Final thoughts from Guatemala (August 13, 2008)

I want to remember the corn growing up the sides of mountains that look too steep to climb. I can't imagine what effort it must take to plant corn on such slopes, nor to harvest it. I can't imagine a life that makes such effort worth the return. I know that clearing forest to plant the corn worsens erosion and shrinks natural habitat, but the corn looks beautiful as it spills down the hillsides.


I want to remember the vibrancy of the Chichicastenango market, the colorful fabrics, the beautiful vegetables and fruits, and most of all the nearly hidden middle of the market where the local people cook and eat and shop and sell for themselves, not just the tourists. I had the best fried chicken of my life in the center of Chichi's Thursday market, and the following day a delicious traditional breakfast of eggs and beans. They came with chile powder and jalapeños as optional condiments, the chile powder described as "picante" (spicy), and the fresh sliced jalapeños described as "non picante" (not spicy). I want to remember the essential sound of Chichi's market - the clapping arising from so many women continuously making fresh corn tortillas by hand throughout the day. Fresh corn tortillas come with every meal here, as well they should.



I want to remember how many things are transported by carrying or by bicycle here. Giant loads of cloths or other street stand goods are bundled up into blankets, or large baskets in turn wrapped in blankets. With creative tying, the ends of the blankets are brought across the shoulders and chest, or sometimes the forehead, and then walked down the street. I don't know how much some of those bundles weighed, but I'm sure the weight they carry with their bodies would put our strength to shame. No ergonomic considerations here, no workers comp or sense that something might be too heavy or too hard to carry. It just gets done, because it has to, and frequently happens over steep hills that we Americans breathe heavily while walking up when we're not carrying anything.

I want to remember how frustrating it is to only be able to understand so much, and to say even less. My Spanish improved throughout the trip, but I would like to know more before returning to a Spanish speaking country. I am learning to formulate my questions, but am missing a lot of the language structure that I think would help. Living in California, it probably is about time I really tried to learn some Spanish.

I want to remember how beautiful the mountains and valleys and volcanoes of Guatemala are. The pine forests of the highlands, the jungle of the lowlands, and the pervasive farmlands each have their own personality and their own draw. The jungle in particular grows plants and animals in sizes and shapes I'm thoroughly not used to. Toucans with their giant beaks and tiny streamlined bodies, howler monkeys that sound like dying or injured animals at 3 o'clock in the morning, the gigantic larvae of something, the funny lizard guy that ran upright on two legs when startled, an insect that makes sounds like a sprinkler alternating with an electric wood saw...



I want to remember how to make traveling days part of the adventure, to be happy with a space on the bus even if it's only half a seat, and to be willing to just go with what happens because sometimes you just can't figure out what's going on. I want to remember that fruit should always be mouthwatering, that tortillas should always be hot off the griddle, that lemonade should always be fresh, and the milk for your coffee served steamed. I want to remember that taking a complete break from work is refreshing, invigorating, renewing, and healthy.

To adventures, journeys, and experiences...

Lessons and moments from Antigua and beyond (August 6, 2008)

(reposted from email earlier this summer)

Hi all! Been a bit of time since I've had enough internet access to write out a letter, but I have kept track of some moments to share. Enjoy. :)

Lessons and Moments from Livingston, Antigua, Pacaya volcano, Coban, Semuc Champey, and On the Road:

-- When life puts a Mayan woman with chile spiced mango in your path, buy it, and get it Guatemalan style, with lime and salt and chile powder and that other seasoning that's so good. Eat it, and try not to moan too loudly in public. Go back for "uno mas" (one more).

-- Sometimes when you buy a ticket for a tour, you get a seat on the bus. Sometimes you only get half a seat.

-- Seeing numerous Guatemalan men in drag dancing together in the street is both highly unexpected and entertaining.

-- I have now been about three feet away from molten rock on an active volcano. Just how thick is that cooled crust on the lava flow, again?

-- Boys no more than 10 years old are perfectly capable of riding horses, renting them to tourists, and guiding them up and down a volcano.

-- If arriving in Antigua in a downpour, wear sandals or waders, or your hiking boots are likely to take several days for the street juice to dry out. (Street? What street? I see a river!)

-- Do not stay at a hostel named "Jungle Party."

-- Sometimes having a whole fish in your soup is a good thing.

-- Not having water in your hostel for 12 hours straight is a bad thing.

-- Hot showers should be thoroughly and utterly appreciated whenever they're available.

-- Natural pools you can swim in on top of a natural limestone bridge are both stunningly beautiful and the perfect temperature. Climbing down a rope ladder to crawl behind a waterfall and along a raging river that is boiling back up after plunging underground several hundred feet is a little less serene than the swimming, but an unforgettable experience.

-- Fireflies!

-- "Free internet" means you can never get on it because the line's always too long.

-- I have now ridden on one bus with fried chicken, three buses with live chickens, and one true "chicken bus" (that we actually managed to find and it took us to the right place, and a fellow passenger made sure we got off!). The chicken buses are all old American school buses. The "luxury" buses are all old Greyhounds. All of the drivers are crazy.

-- On every bus ride, something happens that makes me realize I have no idea what's going on.

-- Sleeping in a treehouse is FUN.

-- If you are actually from Louisville, Kentucky, you pronounce it LOO-ih-vul, with a nearly non-existent "ih" sound, and swallowing the "vul."

-- When you order lemonade here, it's always fresh.

-- A small rip in your jeans can very quickly become large when you take a big step (this is mainly a problem when the rip is horizontal along the back and would make for a very short pair of shorts).

-- Bats are cool. Bat guano combined with cave muck all over the one remaining pair of pants is not so cool.

-- La grande cuchara es para frijoles, y la pequeña cuchara es para la crema (the big spoon is for the beans, and the little spoon is for the cream).

-- Construction, even that tossing very large rocks down a hillside towards the road, stops for nothing and no one. The bus simply waits for a period when only small rocks are tumbling down, and then floors it.

-- A 15 person van (minibus) holds at least 25 people.

I can't believe I'm coming home in less than a week!

Tikal is amazing (July 28, 2008)

(reprinted from email this summer)

Hello all!

Life in Guatemala is definitely an adventure, particularly the getting money part. Not only are ATMs more often broken than not, they also run out of money pretty quickly, and most commonly only accept Visa/Plus and both Lacey and I have Mastercard/Star. :P We are learning to acquire a good chunk of money when possible, and not assume that getting it will be easy.

It's all part of the adventure though, and we are having a great adventure. We went up to Tikal 

this weekend, and two hours in the afternoon of my birthday were spent wandering around the "Gran Plaza" of Tikal, sitting on the top of one of the pyramids, and watching dusk come and all the birds fly by and call out, and the insects get louder and the monkeys call too. It was pretty 

magical. At dinner afterwards, a family (from Quebec?) who had heard it was my birthday up on the pyramid and was then sitting at the table next to us, came over and wished me a happy 

birthday and bought Lacey and I "limonadas" (lemonades). It was very nice of them! I had a couple people that day tell me that I would never be able to top this birthday, so I´ll have to come up with something spectacular for my next decadal birthday. :)

We rented hammocks at the campground in Tikal - the campground guy, Gonzalo, set up these ingenious little hammock/net contraptions for us that hung off of support beams underneath a thatch roof that was otherwise open to the world. The hammocks were low enough to the ground that the mosquito nets fell to the cement platform so that those biting bugs couldn't get in. So we slept through the night treated to the sounds of the jungle, and boy was it loud! There are either really big insects that are out there, or little insects that make really big sounds. I expect it's the former, based on some of the insects I saw while I was there: the biggest ant, grasshopper, and unidentifiable giant bug at the very least that I have ever seen! The howler monkeys started up around 3 in the morning, but didn't go for long. They sound sort of like you would expect a high-pitched sea lion screaming in pain to sound like. Crazy.

Anyway, yesterday we traipsed around Tikal for five hours in the morning, breaked for lunch, and then wandered for another three hours, and still didn't see everything. I definitely felt sated though, not to mention exhausted and badly in need of a shower. :P They let you climb on many of the ruins in Tikal, so while there was a little archaeologist part of me that cringed at walking on top of ruins, I couldn't exactly NOT do it, so I tried to fully enjoy every moment. Not that hard really. :) We learned that some of the coolest little rooms and passageways were to be found in the backs of the buildings, so we started really doing some exploring and found several groups of bats!

We got back to Flores yesterday evening, and are staying in a hostel with lots of character, two parrots, and a vegetarian restaurant (the only one in Peten, they say), run by a Dutch guy named Matthias who does yoga in the mornings. We had a delicious burrito last night kind of Italian style, with tomato sauce and parmesan cheese on top, but with the typical beans and rice and salsa on the side. Yum! And I had a $2 cocktail that was basically a strawberry banana smoothie spiked with rum. Also yum. :)

Today we´re taking it easy, but hoping to make it down to Ixobel today, where there is a hostel in the pine forest that's supposed to be a great place to relax, swim, hike, etc. Though my legs are sore enough today I might pass on the hiking for a day. :) From there we´re undecided, though we know we want to go to Semuc Champey (limestone bridge and underground pools), Antigua, back to Guatemala City for the museums, and out to the western highlands. We'll see what order that takes place in!

To those of you who have sent me little messages - thanks so much! It's lovely to hear from you. :) I have no idea if I'll be able to respond to everything, but I appreciate every note.

This has been a fabulous birthday trip so far, and I'm excited to see what happens next. :)

Love to you all.

Arrival in Guatemala! (July 24, 2008)

(reposted from email earlier this year)

Hi friends and family!

Some of you know I was heading off to Guatemala for my 30th birthday with my cousin Lacey. Some of you didn't know, but I thought I'd put you on the list anyway. :) We arrived tonight about 45 minutes late, expecting to be able to both get money out of an ATM, and be picked up by the hostel we were staying at. Well, the one ATM in the international arrivals terminal was out of order, there seemed to be no sign of the folks supposed to be picking us up, and of *course* there was no working phone in sight. So much for that easy-going plan. :P

A very nice taxi-organizing man allowed us to use his cell phone to call the hostel, where they assured us there was someone waiting for us at the airport. But after 40 minutes of looking-and-not-finding, we took his offer of a taxi and made it to the hostel. Fortunately, many places in Guatemala will also take American dollars in addition to the local Quetzals, and even more fortunately we had American dollars on us, so we were able to pay for both the taxi and the hostel tonight. Already an adventure!

It was beautiful flying in, looking at the blue(!) traffic lights arranged in curves and amongst a lot of black. I'm very curious to see what it looks like when I fly out during the day. Tomorrow we are hoping to get out of Guatemala City and take a bus up to Flores and thence to Tikal. If we can manage to get tickets, we'll be going on the $25 "luxury'' bus. :)

It was nice to find internet so easy our first night, but I have no idea how likely that will continue. Hopefully you'll all hear from me a few more times on this trip!

In the meantime, happy July! :)