Trip to San Marcos L.L.
It is beyond beautiful here.................the way we came in from the dock (after a VERY choppy boat-ride with 12 indigenous people with their baskets and bags,) led us through stone covered paths through the banana trees and other vegetation.....very thick and lush, turning here and there through cultivated veggie gardens, coffee plots, everything totally rich and lush and verdant.
We are staying at the hotel of a grey-tressed woman I once met at a music concert in Jocotenango almost a year ago. She has built a lovely place with hammocks on the porch, and for herself a wonderful grand treehouse. She has little indigenous kids running around, her ¨god-children¨ and the whole place is just easy and lovely.
We went up to Blind Lemon's for a hamburger and to use the internet; tonite after dinner the woman and her Argentinian friends will play music. My friend Merri is at a clinic right now, seeing about a possible job. I would love to have a job and live here.
The hippie part of it is like the best of Berkeley thrown willy-nilly in to the jungle, and above this low-lying area, which was sold to the hippies after a Hurricane destroyed everything in the low part 10 yrs ago or so and the indigeneous-Hispanics (mostly indig.) moved their town up a little further, contiguous with this. That area is just a regular Mayan pueblo, but a little cleaner, and more pleasantly meandering than others I´ve seen. But kids of 11 or so trundling huge boulders out of a hole beside the street (i.e. men´s work,) a small group of young kids catching bugs on some plants on the side of the road (starting to interact with them I suddenly remembered a recent warning not to engage with children because of the rumors we gringas try to steal them,) a school in session, the clinic with the moms and babies waiting on the porch, etc. i.e. just a town, like Santa Ana but at least the part I saw more charming.
No howler monkeys, unfortunately, in the San Marcos “jungle”, and no unique singing or noise-making birds, but some evangelical Mayan woman singing over a loudspeaker at 6 am which I could hear clearly from my hotel....which was actually quite lovely........sort of an endless chant in a voice that sounded childlike and innocent but strong. Nice.
Last nite was music by the "wildwoman" I met at the concert at Jocotenango. I was prepared, in my critical way, to not like her...........I am predisposed to dislike these strong outgoing large wild grey haired women, it seems...........but in fact her guitar-playing was very good (all those bar chords up the neck I could never manage) and her voice was strong enough and clear and had a nice quality, and she sang some Billie Holliday and not Mae West but some woman of the 20s and 30s songs that were just a pure delight.........one made me ask her if she knew The Sheik of Araby, because it was of the same genre. Anyway she was a great pleasure.
And then she was joined by some black guy on drums who just happened to be there for his honeymoon with his lovely hippie wife, and an Argentinian man I liked very much, and, unfortunately an Argentinian woman who had a nice clear strong voice and slim body, very beautiful, but her voice just too strident for me.
But the Scene (which Merri described as very "clique-y" tho I didn't see that) was that the woman from the clinic (another big wild-grey-haired woman) came down for the music, with several people in tow.
Twenty-five or so people showed up in this small venue, which the woman (Terri) built.
So that shows you the extent of night life around there, although we met some guys from Australia on the bus back who had been at a different bar/music venue, there.
The whole town seems to be these two parallel walkways from the lake/dock that lead up to a regular street that apparently goes up to Solola which is the border of the regular town. On either side of these walkways are probably 12-16 shops, restaurants, B&Bs, and Centres. And then there is Blind Lemon's at the top and then the town.
A life there would be (for me)....like.....maybe a little work at the clinic, doing Infant Stimulation stuff or possibly counseling with better spanish (which would be hard to achieve since most of the people I would know tend to speak English with each other)....maybe volunteer in the indigenous school up the road a ways. Then I discovered a Therapy Center down by the dock (lovely wood-frame home up from the lake.........which I adore.......I can't believe how much it affects me each time, being by the water) which does past life regression therapy, etc etc etc. I'd be interested in learning more about doing that (I've done a lot on myself, a little with another therapist, and a few sessions with friends), and also maybe doing some of that myself, as well as Astrology....especially now that I've learned to do re-location therapy, and I think that would be a "seller." Anyway so I could do those things, write, adopt some little kids, have a garden. But no pigs, goats, etc. A little too uppity for me, really, tho I like uppity hippie-new age better than uppity-tourist. And these folks still have to deal with insects, mud, rain, blackouts, etc....I mean real things, and more than in Antigua. And days of choppy water when no one can get anywhere.
So it's appealing but not absolutely. It's missing something low-key, comfortable, and warm. My friend's reaction to it all is a bit iffy (I noticed on the whole trip that she and her daughter are much more negative about people, especially men, but everyone, than I am.) But if she goes up there again for a week, I'll go with her and just check things out.
But it would be the ideal, like Antigua, of a place to work with needy folks,while still having your internet, and health food store etc.
And of course it would be a more likely place for a Danceaway, or Auth. Movmt group, or whatever than even Antigua. All this a bit like trying to figure out who you ARE, really - what do I need to live?
Here one year today….September 5th, 2007. Almost two years since my romance with Guatemala began.
It is beyond beautiful here.................the way we came in from the dock (after a VERY choppy boat-ride with 12 indigenous people with their baskets and bags,) led us through stone covered paths through the banana trees and other vegetation.....very thick and lush, turning here and there through cultivated veggie gardens, coffee plots, everything totally rich and lush and verdant.
We are staying at the hotel of a grey-tressed woman I once met at a music concert in Jocotenango almost a year ago. She has built a lovely place with hammocks on the porch, and for herself a wonderful grand treehouse. She has little indigenous kids running around, her ¨god-children¨ and the whole place is just easy and lovely.
We went up to Blind Lemon's for a hamburger and to use the internet; tonite after dinner the woman and her Argentinian friends will play music. My friend Merri is at a clinic right now, seeing about a possible job. I would love to have a job and live here.
The hippie part of it is like the best of Berkeley thrown willy-nilly in to the jungle, and above this low-lying area, which was sold to the hippies after a Hurricane destroyed everything in the low part 10 yrs ago or so and the indigeneous-Hispanics (mostly indig.) moved their town up a little further, contiguous with this. That area is just a regular Mayan pueblo, but a little cleaner, and more pleasantly meandering than others I´ve seen. But kids of 11 or so trundling huge boulders out of a hole beside the street (i.e. men´s work,) a small group of young kids catching bugs on some plants on the side of the road (starting to interact with them I suddenly remembered a recent warning not to engage with children because of the rumors we gringas try to steal them,) a school in session, the clinic with the moms and babies waiting on the porch, etc. i.e. just a town, like Santa Ana but at least the part I saw more charming.
No howler monkeys, unfortunately, in the San Marcos “jungle”, and no unique singing or noise-making birds, but some evangelical Mayan woman singing over a loudspeaker at 6 am which I could hear clearly from my hotel....which was actually quite lovely........sort of an endless chant in a voice that sounded childlike and innocent but strong. Nice.
Last nite was music by the "wildwoman" I met at the concert at Jocotenango. I was prepared, in my critical way, to not like her...........I am predisposed to dislike these strong outgoing large wild grey haired women, it seems...........but in fact her guitar-playing was very good (all those bar chords up the neck I could never manage) and her voice was strong enough and clear and had a nice quality, and she sang some Billie Holliday and not Mae West but some woman of the 20s and 30s songs that were just a pure delight.........one made me ask her if she knew The Sheik of Araby, because it was of the same genre. Anyway she was a great pleasure.
And then she was joined by some black guy on drums who just happened to be there for his honeymoon with his lovely hippie wife, and an Argentinian man I liked very much, and, unfortunately an Argentinian woman who had a nice clear strong voice and slim body, very beautiful, but her voice just too strident for me.
But the Scene (which Merri described as very "clique-y" tho I didn't see that) was that the woman from the clinic (another big wild-grey-haired woman) came down for the music, with several people in tow.
Twenty-five or so people showed up in this small venue, which the woman (Terri) built.
So that shows you the extent of night life around there, although we met some guys from Australia on the bus back who had been at a different bar/music venue, there.
The whole town seems to be these two parallel walkways from the lake/dock that lead up to a regular street that apparently goes up to Solola which is the border of the regular town. On either side of these walkways are probably 12-16 shops, restaurants, B&Bs, and Centres. And then there is Blind Lemon's at the top and then the town.
A life there would be (for me)....like.....maybe a little work at the clinic, doing Infant Stimulation stuff or possibly counseling with better spanish (which would be hard to achieve since most of the people I would know tend to speak English with each other)....maybe volunteer in the indigenous school up the road a ways. Then I discovered a Therapy Center down by the dock (lovely wood-frame home up from the lake.........which I adore.......I can't believe how much it affects me each time, being by the water) which does past life regression therapy, etc etc etc. I'd be interested in learning more about doing that (I've done a lot on myself, a little with another therapist, and a few sessions with friends), and also maybe doing some of that myself, as well as Astrology....especially now that I've learned to do re-location therapy, and I think that would be a "seller." Anyway so I could do those things, write, adopt some little kids, have a garden. But no pigs, goats, etc. A little too uppity for me, really, tho I like uppity hippie-new age better than uppity-tourist. And these folks still have to deal with insects, mud, rain, blackouts, etc....I mean real things, and more than in Antigua. And days of choppy water when no one can get anywhere.
So it's appealing but not absolutely. It's missing something low-key, comfortable, and warm. My friend's reaction to it all is a bit iffy (I noticed on the whole trip that she and her daughter are much more negative about people, especially men, but everyone, than I am.) But if she goes up there again for a week, I'll go with her and just check things out.
But it would be the ideal, like Antigua, of a place to work with needy folks,while still having your internet, and health food store etc.
And of course it would be a more likely place for a Danceaway, or Auth. Movmt group, or whatever than even Antigua. All this a bit like trying to figure out who you ARE, really - what do I need to live?
Here one year today….September 5th, 2007. Almost two years since my romance with Guatemala began.
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