More Guatemala travel - to San Marcos

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.

Chichi et environs

We stayed the night in a small hotel near the market and central square between the two churches [the most beautiful church in the photo.] What we didn’t know was that the night of Easter, music and dancing goes on there – very loud - until 3 a.m. This was a live marimba band who played non-stop, but the traditional music was also well-integrated with much more modern trends (my sister described it as similar to Tex-Mex.) The only unfortunate thing was that we didn’t feel quite safe enough to travel through the dark streets to and from the activity….although it was only a few blocks away. In the light of day that seemed silly, but…. If I’d known about the music I would have arranged with the guide to escort us to and from.
The guide, the young artist from whom Suzanne bought some paintings, and the young man who waited our table, all indigines, were so friendly and open and sweet………..these interactions were a high point of our trip. I am happy that my Spanish has mas o menos progressed to the point that this sort of interaction is possible. Tomas told us that his family lives outside of Chichi in the country, neither of his parents were literate, his father died a few years ago so he is head of the family and has to work as a guide, but he is finishing high school at night.

We then went back to Pana and got hustled by two young guys into taking a private boat for 100Q each to the little “resort” we’d reserved for two nights. (Take the public boats for 15-20Q.) Isla Verde was created by a young woman from Spain over the last three years. It has.a lovely common room, kitchen, deck overlooking the lake, meditation platform and yoga space…..and lots of little cabins strung up the hillside also overlooking the whole lake. The little bathroom of our cabin was charming, open-air, with lots of plants growing into the space. The owner/builder used the concrete parts of all structures in a way reminiscent of the Southwest of the US – free-form, curved shapes.
It was a little expensive by my standards ($175 for 2 people 2 nights and all the excellent meals and help from the staff.) She is interested in hosting workshops there – weaving, yoga, or whatever.
We did quite a bit of relaxing there, though the hottub wasn’t functioning, and we didn’t indulge in the massages offered. In the day time we took small public boats (which are a trip in themselves, as the locals shuttle themselves and various goods from one dock to another) to several villages around the lake. There is a very hippie village there – San Marcos – which we didn’t visit, but we went to San Juan (which I am sort of interested in living in, at some point) where we went to a painter’s workplace and talked with him about his wonderful folk-art paintings, and to a weaving coop which uses all natural dyes, where we shopped in their tienda for lovely scarves and walked through their dye process, and talked with a lovely woman weaver. They use the backstrap loom, like all the other weavers I’ve seen in Guatemala
San Juan is one of the cleanest, quietest villages I’ve been to. We met only two gringos on the street, both volunteers (one with the Peace Corps) in various projects in the area, teaching reproductive choices and women’s rights (one) and helping develop small economic projects (P.C.) Lovely people we talked to, and a very nice restaurant there, as well.
We then walked to the next village – San Pedro – where I took a training for 4 days some months ago. We took a winding way thru the village (evidently known locally for its drug culture) and then got another public launch to Santiago, home of Maximon, the local saint. He’s a cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking saint you can appeal to for curing and other benefits. A tuk tuk took us to his current home (he is passed around the village annually to vs. members of the brotherhood,) and a little boy guided us up the alley and through a curtained doorway to confront Maximon, a few feet from the door. The assembled men quickly pulled it together to receive visitors and for a few quetzals we could take photos, look at the other saints reclining in biers nearby, and see all the plants hanging from the low ceiling, that are used in various parts of the ceremonies (the Curasca among them.) I tried to get more information about the ceremony and Maximon, but there was only one man who spoke Spanish, and that was limited. Suzanne picked up a book about him, though, so I will learn more in the future.
We then backtracked to Antigua the following day, spent a day seeing the sights here, and finished an incredibly lovely 8-day vacation.
It was really lovely to have her here, and to see all these things which I’ve seen before (except for Semana Santa) but from yet another perspective.

Bakc to the Lake, and home again

In the morning I sit in the sun and read and listen to my surroundings, waiting for my friend to wake. There is a bird here with a loud whistle – I have heard it once or twice in Antigua, too – and there are many other birds around in the trees and on the power lines overhead. The church not far from her house begins to boom out its morning sermon and there is a lot of choral singing. A little boy - playing or working on the roof of his house, visible behind hers - keeps calling to his brother. There are even the loud pops of occasional bombas (firecrackers.) For an idyllic place, it seems rather noisy this Sunday morning. When she finally joins me we talk about that – I’ve referred to it before as Imperfect Perfection. But we also talk about it in terms of the spiritual exercise we both follow – that you have to be able to Do Your Thing no matter what’s going on around you, and resisting some annoyance or intrusion only increases the hold it has on you. Essentially one has to accept Guatemala (and anywhere else) for what it is…..and continue to go your way and do what you do, which may or may not affect your surroundings. We talk about her struggles building this place over the years (she no sooner got a huge long retraining wall built around the back part of the property – hiring many men from the community to help her – than Hurricane Stan came along, the water poured off the newly constructed soccer field a ways above her house, and her wall came tumbling down - for instance) and how she feels that a house built in Norway (which she has done) would last a hundred years, but because of the heat and humidity in Guatemala nothing lasts more than ten years. Already one wall of one house is cracked because the foundation has settled, two large trees with roots under the house are buckling the porch, etc. etc. She has become somewhat discouraged, especially after she discovered that some workmen she had trusted were cheating her. So we talk about all this, about creativity, about our experiences with and because of the latihan, and about our relationships with our parents and with our children, as the sun rises in the sky and eventually the inevitable clouds begin to gather. We decide to have some late breakfast before I leave, and she makes me some scrambled eggs with veggies cooked in, and spreads on top of it some sort of red-orange “caviar” out of a toothpaste-type tube she had brought from Norway, made of codfish roe; not really caviar, but a little salty and very delicious. Then about two o’clock we set off to walk me to the truck stop so that I can return to Pana in good time for my shuttle to Antigua, and sort of by surprise she decides to go to Pana for the afternoon, too. I am a little glad that she is with me, as this second pickup has no framework around us (some have a sort of peaked roof made of pipe, which I presume is covered with a tarp when it rains) and therefore there is nothing to hold onto. There are just two low benches down each side, and when the truck starts up it is going twice as fast as the first truck – (i.e downhill) – and I am terrified….each twist and turn of the road at this speed seems to threaten to toss me over the side. I have to just hang on tight to the edge of the truck and look straight ahead into the bottom of the truck so I won’t be as aware of the speed. She suggests I look out at the lovely view toward the lake, but then sees I am pretty tense and says, “Just breathe.” Well, I AM “just breathing” and have gone back to my former mind-set of just giving myself over to God, [the back of the Guate chickenbuses are usually painted with signs like “Cuidame Senor” – Take care of me, Lord] but I wasn’t about to look down at the lake. I decide that if I come back again, and I imagine I will, I’m going to take the INSIDE side of the truck on the way down, and maybe even take the position of one of the little girls in this truck, with my back up against the window. So THIS ride isn’t too fun, at least until we get most of the way down the mountain side so I can enjoy the vistas again (usually I love riding in the back of a truck.) 

Then we walk back into crowded Pana, in the throes of their big weekend fiesta (replete with carnival rides and shooting galleries.) We walk down the stalls of bagged bagels (unfortunately vendedores here don’t seem to have learned the basic principles of good business and have set all their stalls out one after another with the same items, whether textiles and crafts or food, which of course undercuts prices and bores the customers.) I find some wonderful fresh homemade bagged potato chips, she gets some hard chunks of almonds drenched in molasses, and on we go thru the maze of streets, looking for the hotel where I am supposed to meet my shuttle. Of course I see 10,000 textiles and carved items and handbags and so forth that I would like to buy, but I am not in the money-spending mode these days. After locating the shuttle, we walk down to the lake, and see that gorgeous sparkling blue entity stretching out for miles and miles, with a few people bathing themselves on the water’s edge below us, replete with soap, and then swimming, and unfortunately the usual flotsam in the grass below us, ten feet from the water. You do see signs around about putting your trash where it belongs, but noone seems to pay attention – but at least that’s a start. We decide to eat, since it could be seven pm before I get home; but unfortunately choose an Americanized restaurant because it is across the street from my shuttle, and get a not-great meal, but for only $6. At the restaurant is a whole clutch of young Norwegian women, whom she says – after a brief conversation with them – are going to Spanish school in Antigua and starting to volunteer in a kindergarten; something set up by their school. Then my shuttle comes, I say goodbye for now to her, and I have another opportunity to spend three very close hours with nine strangers. 

The girl next to me and I start talking; she is of course going to Spanish school in Antigua and starts tomorrow volunteering in a hospital here where she says babies with cleft palates whose parents can’t afford to take care of them stay until they are three months old and can have the operation! With all my concerns about the importance of touch and about early bonding and it’s affect on later behavior (proclivity to violence, inability to feel empathy, or have good relationships, etc.,) you can imagine how this sounds to me. On the shuttle TO Pana, a girl had mentioned that she had taken a tour of this hospital and that “babies” (she didn’t say what sort or what problem they were in the hospital for) are kept in sort of cages…..! I have been thinking off-handedly about going in to volunteer to hold babies, as volunteers do in hospitals in the US for extra care, but having heard these stories I am determined to go to the hospital this week to learn what I can about volunteering with them until my Spanish gets better. This second shuttle driver is younger and more reckless than my teacher’s husband, (although at least all these shuttles are enclosed vans – usually appearing and sounding in good mechanical order): at one point he is passing busses on a curve, and I make a comment to the other passengers in the back with me, and a young man sitting behind me speaks up to the “chauffeur” in perfect Spanish asking him not to pass on curves and to take care of his passengers. When the guy doesn’t respond, the young man says, “Did you hear me?” and the driver slows down. The hippie guy sitting directly behind me says to the other man that he has been all over C. America and thinks this is the most dangerous road – way worse than Chiapas. I had heard in that parts of Mexico the drivers are crazy and always thought I couldn’t go there on a bus because of that – now I know I’ve already been through the worst!! Although I would NOT do this trip on a chicken bus. Those guys are insane!As you travel you see wrecked and ruined buses over the edge of the cliffs. With all of these “possible danger” issues, however, my feeling is that if I’m not willing to take these occasional risks…………what then? Stay in my house all my life? I will be reasonably cautious, por supuesto! But some risks are necessary to see this incredibly beautiful country and to learn more. All along the highway on my way home are families in the beautiful reds and blues against black or indigo of the traditional clothing, walking back miles and miles from the regional markets. Mothers with wrapped babies, small children, old men…..walking,walking, chatting with each other, carrying things. Such amazingly strong and resilient people!

Back to antigua, and on to San Andres Sematabaj

The drive back from Copan is pleasant and uneventful. We stop once for a bathroom break and to let one of the group off to make his way by some series of local busses to Tikal. We also stop for dinner about half-way at a decent restaurant with delicious limonada con soda (lemonade is made with limes down this way) but I am so broke by this point that I order only 2 tamales, and have to borrow a bit to cover that. As we drive in the dark I find myself saying, “Ah it will be wonderful to be HOME…” and then realize that I am thinking of it this way, which feels rather nice. And it is wonderful. 

Although the weekend was full of realizations and information of various kinds, I think two things stay with me strongly: 1) the importance and pleasure of speaking Spanish well enough to really talk to people. 2) Guatemala outside Antigua (and outside of Guatemala City) doesn’t seem nearly as dangerous as the guidebooks and various information on the internet has led me to believe. THAT is important for any future traveling around that I do. I am also left this morning with the wonderful and well produced CD from the Garifuna man we met, Aurelio Gota (Gotay?) The music is very fast (I believe it’s called Punto, the music and the dance) and vital and his voice is wonderful, and the songs are in the Garifuna language. What a trip! And did I say that my teacher and I are going back to Livingston for the annual Garifuna celebration in Noviembre? 

And then the week goes by in its usual way, and this weekend I leave Antigua to visit my new Subud acquaintance from Norway who lives outside of Panajachel, in a shuttle-bus with three young women, (including one who had traveled to Rio Dulce with us,) my Spanish teacher and her tour-guide husband - having decided not to go it completely on my own, plus they gave me a slightly better price than the other agency – $20 roundtrip. It takes nearly three hours to get to Pana, one more than I thought. I had forgotten how beautiful the drive to Lake Atitlan is – through agricultural areas almost all the way. Fairly large farms - though they appear to be mostly family-owned - in the flat valley, and then smaller ones on the sides of the hills as we get up into the mountains: primarily cabbage, and corn, with some lettuce and some coffee. Once we get to Pana, and let the three girls off at their hotel, my teacher insists on walking with me to help me find the truck that jitneys people up to San Andreas, where my friend lives. Actually this turns out to be a big help as Pana is larger than I remembered, and is having ITs pueblo celebration this weekend – with thousands of people in the streets. I’m not particularly concerned about taking the “jitney” up to San Andreas, though it’s an open truck, but Milvia wants me to call her on her cell as soon as I get there to let her know I have arrived safely. When the truck finally shows, on the unmarked street corner, I hop in with two young women in traditional dress, and then one after another a man with a big sack of something, a boy holding a flat of eggs with his mother and his little brother wrapped in her big shawl, several other women and men with some other parcels, show up and climb in. I had chatted with the first women while we waited, and told them I was visiting a friend in Pana (in part, cautiously, to let them know someone was waiting for me), and I greet all the other arrivals, help to load a bag in for the old man, and complement the boy on his sweet “big brothering.” This is all natural for me to do, but I am aware of my actions as possibly easing my being there, and I think they do, tho I did hear the word “gringa” at one point. Then we take off. 

I was a bit nervous that this would be a wild ride up a steep hill with dropoffs (one of my big fears) but actually the area along the road is richly green and pleasant, not especially steep and it is beautiful looking back at the lake. Various passengers rap the side of the truck and get off or on at various points. When one man gets off, he picks up his big machete off the floor of the truck and takes it with him. If I had been really worried at any point about the potential for being robbed, I might have worried if I’d seen this; but actually I was quite comfortable from the beginning. I am a little surprised there are not more greetings and adios’ between the people, although they are friendly about jostling into each other as the truck goes around sharp corners, and at one point a woman grabs my leg to steady herself and we have a nice warm non-verbal exchange. After about 20 minutes we arrive in San Andreas Semetabaj. I had some thoughts that it would be a tranquil Mayan country village, but the street are wide and paved with interesting fit-together blocks of concrete, there are quite a few tiendas, restaurants and so forth, there are lots of people in the streets, there is a new parque, already somewhat littered, and there is water flowing into the street from the mountainside (and last nite’s rain.) Nonetheless it is quiet in comparison to bustling, touristy Pana. I had not had any response to my email telling her I would be coming, but she had expected me the week before without any communication between us (before I decided to go to Rio Dulce, instead,) so I was pretty sure she would be there waiting for me. Just in case, I have taken some extra money so I could ride back down to Pana and spend the nite in a cheap hotel if need be. I follow her map carefully but manage to get slightly lost anyway. A nice well-dressed man walking with his kids sets me on the right road….which is actually just a double-track trail down off the paved road, some 500’ to a gate with the sign “Casa del Luz” – the name on her map. I knock at the locked gate and after a moment her face appears……..I am lucky she is there because she HADN’T gotten my email and has no idea I was coming. It takes her a few moments to adjust. So we spend the rest of the day and evening together and a good bit of the next morning. I am rather low-key this weekend, fighting off a cold, but for some reason I do very little talking, and she does the majority – talking in particular about her studies for many years now, even when in Norway, of the Mayan Calendar, the Popul Vuh, and various things associated with it. She has sought out Mayan shamen in the Lake Atitlan area, and at an earlier time in Mexico, but doesn’t think too much of most of the ones she’s met because of their focus on blaming other people for the ills that befall one – i.e. black magic. However she has read the work of some Mayan man who became a professor in Mexico, studying and writing on the Popul Vuh (which he said was not a correct translation of Mayan words) which she gravitated to very much, and she has given lectures on the topic in Norway several times. Her vision as she was building her Casa del Luz was that it would be a place where people could come to learn about these things, that she could arrange contacts with local Mayan shamen and visits to villages, particularly for the great numbers of Norwegian visitors that come to Pana and San Andreas because of her Norwegian neighbor and another Norwegian woman who runs a Hospedaje in San Andreas. But I tell her I know several people in Chico who might be interested, as well. Her place is gorgeous. The land it’s on is not large, but there is a lovely lawn-and-trees area just inside the gate, and two houses which were evidently shells when she arrived, but are now just lovely, fairly simple – somewhat Santa Fe/Taos-looking – homes. Very like the style of most homes in Guatemala, but a little more grand, and she has added wonderful pine wood-framed windows (instead of the metal ones other people use) and beautiful paneled doors. The houses both face the gate, one more-or-less behind the other, and there is about 30’ between them. The view from one house is the lawn/garden (with a big pine tree as a centerpiece) and from the other, higher by 15’, over the wall to the coffee finca beyond and across to the mountains that surround the lake 15 miles away. VERY lovely, and her furnishings simple and very beautiful. She has quite a few citrus trees of various types, banana trees, excellent avocados (I haven’t found any good ones in Guate this time of year,) and passionfruit. I have seen the vines many times, in Berkeley and elsewhere, but never have seen the fruit, much less tasted it. The inside of the fruitskin is spongy/fibrous, but within this is a bed of sweet seeds, not unlike a pomegranate, and you crunch the little seeds inside them. Since I had been a bit interested to hear about the orphanage that her Norwegian neighbor has started here in San Andreas, she tells me that it has been funded by various Norwegian organizations, who give a lot in Guatemala, and that it houses eight children who are cared for during the week by one Mayan woman with an aide who stays for the weekend when the main woman goes home. The Norwegian woman who started this is married to a Mayan man, and lives next door to my friend with her husband and four Guatemalan orphans, in a rather lovely turquoise eight-sided concrete house. Her husband’s relatives live in three or four shacks on the property. S. also tells me that there is a more traditional Mayan village a mile or more up the road and that we can walk up there to see it next time I come to visit. My friend has also looked into other projects in this area and says that in general many seem to get started, with great will and enthusiasm, but that few continue; those that do seem to involve more Guatemalans than gringos. She seems to think that many projects just let the government off the hook for taking care of its own people, a philosophy shared by some of my Chico friends. But my thinking is that it is very expensive and requires a lot of expertise to get these projects started: perhaps the best “compromise” is to have NGOs start them, and train people (learning from the locals as well, of course) with the expectation that the government will take them over in time, and certain monies or trades will be locked into that prospect. However, I have to say that doesn’t even happen in the US….witness the program I worked for for four years which foundered and had to change its really useful focus after the initial funding by the Prop.10 organization, in order to fit into government guidelines for MediCal funding. 

So we sit in the garden and then the house, and she talks and talks and I listen. Then we walk down into San Andreas to give me a “tour”. I can’t say the town impresses me much, though it could have its days. It is a rather dark and glowery day today. And the restaurant we decide on is only so-so, but relatively inexpensive. We also walk up to the town cemetery which surprises me in having no statuary of any sort – just rectangular cement boxes with names and dates on them, painted turquoise or rose or white with LOTS of plastic flowers, and some little raised dirt mounds where children are buried. Nevertheless a lovely place with an overgrowth of every sort of plant. Next - back to the lake, and home again.