The Journey Ahead

So that’s it.   Lisa and I are finished with our Latin American odyssey.  After a last meal of chicken mole and cheap cervezas in San Cristobal de las Casas, we made a tired descent to the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez to their brand-spanking new airport, and we caught our flight to Mexico City, then to Guadalajara, then to California, aboard Mexicana Airways (by the way, don’t ever fly Mexicana Airways if you can help it).  It was a little sad to come to the end of this leg, yes, but we both had an easier time of it this time around.  Leaving Bogota last November was hard to stomach.  Will we ever get to do this again?  At the time, the future Central American leg was just an idea, I didn’t think it could or would happen, and as such, I sank into a typical post-travels depression.  As an American, I felt it was impossible to go for another round of travel, nobody here ever does that.  But suddenly we were in Costa Rica, traveling again, slipping seamlessly back into the stream of backpacking energy, reminding ourselves how easy it is to do this, how much of an impact these experiences make on our characters, how illuminating it is to remove ourselves from our safe, clean and wealthy communities and see how others live.  This time, departing Chiapas, we’re not looking back in desperation, we’re planning the next journey, confident we’ll be back on the road soon enough.

For now, the journey ahead will be taking the form of graduate school.  Lisa has been accepted at the University of Pennsylvania’s excellent school of nursing, and she’ll be settling into Philadelphia this summer, eating cheese steaks and rooting for the Phillies.  I’ve bamboozled my way into architecture school and will begin my M.Arch. at the Rhode Island School of Design, moving to Providence this fall.  It is altogether deflating to know that Lisa and I won’t be able to settle into the same city for now, but we’re both confident we’ll make it out of school unscathed.  We’ve climbed volcanoes, become lost in third world slums, and hitch-hiked across El Salvador, for god’s sake.  Ok I admit I’m becoming a little verklempt.  Talk amongst yourselves.  Here’s a topic: Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island.  Discuss.

So here we go.  Touchdown in San Jose, Lisa will fly north to Tacoma, WA to help her sister get hitched.  I’ll go camping in Boonville, CA, smoke a cigar, and maybe play some late-night kickball.  We’ll rendezvous with old roommates and good friends, pay our respects to our old stomping grounds, eat enough burritos and drink enough Lagunitas to last through school, and we’ll generally be complete mooches, to friends and family and complete strangers alike.  We’ll move all our belongings to the East Coast and relearn how to shovel snow. Thunderstorms!  Harpoon IPA!  Turnpikes!  Jerry Remy!  This is where the trip gets interesting.  Wish us luck.

Cocodrilos at Sumidero

The very last excursion of our Latin American journey took us to Sumidero Canyon, the proud symbol of the state of Chiapas.   We spurned the tour agencies and went by ourselves, but we probably should have just done the tour: the canyon is hugely popular with Mexican tourists, and there’s no way to get into the canyon without joining a tour boat anyways.  So we didn’t save any money, but we did enjoy the temporary solace of independently exploring what little there is to see in the supporting town of Chiapa de Corzo.  It may not have been the town that was uninteresting, but more the heat: San Cristobal de las Casas is a good thousand meters higher in the mountains, and Chiapa de Corzo is part of the sweltering lowland jungles we’ve strictly avoided.  Humid and hot, no wind.  Nastiness.

We wasted no time in finding the embarcadero.  It is crowded with tourist stalls and boat touts, with a handful of competing companies shouting but none willing to cut prices.  With tickets in hand we were herded together with a large group of Mexican road-trippers and Belgian tourists, handed life preservers, and led to a speedy tour boat.  Lisa and I somehow nabbed two good seats towards the bow; a lot of the Belgians were crowded in the stern with lesser views.  The waters around Chiapa de Corzo are calm and flat.  We pass a few villages on the outskirts of town where kids are swimming and fishing.  The surrounding landscapes are pleasant, nothing special, but nonetheless it feels good to be on the water, moving fast, with wind to cool us down.  There’s a checkpoint for all boats which we pass through, holding our wrists to the air, showing our official wristbands giving us permission to enter.

The cliffs arrive gradually, getting better as we go.  Huge.  Green and shaggy.  Everyone aboard pans their heads in amazement, mouths agape.  Audible ooo’s and ahh’s.  How had I never heard of this place?  On occasion, our captain would swerve the boat towards shore and cut the motor, drifting close to overgrown swamps and flooded woods, where we spot the eyes and long tails of crocodiles lurking near shore.  It would be great to be able to swim here, but I can understand why no one brought their swim trunks.  Further on, we pass underneath one of the highest points, the Peñón de Tepetchia, a cliff from which the local indigenous tribes had once thrown themselves by the thousands to their deaths here below, rather than face capture or execution at the hands of the Spanish.  Yikes.

Further in, we make token stops at a small grotto and a rock formation that’s said to look like a Christmas tree, both underwhelming compared to the surrounding cliffs themselves.  The canyon walls spill open as we navigate into the reservoir at the Chicoasen hydroelectric dam, with lush hilly farmland at shores.  The boat stops and so does the breeze, and we’re all reminded how disturbingly hot it is today.  Smartly, children and women motor over from the village of Osumacinta selling cold waters and beers.  When they’ve made their sale, we begin the journey back – a surprising 20 miles from the dam to the embarcadero.  We stop to stalk a few more crocodiles and soon after see local kids swimming and bathing either unaware or unafraid of the beasts around the corner.

In the tyranny of the midday sun, we’re glad to get back to shore to find shade.  Food options in town looked crummy, so we picked up some ice cream and ate by the colonial brick fountain before hopping a local bus up to the highway.  Here’s where the organized tour would have come in handy, because flagging a mountain-bound bus with available seats from the side of the highway wasn’t as easy as it was in our non-Mexico days.  If they’ve got two spare seats, two people get on board and two only.  No one sitting on stools in the aisles, no enormous Mayan women on your lap, no babies in the luggage racks.  Sadly, we’re reminded that the days of the chicken bus are well behind us.  Luckily it isn’t terribly long before we find a bus with exactly two seats available; the heat and grumpiness was creeping up on us both.  But now it’s just an air conditioned ride into the hills, back to San Cris for another two nights to face the impossible: we are flying home.

A Visit with the Tzotzil

An easier day trip out of San Cristobal de las Casas is a visit to one of many small Mayan villages in the hills surrounding the city.  Lisa and I found a collectivo amidst a traffic clog near the mercado and slowly made it the few miles into the hills, dumped at the central plaza in San Juan Chamula, populated nearly entirely by Tzotzil Maya.  Chamulans are known for their distinctive dress, involving thick black goatskin skirts and ponchos, which almost look to be unfinished gorilla costumes.  The plaza itself doubles as the village market, with typical stalls thrown together haphazardly, a trickle of Tzotzil men and women negotiating prices for the black hairy fabrics.  It seems to be a mark of social status, and so too young children have matching tiny get-ups of their esteemed moms and dads, maybe hand-me-downs.

Beside the plaza we found the tourist office, under the balcony with a gang of stern cowboy-hatted elders leaning on the balustrade staring across the town.  Here, outsiders need to obtain a pass to visit the village church, a very serious affair.  No photographs or videos are permitted inside or in the churchyard; offenders, I suppose, may be subjected to beat-downs and humiliations by those cowboy-hatted elders.  I didn’t know the churchyard rule, so I have a few snaps, oops, got a few nasty looks, but inside I was sure to pocket the camera and not anger anyone else.

There’s a bouncer at the door checking credentials; a couple of his buddies are hanging around for intimidation purposes, or they’re bored.  We stepped inside.  The nave is dim, lit only by scant sunlight from the clerestory and hundreds, thousands of candles scattered about.  There are no pews.  Various wooden shrines sit against the walls, glass-boxed saints adorned with gaudy decor and florescent light; St. John (hence San Juan Chamula), not Jesus, stands at the nave’s focal point.  The floor is covered in pine needles, the aroma mixing with burning incense and wax.  The air is smoky and mysterious, echoing with the murmurs of prayer and ritual.  A duo towards the back, one with a homemade guitar, the other on accordian, play slow, haunting rural melodies, no ending or beginning, tunes perhaps hundreds of years old.

We tiptoed to the front of the nave and sat on the floor out of the way, cautiously observing the rituals.  In the simplest form, someone arrives in the church with a fistful of small candles, adheres them to the floor, and kneels before the lights and their chosen afternoon saint.  Cheap, quick, easy.  Those with some serious prayers to unfold arrive with significantly more candles, larger, of varying colors, as well as a heap of fresh pine needles, purchased at any village market in the area.  Row upon row of lit wax will front a pine needle nest of sorts, and a whole family will sit for an hour or more rattling off various slogans and religious catch phrases.  Not wanting to be outdone, some will hire Mayan healers and soothsayers to accompany their sessions, when old world rituals (swilling of liquors, passing of the hard-boiled egg, blessing of the sodas, beheading of the chicken, etc.) mix with Catholic prayer.  The ultimate prayer package, it seems, involves a whole team of holy men and magic women and hundreds more candles placed at every single shrine in the room and across the nave, with the pine needles and soda and eggs but also with the gentlemen playing music for you and the crazy guy who darts outside every once in a while to set off fireworks.  It might cost a small fortune but you will be the envy of the whole office.

We later hired a cab to take us over to an adjacent valley to the village of Zinacantan, the regional flower powerhouse.  Their church, also off-limits to photography, is less fascinating but smelled great, thanks to the hundreds of fresh bouquets packing the altars.  The town was nearly deserted; we wandered a bit and met little 8-year-old Maria, who has been pulled from school and enlisted by her weaving mother to corral visitors to her home in the hopes of off-loading an abundance of traditional Mayan clothing.  Maria’s a doll.  We strolled with her a bit and couldn’t resist the offer to visit her home; we have nothing else to do.   Maria’s porch was filled with looms and textiles and her extended family: mother, aunties, grandmothers, all helping to string together the wares.  Inside, in a dim entry foyer, Lisa thumbed through some fabrics and huipiles but ultimately decided she didn’t need more things to carry home.  We said thanks but no thanks and waved adios to Maria, Maria’s mom, Maria’s aunties, Maria’s grandmother, and whoever else was hanging around the porch, and they all resumed their weaving, cursing us in Tzotzil under their breath.  Oh well.

What To Do About Palenque?

We debated a couple days what to do about Palenque, the ruined Mayan city in the north of Chiapas.  We had the time to visit, that much was known.  But Palenque is a good five to six hours by bus from San Cristobal, which doesn’t lend itself well to a day trip.  Palenque town, where we’d have to stay, is apparently nothing to look at (for us, usually not a big deal), and is apparently wicked hot (for us, usually a problem).  There was the question of a Do-It-Yourself visit, as we’d done at the ruins of Copan and Tikal, or joining a despised tour, less freedom, more cost, but transportation links a breeze.  There was the question of visiting the nearby waterfalls of Agua Azul and Misol Ha, places we were told are difficult (and dangerous?) to reach by public transit.  There was the question of our gear, which we were damn tired of lugging around on buses now, especially in the Central American heat.

So we broke formation, lost some backpacker street cred, and joined a day tour of Palenque, with stops at the waterfalls, round-trip outta San Cristobal.  What have we become?!

It turned out to be a savvy decision.  We were able to save our steal of a room and leave our packs behind and worry nothing of wasting time on transit connections.  We saved time getting the standard package that included Agua Azul and Misol Ha, convenient stops for us on the way north, now with no need to arrange a separate double-backing visit out of Palenque town.  The amount of time on a moving vehicle that day would be brutal by Central American standards, but by the following morning we’d be glad to get all legs knocked off in one fell swoop.  We figured we’d break even, at best, if we did the trip ourselves with an overnight or two in Palenque town, the humidity of which we wanted nothing to do with.  And because we weren’t traveling onward into Campeche or Tabasco or the Peten, the day tour made the most sense.

The road to Palenque is atrocious, no matter what.  Scenery nice, yes, but the road itself is peppered with potholes and hundreds of speed bumps (I counted over 80 on the leg from Ocosingo to Palenque alone).  Good and safe for the communities the road passes through, but bad for the gringo in the backseat with the bad stomach from last night’s comedor grub.  It was impossible to sleep in those early morning hours to Agua Azul, but we made it, passing through Mexican military checkpoints and EZLN checkpoints and squeezing past an enormous felled tree across the road that men were hacking with machetes.

Agua Azul was pretty cool, a similar but more expansive aquatic scene to Guatemala’s Semuc Champey.  It was more traveled than I had expected, especially by Mexican tourists, whereas Semuc Champey attracted predominantly backpackers (take your pick).  The surrounding hills weren’t as majestic as Semuc Champey, but the waterfalls and cascades were larger and still thunderous.  Though Semuc Champey felt mostly untouched by the advances of civilization, I appreciated the upper reaches of Agua Azul where local kids played on rope swings and old men soaked their feet, and where I caught an accidental glimpse of a pair of aged Mayan boobs (not my first) as I unwittingly wandered too close to a riverside bathing nook.  Did that make us think twice about swimming?  Not at all.  The heat was too oppressive and there wasn’t much else to do anyways.  It took a bit of searching to locate the appropriate swim hole, and though the water isn’t quite turquoise, it really hit the spot.  There was even a lifeguard there (what?!), making sure we didn’t stray too far downstream and over the falls, which must have happened enough for them to hire a lifeguard.

Misol Ha was also pretty cool, a towering waterfall splashing into a deep round pool, with a short hiking path embedded in the cliff behind the falls, leading to a cave complex we had no time or want to explore.  Would have been nice to have a bit more time here to swim, which seemed more convenient and unique than at Agua Azul.  Neither waterfall was quite worth a dedicated trip to see, but they both made for excellent sides to go along with the Palenque entree.

The ruins of Palenque were espectacular.  The ruins are out of the way of most itineraries and so were quiet and free of crowds.  The temples are all huddled close against steep jungled hillsides, many still awaiting full excavation.  The central palace complex is exactly that, complex, with porticos and courtyards and underground mazes, dungeons.  A walled irrigation canal flows nearby and underfoot on our way to another grouping of temples, all with choice views over the city and Mexican landscape beyond.  It all feels so well hidden and protected.  Flat plazas are grassy and dotted with trees.  A temple on the north edge was once home to an eccentric explorer who camped out at the top for years.  A path leads downhill into a residential sector, steep cliffside ruins perched next to the drizzle of a once powerful series of cascades, essentially another Agua Azul or Semuc Champey.  Though here you’re prohibited from swimming in the enticing pools, a damn shame with the crippling heat.  Our only relief came at park closing time, when a swarm of snack touts descended on us in the parking lot offering cold water and mangos.  Too easy.

Another brutal ride back to San Cris, through Ocosingo and over another couple hundred speed bumps.  A long day but it felt great to have seen Palenque and Northern Chiapas, a part of the world we may never have reason to pass through again.

Losing Time

It took us a couple days to realize that when we crossed into Mexico, we lost an hour: Guatemala doesn’t bother with that daylight savings horseplay, while Mexico aligns itself with what we’re used to in el Norte.  So we’ve traveled west but moved a timezone east.  This also means we had checked out of our hostel in Comitan an hour late; in more cash-strapped economies further south, we may have been charged an extra day.  Anyways, now that we’ve got our clocks wound correctly, let me tell you about our time in San Cristobal de las Casas.

San Cristobal de las Casas, in the center of the State of Chiapas, is to be our final stop on our Latin American odyssey.  Beyond here lies only sweltering jungles; Oaxaca and other worthwhile cities are too far and we’ll have to save them for another year.  At first glance, like Comitan, San Cris felt too swank and done-up for my tastes.  The central plaza, the zocolo, was well-manicured and calm, but sterile; the pedestrian streets branching off felt cheesy, as much as I love peatonalismo.  There were ambling Mexican tourists emerging from tour buses and every business, it seemed, existed to serve them only.  It admittedly crossed my mind to cut losses and retreat back to Xela for an extra few days.

But the town very quickly and very surely grew on me.  The climate, for one, is just about perfect, with warm and sunny days and comfortably brisk nights.  The peatonals hid some cool bohemian hangouts and shops, with great food and cafes showing local movies and documentaries nightly.  Live music is everywhere.  Surrounding hills are wooded and calm.  And most significantly, indigenous culture is breaking into mainstream, thanks in large part to the EZLN.

In the mid-1990s, the Zapatista rebellion began here when disgruntled campesinos donning black ski masks and firearms seized control of San Cristobal.  The rebellion was quickly squished by the Mexican military, and the EZLN leaders changed tactics and transformed themselves into a peaceful social movement to promote indigenous rights and culture throughout Mexico and the world.  San Cristobal now hosts a number of EZLN-run cafes and artists collectives, all selling colorful folksy artwork showing masked guerrillas dancing among cows and chickens in the green community plazas of hilltop utopias.  EZLN fair-trade organic coffee is a big hit here, and the Zapatista cause is beginning to become synonymous with slow food and sustainable living.  There are women’s co-ops selling indigenous weavings and helping to combat latino machismo culture.  Little masked Zapatista dolls are on sale at the crafts market.  While they’ve been dismissed as revolutionary failures, the EZLN stresses long-term goals and gradual, steady progress.  At one local EZLN collective, I clunked my spare pesos into a can raising funds for a tractor, which that particular community is hoping to purchase within the next ten years.

For the long week, we planted ourselves at a good deal posada that was in the process of buttering up its decor to transform into a “hotel and spa.”  They’ve got some work to do.  Might want to add doorknobs to the guest rooms.  But the room was cheap and clean, no more expensive than anywhere in Guatemala.  There was a great little roof terrace we had to ourselves for sunsets, which were pretty gangbusters every evening.  We went for jogs up and around the two different cerros in town, and in the streets we caught some indigenous dance performances, a road race and a parade, where women handed out swigs of mezcal.  The most colorful and exciting part of town was the ubiquitous market, packed with carefully stacked fruits and vegetables, stalls of candles, dirt cheap barber shops, stanky meats, heaps of flowers, and traditionally-dressed gold-toofed Mayan men and women reminding us that San Cristobal de las Casas is not so far removed from highland Guatemala, after all.

This is Chiapas?

We passed through Huehuetenango for the third and last time and caught our last Guatemalan chicken bus, this one with a flat screen TV (!?) mounted above the driver’s compartment playing “Predator,” which was filmed in Chiapas, our destination.  Arnold’s opus magnum.  Having left Xela reasonably early, we reached the Mexican border post at La Mesilla by lunchtime, and crossed again on foot.  It was hot; we were both still dressed for Xela’s mountainous climate, and so we arrived in Chiapas a sweaty mess.  We traded the last of our quetzales for pesos and found a shared taxi heading to Ciudad Cuauhtemoc, not a ciudad at all but an oddly quiet handful of buildings there only to serve the drizzle of traffic passing from Guatemala to Mexico or vice versa.  I don’t know the exact rules, but it seems Guatemalans are not allowed to cross into Mexico easily (or they just can’t afford to travel), in an effort to halt the wave of Central American migrants looking for better opportunities in the North.  Mexicans, on the other hand, seem to be able to afford driving private automobiles for their vacations, and so it was a bit of a wait in Cuauhtemoc for a public bus.  No more chicken buses hustling you on board, no more ladies selling bagged mangos, no kids hawking sodas and agua, amigo, agua a cinco a cinco a cinco.

Chiapas, though the poorest state in Mexico, immediately feels swank compared to Guatemala.  We had eventually caught a collectivo to the city of Comitan, and just 10km from arrival, the van broke down.  If this were Guatemala, the van wouldn’t break down, it would be packed with twice as many bodies as seatbelts and would somehow arrive in Comitan in record time.  But if this were Guatemala and it did really break down, we’d be on our own and have to flag a new ride from the side of the highway.  Here in Mexico, the van sat dead for only ten minutes, when a second colectivo arrived, radioed to collect us, and we were on our way, no worries.  They probably wrote up a report about the incident and submitted it to their suggestions bureau to scan and file and present in PowerPoint.

Comitan was surprising.  Arriving late in the afternoon, we hoofed into the center and were amazed at how clean everything was.  No litter in the streets, no dogshit, no potholes on the sidewalk.  A tourism agent met us and eagerly told us of all the exciting things there were to see in and around Comitan.  The plaza was filled with middle-class Mexicans, strolling confidently, leisurely.  Fountains and manicured trees.  Expensive cars passed by slowly and stopped to let us cross the street.  Contemporary art sculptures here and there. This is Chiapas?  This is the poorest state in Mexico?  We found an excellent hostel and were glad when the price was comparable to Guatemala, and we enjoyed a couple tipico chicken dishes on the plaza, then ice cream, sitting on the steps watching the local teenagers gather to plan their night.  Historic buildings were dramatically illuminated.  I could live here, I think.  Alright, at least for a few weeks.  We stayed a night and had a slow morning sitting by the church with coffee, and we visited a small archeology museum before walking west to the Panamerican to find a bus.  Now it’s on to San Cristobal de las Casas, our last stop of the trip.

Last Days in Guatemala

We tricked Pat and Susannah into riding in style to Lake Atitlan in a typical Central American chicken bus.  They had wanted to take one of the direct tourist shuttles for twice the price, understandable given they’re on a vacation from stressful jobs.  Lisa and I had nervously taken a chicken bus from Guatemala City to Lake Atitlan back in 2006 and the 3-hour ride ended up being a small highlight of the whole trip, a rolling glimpse of rugged highland life.  We’ve avoided tourist shuttles ever since, and didn’t think it proper to let our friends miss the experience, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.  It’ll be remembered, good or bad, that’s all that matters.  We were lucky to catch the one daily direct bus from Antigua to Panajachel, so we wouldn’t need to change at Chimaltenango or Los Encuentros, which could have got messy.  We also each had a seat, though some of us were three across sharing with Mayan ladies and (very smelly) babies.  We were also lucky to have excellent weather, considering the storms we’d seen in Antigua and the thick cloud cover Lisa and I had passed through on the Panamerican heading east.  The highlands have beautiful countryside and the views on curving descent through Solola towards the lake shore are phenomenal.

Panajachel was more of a tourist dump than I had remembered it; more buildings have popped up and each one seems the same, touting junk souvenirs and overpriced cerveza.  Too many places to stay and eat and too few tourists to go around.  It was, however, nice to see our first ever Latin American hostel, Mario’s Rooms on Calle Santander, and the first glimpse of the volcanos from the embarcadero was just as exhilarating as it was in oh six.  We jumped a launch and set out on the flat lake towards the cliffside villa hotel that will be our home for the next three nights: Casa del Mundo.

Casa del Mundo was built from scratch over the course of a decade by a savvy couple from Alaska.  It is an amazing spot, just outside of Jaibalito village, perched almost impossibly on a steep cliff, covered in unplanned gardens, stone stairwells and sunny terraces.  The view across the lake is unobstructed; service is excellent, but not to the point where it made us grubby backpackers feel uncomfortable.  Casa del Mundo still prides itself on being a budget villa, if such a thing exists; the prices on doubles with shared bathrooms equal what we paid for that 8-bed dorm in Santiago, Chile.  Though their family dinner is a crummy deal and not filling, their breakfast and lunch menu makes up for it.  The terraces by the water make for great lake jumping, and the water is excellently refreshing (if not perfectly clean).

After the third day, we parted ways with our Marblehead commandos.  They all headed back to Panajachel and to the Guatemala City airport, where they caught a flight north to see the ruins of Tikal, which Lisa and I had seen in 2006.  Lisa and I stayed the afternoon at Casa del Mundo, swimming and reading, hiking the surprisingly extensive grounds uphill past the solar array to the Santa Cruz trail and an excellent mirador.  It would have been nice to hike more, but in Xela we’d heard some bad firsthand stories of serious robberies along the lakeshores; probably would have been okay, but we’ll be back someday.  When we were ready, we packed up and hailed the launch and moved to San Marcos, a village that attracts the same holistic new age types that populate Big Sur.  The settlement is almost indiscernible from the water, nestled among trees, low and flat underneath the ragged mountain backdrop. There is a feeling that this is a place the locals want to keep secret from both the real estate developers and the backpacking hordes.  There is only one vehicular road; most pathways are narrow pedestrian meanderings, lined with hedges or bamboo fences, or sometimes cutting through a crop of coffee.  Various budget meditative retreats and organic back-to-the-earth cafe food is on offer, and little gringo love children and first generation mestizo rugrats, long haired and shoeless, scamper around the village square with the local Mayan kids.  It’s a relaxing town, and it’s a place people visit for a few days and end up staying a few years.  We didn’t get too carried away though, and spent only a night, hunting for sleepy restaurants through the dark alleys with our headlamps and falling asleep to the booms of fireworks from the church celebration.

The next morning, we caught a launch to San Pedro and found a fresh chicken bus waiting to depart for Xela.  The road climbing out of Lake Atitlan’s crater was just as beautiful as the descent through Solola, with too many switchbacks to count.  The route gave us the opportunity to pass through a few other hillside settlements before the bus climbed north to the Panamerican, hooked a left, and brought us back to the volcanic valleys of Quetzaltenango.  We posted up a night at Gato Negro hostel and got the last of our errands done in preparation for the last stage of our trip: Chiapas, Mexico.

Que te vaya bien, Guatemala.

Earthquake, Lightning, Volcano

We left Xela to meet my old Marblehead chaps in Antigua, a town Lisa and I had first visited in 2006.  Back then, we were on our first trip into Latin America, a 10-day escape from work.  As we’re packing up our things in Xela, we wonder how we’ll react to Antigua the second time through, having traveled through so many other Spanish colonial towns in Latin America in the past year.  Antigua has a reputation, now as well as in 2006, as lacking true Guatemalan authenticity, a town that has swept much of its grime under the rug and become a magnet for package tourism.  Xela gives Antigua a lot of shit for it.  Streets are clean, crime is low, and seemingly every business in town is out to make a quick buck off you.  That’s how we remembered it, but in 2006, we didn’t care; it was still new and wild, the architecture was muy tranquilo and the volcanoes surrounding the town creeped me out.  It was great.

When we arrived for the second visit, I was glad to find that I wasn’t horrendously jaded.  Antigua is still packed (packed) with tourists, perhaps moreso than I remembered, but there’s still a strong Guatemalan presence – the central plaza is filled with young students, the hectic market is packed with Mayan produce, and the danger of being robbed is still as present as it would be in Xela or San Salvador.  It is hard to ever be too upset with Antigua; the colonial haciendas are beautiful, the volcanoes are huge, and the food is a tasty treat.

Alex was the first to arrive, getting some light traveling under his belt before starting business school in New York City.  We battled the crowds in the vibrant Saturday market, ate heaping tipico dishes at a place called Traveler’s Menu, and explored a couple ruined churches, including one off the map where lived a middle-aged couple who unlocked the gate and gave us a tour.  Their tiny shack of rusted corrugated aluminum was incorporated into the ancient felled stonework; how and why they came to live here we didn’t find out.

Pat and Susannah arrived a day later, both on a 10-day break from their jobs.  After showing them around town, we all decided we’d spend our Sunday evening climbing the active Volcan Pacaya.  Lisa and I had really enjoyed our climb in 2006, scampering across  a glowing-red lava field to a slow tumbling lava river, the cone above erupting and spewing red chunks of rock against the night sky, like how I’d always imagined a volcano to be.  The air was clear and crisp, and we escaped with only partially melted sneakers.  This time was completely different.  We had ignored the fact that every day so far in Antigua it rained in the late afternoon and evening.  We had dismissed the sight of ambulances screaming ahead of us as we approached the mountain.  We had seemed to forget that we’d been woken up that morning by a 5.4 earthquake.  Are we pushing our luck?

Just as we got to the trailhead, the sky opened up, of course, and the little junior touts renting hiking sticks and flashlights made a small fortune selling gringos like Alejandro from Brooklyn a makeshift rain poncho.  Halfway up the trail, pouring rain, lightning struck nearby, maybe within 25 yards, an enormously loud explosion followed by a solid two seconds of what sounded like machine gun fire.  We all ducked, cursed, and looked back, thinking it might be best to call it quits – people have been killed by lightning here.  We were still under the treeline and we knew the top would be bare.  But as expected, our guide brushed it off, no big deal, don’t worry.  Vamos, let’s continue onward, hiking upwards into a thunderstorm on top of a volcano.  Sure.

Making a traverse of the summit grasslands, my knees were ready to give out with any slight flash in the sky or from someone’s camera.  I walked hunched over, as if that extra foot would deter any more lightning.  Idiot.  The storm seemed to have passed though, and we entered the lava field in blustery starts and stops of fat rain.  We were in a cloud, so visibility was low; single file, we followed other groups ahead of us uphill over a moonscape of dark sharp volcanic rocks.  30 minutes up, skirting the side of the main cone that Lisa and I hadn’t been able to get close to in 2006 (violent unpredictable eruptions), we reach a small crag smoking with lava and we’re able to see the glowing red in the cracks under our feet.  The thick cloud cover meant no view of the new lava river, unfortunately, but the landscape all around us was spectacularly terrifying.  All the rainwater that had fallen was now evaporating from the cracks and chasms of the lava-filled cone.  It was beautiful to stand in the middle of it all, but naturally none of us thought it was a good idea to stay long.  We began the descent, joining another group as our guide stayed behind to help a pair of less mobile Israeli girls.  Reentering the cloudforest, the storm picked up again and turned the trail into a muddy mess.  We hurried down to dodge any more lightning and to beat the dwindling light.  We reached the base completely soaked to the core.

We were lucky, though, as we found out the next morning, on the front page of the paper, that two people had died at the top, reason for all the ambulances we’d seen.  From what I can understand, Pacaya erupted, or at least made a belch, causing a group to panic and run, which is never easy in the lava field, but it’s probably what you should do, right, if the volcano you’re on begins to rumble.  A woman from Venezuela fell and hit her head on one of the many razor sharp rocks, and died.  Her young guide tried to help her, triggered a small rockslide, and also died.  Others were injured, I think.  But that didn’t stop any of the tour agencies from running the trip that day, or even mentioning that accidents had happened; perhaps they should have, but this isn’t the United States.  Back home, we wouldn’t be able to do this at all, or if we were, there’d be a paved trail to the top and we’d need to sign waivers and pay $100 each.  This is Guatemala, we paid $10, these guides probably get a fifth of that, and they’ll understandably jump at any chance to take more people to Pacaya, eruptions, rockslides, lightning storms aside.  That’s all part of the adventure, I guess.

Quetzaltenango (El Departamento)

Xela itself is, at most, half the reason people visit; the surrounding lands in the department of Quetzaltenango make for great excursions, with vibrant hilltowns and excellent hiking nearby.  Here are some of the things we did.

- We visited the village of San Cristobal Totonicapan during Semana Santa, where elaborate Passion plays are put on in the town square, attended by thousands.  There were two separate plays in progress when we arrived, perhaps rival thespian troupes touting the best gore and blood for your money.  A carpet was in progress in front of the bright yellow church, some teenagers patting down the colored sawdust as others walked around with water sprayers to keep the thing from blowing away.  A graffiti artist was spray painting a stenciled image of Christ in the center, which sort of resembled the classic Che Guevara icon.

- We visited the town of Zunil, beautifully situated in a green canyon with an outstanding view of Volcan Santa Maria.  We hired a pickup truck to take us up into the mountains to the alright hot springs of Fuentes Georginas, almost too hot to properly relax.  The ride up from Zunil was my favorite part of the trip, as the 10k road winds through outstandingly serene mountain farmland, fresh onions stacked and ready to be hauled away.

As I’ve said before, there is no better way to travel in Central America than in the back of a pickup truck – you can go for a dollar or two cheaper with a tour agency in Xela, but you’ll be stuck in a shuttle with tinted windows the whole way.

- We climbed the perfect cone of Volcan Santa Maria, beginning at midnight, reaching the summit at 5 a.m. in time to see the sunrise.

The hike was outstanding, and might be the individual highlight of this Central American leg.  The view at the top was epic.  To the east, the sillouettes of the volcanoes around Antigua and Atitlan, Volcan Fuego erupting in the early morning orange glow.

To the north, dark mountains protruding from a sea of clouds covering Xela and Zunil, the Cuchumatanes off in the distance.  To the west, illuminated volcanoes reaching the Mexican border and the triangular shadow of Santa Maria creeping over an ocean of billowy clouds that wraps around to the south, the great spine of volcanoes spilling off towards the Pacific.

We returned a couple weeks later to do some exploring on our own, following a trail circumnavigating the cone in search of the attached Santiaguito Volcano, one of three active in Guatemala, but we turned back when heavy fog poured in from the coast.  We found an alternate exit trail from Santa Maria which was unexpectedly beautiful, following the path towards the shelved farmlands west of the volcano, where we asked farmers for directions and descended to Llano del Pinal with groups of campesinos finishing their day’s work in the fields.

- We visited what is said to be the largest market in Central America, the Friday Market of San Francisco El Alto, where the entire hilltown is packed with stalls selling everything you could ever want.  The municipal soccer pitch is converted to an animal market, where campesinos negotiate prices for bone-thin cows, confused sheep, and sacks of geese, all done in a way that hasn’t changed for thousands of years.  It is not a place for PETA.

The lowlight of the excursion was the usually breathtaking produce section, always the most crowded, where I was very nearly pick-pocketed.  At a crowded juncture of stall-filled alleys, a few Mayan women charged ahead of Lisa and me, stopping in front of Lisa and subtley but purposefully hip-checking her backwards, both of us stopped in what appeared to a heavy crush of human traffic.  With my hand hooked on my right pocket, I felt a banknote slowly begin to exit, and with my other hand, I tucked it back in the pocket, looked over my shoulder and came face-to-face with the thief, a man in his 50s.  We looked at each other awkwardly, he knowing he’d been caught, me giving a nervous nice try look that really hid my fear of being knifed as the man was clearly frustrated in his failure.  But Lisa and I managed to slip away down the street, all items accounted for.  Lisa’s teacher Carlos had accompanied us that day, and he told us that the school used to run field trips to this market every week until too many students got robbed.

In the same section earlier, a little old lady selling beans had warned us of thieves, and I believe in a similar crush of bodies I had felt my back pockets picked.  But I don’t ever carry anything in there besides wads of toilet paper, for those classic Latin American moments, when, you know, your bowels disintegrate and you need to rush to the nearest hole in the ground.  So somewhere in San Francisco El Alto, someone is having themselves a nice comfortable shit, courtesy of my old emergency stash of Scott’s Quilted Two-Ply.

Quetzaltenango (La Ciudad)

We arrived in the city of Quetzaltenango, better known as Xela, for an extended stay.  Xela will be this leg’s Sucre, in a way.  Its downtown is no UNESCO World Heritage Site, but the city has a dignified and rebellious aire, once the capital of the independent republic of Los Altos, and the birthplace of Jacabo Arbenz.  It attracts a fraction of the tourist hordes as does its rival Antigua, and for that, it retains much of its raw Guatemalan character.  Like Sucre, it’s a common place for travelers to stay long term, either studying or volunteering or hiking.  Zona 1, a gritty old colonial quarter, feels a lot like parts of Santiago, Chile, with a growing bohemian culture that makes you want to buy that crumbling hacienda and turn it into a microbrewery.  Anyways, here’s a summary of what our life was like in the month we spent in Xela.

- We studied Spanish at Celas Maya, a well-organized school with an excellent, leafy facility.  My teacher, a gold-toothed Mayan woman named Antoinetta, was a tremendous help, focusing less on grammar rules and more on developing conversational skills and building vocabulary.

The best discussions were about modern Guatemalan culture – we talked about corruption in politics, the lasting effects of the 1954 CIA coup, environmental concerns in Xela, and the difficulties of Guatemalan citizens of supporting their families.  Lisa’s teacher has a husband working illegally in Los Angeles who she hadn’t seen in over a decade; Antoinetta has family in Worcester, MA who she’s never been able to visit.  Just the application for a tourist visa to the United States costs upwards of $250, and since only about 1 in 100 are awarded visas, only the wealthy ever try for one.  I finished many class sessions feeling incredibly spoiled, needless to say.

- We stayed at El Puente Guesthouse, owned by Celas Maya and attached to the school facility.  We had considered a homestay, but ultimately wanted the freedom to eat whenever and wherever (and whatever) we wanted, having heard a few complaints from other travelers about their daily diets.  El Puente was fairly basic but with only four rooms, the kitchens and bathrooms were never overrun with the junky sort of backpackers who tend to populate budget haunts (I’m looking at you, Casa Argentina).  Lisa and I learned how to make tipico foods and we created some excellent meals in the kitchen with fresh tortillas and fried plantains.

There was a small shady yard and a very kind and very tiny woman who ran the place; she had Lisa try on her traditional Maya clothes on our final morning.

- We volunteered at the fledgling non-profit El Nahual, a newly constructed facility on the fringes of the city, where the underprivileged kids of Xela were more likely to attend the free daily English lessons.  Problem was that as an organization that depends wholly on its volunteers, very few gringos made it out this far to help, as there are many other volunteering options closer to the center.  It wasn’t the most organized of schools, either, but they’re at least making an effort.  Lisa and I helped a few days in the daily afternoon sessions teaching basic English to kids aged 3 to 12, though at times it felt more like daycare.  One kid looked to be like 6 months old, everyone called him “Bebe,” but he was actually 3.  He didn’t speak a word, smiled constantly, and scribbled drawings on scrap paper, on the desk, and on my shins.  He wore an enormous red hat and what seemed to be a snow suit.  He was short enough that he could walk across the classroom underneath all the desks without ducking.  Glenda was the top student, but often impatient with the younger kids; her little brother David, the macho man, concentrated most on recess games of soccer in a rubble-strewn yard, where he and I often lost, outnumbered, against a team of all girls.  David also sucked at defense.

Estrella was up and down, smiling and goofy one minute, choosing “happy” as her mystery hangman word, and then throwing a temper tantrum the next minute, often when her bitter rival Glenda was absorbing our attention.  Emilia was incredibly shy, but we managed to get her up in front of the class during a hilarious game of charades, where, back to the board and head down in stage fright, she let out a subtle hisssssss and the whole class shouted “snake! snake!” and she returned to her seat proud and grinning.

- Through El Nahual, I also spent a terrifying day teaching English at a nearby public middle school.  I was thrown into the first class by myself, no other teacher around, with a shell of a lesson plan, in front of 30 young teenagers determined to pay as little attention to me as possible.  We reviewed vocabulary and played some competitive pictionary, where I managed to coax the cool kids out of the back of the classroom to fidget and moan nervously as they failed to illustrate the word “boring” on the whiteboard.  It was a riot, and I left on a high note.  I sat through recess with my other shell-shocked gringos, and taught a second class the same material alongside a very earnest Ms. Rebecca, the both of us having a disastrous time getting kids to participate.  A clique of girls up front and two outgoing boys were the only bright spots that afternoon; in the back of the classroom, kids dealt cards, listened to music, read the sports section, and one boy heavily caressed his girlfriend, who looked to be really mad at him.  Baby, take me back!  I’ve changed!  In the center of the room, one boy sat perfectly still and motionless, staring straight ahead, making no sound, voted by his classmates most likely to kill his gringo English teacher Elias.  Their regular teacher returned to the classroom early, and instead of commanding control of the class, she joined the gossiping kids in back, adding to the difficulty of teaching Xela teenagers the joy of descriptive adjectives.  Que desastre.

- We caught a soccer match, home favorites Xelaju MC besting defending league champs Municipal 2-1.  It had all the fun of a typical Latin American soccer match, smoke bombs and fireworks and constant chanting, taunting.  The Super Chivos are currently vying for first place in the league on the strength of their defense, but their shoddy strikers may eventually be their undoing.

- As the rest of the world went to Antigua, we spent Semana Santa in Xela and enjoyed what we saw.  The week kicks off with a mocking parade of protest, a student tradition for decades once more serious, demanding an end to government corruption.  Hooded students visit the homes of the rich and demand donations that, in theory, go to the poor; those who don’t give money have their homes vandalized and painted.  On the Friday afternoon before spring break, the students parade through the city with floats depicting various public enemies in handcuffs – Presidente Alvaro Colom, George W. Bush, among others.  With their motorcycles wrapped in newsprint and faces masked, they solicit more donations from the crowd “for the poor,” especially from gringos, and they soak everyone with squirt guns, donation or not.

It is unclear whether these donations find their way to the right hands, as most of the students spend the money on booze all night.  Though it’s mostly in good fun, it’s always unnerving having a hooded man on motorcycle in Central America demand your cash.

The rest of Semana Santa is more somber, with religious processions lumbering through the city and drawing huge crowds.  It is an impressive sight to see upwards of a hundred purple-robed men shoulder a huge, bus-sized float dedicated to Jesus, turning around tight corners, all stepping and swaying in unison, wearing funny smurfy hats.  Women in Mayan dress follow behind with smaller floats, just as heavy, and a brass band plays music fit for funerals.

At night, to keep the electric halos alive, a man tows a loud generator behind the whole team.

Occasionally we’d see a pairs of young Mormon missionaires trying to convert people in the middle of the mess, daringly.  “Carpets” of colored sawdust are laid in the street in intricate patterns for these processions to shuffle over, each of them taking many hours, sometimes days, to complete, just a few seconds to destory.  It is all so ridiculous, but so is painting Easter eggs and eating chocoate bunnies.  Whether you buy into religion or not, you have to respect the proper dedication of time these communities give to religious procedures, trumping their daily jobs or an afternoon on the golf course.  It’d be a sight to see the Catholics in Marblehead march for days carrying enormous and bloody Christ mannequins through the streets.