. Also, he told me that the mosquitos during the rainy season were so voracious that if you stopped for only a second and lifted your hand in front of your face, the insects would descend like a glove, obscuring the flesh. I was glad to be there in the summer.

 

As we walked, the jungle changed. Sometimes there would be minutes when we were working through a dense palmetto section, with an incredible diversity of palms of all sizes and shapes. Other times the undergrowth would dwindle and the trees would rise to an unprecedented height. Strangler figs became more and more prevalent. I had never seen examples like these before; Eladio explained that they were called matapalo in Spanish, “tree-killer” literally. While beginning as a vine at ground level, eventually this parasitic plant would climb, suffocate, and consume the body of the tree whose structure it had stolen. The skin of a strangler fig is almost white, and smooth. The individual tendrils of the young vine eventually engorge and fuse together where they touch, forming a second skin around the withered host tree. Although before this process is complete, the interlocking segments create a beautiful patchwork of life and death, white on black. Like windows.

 

Along the way we encountered all kinds of interesting wildlife. The spider monkeys were always waiting. They were usually hidden in the upper canopy of the forest, but whenever we would stop for a water break, usually we could locate a group for the noise they made swinging and leaping. At one point we stopped to watch a group that was feeding directly over the path. This was when I learned that spider monkeys are pretty territorial and aggressive. They would try to get directly over our group, and then urinate or violently shake the limbs of fruit trees to shake loose bombs for below. As I watched a dense, inedible fruit the size of a softball streak past Patrick’s ear, I realized what a concussion would mean in the middle of the rainforest. Bad news, not only for the unconscious, but also for those who would be carrying a dead-weight companion several miles to the nearest road. Those monkeys meant business.

 

We arrived to the camp at Tintal in the early afternoon. I hadn’t brought a watch or phone, and happily lost track of the hour as quickly as possible. When there is no electricity and nothing to do after dark even if there was, following the sun is simply more practical. With this in mind, we helped the Eladios sling our hammocks under a wide tarp roof in the partial clearing of the camp, and afterwards attacked dinner in silence. Nothing builds an appetite like hiking, and everyone appreciated Eladio’s delicious chicken stew. And the man was a master of tortillas.

 

After dinner we talked with one of the men more or less living onsite at Tintal. There was a group of about five men, living in a low, primitive bunk room in the center of the clearing, supposedly working at excavating the site of Tintal. However, from what I gathered over the length of the excursion and from what Eladio told us, much of the work gets left undone; to say the least, progress is extremely slow. Apparently, there are problems with the funding of the excavation, and as a result the few workers that are onsite are hardly paid enough to feed themselves, and thus are lacking much incentive.

 

Beside the fact, there was one man who was excited to show us an overhead map of the series of buildings making up the site. He also handed us some ancient Mayan ceramics that they had found on the site. These pieces were exquisite and could easily be on display in the most prestigious museums, and here I was in the middle of the jungle handling painted bowls that had been hand made more than fifteen hundred years ago.

 

 

The workers could have uncovered these pieces in one of the many sites undergoing excavation, but more likely they were just left on the surface by unimpressed thieves. There are a myriad of buildings making up the site at Tintal, we were told, and that most of them are still buried entirely but can be recognized by the unusual rise of the land, and by the open sockets where grave robbers have dug in, attempting to find funeral offerings of jade or other priceless objects. Along the road to El Mirador, and here at Tintal, I saw many, many open sockets attesting to the frequency of pilfering in the past. While the sight and idea is disturbing, everyone I asked pointed out that these are just a few cases when compared to the overwhelming size and breadth of each Mayan site. Many of the buildings and ceremonial funeral mounds are forgotten to humanity and still guard unspoken ancient treasures.

 

Around an hour before sunset, Patrick, Jorge, Hagai, Eladio and I all hiked up the steep earthen steps to the top of the highest temple at Tintal. It was completely covered by soil and vegetation, but the very top was loose rock, and the view was incredible. Nothing but pure, untouched virgin rainforest as far as the eye could see in every direction. Amazing. The fall of the sun brought on a cacophony of jungle sounds, and also rain. We watched it coming from the east, great dark sheets separated by sections of dry sky. Not wanting to miss the sunset, we watched and tried to gage the time before the rain would reach us. As soon as the sun slipped below the horizon, we were trotting down the side of the temple. At ground level, it was dark. The canopy blocked out an amazing amount of the light still lingering in the sky, and as we followed the trail back to the camp, the bottom fell out. We ran.

 

There would have been no way a mosquito or any other flying insect could possibly have navigated under this deluge, but nevertheless we got into our hammocks under mosquito netting and listened to the downpour railing the tarp above, and the packed earth all around. I took recordings of the sound: an absolute, all-consuming roar of falling water in the dark jungle twilight, so loud you could feel it.

 

I woke up before dawn. The rain had put down the mosquitos for the night, but it had also brought unusual cold. I put on more clothes and got back into my hammock, curling into a ball until everyone was awake. At breakfast, everyone said they had realized the same cold before the dawn; this was slightly disconcerting because Henry had told us it would be hot and to pack light. No one had brought anything like a jacket. I was lucky to have brought along a rain poncho, which I slept in every night for the rest of the excursion. It would become our daily pattern to wake up, more or less in synch, at three-ish in the morning, to put on more clothes and try to go back to sleep. I was amazed at how quickly this and other rhythms formed during the trip, but I attribute it to the effort everyone was putting forth: when a group hikes together all day at the same pace, consuming roughly the same amounts of the same food and water, sleeping in the same fashion and under the same roof, patterns emerge. By the last day, we were grinning at each other in the pitch black while putting on extra socks.

 

The next day, the second day, we set out at around seven to start the leg of the trail from Tintal to El Mirador. It would be 36 kilometers. I got all the distances and times from Eladio and busied my mind doing the math while we walked. Eladio told me it was 28 k from Caramelita to Tintal, 36 from Tintal to El Mirador. 64 kilometers total, one way. Hagai commented that a mile was equal to 1.4 kilometers, so I figured 43 miles for the same distance. We hiked for five hours the first day and six the second, so a total of eleven hours one way. 43 divided by eleven is roughly 4, so we were hiking through the jungle at roughly four miles per hour. Not bad. What was more interesting was when I realized that our return to Caramelita and civilization would mark the end of an 86 mile journey through the rainforest. I was pretty pumped. And as I realized in the end, after a hike of those conditions the exhaustion is thorough, and delicious.

 

Eladio stopped and picked up a nondescript fruit similar to a kiwi from the jungle floor. “Zapote,” he said, and motioned to eat it. It was fantastic! I’ve never tasted something similar, but the closest thing I could compare it to was maple syrup. Soft, without seeds, but with a gritty texture that was a delight to chew while walking. Every so often, we would pass the remains of an extremely primitive and temporary camp where Eladio told us people used to come and harvest chicle from the trees. This is the substance used to make chewing gum of the same name (Chiclets). The host trees were easy to pick out; they were all sporting a Zorro-like scar from top to bottom, marking the passage of time and the milking seasons with their growth and the number of lacerations making up their scars. Eladio also stopped us and made us smell the resin leaking from one tree called Copal: it was the tree from which the traditional religious incense was harvested. I recognized the smell from the billowing clouds of it during Semana Santa in Antigua, and smeared a bit on the inside of my journal to savor later.

 

In the few sparse conversations that transpired during the morning’s hike, I asked Hagai about his mandatory service in the Israeli army. Every Israeli youth is required to serve for three years starting at the age of eighteen. Hagai was quiet, with a reserved and intelligent stare, and I asked him about the effects that his time in the military had made on him. We walked in silence for some minutes before he slowly told me about calm, compassion, adaptability, and perspective. Hagai was one of the cooler people I’d met, and he had the habit of singing out loud on the trail. Mostly Beatles and Pearl Jam, but also a delightful rendition of Cecilia by Simon and Garfunkle.

 

We finally broke into a clearing. We had reached El Mirador. Eladio led us down a steep embankment to a long, low tarp shelter lined with makeshift tables and benches. We got dinner and the hammocks set up, ate, and then the four of us set out on the half-hour hike to La Danta (the tapir). La Danta is the twin temple to El Tigre. Both are situated in the northwest corner of the El Mirador complex, and they are the tallest temples of the Mayan world, built between 150 B.C and 150 A.D. The structure of El Tigre is taller, but La Danta is built on a natural plateau and thus reaches higher into the sky. For this, we chose to head for La Danta for the oncoming sunset. The hike to the top was exhausting: there are several levels to La Danta, each requiring a steep assent, and on each level were several excavations, marked with baggy, water-logged tarps covering open digs. A resident guide the next day would tell us that the base level of La Danta covers eighteen thousand square meters, and that the peak is 60 meters above the forest floor.

           

The view from the top was unbelievable. I felt like I was up in the atmosphere; there was nothing else in sight as high, only the twin forested peak of El Tigre some hundreds of yards away, and the wind was kicking. As the sun set in a fiery display, the massive shadow of La Danta crept further and further away into the east, blanketing the forest canopy far below. We watched big-colors Keel-Billed Toucans and White Fronted Parrots wheel around the peak and settle again in the loftiest treetops below. I’ve never had to use binoculars to look down before. The sunset was one of the best I’ve ever seen.

 

The next day was a day of relative rest. We all cooked pancakes and tortillas together on a piece of sheet metal over the fire, and had coffee. Afterwards, I went out early to the clearing at the trail head to watch for birds. On the way in we had seen a series of rare and impressive species, like the Oscillated Turkey and Crested Guan, both of which are big (and popularly edible for the locals) and amazing to see in the wild. We also saw several species of Trogons, which are a family with the shape and behavior of oversized flycatchers, but with the most amazing display of colors, and with an amazing voice as well. On the list for the week were Violaceous Trogon, the Massena Trogon, and the Collared Trogon. I snagged the best pictures I could from a distance, and recorded the song of the Violaceous on the first morning at Tintal. Picture this color arrangement: The Violaceous (male) has a deep, iridescent blue head, a yellow ring around its eye, a shockingly vibrant yellow-gold chest, and a striking black and white barred pattern on the underside of its tail. When I saw it, it struck me as so bizarre and beautiful, it seemed out of place.

 

We spent the day casually walking the trails between the different peaks in El Mirador. The resident guide I mentioned before took us inside one of the lower pyramids. Inside, we put on hard hats and turned on our flashlights, to bend over and shuffle through tight, small, claustrophobic passages that ran left and right, and parallel at higher levels. The guide told us that it was typical of the Maya to build directly on top of older pyramids in order to achieve greater height and girth, and as a result excavating archeologists often find glyphs or sculpture within that at some point was on the outside of the structure. This was the case in this series of passages.

The guide showed us a massive sculpture of a stylized jaguar face in red, with fangs each the size of a bread loaf. But perhaps the most exciting discovery below ground in these Mayan ruins were the insects: I put my head (and lamp) into a low room in a dead end of one passage, and was face to face with some species of spider or other alien insect the likes of which I’d never seen before. It was about the size of my hand, shaped like a typical spider, but with two forward arms like a crab. And with two extremely long antennae waving slowly from side to side, side to side. I got a wicked picture, good enough to give nightmares. As I turned to pull my head and shoulders back out of the door, I saw that there were others on the roof immediately above my head, watching, sensing…

 

We spent the afternoon lounging on top of some of the lower peaks at El Mirador. Many of these are entirely forested, so that the view is limited to the canopy above and around, and the jungle floor below. This was an interesting sensation, because we were over a hundred feet above the forest floor, but still hadn’t broken through the canopy and thus couldn’t see the sky. There was also a small pond or pool near the camp, with an ancient and questionable pier out into the tea-colored water, and all overhung with orchid-drenched branches. Someone had planted several citrus trees on the bank sometime in the past, and the air was thick with the smell of rotting oranges and the hum of wasps. Mosquito-netted hammocks are fantastic for siestas.

 

After watching the sunset again from La Danta (indescribable) and sleeping, we began the return journey. It had only been three days, but already felt like a week. We followed the same trail on the way out for the next two days. Between El Mirador and Tintal there was originally built a Mayan causeway. Eladio told me that this man-made, elevated and relatively straight road was built in 500 days by Mayan slaves. It’s a distance of 25 miles.

 

The trip back was amazing, but mainly internal. By the time we resurfaced at Caramelita, I was covered in tick and mosquito bites, some plant reaction that looked like poison ivy jungle-style; I was filthy, tired, worn, and beaming. I’ll never again doubt the profound satisfaction of a good trek.

 

P.S. The word for blister in Spanish is “ampolla.”

 

 

Tikal

 

Guatemala is home to some of the greatest ruins and wonders of the ancient Maya. Theirs was a civilization astoundingly advanced for its time. The Maya enjoyed an epic reign, developing an impressive attentiveness to astronomy, mathematics, and architecture, among other things. And even now, hundreds of years later, their monoliths and temples still stand majestically in the jungle. I had to see them.

 

From consulting my Guatemalan Lonely Planet guidebook, several experienced friends, travel agencies around Antigua, and my professors in Centro Linguistica Maya, I had decided that I would need a full week to fully take advantage of a trip to Peten, Guatemala’s northernmost province. Here there are fewer people living there per capita than anywhere else in the country. And there also are the vast rainforests hiding forgotten Mayan ruins. It would be an eight hour bus ride. I decided to make it last Friday.

 

After making a reservation with a travel agency in Antigua for a seat on the Linea Dorada bus, I packed anxiously. There were several departures everyday, and I chose to take night bus in hopes of sleeping during the trip to save time and also to avoid the agony of such a lengthy bus ride during the increasingly warm days. I was on the corner outside of my apartment at sunset on Friday when a small white shuttle pulled up, already laden with backpacks strapped to the roof, and travelers within. The driver was nice but in a hurry; apparently I was the last stop.

 

We got on the road east out of Antigua heading for the capital city at about 7:30 p.m. The Linea Dorada (Golden Line) bus station is located there, and as we rode I listened to what I think were conversations in both Dutch and German between other passengers behind me. Halfway through the trip it started raining. We stopped on the side of the steep, busy mountainside highway in the dark rain to cram the backpacks into the van’s backseat. After this rearranging, I found myself riding shotgun. Sandwiched between me and the driver was a middle aged woman from Michigan. We began talking, and in a surly, rusty smoker’s voice she told me about how she had been stationed in Alabama while serving in the Marines long ago. She was a delightfully vulgar and wrinkled lady, and the first of many new interesting people I would meet throughout my trip. She got off in the rain in the middle of one of the shabby, dilapidated sprawls of the capital, shortly before the bus station, tipping the driver well.

 

I waited in the crowded bus station in Guatemala City for an hour or so, watching movies badly translated into Spanish with everyone else, and then got on the bus. Whoa. Air-conditioning. Forgot about that stuff. I actually suffered for cold during the long night journey.

 

They turned the lights out after a while, and I slept brokenly. Even in a bus where the chairs lean back a bit, there is little legroom in Guatemalan buses. We stopped at the border of Peten to be inspected by state customs officers, more or less. I stumbled outside with the rest and read a list of about eighty fruits that were not allowed to cross into Peten for fear of bringing in foreign plant disease. I had heard of maybe twelve on the list. Guatemala has forever changed my concept of “fruit”.

 

I woke at dawn. We had reached Flores, a small city built on the ruins of a Mayan settlement on an island in the middle of Lago Peten Itza. There is now a man-made causeway that crossed the water to Santa Elena on the mainland. But I’m getting ahead of myself; I learned all this later. On that Saturday morning I just threw my bag into a small shuttle headed for Tikal and left Flores minutes after arriving.

 

The shuttle was designed to hold around nine, and by the time we got to the gates of Tikal there were around fifteen packed inside. To wake myself up I started a conversation with a guy named Hugo sitting next to me. He turned out to be one of the official guides that work at Tikal. This was around six in the morning, and the whole shuttle was full of people commuting to work at Tikal. I made acquaintance with Hugo, and after an hour when we arrived at Tikal, he offered me a heavily discounted day of guiding around the park. I accepted, and we worked out the details while eating a quick typical breakfast of coffee, black beans with cheese, eggs, and fried bananas in a small comedor at Tikal. Afterwards, Hugo led me to the campgrounds (I had read that you could camp for cheap on the edge of the jungle at Tikal, and was packing my hammock). The attendant’s name was Enrique, and he showed me where I could store my bag for the day and told me that I could (and should) rent a mosquito net from him. After a little bit of organizing, I slung on my daypack and Hugo and I were off.

 

In a more recent Guatemalan guidebook I had borrowed from a friend before leaving Antigua, I had read that the entrance fee to Tikal was fifty Q per day, per person. About seven dollars. However, when I got to the gate, I saw that the price had been upped to a hundred and fifty. Roughly twenty bucks. My friend’s guidebook had been published in 2006. Apparently the Guatemalan government realized what an attraction it has on its hands. And hey, it’s not like you can get to the gates of Tikal, see the entrance fee, and say, “Nah, I guess I’ll just have to skip it.”

 

At the gates I met two more travelers who were looking for a half day’s tour, and we worked out a deal to split the cost of Hugo’s guidance. During this conversation, I heard a noise like no other: the song of the Oropendula. Like an echo in a wet cave, or the amplified sound of a drop of water. I recorded it while watching these large birds nesting overhead in a colossal hardwood tree just at the gates. Oropendulas build nests like long woven sacks that hang from high branches. And as I watched the large, striking species sing, I discovered that for every enunciation of this strange song, the bird pitches itself forward from its perch on a limb, but maintains grip with both feet and thus swings into an upside down position, as if to better throw the sound of its’ call. Quite curious, and fantastic. I checked the book: they were Montezuma’s Oropendulas.

 

We got moving into the depth of the jungle at around seven a.m. The birds and animals were still active before the mid-day heat, and while wandering the wide shaded trails, Hugo was happy to help identify those we saw. He was a really knowledgeable guy, spoke the entire day about anything I could ask, (although only in Spanish) and was a great guide. He told us that the site of Tikal had been chosen because beneath the Mayan made elevated sections, there was a natural rise in the land that helped the ancient city avoid standing winter rains that covered the lowlands. As he was explaining this we began climbing a noticeable incline, and at the top we reached the first set of ruins.

 

Amazing! There was a short temple, about thirty feet in height, but stout and wide, with worn, ancient gray stone stacked and centered in the typical step-shaped pattern of the Maya. At the foot of the stairs running up its face were several marker stones called stelae, shaped like oversized oval tombstones. Hugo explained that this was essentially their intended purpose, placed to commemorate the reigning kings during the time of the construction of this temple, or to acknowledge those buried within. Originally, there had been glyphs carved into each in the Mayan written language, but these had since faded over the years.

 

Apart from this first temple, there were several other low structures set facing one another, resting on the four sides of this artificially raised plateau. All underbrush had been cleared away, but there were many massive exotic trees shading the majority of the space. Here we saw several new bird species: Red-Lored and White-Fronted Parrots, Social Flycatchers, Masked Tityras, and Collared Aracaris. All of the above are strange looking creatures, but the Aracari was the most striking. It is a bird shaped like a toucan, with the same oversized bill and forward posture, but all black, red, and yellow. Very strange.

 

We kept walking. The park of Tikal is big: they say it takes two days to see everything, but that is probably an underestimate. Only a small portion of the ruins are “clean,” as Hugo described it. In other words, only some have been fully excavated from the ground. Many others are partially or completely underground, with ancient trees and roots growing throughout. From the looks of it, it is a massive undertaking to clean even a single site. The colossal central plaza of Tikal, for example, took years to excavate fully, and a few minutes later we turned a corner to this very sight.  

 

The central plaza of Tikal is vast. It was the Mayan style to orientate temples along the lines of the cardinal directions, and often in corresponding and facing pairs. Temples One and Two on the east and west sides of the central plaza are good examples. Hugo led us through on a wandering path through a series of low level ruins, when suddenly we stepped out onto an elevated terrace on the south side of the plaza, overlooking everything. The view blew me away. The pair of temples was enormous, reaching from the floor far below and towering above the surrounding jungle canopy. Both are over 35 meters high, and were built in the first century AD.

 

Tourists wandered in pairs or small groups among the structures on the north side of the plaza, or were sitting or lying in the well-manicured grass in the center. There were wooden stairs leading up one of the temples, and from a platform at about three-fourths of its full height people were simply staring in awe. We spent some minutes doing the same before making another move.

 

I took so many pictures, partially for the fact that I realized that the temples were too large to fit into the frame of my camera from any close distance. And wandering through the park later that day and the next, I know I took many of the same pictures twice or even three times, simply because it’s impossible to avoid a picture of an ancient monolith angling out of the jungle, even if you know you’ve already taken it before. I had never seen such impressive architecture, regardless of age or style. However, the fact that these pyramids were built by hand and without motors or electricity is enough to shake the mind.

 

Hugo led our group of three around for most of the day, and after bidding him a sincere and thankful goodbye, I climbed Temple Five to watch the sunset. This temple is on a plateau apart and to the south of the central plaza, and is taller than the rest. It is forbidden to scale the original stone steps up to the crown of the temple, but there are wooden stairs that climb to the same height. I say stairs, but they functioned more like a ladder because they were so steep. More than one person has died from the fall, and Hugo told me he once witnessed an inattentive woman take one step too far at the top, looking through her camera lens, and fell to her death. After hearing this I took my time with the ascent.

 

At the top, I basked in the glow of the setting sun and the uninterrupted wind above the jungle canopy. In very few places have I experienced such a strong feeling of spiritual significance. A religious mountain of stone in the middle of the Guatemalan rainforest, with a view of the crowns of several other Mayan temples, surrounded by exotic birdsong and the eerie calls of spider and howler monkeys reverberating through the air. Charged. Temple Five is forty-four meters high. That’s over a hundred and thirty feet. I watched as the brilliant sunset light faded on the faces of the opposite pyramids, and listened to parrots cackling through the sky.

 

 

Tikal closes at sunset. I walked out just ahead of the elderly, slow-paced security guard who was busy trying to empty the park. On the path out I met a young Israeli named Hagai, who was in the middle of traveling around Central America and who told me about another Mayan ruin called El Mirador. He said something about a multi-day hike through the jungle to get there. It sounded interesting. With the fall of full dark, I was asleep in my hammock slung between two posts under an open-air thatched roof on the jungle’s edge. I could hear the mosquitos bumping against the netting inches from my face, searching for a way in.

 

I woke up at dawn to the deafening howl of big black monkeys in the trees just outside my hammock. Howlers. I took breakfast in the same place, and then I went to a building with a red cross painted on it, next to the entrance gate. I had been bothered by some form of biting insect all during the night. Not mosquitos, at least not the typical species, but small enough to pass through the fine net I had slept in. There were small red whelps polka-dotting my wrists and ankles, the places where my cloths hadn’t covered. It is too hot in Tikal, even in the night, to use a sleeping bag. The staff in the medical building told me that there are a myriad of tiny biting insects in the area, that the marks were nothing to worry about, that I wasn’t going to collapse and die of Dinghy Fever, and that they would fade in two or three days. Well, thanks! It’s always good to know imminent death isn’t on the day’s schedule.

 

During the second day in Tikal I had several mammal encounters. While entering the park I saw a large rodent, about the size of a cocker spaniel, cross the path. It looked kind of like a giant guinea pig, with a rounded back and bottom, and no visible tail. Later, I was waiting silently in the middle of a long, empty path in the thick sweltering jungle, and a social group of pizotes scurried out of the forest and began to forage and sniff within ten feet of me. Pizotes are relatives of raccoons, but are longer, lighter, and more catlike. They are reddish brown in color, have pointed snouts, and long, ringed tails. They were amazingly fearless, and I was able to take video and a handful of pictures before they continued on their foray into the jungle on the other side of the path.

 

Some hours later, I was stalking a brilliant tropical bird called a Blue Crowned Motmot (look up a picture, they are incredible) when a couple of guys came walking down the path. I greeted them with the awkward nod that I’ve developed to try to explain, “yes, I’m absolutely grinning with excitement over a bird, alone in the woods,” when one of them did a double take and told me he thought he had seen me reading in Antigua’s central plaza. I introduced myself to him, (he was a middle-aged thick and bald Australian named Alex), and to his companion (a Guatemalan guy named Santiago closer to my age, and with hair). I told Alex that yes, it probably was me, and we started a conversation. They were looking for monkeys, and asked me if I had seen any around. The day before, at sunset, I had watched several pockets of spider monkeys swinging around and foraging in the treetops around Temple V, and that morning I had passed under some that were traveling parallel to and immediately over the path. I told them about this second group, but before they could even begin moving in that direction there was a loud crash up on a nearby ridge, and a family of spider monkeys began heading our way.

 

We took turns sharing my binoculars, but eventually this became unnecessary: the group of ten or twelve monkeys came right for us, seeming very curious in their inspection of the humans. They undoubtedly knew we were there, and would throw pointed and lengthy stares in our direction when they got close. One even climbed down a vine into a palm tree on the edge of the path, and began skinning and eating palm nuts about ten feet above our upturned faces. It was awesome.

 

Later, I wandered back to the Central Acropolis and ran into Hagai resting in the shade cast by a tall palm. We started talking and he told me that he had decided to go on that excursion to El Mirador, which is a complex of ruins near the Mexican border that houses two of the tallest and oldest temples in the Mayan world. He told me that so far only he and his friend were going, and that they were looking for other people to come along, because the guide would drop the price for a bigger group. I decided on the spot I wanted to go, and asked him about logistics. Hagai told me that they had until four p.m. that afternoon to tell the guide about additional people for the trip, and that the plan was to leave at five a.m. the next morning. He told me he was staying in a hostel in Flores called Los Amigos, which I had heard about and had been recommended to stay at by several people in Antigua. I was pumped!; I couldn’t imagine a better way to make the most of my one week’s time in Peten, and so I told Hagai that I would try to make it happen. He gave me a smile and a handshake, and told me that he would be in Los Amigos if I decided I wanted to go. I wandered around the ruins for a little while longer, but quickly realized that this new potential adventure had taken over my attention and imagination. With a last awe-filled glance back at the crest of an ancient temple through a window in the canopy, I walked out, got my bag from Enrique, and haggled out a seat in a Flores-bound shuttle.

San Pedro

Este fin de semana yo fui al Lago Atitlan. Salí de la ciudad a las seis de la mañana del Viernes, porque todos mis profesores me dijeron que dos días no eran suficientes. El viaje era muy bonito; el piloto de mi camioneta era mas o menos un amigo, entonces era un viaje muy barato y agradable, aún era muy temprano. Y también, él eligió un camino inusual. Era un atajo, y la calle era muy zigzagueante, muy profunda en las montañas. Durante el viaje, había un a parte donde eran campos y fincas vacíos, con nubes de vapor alzando en el alba. Había valles empinados y al fondo, ríos y apoyos torcidos y obscuros. Y finalmente el lago muy abajo.

Al principio estuve en Panajachel. Comí desayuno con mi conductor en un comedor típico. La comida era frijoles negros con crema, plátanos fritos y dos huevos, cocinados como soles. Y tortillas, café, y jugo de naranja también.

Después de esto yo vague un poco en las calles los cuáles están casi vacías en la mañana, mirando a las tiendas de ropa y telas. Hay muchos de estos en Pana, prácticamente hay uno mercado de solamente esto.

El viaje a través del lago requirió más o menos veinte minutos. Tomé muchas fotos de las montañas desde el centro del lago, incluyendo el cielo y las aguas. Por fin, llegué a San Pedro.

San Pedro era una de las ciudades más curiosas e interesantes de todas las que yo he encontrado durante mi tiempo aquí en Guatemala. Está situada en la orilla del lago. Había muchos senderos de arena cerca del borde del lago donde era posible cruzar campos de vegetales y árboles de fruta. Y en el medio de todo este laberinto había restaurantes chiquitos y algunos hostales. Era fantástico.

Durante el segundo día de mi tiempo en San Pedro encontré un hostal muy bueno, con un jardín con mucho espacio, y muchas hamacas. Y también, yo pasé tiempo con viajeros jóvenes de una diversidad de países. Comía en comedores escondidos en el laberinto de caminos torcidos. Regresé el Domingo para encontrar una procesión inmediatamente afuera de mi apartamento, en el crepúsculo.

Semana Santa

Me divertí mucho en Semana Santa. Pasé todo la semana aquí en Antigua, observando los acontecimientos de este evento. Yo vi algunas procesiones, posiblemente ocho o nueve en total. Y más, muchas de estas estaban inmediatamente enfrente de mi casa. Con mucho ruido, música fúnebre y tradicional, bastante gente, cucuruchos, muyeres y señoritas se vistieron de negro, y las andas enormes e increíbles, eran una demostración fantástica.

Algunas veces, cuando yo trataba de cruzar la ciudad, me paraban las procesiones. Porqué había tres o cuatro cada día, y también porque todas seguían rumbos diferentes, era más o menos imposible evitar entre las multitudes. Pero no era una cosa frustrante; ¿con cuál frecuencia puede mirar un evento de ese tipo o significado?

La mayoría de mi comida esta semana era de las ventas de la calle. Con las multitudes que seguían a las procesiones vinieron también los vendedores de comida. Había algunos lugares, por ejemplo La Plaza de La Merced, El Tanque de la Unión, o el Parque de San Sebastián donde había una gran cantidad de vendedores, con una diversidad de comida para deleite de la gente. Comí tamales de pollo, pasteles con leche cocinados enteros, mango, platos de carne de res a la plancha con guacamol y tortillas, diferentes tipos de ensalada, sándwiches de pollo con chile, sopas dulces de frijoles blancas y arroz, tostadas, y otros. Para mí, esta es una parte de la cultura de Semana Santa muy interesante y divertida.

También, esta semana yo pasé mucho tiempo jugando ajedrez. Descubrí que hay un juego de ajedrez en un restaurante/hotel/bar enfrente de La Merced que se llama Kafka, donde siempre hay mucha actividad y enfrente pasaban muchas procesiones. Entonces bebí mucho café y jugué muchos partidos de ajedrez mientras estaba mirando a la gente en la calle.

Semana Santa

Era posible que yo hubiera tenido una experiencia mejor durante la Semana Santa, pero yo creo que no. Yo acabo de terminar de mirar todas mis fotos de nuevo (algunos cientos en total), y yo me doy cuenta de que todo era fantástico. Las alfombras, los niños revolviendo incenso al fin de cadenas de plata, la gente diversidad en las calles, las Andas, todo.

Y también, yo visité a mi amiga Juanita, a quien yo conozco porque ella es la muchacha de la casa en la cual yo viví antes de mi apartamento de ahora. Había un grupo de su familia a su casa, y todos eran muy agradables y hospitalarios conmigo. Ella me dio comida, güicoy cocinado con mantequilla, y una bebida de escocia. Después de una conversación con bastantes participantes y mucho riendo y chistes, nosotros salimos para mirar la alfombra de su familia. Era muy buena, con sandía y muchas partes compuestas de flores de corozo, y una base de pino.

Había muchas cosas nuevas que observar en Antigua. Algunas veces yo ví burbujas flotando en el aire, puestas allí por niños con botellas de jabón y barritas. Y había vendedores con panes grandes. Yo ví pan blanco de casi dos pies en tamaño. Yo compré un pan redondo y dulce con pasas adentro. Era como un escudo, e infortunatemente yo comí todo en dos días (era muy grande, más grande que mi cabeza).

Habían unos atardeceres impresionantes también. Yo miraba algunos de mi terraza, con mi cámara, y siempre podía escuchar los tambores de las procesiones en la distancia. Era un período entero increíble, y completamente diferente y novedoso para mí.

Turismo

Una cosa muy interesante es el hecho que Antigua es una ciudad con espacio limitado. Por eso, el interés y éxito de turismo aquí es más o menos enjaulado, geográficamente. Normalmente, las empresas nuevas cuáles son atraídos de esto hubieran construidos más y más afuera de el centro de la ciudad. Pero aquí, esta acción tiene una presión. Y es obvio, por eso competencia, las empresas valen más y más, porque el precio de la tierra se está incrementando. Yo creo que esto es una de las razones que había seguido a la diversidad de empresas lujosas, como hoteles muy ricos, galerías de arte, tiendas de ropa y fábrica muy buena, restaurantes especiales, y todas las atraídas a un sitio de turismo denso.

Esto está bien, para ganar más dinero de los ciudadanos y el gobierno, y para mejorar la infrastructora. Pero una cosa posiblemente más importante es que, con las turistas viene una consciencia más afilada de la situación de los problemas sociales de Guatemala. Necesitas preguntar, ¿Por qué hay un montón de proyectos sociales en Antigua? ¿Es posible que muchos de los padrinos de estos proyectos hayan sido al principio solamente turistas?

Creo que este asunto es muy interesante. Hay muchos lugares en el mundo que necesitan ayuda. Posiblemente estos puedan atraer más atención si ofrecen más para agarrar los ojos de la gente. Y posiblemente sería una carrera buena de desarrollar ese proceso.

Semana Santa

Picture this. I’m leaning against one of the stone pillars holding up the second floor of the Antigua Municipal Government building, on the north side of the central plaza. These pillars are in a state of historical decay. They’ve been here for hundreds of years; the building was originally a colonial palace.

Filling the plaza, walking along the passage behind me, crossing and cris-crossing in a myriad of impossible patterns is the crowd. The multitude. The city is swollen with the spectators, participants, and religious devotees of Holy Week, Semana Santa. Here in Antigua, the processions start at dawn on Thursday and continue until Sunday. Streets will be blocked by cucuruchos, by throngs of incense-swinging kids, families building alfombras, tourists with cameras. I’m one of the latter.

As I lean against the stone, I try to take it all in. Moving colors come first. There are balloon venders standing on the corners, or crossing the wide cobbled streets into the crowded shade of the park. Each carries a fist-full of strings, preventing the escape of a hundred or more multicolored, helium-filled orbs. Different colors, most with balloon animals tied just below the knot, or with a smaller, different shaded balloon rattling around inside the first, or confetti, or all of the above. You can always find a balloon if you need it: the vendors’ style is to trail behind the processions, feeding on the collective elation and catering especially to the multitude of kids still perched on parents’ shoulders in wake of the main event.

There are guys carrying large formless nets full of homemade rubber balls, painted brightly in rainbow stripes. On closer inspection, these balls really are great, incredibly sincere. They have no uniform size, most are actually a little lopsided, and there is no way to maintain their pressure. Kind of a one-time deal. These vendors hunch like Santas under their loads when they’re moving, but their favorite style is to lay three or four smaller bags out in the middle of the plaza’s pathways, stand back, and just watch for interested eyes in passers-by. I’m sure it works great for small children as well, right at their level. Funny thing with kids and colors.

There are guys selling orchids. I don’t know where they get them, but I’m willing to bet they’re plucked straight from the nature. Walking slow and bent in the street before me is an ancient old man, with a bright orange orchid in a small wooden crate hanging around his neck, cradled at his chest with gnarled hands. And suspended from a strap carried across his forehead, three more rest against his back. I haven’t really figured out these guys patterns yet; they are less common than the other vendors, and their product is less regular. I’ve seen at least a dozen species of orchids; usually each guy has two or three on him at once. There’s usually one in the gas-station parking lot in the north-east corner of town, and often one walking the busy commercial street that runs east to west in the north side of central park, the road at my toes right now.

The ice-cream hawkers straddle categories. Their tiny refrigerated carts on wheels are always painted brightly, usually with hand-made takes on popular cartoon characters or the like. But their real strategy involves sound, not color. Constantly, no matter where or when you are during Semana Santa, you can pick out the sound of the small but efficient metal cowbells that the vendors strap to their carts. Usually the jarring roll of the cobbled streets is sufficient to keep that clatter going, but in case the crowd is more permanent, for example on a busy corner, the savvy ice-cream boy will lean against his kit and jiggle a bell with one busy finger. I say the sound is efficient: one time, sitting against a palm tree in the Plaza del Tánque de Unión eating a plate of meat and guacamole with tortillas, I suddenly realized that I was surrounded by at least five or six stationary ice-cream guys, all within thirty feet. The sound was incredible. I know now what people mean when they say it’s so loud they can’t think. I had to leave. Sometimes, thankfully, the ever-present metallic rattle sinks into the subconscious. I just wonder how many of those guys are actively destroying their hearing at their own hand for the sake of helado.  

As for the sound scene in front of me, horse hooves are next. There are always a few horse-drawn buggies cruising around the center of Antigua, but for this week they come out of the woodworks. Or the rural fields, more likely. Offering a unique way to view the city for tourists Guatemalan and foreign alike, the carriage-drivers definitely take advantage of the crowds this week. Actually, I’ve been told that the majority of most businesses’ income is made during Semana Santa. And since Antigua’s biggest industry is tourism, this is a hefty statement. The familiar clop-clop-clop of a horse trotting on cobble stones is a rather nice addition to the chaos in my opinion.

As far as smells go, there is one that rules over all during Semana Santa: incense. The traditional, catholic-style incense that is sold everywhere here in black plastic bags, and spun in metal cauldrons on chains by kids in the processions. With each procession, there is a long double line of cloaked devotees who walk in silent reverence ahead of the group carrying the wooden Anda. Often times the cloaked are in a deep purple, but some churches use black or white. There are also men who dress up like the Roman soldiers that were responsible for Christ’s death, in full red capes and mock golden armor, with spears, shields, and red-plumed helms. I even saw one procession with a group of members dressed head to toe in solid black, with only eyes exposed, and tall pointed hoods, uncomfortably similar to a color inversion of the Ku Klux Klan.

And the people. You’ve got the indigenous Mayan populations, dressed in traditional, brightly colored, hand made cloth. Most are noticeably shorter than the average. The traditional women all carry a piece of folded cloth with special significance: single girls carry it on one shoulder as a signal of their availability to prospective men, and those who are married carry it balanced on top of their heads. Many also use a similar cloth like a sling to carry a child on their back. Some carry large cloth bundles, containing food or handmade textiles or jewelry to sell in the street.

The tourists are from within Guatemala and from without. Usually the only difference is skin tone. All carry cameras, buy food in the street, make up the majority of the crowds that follow the processions. Occasionally there are aberrations: just as often as I see a white, barefooted hippie wandering the streets in all local clothing, I see a Guatemalan adolescent girl wearing a tee-shirt smeared with a snide, bitchy message in English or a sexual innuendo. Either way, I doubt she knows what the shirt says, and I doubt the hippie spots all the poop and glass in the sidewalk before it’s too late.

Drawing my attention back away from the swirling details of the scene in front of me, I focus instead on the whole. There is a cloud of incense smoke drifting slowly across the backside of the plaza, hidden for the most part by the jacarandas and manicured shade trees. Iridescent black grackles swoop noisily from perch to perch, cawing raucously and swelling with mating dances. Several soap bubbles strain to gain altitude over the heads of the crowd: there is a kid somewhere nearby blowing them into existence.

An escaped red balloon passes over some ruins on the east side of the plaza, probably two hundred feet off the ground and gaining more quick. A squadron of adolescents on motocross bikes zoom by, revving their engines for the ladies and dodging pedestrians at high speed. The street dogs maintain their secret social hierarchy, meeting and greeting just like the crowd, occasionally wrestling or scoring a dropped enchilada.

Tall grasses growing forgotten in the gutters of buildings around the square wave in the wind. In the distant south, a colossal show of force is in play, as the western winds push a cloudbank up the skirts of Volcan Agua to the top, where it doubles back over itself, curling like a wave from the crosswinds at the peak.

Religion in Antigua

 

Last week I watched a man in the central park cleaning the Fountain of the Sirens. This fountain is about twenty feet tall, is made up of four large pools, and holds the central position in the city. The time was about 7:15 in the morning. I’ve gotten into the habit of getting out of the house about forty-five minutes before classes start every morning. Usually I head for the Plaza Central, where instead of the usual hoards of tourists-watching-locals and locals-watching-tourists, there is virtually no one. In the early morning, the only regular visitors to the park are the cleaners. Everyday, they use huge palm fronds bound with string on the ends like brooms to sweep the place clean. The trash piles up in the intersections of the wide cobbled paths crisscrossing the plaza, in between the vegetated grassy patches. The trash piles are mainly fallen Jacaranda blossoms, bright violet against the forgotten coke cans and ice cream wrappers.

Friday morning has developed a special pattern, too. Each week leading up to Samana Santa, which is only two weeks away, different churches around the city take turns making alfombras inside their chapels. Last week, Guillermo led me west past the end of the city avenues, across the open-air market, to the bus station. This is a place where commuters and leisure travelers both fan out in search of the right buses, where they hop inside, usually to wait in a lengthy line that files out of the station and away. Actually, it’s not a station really, more like a dusty empty lot bordered with abandoned ceviche stands and unconscious drunks.

We passed through the station and kept on until the far side, reaching one of the main roads leading north out of the city. There we stood for a moment before Guillermo waved down a north-bound bus. It was empty. The toll was four Quetzales to go to Jocotenango, a town that abuts Antigua to the northwest. We got off at the church. It was painted a dark pink; aged, built in the colonial style with weathered European saints and imposing style, and pink. Its name is Ascension de la Virgin. Guillermo explains that the indigenous people use vibrant colors as a way of life. He tells me that the farther you venture away from big cities, the more strange the colors of the churches get. Eventually, you can find churches painted in more than one shade.

All around this one are Guatemalan school children of all different ages. I watch as the younger ones chase each other in circles, or try to climb the outer face of the church. I watch as the older ones try to pull them down. An elderly man standing in the shade spilling from the massive doorways invokes an eerie, familiar tune on a simple wooden flute, calling the masses to worship.

Stepping inside, I realize that this is the largest church I’ve been in so far, besides the Iglesia de la Merced in Antigua. There is a multitude of people standing behind a single rail, improvised from a usual pew rail. Beyond is the alfombra, this one perhaps forty feet long and fifteen feet wide: a shocking cascade of color in the otherwise shady interior. Amongst the offerings of candles and seasonal fruits are several loaves of bread sculpted to resemble animals. I snag a picture of a lobster and a crab over the heads of the Guatemalans in front of me. Later I see that they are each sporting a little flag advertising the name of the responsible panaderia, or bakery.

Afterwards, Guillermo led me around the narrow neighborhood streets of Jocotenango. Some years ago, in 1976, there was a devastating earthquake in Antigua. It is the reason that there are so many ruins still resting in the town, and the reason for the neighborhood that we are walking through. After the earthquake, there were so many displaced and homeless families that the Antiguan government subsidized roughly three hundred houses to be built here in the north of town. Essentially, there was not much here beforehand and so Jocotenango was transformed from a village to a city. Many of the new families never moved back, and while Guillermo is telling me this story we pass a wide dusty school yard filled with children playing soccer during recess. These are the descendents of the displaced families. I get a strong feeling of how alive history is in this place.

We have enough time, so Guillermo leads me on a different route back south to Antigua. I soon realize that there is really nothing that separates Jocotenango from Antigua; no forest, no streets or walls, not even a strong break in the neighborhood. Actually, on the way back, I don’t even remember any signs. In effect, the two are more like different districts of a larger city that fills the valley created by Volcan Agua in the south and a vast ridge of hills that encircles the whole. Antigua takes the central of the valley, but also are Jocotenango, Santa Ana, San Felipe, San Bartolemeo, Santa Maria de Jesus, and others. The way I understand it, there is a different district for every major church, which is many. The Spanish Conquistadors created a haven of Christian worship here in Antigua.

Anyway, somewhere in this vague divide between Antigua and Jocotenango, we encountered Guillermo’s home. He had been excitedly chatting about it, and had invited me to see it if I wanted. I had to stoop to step through a small metal doorway set in the stone wall bordering a busy street. As I shut the door, and turned to face the interior I saw a long open-air courtyard. Ferns and flowers dripping from hanging pots ringed the lip of the tiled roof overhead. A number of closed doors along the inner wall led to separate, unconnected rooms. This is more or less the traditional Guatemalan architecture. Guillermo was excitedly telling me about his family history of making ceramics.

He led me around the place, showing me an ancient clay-press machine that was designed to use donkey-power. I saw a large oven for cooking ceramics, a lower door and chamber used to stoke it, a store room for fuel. There was a mountain of broken ceramics against one wall of the circular oven-house. A proud Guillermo showed me one room filled with nothing but finished pots and vessels of diverse make and glazed. On the wall was a framed certificate of official recognition from the Artisans Association of Antigua, presented to Guillermo’s father over twenty-five years ago. Next to this were several newspaper articles with faded pictures of an old man and woman working clay by hand and smiling. Guillermo’s parents. He had told me that his family had a history in ceramics; the workshop is over two hundred years old.

Several days later, Guillermo and I take a serious tour of ancient churches in and around Antigua. On our way south we pass through a long, palm-filled park that fills a city block. On one end is a wide, shallow fountain that throws a bright reflection of the yellow arched structure on its far end. This is El Tanque de Union. It has been here since colonial times, and was originally built as a social service: a central water source for washing clothes. There are several women dressed in traditional indigenous dress on the far corner continuing the tradition.

On the opposite end of the park from the fountain is Hobras Sociales del Hermano Pedro. This is a large private hospital, but Guillermo informs me that the medicine is cheap, and judging by the line of people waiting inside I’m willing to believe him. He tells me that people come from all over the country to use this hospital. It is large and spacious, with a series of open-air interior courtyards ringed with closed rooms. The floors, walls, and ceilings are made of stone, and the ceiling of the first floor is twenty feet up. I can feel a natural breeze inside. Very different from an American hospital.

The first church we visit is La Iglesia de San Francisco. This is the biggest church in Antigua. It takes up more than a full city block on its own. There is an outer perimeter wall that touches the sidewalk on all sides of the block; tall, thick, and enameled with flowing sculpture. Inside is an impressive open courtyard surrounding the church itself. A couple of huge trees grow in one corner.

There is a story here in Antigua about a man named Brother Peter, or Hermano Pedro as he is remembered locally. He is actually the patron saint of the city. Several hundred years ago, when Spanish colonials filled the city and all the ruins around town were being originally built in the Colonial style, Hermano Pedro was a Spanish monk who focused particularly on social work: helping the poor. The citizens of Antigua really appreciated him then, and since his honored memory has grown, and he has become a Saint. Many important buildings in Antigua are in his name. In the plaza here at San Francisco is a fragrant flowering tree called Esquisuchil, dedicated to Hermano Pedro. Guillermo tells me that the local people collect the flowers and use them medicinally in teas to treat sickness.

In the past, La Iglesia de San Francisco was rocked by an earthquake. Its high vaulted roof had collapsed, but since then San Francisco has been reconstructed. Inside are pillars ten feet in diameter and antechambers large enough to house some of the same Pasos that will later be carried in religious processions in the streets. One wall is entirely covered in a patchwork of irregularly sized and colored stone plaques inscribed with different names and dates. Nearby is a sign explaining that these were all offered by families that felt they have been blessed or helped by Hermano Pedro. There are hundreds.

On the way to Santa Ana, a small village on the south end of Antigua, we cross the Parque de la Paz. Massive blossoming Jacarandas cast a welcoming shade throughout the quiet, tranquil park. There is a larger than life bronze statue of Hermano Pedro reaching over to offer a helping hand, and on a bench is a young couple kissing, but otherwise the park is empty. The plaque at Hermano Pedro’s feet notes the dates of his birth and death: 1626-1667.

The church in Santa Ana is bustling. There is a busy courtyard below its wide front stairs; children are running around, and there are women selling ripe colorful mangos from wooden carts. Inside, the alfombra is draped with wide swaths of red translucent cloth that hang from the ceiling. At the head of the alfombra is a stage, arranged with life-size figures representing the condemnation of Christ. Above the stage an inscription reads “ROMA”. As I’m leaving I see a booth outside the door where people can sign up to help carry the Paso during the coming Procession. Against the wall is a wooden device marked at every centimeter, kind of like the one in the doctor’s office used to take height measurements. I guess things like this are important when the weight to be carried could easily crush the life out of the participants, in the case of a mishap.

Our last stop is El Calvario. It’s a smaller church in the extreme south of Antigua, but brighter than normal, painted with starkly contrasting lemon-yellow and white. Guillermo tells me that he has been attending mass here for over fifty years. The inner walls are covered with large paintings depicting different stages in the life of Christ. Most are several hundred years old. Outside, there is another Esquisuchil tree adding to the lush, shady gardens that fill the church’s grounds. Outside, in the dust of the street, a young girl is sitting in the steps and selling small plastic bags of peanuts.

Running away from El Calvario is a wide, double-lane cobbled avenue with a grassy median where shade trees grow. However, one lane is for foot traffic only. About two hundred yards from Calvario’s front gates is a sunken fountain in the middle of this lane. The fountain is built on a level eight or ten feet below the avenue, and is ringed by a rod-iron fence. Intersecting it at a right is another cobbled street that leads straight down from the mountain. Guillermo tells me that the name of this street is La Calle del Agua, because every time there is a serious rainfall, torrential water rushes down from the mountain along this street like a river, and fills the sunken fountain with silt. In the past, when the wide avenue was being built, the ancient fountain was uncovered where it had been buried below by a huge accumulation of sediment and earth that had been gradually carried down by the mountain’s rains.

On one side of the avenue is a tall stone wall that runs the length of several blocks into the heart of Antigua. Every hundred feet or so is a grand portal in the wall depicting one of the Stages of the Cross, and marked on top with a stone Roman numeral. The name in Spanish is El Viacruciz de Jesus. These terminate at El Calvario, starting all the way back at La Iglesia de San Francisco, possibly five or six blocks away.

This Sunday there was a big Procession in Antigua. It was hosted by the same church in Santa Ana, which is called El Templo de Nuestra Senora. I woke up on Sunday and there was a guy on the corner right outside my house with a big “Procession” sign, ready to direct the inevitable traffic. I asked him about the day’s events, and he gave me a glossy pamphlet that had a brief history of the church, a map showing the projected path of the Procession, and the times that the Paso would reach different important churches or parks along the way. I read that the whole thing would start at noon, and finish twelve hours later at midnight, having completed a loop through Antigua, passing by El Calvario, San Francisco, El Parque Central, and La Merced, among others. At a stroll, the same route would take no more than an hour to complete. Then again, a Procession is like a great, rolling giant of a parade, with a veritable army of attendants relaying to carry the massive Paso. Streets would be blocked, prayers blasted via loudspeaker over the heads of thousands, and clouds of incense would blot out the sun.

I ate lunch in the Plaza de La Merced. During procession days, the crisscrossing paths fill with food vendors, the smells of their wares, and the crowds that flock to enjoy. Available is an array of traditional Guatemalan and local foods. Skinned mangos sliced to look like flowers, soups, sandwiches of pork, chicken, beef, fried strips of plantains, something like quesadillas, tortillas filled with fruit, cheese, meats. Corn on the cob. Tostadas piled with sugar-beet salad. Charitas. A million different dishes featuring aguacado. I tried to sample a little of everything. (By the way, I heard that another name for local Antiguans is Panza Verdes, which translates to Green-Bellies, because they have such a strong reputation for eating aguacados. And why not? Aguacado trees are so rampant here that you can pick up delicious, freshly fallen fruit in empty lots.)

On my way through the crowded streets I encountered an indigenous family playing the Marimba. Here, the Marimba has been named the National Instrument, and it has been recreated to house two rows of keys and two players. One of the players on this occasion was a boy of no more than twelve years of age, who was standing on a milk crate to reach the keys. But he was dominating, not even looking at what he was doing, welding two sticks in each hand and glancing around the crowd with a bored gaze. The music was really good; they were making a lot of money in donations from the crowd. The daughter stood nearby and was playing rhythm on a skin drum and using a rattle made from a large tortoise shell. I’ve heard complaints that music of the Marimba isn’t appreciated like it used to be by the citizens of Guatemala, but looking around the ample crowd, there was no age group that wasn’t present in force. 

I met the Procession in the Central Park. It had halted, and the huge crowd had gathered. On the steps of the Templo de Santa Catalina Bobadilla, a large ancient church bordering the eastern side of the central square, was a group of religious officials. Everyone was listening as prayers and blessings were being read and amplified. I dug my way into the crowd, working towards the center. Eventually I was immersed. All around me people were murmuring prayers in Spanish. Nothing was moving but the great slow sway of the Paso, being held aloft on the shoulders of forty or so men dressing in dark violet. I watched their faces. They were struggling.

Later, after following the Procession through much of Antigua, I was sitting with my back against the outer wall of La Merced in the falling dusk. People were sitting in the grass, on the edge of the sidewalks, on the lip of the wide fountain, eating in groups or talking. A good many of them were wearing violet robes, and looked tired. A couple of kids my age were swinging full-circle incense urns on chains near me, using centripetal force to fan the flames. As I watched, a block of smoldering incense escaped and arched to land on the ground near my feet, trailing embers. Slow religious marches broadcasted from the speakers in the front of La Merced, mixing with the shrieks of children playing tag and the calls of old women hawking food.

Monterrico, y La Iglesia de Santa Ines

 

On Thursday, Guillermo asked me if I wanted to visit another nearby church that had constructed an alfombra. Apparently, a different church takes up the mission each week. This time it was La Inglesia de Santa Ines. I said yes. On Friday we left early, just as I arrived at the school’s doors at eight in the morning, because Santa Ines is located outside of the city. It was a brisk, cool morning in Antigua, which is nice because the weather here is growing progressively hotter and hotter each day.

And this reminds me that on Wednesday Lidia and I went to the section of the open air market where hawkers sell off second hand clothes for next to nothing. In the back of the market, near the soccer fields, there is a large, low tin roof constructed underneath which vendors chant their prices, beckoning for people to come and look. The thing the vendors’ songs reminded me most of is the banter that kids in a little-league baseball game rattle off to distract the batter. Behind each vendor is a long series of collapsible tables, upon which a staggering pile of unsorted clothes balances uncertainly: infant-sized one piece pajamas, skirts, shirts, strange 1980’s Harley Davidson print sweaters, everything. Anything that falls into the category of clothing is jumbled and twisted together, so that when you are looking, you are actually grabbing corners and pulling surprises out of the fray.

Lidia found some pants for her husband. I found a white shirt that weighed nothing, my favorite. Like I said, soon it will be very hot here. I paid one Quetzal (approximately thirteen cents).

Anyway, I’m wearing my white shirt when Guillermo and I cut northeast across town and start up the side of the highway that leads through the forest towards the country’s capital. We pass all sorts of shacks and small stores, repair shops. Eventually a foot path cuts away from the highway, rises up ten or fifteen feet, and becomes a proper street. This is the street upon which occurs La Inglesia de Santa Ines. It’s relatively new, painted butter-yellow in what seems to be the traditional color for Antiguan churches. Inside is the one open room with vaulted ceilings, and situated behind a low wooden rail, the alfombra. Actually, it was very similar to the alfombra Guillermo had taken me to the week before in a different church on the other side of town. The tradition is strong here, and there is a very distinct pattern of religious demonstration. In the doorway of the church is a man carrying a simple leather drum hung across his chest, and a flute. He alternates between the two, always playing the same melody or rhythm. I recognize the tune of the flute melody, and Guillermo informs me that it is the same that all the churches use to call people to worship.

 

The alfombra is constructed in part by long flowered strips of the Coroso plant. There are several of the pods piled amidst the mangos, melons, flowers, candles, and other offerings. These pods are brown, hard, laterally grooved, and anywhere from two to three and a half feet in length. Inside, they are packed with strands of flowers, which are favored for use in alfombra construction because they carry a nice scent.

After taking a few pictures and paying our respects, Guillermo leads me up a lonesome cobbled path behind the church to a site of little-known ruins. They are in worse condition than those in downtown Antigua, which have maintenance committees to perform upkeep and provide protection. Here, kids have used some kind of red pigment to scrawl graffiti all over the ancient walls. Scrubby weeds are well on their way to cloaking the rest of the site. Bougainvillea hangs impressively on all sides, and there are hibiscus as well.

On the way back to the school, we take a different path. Conversation was much easier than normal during our stroll through several wide but quiet streets in the south of town: they were closed for repairs. Because of the cobbled construction of all the roads in Antigua, massive city-wide maintenance projects take place every year, usually before the busy season of Semana Santa. This is the case now. Without the constant roar of traffic, this ancient city is a very tranquil place.

Friday afternoon I left for the coast. I had heard from several people that Monterrico was a fantastic spot, that the waves were impressive, that the beach was black. It’s a small village located on Guatemala’s Pacific coast, south and west of Antigua. On Friday, Guillermo told me it was best to leave early, because he didn’t know the bus schedule between here and there, but did know that at least one change was necessary in a town halfway in between, Esquintla. I had gone by the dusty lot where the buses work on my way back to Casa Mendez for lunch, and had asked about the voyage. The last bus to Monterrico out of Esquintla was at seven o’clock. I’d have plenty of time.

On the bus ride out of town I peeled and ate mangos that a child was selling. In Guatemala, whenever a bus halts along the road for more than a minute and a half, two or three people jump on trying to sell nuts or sweets or something. The mangos cost nothing. I’ve seen many varieties, and these were relatively small and green, shaped like plumb teardrops. The pits were large, and required a bit of tugging to free the sweet fibrous flesh.

I had planned for a little waiting time in Esquintla, but when I got there someone told me the bus to Monterrico was just about to leave. This was unexpected good news; I jogged down the dirty, busy street and climbed into the backdoor. Of a packed-out bus. I managed to get one cheek onto the edge of seat that was already full before I got there.

In the last fifteen minutes of the ride, enough people had gotten off that there was room for me to sit down next to an elderly Guatemalan woman. We started a conversation about the language, and about the land outside the window. She had studied some French in the past, and thus had a lot to say about the difficulty of picking up a foreign system of grammar. I couldn’t have agreed more. Outside, the sun was getting low. Vast, wet fields dotted here or there with wide, exotic trees dominated the landscape. And boulders. There were beautiful black boulders littering the land. And several times I saw sudden jutting cliffs that shot up into the afternoon sky, with exposed black faces topped with micro niches of tropical fauna.

The conversation was a nice one; it always excites me to communicate spontaneously in the language that I’m spending the majority of my time trying to obtain. I understood almost all of what she said. Especially the part about how this bus wasn’t going to Monterrico. Oh, it was going towards it, she assured me, just not all the way. I didn’t catch the name of the intermediate town where we soon stopped, but I did manage to catch the last bus out of it. Maybe two minutes after arriving. After having asked directions twice and running down the street, turning a corner, and running two hundred yards down a hill to what turned out to be a very exciting adventure.

It wasn’t actually a bus. It was what they call a microbus. Like a shuttle that you would take from a hotel to an airport. Or a large Astrovan, whatever image works best. Now add thirty or so fifteen-year-old uniformed jabbering schoolgirls. I’m serious, the space inside the bus was absolutely full. There was no more room save on top of peoples’ heads. And that’s where I ended up. Sort of.

I was clinging to the doorframe, imposing my space into the interior to make sure I didn’t get shut out into a strange, dingy, unknown city for the night when I looked up and saw several young faces peering down at me. I could see the structure of a luggage rack fixed on top of the microbus, and here were seven or eight of the gaggle of schoolgirls’ male classmates. I quickly pulled my way out of the feverish press for space in the interior and climbed the rear ladder up onto the top. A small circle of Guatemalan guys smiled as I sat down. Apparently, there are disadvantages to mandatory skirts.

The sun was setting, and I was squinting into the wind fifteen feet off the ground on a high speed, beautifully spacious ride to Monterrico at dusk. The land was changing quickly, growing more lush with the minute, and the air was moist and salty. I watched the sun set across rural fields and fruit trees. Little by little people got off to disappear into the night, occasionally the wavering smoke of a roadside campfire whipped across my senses, and I caught an unlucky insect or two to the ear. But the ride was fantastic.

The driver stopped at the water’s edge. It was full dark now, and we were at the end of the road. Literally. A few poorly lit doorways, mosquito-clouded lamps, and the majority of the class of high-schoolers were all there was at this tiny river port. I didn’t know it before descending from the roof to pay the bus driver, but this wasn’t Monterrico either. I watched as the group piled onto one of the wide, flat-bottomed wooden barges, and then I followed suit. After directing a few questions at one of the students, I learned that, yes, Monterrico does actually have a road leading into it, and that no, we hadn’t come that way. We had a thirty-minute night cruise through a convoluted, brackish mangrove swamp before we arrived at our final destination. Wicked.

I ate some peanuts in the dark while talking to this kid and listening to the water-plants hiss by. His trip to school every day took three hours. He was studying business administration. He didn’t know how many people lived in Monterrico, but it was very small, didn’t have a school or a bank. During the pauses in conversation we listened to the swaggering, young bargeman relay the news to a couple of acquaintances. I couldn’t understand anything he said for his accent. It sounded like he was speaking in a stream of ceaseless vowels.

When I saw a collection of lights up ahead, I asked the kid if it was Monterrico. He said yes. The port was like the other: muddy, near-empty, poorly lit from lamplight above. But there was a paved road. I started out confidently: after all, there was only one way to go, and everyone else was making for that direction. Walking down the road I began to pass small restaurants and bungalows, each hung heavily with hammocks. The kind of hammock that I’d pictured people actually using as a substitute for a bed: slackened with use, like a length of net. Minimalist. As in, with any less material there wouldn’t be a hammock at all, just some cords hanging from two points on the porch.

But there was light. And people. And earlier in Antigua, I had met a friend of a friend who purportedly lives here in Monterrico. He’s a painter, and by all accounts is pretty well known. At the corner where the road made a T, a couple of joking men drinking cokes in a tienda recognized his description. One led the way just around the corner, where we found Henry the painter sprawled in a hammock in his dirt-floored front room, watching Pirates of the Carribean in Spanish with some buddies. He was a nice guy, showed me the shoddy bunk beds where he houses travelers that don’t have anything to spend, and then walked me across the street to a small hotel. Henry chatted with the guy working the desk, and then waved goodbye. The attendant showed me to my room, and gave me the key. 40 Q per night (5.5 dollars). The room had walls of its own, but shared the same large thatched roof with all the other rooms on both sides of the hallway. Over the bed hung a circular disk, and from that hung a large amount of mosquito netting, tied into a grand knot. I left my backpack and walked out through the end of the hallway and onto the sand. There lay the Pacific, stretched out black on black with a half moon overhead. Vast, unbroken by lights of ships or otherwise, and with only the rhythmic wash of expiring waves to disrupt the salty quiet.

I ate dinner on the other side of the dirt road from my hotel. There was a futbol game on, two teams from within Guatemala. There was an uncovered well in the floor next to my seat at the table. I shined my flashlight down into it: at least twenty feet down before water level. The mother of the children who brought my silverware and Gallo took my order and then brought the pescado a la plancha (grilled fish.) The taste was phenomenal. During dinner I chatted with a group of visiting Spaniards with mullets. I saw them the next day at my hotel. There are very few hotels in Monterrico. Virtually every extranjero in town was staying at the same one. However, I saw very few foreigners during my weekend. Monterrico is still mainly a vacation spot for Guatemaltecans.

In the morning I woke up and stepped out onto the beach. The black sand superheats in the sun, it’s necessary to jog to the water or grit your teeth. The waves were pretty big, six or seven feet tall sometimes before crashing down at the shore’s edge. I spent a good part of the day swimming and waging war with the surf: throwing myself against a wall of water has never been such good therapy as after a five-week long binge of Spanish grammar. (My professors both noted that I seemed more relaxed on the following Monday.) During the hotter part of the day, I sat under an umbrellaed table in front of a neighboring restaurant and sipped a cool drink, watching a group of Guatemalan kids my age pound Gallos in cans from a cooler. I guess the beach is the beach no matter what color the sand is. Speaking of which, I probably left the surf with enough black sand in my ears and hair to start a rock garden.

The hotel had a pool, and hammocks in every available free space. The entire place was very nice, and laid-back. All the roofs are steeply angled and thatched with palm leaves, the same as everywhere in Monterrico. Later in the day I walked a ways down the beach, watching kids being chased up and down by sea foam, and listening to families playing in their gardens on the inland side of the sand. Wide-leaved vines crawled sprawling out onto the sand from under many low residential walls, with deep purple flowers contrasting vividly on a black background. I cut through a passage between two houses and walked back in the direction of town on the dirt road that ran parallel to the ocean. I pass a brightly-painted, sun bleached cemetery on the way. Strange species of flycatchers snatch lazy insects out of the sky before returning to their predatory lookout post. Locals smile and nod from their back yards, enjoying the weekend. The heat is oppressive when I’m not in the shade.

The main road (the only paved road) of Monterrico is raised three or four feet above ground (I guess to avoid flooding). Thus, from inside, many of the restaurants and homes give the feeling of being relaxed into a sunken state. I chose a restaurant called Comedor Divino Maestro, and took a seat at a table where the smiling, aged matron gestured. The kitchen was the only room under the wide, low thatched roof with a wall. It’s shady, cool, with a slight breeze. I watch people walk by in slow motion, trying to minimize the effects of the mid-day heat. A couple of friends of the owner are glued to a small TV, where another futbol match is on. There’s almost no one else eating. Gigantic, heavily-laden fruit trees shade the empty sandy lot to one side. Mangoes, cashew apples, tamarinds, several hybrids of oranges. It seems like the majority of trees here are producing some edible fruit.

The matron is an old, tanned, wrinkled local in his sixties. He’s skinny, wearing a button-down shirt with the top half open, exposing a necklace of heavy wooden beads and a crucifix. He’s got on a yellowed cowboy hat, and shows off deep stretch marks around his wide smile when he uses it, which is often. I could have waited there in the cool, low shade for ever, but it was a beautiful moment when he slow-shuffled across the sandy floor with my caldo de mariscos. Three halved miniature limes rolled around on the plate under my bowl of yellow-orange, fragrant soup. Their poignant tang accented delightfully the taste of the double handful of unpeeled shrimp, and the entire fresh fish cooked in the stew. This was the kind of meal that took a while to eat. I was happy to take a while at it. Although, I only remembered to take a picture after the fact (sorry, it was prettier before.)

In the afternoon I visited the Tortugario Monterrico. This is definitely the coolest project in Monterrico. It’s a sea-turtle hatchery for local populations of Ridley and Leatherback turtles, both of which are endangered species. Inside, I talk with one of the workers, who shows me a couple of small pools teeming with tiny sea-turtles. I also watch a worker put a plate of raw meat in a low caged section of sand. I ask about this, and he explains that underneath the sand are incubating turtle eggs, and that the meat is to distract the cats from the more precious potential foods in the area.

I’ve got my bird book and binoculars with me, ‘cause I’ve got a feeling there’s nothing like a good Central- American mangrove swamp to attract some bizarre life-forms. The Tortugario didn’t have any trails or anything, so I walked down the road until I reached the end. When I got there, I asked a wizened old woman watering plants in her yard nearby if there were any trails leading into the scrub forest at the end of the road. She said yes, and in I went. Once I was inside I realized immediately that I wouldn’t be stopping to raise my binoculars for anything. There were hoards of mosquitoes so ferocious that I could actually watch as fifteen or twenty attempted to descend upon any given limb of my body at once. I hurried through a series of looping trails, and quickly came to a fenced road (thankfully).

Up and over, and I’m walking in peace once again (the open space allows enough wind to knock down the blood-suckers.) The sun is starting to set, and the sky is a show of its own as I amble along, pausing to look out into sandy fields bordered with palms. I see striking, crested White-Throated Magpie Jays (Urraca Cariblanca in Spanish) and several varieties of orioles. The road is wide, unpaved, and comprised of a fine dun-colored dust. Occasionally a local cruises by on a bicycle, and returns my smile. Overhead, the sky is on fire, and in the spaces through the vegetation I catch glimpses of an ocean that appears deceivingly calm from a distance.  

I wake up before six. It’s Sunday, and I’ll have to leave earlier than I did from Antigua to guarantee actually making it back before my classes start on Monday. However, I’m not leaving yet. I walk down the road to the swamp port where I arrived in Monterrico two nights before. A boat leaves every hour, and I want catch the next one possible. I’ve got a desire to see the mangroves from the water side, and during daylight. I talk to the conductor, and when five minutes after the hour arrives, we set out.

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This time the boat is a long, motorized canoe shaped vessel, about thirty-five feet in length, and with a tin roof fixed overhead. Passengers sit on either side, and I get a spot near the front. The path through the swamp to the next town is actually pretty open; the mangroves on either side never close the passage in to a width of less than a hundred feet, but the water plants are a different issue. These thick, bulbous floating specimens started out in small, harmless clusters near the port, but further on we encounter vast mats, and at one point the attendant has to sit on the bow and give directions back to the driver, navigating a changing trail through the flora. Meanwhile, I’ve got my eyes open. I see seven new species during thirty minutes, including Northern Jacanas that flap away low on the water exposing vivid yellow wings, a solitary Squirrel Cuckoo hopping in seclusion deep in the tangle of mangroves, and several crested Yellow-Winged Mexican Caciques, flopping high in some palm fronds overhead.

I take the same boat back soon afterwards, and go out to play with the sea once more before preparing to return to Antigua.

Back in my home base later Sunday afternoon, the town is buzzing with people. There are a couple of religious processions scheduled for today. I catch the tail end of one on my way to a friend’s house on the other side of town from the bus station. Guillermo tells me that long ago, before Antigua received as much attention for its fantastic religious displays, there was less commercialization involved. But now, the reality is that Antigua pulls more profit during this time of the year than during any other. I get some interesting pictures on the subject.

I spend the late afternoon at my friend’s house (actually the same place where I met Henry originally) studying and reading, and cooking some veggies for dinner. Later, we go out in the street to check out a lot of noise, only to find out that the second procession of the day is actually to be held during the night, and on the street immediately outside the apartment. The road has been closed off, and families are dousing the pavement with water in preparation for building alfombras. I go out and take some pictures while there is still daylight, and talk to a few people. The procession will start at nine o’clock, and is sponsored by La Inglesia de Santa Ines. Seems I’ve gone full circle this weekend. I see people opening up pods of Coroso for the event.

Several hours later, I hear the same flute and drums from Friday morning. The Procession is starting. I step through the street door of the apartment into a fray of religious activity. There are people crowding the streets, and I can see down the way a massive swaying float, being carried to the rhythm of the traditional musical marches. It’s dark, and there’s a bit of rain falling, but the atmosphere is one of excitement. On comes a volley of cloaked devotees waving metal containers billowing incense. Next is another float held aloft by women, led in front by a gray-haired woman who can’t be younger than sixty. And after everything, a group of men with brooms and shovels push the ruined alfombras into piles to be picked up in the morning. For religious Antigua, Sunday seems hardly a day of rest.   

Life in Antigua, Senderos de Alux

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

So. It’s the fourth week of my schooling here in Antigua. The first quarter of my studies here have been well spent. I feel like I’ve made much progress with the language, and am moving steadily forward in capacity of both grammar and conversation. Today, Guillermo started me on the present participle tense. Gerunds. As in, any verb in English ending in –ing. Something happening now. Of course, in Spanish, you can use the present participle in conjunction with every other tense, so the one lesson was really like five or six.

Today is Ash Wednesday. Guillermo took me to a church on the edge of town, where one of the first alfombras (vast, detailed, internationally famous hand-made carpets) of the religious season had been constructed. According to Guillermo, the creation of alfombras is one of Antigua’s oldest and strongest traditions. His family has being involved in the process for generations. They are made of flower petals and vibrantly colored sawdust, delicately sculpted into elaborate images of religious and geometric significance. The school was filled with hundreds of uniformed school children visiting on field trip as well. Surrounding the alfombra was a sea of diverse fruits, serving as an offering to God.

The afternoon was pretty eventful as well. Lidia and I decided to walk to the open-air market near the school. We stopped in Pollo Campero on the way to get ice-cream. Pollo Campero is Guatemala’s version of fast food. Here in Antigua, which is a place pretty strongly affected by globalization, there is an array of American fast food available. Dominos, Burger King, McDonald’s, Subway. Pollo Campero is a chicken place. It’s pretty similar to KFC, but the service is much better. The place is always busy, and there are a dozen or more waiters and waitresses roaming around, taking orders. It’s like a sit down restaurant in that aspect, except that everything is cheap and unhealthy, and very quick. Fast food at heart. I got pistachio dipped in chocolate, topped with peanuts.

I’ve been wanting to get a radio for a while now so that I can fill my room with Spanish at all hours, especially when doing homework. Lidia and I found a stall with a guy selling small electronics. In the open air market, bargaining and haggling are the standard practice. Basically, if you accept the initial price quoted, you’re getting ripped off. The Spanish verb is “regartear.” So, after the guy offered 110 Q for a nice Sony radio, ($14.5) we made up a bogus story about shopping around and coming back later. Of course, he new this was a lie, and as we were walking away quoted a price much lower. After a bit of haggling, I got the radio for 80 Q ($10.5).

I also bought a couple of DVDs. I was talking to a couple of friends about how the markets here are full of dubbed American movies, and they were telling me about how Spanish and especially Latin American films are usually well recognized at large film festivals in Europe. I had asked my professor Guillermo about this, and he recommended The North, a historical non-fiction about the thirty year long civil war that took place here in Guatemala between 1973 and 1996. After a bit of searching I found it, as well as a movie called The Silence of Net, which is a Guatemalan movie filmed predominantly here in Antigua. It won several awards in film festivals around the world. I’m looking forward to watching both (in Spanish, por supuesto.)

Afterwards, Lidia and I walked to through the market to a dusty soccer field where organized teams comprised of merchants that work here in the market play. The field was basically squared on sand, and many of the players were coated in it, having fallen in a heavy sweat. Stray dogs, ice-cream sellers, and second-hand clothes vendors wandered around the sidelines, watching or not.

It’s avocado season here. Avocadoes grow in vast abundance, thousands and thousands on a single tree, which can grow to great heights and breadths. And fresh avocadoes go for a Quetzal a piece on the street. For lunch today I went with some other students to a café off Antigua’s large central plaza, and got a sandwich with a thick spread of avocado among the other more typical sandwich constituents. A soup came with it: turkey noodle with avocado and jalapeño. Mmm. I had a liquedo to drink, with is like a smoothie made with fruit. Mine was pineapple, and was topped with a good inch of raw fruit pulp/froth.

Now that I’ve been instructed on the majority of the verb tenses, I’m attempting a novel in Spanish. In the school I found an old beaten copy of El Senor de los Anillos (Lord of the Rings), La Comunidad del Anillo. Very exciting. However, I’m dedicated to learning all the new vocabulary possible, so this slows my already laughable pace to a veritable crawl as I reread every paragraph to look up new words. At least I know the story going in to it; should help with comprehension.

Before dinner I go to one of the beautiful, colonial-Spanish era churches in town. La Iglesia Merced is huge, decorated outside with bold white architecture and sculptures of Christian saints, and inside with numerous murals, statues, and paintings depicting the life and death of Christ. The rows are packed. The central aisle running between double rows of pews is more than fifty yards long, and the ceiling is probably sixty or seventy feet overhead, arched and frescoed. The service is entirely in Spanish, but isn’t far different than most traditional Christian services and thus isn’t hard to follow. Towards the end, the head priest marks the foreheads of ten other important members who fan out with ash. Everyone gets up and joins the line forming nearest to them. While I’m shuffling forward to be reminded of the temperance of human life, I spot two women who teach at my school; they are always joking with the students and each other, and eating ice-cream. They smile and wave.

Last night I was walking the streets after sunset and doubled back after absentmindedly passing an enormous set of semi-circle wooden doors, thrown wide open. Inside was a very professional, spacious, high-ceiling art gallery. There were works of several different artists on display, but what caught my eye was a six foot tall mural comprised entirely of miniscule handmade tiles, stacked descending like links in a shirt of chain mail. The colors were brilliant blues, and the artist had obviously hand-made each triangular tile, because they were imperfect and rounded in a manner that banished mass-production as an option. After pulling myself away from an unexpected absorption, I noticed that there were two men behind a desk at the other end of the hall. I went and talked with them about the piece, inquiring about the artist. It turns out that Orestes Sanchez, a Cuban American ceramics specialist, has been in the field for over thirty years, and has developed a pretty wide-reaching reputation. Apparently, his work has shown up in galleries in Latin America, Florida, Georgia, and now here in Antigua. I was quite impressed with his pieces.

Friday, February 08, 2008

I’m listening to music in Espanol. A friend of mine here gifted me with fifteen or so popular Latin songs. Reggaeton, pop, and rock are all popular categories. I can understand pieces of the song without concentrating, more if I do. I’ve noticed a strange sensation after some conversations: I remember what was said, usually in English, but not the actual words. In other words, I don’t remember the process of constructing sentences, only the ideas that were actually conveyed. This sensation excites me. The seedling of a process of automatic comprehension.

Monday, February 11, 2008

The automatic date function that my computer uses is misleading. In Guatemala, when I wrote the date in this way, my teachers were amused. Why put the month before the day? It seems more logical to list the full date in terms of increasing scale. As such, today is 11.02.08.

I’ve been climbing from floor to floor in my school. I haven’t yet found any boulders to play with, and this compulsion won’t lax. Furthermore, the school, similar to my family’s house here, is comprised of four floors. The trend is to have open space between floors, stairs with railings but no walls, fewer internal ceilings. It creates a feeling of a maze, kind of like those optical illusion drawings where the stairs eject from doorways on all sides of a complex room, suggesting a lack of up or down.

Anyway, the space between the second and third floor of the school, near the door to the room Guillermo and I utilize, is one such open space. The smooth tile of the third floor is only about eight and a half feet above the second, and as such is within jumping grasp (for me.) After explaining to an older, perpetually smiling professor who resides in the room above mine as to why I continuously appear scaling up over the railing outside the landing to his door, he gave me a precious tip: directions to a gymnasium in town that he said contained a climbing wall. I flipped out. And left immediately in search (classes had finished for the day.)

Gimnasio Antiguena was the name he gave me. Located on the block behind La Parque de Santiago. I had no trouble finding the park; it was actually very near my house, in the north end of town. However, I found no such gymnasium. There was no sign, only a busy dusty street that led out of town. I stepped into a small tienda to ask directions. The women inside were very nice, but unhelpful. They did try though, and after seeing that the tienda specialized in ice-cream, I asked about their prices. Different styles of mass-produced sickles ranged from six to nine Quetzales, and as I made up my mind, a swirling mob of middle-school aged girls in matching plaid school uniforms entered and left, each buying what looked like a miniature banana on a stick, dipped in chocolate. I noticed a plate of such delicacies hidden at the far end of the well-displayed ice-cream selection. How much for one of those? I left nursing a frozen choco-nana that set me back 1 Q.

The next place I stepped into was a large, under-lit second-hand clothing store. I looked around for help, and encountered a large, aproned woman leaning over a dusty glass checkout counter full of old shoes, kissing the owner. I averted my gave, trying to silently provoke awareness of my presence, and a moment (a long moment) later, the woman asked me if she could help, with a huge smile. After my question, she pointed across the street to an unmarked open double-door in an ambiguous concrete wall.

I held my breath, triple checked both ways and then timed a Bourne Identity style dash through traffic to the other side. There are no stoplights in Antigua, the same number of crosswalks, and quite a vast abundance of motorcycles and tuk-tuks that cut and swerve with exhilarating abandon.

Passing through the doors, I step into a large paved lot and then cross into the gymnasium on the other side. On my way, I pass a long room pumping Spanish rock and filled with Guatemaltecans working out with weights. In the gymnasium, I immediately see that a section at the closer end has been set apart and filled with padded mats; probably twenty or thirty children are practicing acrobatics with trampolines and uneven bars. To my right, the gym proper: a double-wide basket ball court, with a tin roof fifty feet up. There are kids practicing fencing without any equipment, but I can tell what they’re practicing at from their stance and movement. They toss a small block back and forth with each mimed jab, I’m assuming in attempt to coordinate attack and defense. And at the far end of this open, shaded space the wall looms.

There are four wide wooden sections peppered with holds that run all the way to the top. A group of no more than twelve is taking turns belaying and climbing up probably eight or nine routes. And to the right is a short, twelve foot tall bouldering section. It’s set at a good fifteen degree angle (in the negative if you’re on it) and surrounded by ground pads. I scamper over and check it out. Many of the holds have seen a lot of love. Some are wooden, some are worn, and some are polished slick from use. And there’s one hold at the top left that’s designed to look like a human skull. Awesome.

Not two minutes after I plop down and begin working out routes in my head, a young wiry guy in a green spandex bicycling shirt comes over. He strikes up a conversation during which he speaks entirely in English and I attempt to reply exclusively in Spanish. He’s in charge of the wall, which he explains is a job paid by the city of Antigua. He explains that this is Antigua’s public gym. He also explains that the gym is open weekdays from four p.m. to ten p.m. My classes end at four p.m. daily. Mmm…

After a nice introduction, Filipe lets me know that I’m free to come over and top rope with the rest of the group. I thank him, and accept the chalk bag that he sends over with a little climber that couldn’t have been more than ten years old. I traverse in circles until I can’t string more than five moves together.

After a while I wander over and watch as Filipe and some other experienced members belay and time a group of kids who are doing timed ascents. I get the impression that these kids come here a lot. The kid who brought me the chalk earlier comes over and we start talking. He tells me about climbing, I tell him about the bouldering in Alabama, we talk about shoes. There’s a large pile of colorful rental shoes against the wall, but this kid is sporting his own pair, and I’ve brought my own as well. After the crowd dies down, I take a few laps on the wall before thanking Filipe and dipping out. Dinner is served at my house in less than five minutes; I run home. Its representative Guatemalan cuisine: sopa con carne, tortillas, frijoles negros y platanos fritos.  

On Friday Guillermo set me up with a massive load of new grammar theory: present participles and four types of perfect progressive tenses that utilize them, past participles with four tenses for them too. (Pluperfect?!) Nevertheless, I studied a lot on Friday and Saturday and also explored town for the Guatemalan tourism information office (INGUAT). I found the office, and after drilling the attendant for a nearby location where I could freely wander in the forest, he told me about a place called Senderos de Alux. He gave me a flyer, which explained that it was an Ecological Park, located near the nearby village of San Lucas, on the road to Guatemala City. It opened at 8 a.m. Now I had a plan.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

I woke up to my normal school alarm on Sunday at 6:45. I packed a warm long-sleeved shirt, a liter of water, my binoculars, a bird identification book of Central America, paper and pen. It was delightfully chilly in the near-empty Sunday morning streets in Antigua, and I bought peanuts, apples, and bread from street vendors on my way across town to the bus station, behind the open-air market. I found the next bus to “Guate” (one leaves every fifteen minutes or so) and got on. The directions on the flyer said that the road leading up Cerro Alux branched from the highway to Guatemala at around kilometro 26.5, past San Lucas proper.

 

There were only ten or twelve people on the bus when we pulled out of the station, but we stopped at several street corners while crossing through the south end of town. The driver works in close tandem with another guy who is constantly leaning out of the open front door, shouting an abbreviated form of whatever is the bus’s destination, and waving. They honk and shout at approaching street corners, skip them if no one waves back, or alternately stop if someone down the side street starts running. It’s a very sporadic system, but by the time we are leaving the outskirts of the city the bus is full.

People get on and off, on and off all along the highway. Sometimes we stop to let people out at places that have no human development whatsoever, perhaps only a rough staircase carved out of the dirt, climbing up into the forest. There are many fully indigenous people here in Guatemala: like an entirely different social class they speak their own languages, have their own ancient customs and clothing, and a very different way of life that seems so odd in a swiftly developing and globalizing country. They are generally treated like a different class as well; in Guatemala this is the line of social and economical inequality with which politics and government quarrel.

We climb through mountains in the heavy, colorful bus. Cloud forest and temporal jungle is broken occasionally by a busy village. At a rare stoplight I watch an old, barefooted vaquero in a cowboy hat lead a cow down the shoulder of the highway. I watch the kilometer markers, and get off after 26. I’ve been riding for more than twenty minutes. The toll is 5 Q (less than 75 cents.)

As the bus roars away in an uphill labor, the living silence of cloud forest moves in and envelopes me like a blanket, muffling the sounds of man. The next volley of cars breaks it, but I cross four lanes and start up a winding, empty road on the other side of the highway, and the quiet comes back. It’s still early morning, and the air is thick and cool. I ascend in silence.

Halfway up I’m sweating and have to take off my undershirt. I turn and look back down the mountain and can see a cemetery on the adjacent slope, half a mile away. The tombs are rectangular and built above ground, painted all in bright pastels, packed tight and ringed with a high square wall. It looks like a candy honeycomb dropped strangely and starkly in the otherwise dark green vegetation.

A thousand meters before the end of the road signs from Senderos de Alux begin advising against dropping trash. I find this encouraging, normally the roadsides here are very dirty, but there are very few houses along this road, and none as I near the top. The height is great enough to merit the presence of several radio and telephone towers in an open field that I pass by. I also pass a concrete block house with cows in the yard, which on my way back down is thumping with pop music. A radio station built on site, apparently.

I drop down the far side of the mountain for several hundred feet. Along the roadside are numerous flowering shrubs and trees. Many of the flowers are fluted or trumpeted in shape, and I begin to see hummingbirds. As the forest opens into a vast grove of thick, old growth conifers, I see the park entrance. It’s a small, one room wooden hut, and a smiling man in his late-twenties takes my ten Quetzales and wishes me a good morning. I ask for a map and he instructs me to take the outer-most ring of trail for the deepest forest, and best bird-watching. There is no one else in sight.

I take the path down and to the right of the entrance, descending into thick growth almost immediately. The trail is three feet wide, well-maintained, and comprised of packed clay. There are few fallen leaves, and those that have are soft with the morning clouds. I can stalk without making a sound.

And this is when I become aware of the sounds of the hummingbirds. The forest is full of their quick, metallic rattles. Like machineguns set for triple-round bursts, they belt out no less than a series of three sharp clicks, and often a string much longer. I had read that hummingbirds are extremely territorial, but here I witnessed this fact in action. A string of chatter alarmingly nearby causes me to turn, and there in a cluster of tree flowers ten feet away a hovering, blurred organism that initially looks and sounds more like an insect is feeding. And out of nowhere swoops another, spouting the most obscene string of uninterrupted verbal abuse. They chase each other; I mean pursue in the strongest sense of the word. These tiny birds are aggressive. And common, at least in this pristine place. I spend the entire day in the park, completing the widest trail loop, and I see far more hummingbirds than anything else. I spot three species, the White-eared Hummingbird, the Green-Throated Mountain Gem, and a long, orange-bellied species that I can’t identify from the distance, (and given a four second window of observation; hummingbirds don’t stop moving often.)

The map has marks for swings, bridges, and lookouts scattered along the trail. At the first fork of the trail a rudimentary wooden suspension bridge crosses over a steep creek bed. And nearby on my side of the gully is a well-maintained rope swing, judging by the condition of the rope. There is a metal frame seat suspended at the bottom, the knots look good, and when I pull it up I see that the height has been set to match the angle of the hillside: this swing means business. I drop my backpack and hop in.

I grit my teeth expecting to skip on the way down the bank: there is no more than an inch of leeway underneath the seat, but the path is clear. I make a long, slow arc up into the air over the creek bed, and am suddenly frozen in space. To my right the slope of the mountain drops away into temporal jungle: on all sides is vibrant, healthy vegetation, there are thick vines cascading down into the forest floor, and the morning sun has peeked through a hole in the canopy and lit up the whole scene from the inside. I was ecstatic, I took video.

For the rest of the morning and early afternoon (the park closed at four) I wandered slowly along steep trail, often creek-side, watching and just taking it in. I spotted more than ten new species of birds, at one point making five new sightings without taking a step. The forest was very alive. Later in the day I encountered two or three families with a slew of laughing noisy children in tow, but otherwise only raw sounds. I think they were a bit surprised to see a tall, dreaded gringo standing still in the jungle (there was no question with the young kids) but everyone was smiling and friendly. The birds weren’t even very skittish of their laughter; I spent a few minutes in conversation with one dad, sharing my binoculars and talking about the behavior of a flycatcher perched nearby that was performing endless acrobatic loops for us.

I found two of the lookouts built on incidental exposed hillsides in the forest. One was built in the form of a tree house. The view from the top included sound: far below the Panamerican Highway cut suddenly out of the jungle and headed down and away to Guatemala City, the sprawl of which was quite visible in the distance. The contrast was unnerving, after so much time enfolded in warm quiet. I used my binoculars to watch a trio of daredevil bikers carve through traffic and accelerate through turns with an escalating mechanical whine. From that height I could see that the banked concrete edges they were hugging were constructed high over steep, vast forested gulches.

As I hiked the end of the loop steeply uphill towards the park entrance, clouds were gathering overhead and the light took on a strange gray tinge. I knew that behind those clouds night was coming on soon as well, and I was several kilometers from the nearest town, more from my home. I descended the road from the peak of the mountain, dropping into and out of dark, shady sections where trees reached across and encountered one another overhead. At one moment, I heard a loud, raucous chatter high overhead and turned quickly to see three bright green parrots in a tight triangle formation swoop around the hill’s crest, disappearing behind the canopy. There are a variety of parrot and parakeet species in Guatemala, I have no idea what type these were, but the sight was just as exciting. It’s really strange to see parrots in the wild, I had no idea that they were so agile; they slipped quickly across the sky, solid and smooth like doves.

At the highway I lean out on the concrete landing, trying to read the ornate print above the windshield of an oncoming bus. The name of the destination on this one I don’t recognize, but the next is Antigua bound. As it roars into proximity the shouter and I meet eyes, and I put my hand out. They pass and pull to a hard stop thirty yards away, and I run to get on.

I carry a serene state of mind on the ride home. In the turns in the mountains, it’s necessary to grab on to the seat in front of you to avoid spilling into your neighbor’s space. This isn’t a concern now; few people are riding the bus late Sunday afternoon. When I get back to Antigua, I make for the central plaza. My professor had told me that there was to be a religious procession around this time today, and I could hear and see the smoke from las bombas in the airspace over the park. Semana Santa, or Holy Week, is the big time for religious events here in Guatemala, and especially in Antigua, but there are a few before then as well. I encountered the mob several blocks from the town center. However, I made it there in time to hear the head priest of the Templo de Santa Catalina Bobadilla, the huge colonial church located on one whole side of the central plaza, giving the afternoon prayer.

 In front of the church, below the crowded steps where the priest and an army of purple-robed Cucuruchos (devotees) were standing, was a group of perhaps forty more. These men were supporting on their shoulders an immense, wooden (and by all accounts and facial expressions extremely heavy) Anderia representing several images of Christ. The Anderia is like a parade float in function, but is carried, and probably weighs more than an American float packed with Girl Scouts since it’s basically a giant rectangular sculpture with roughly the same perimeter as a small motor-home. 

After the prayer, people were ushered out of the way and the group carried their charge thirty feet forward to the plaza’s corner, maintaining a swaying uniform gait. Behind the float was an entourage of other Cucurochos, some leading ropes keeping spectators out of the path, others waving pots of burning incense, others pushing a generator rigged to the float, powering the many lights onboard. They made a vast, slow-motion turn to face the next adjacent side of the plaza, and then forty fresh violet-dawned men rushed in to take their places. Behind them, a group of twelve or so women followed suit with a proportional float of the Virgin Mary.

The smell of incense and the sounds of thousands of people filled the plaza as I navigated a path through the sea of spectators, towards the north of the city, towards home.