Xela Tales

Nicaraguan Adventures

2009-05-17T21:01:00.000-07:00

We were in Granada last time we conversed, separated from Travis and Angela and reduced to a group of five after Angela came down with some terrible strange sickness.

Now we have reunited and are seven again. Turns out Angela had an ear infection, which is why she felt like shit the morning we left from Utila. This problem was probably connected to her problem with equalizing her ears. With the air trapped in her ear cavities, all the little bacteria were free to multiply. Now she has medication and cotton swabs to slow the murky secretions from her left ear.

Estranged from Trangela (short for Travis and Angela), we spent the night in the Kalala Lodge then met Trangela in their hostel, The Oasis, at 9 in the morning. We quickly realized their hostel kicked our hostel’s ass.

While our hostel had thin mattresses on top of wooden boards, leading to a princess-and-the-pea like situation except there was only one mattress and no pea, but a whole fucking lot of pain and discomfort, The Oasis on the other hand not only had respectable mattresses but free Internet access, colonial charm, murals and hammocks.

Check out this mural that was at our hostel, The Oasis.

After eating breakfast together, we decided to abandon the Kalala Lodge and move over to The Oasis since it was so completely superior. While we could have spent the rest of the day exploring Granada, we succumbed to the free Internet access and spent much of the day on Facebook and catching up on some good old perusing superfluous Web site time.

We stumbled upon murals and sayings painted on the walls. Nicaraguans love them some poetry.

Eventually we realized we hadn’t eaten lunch and it was about 3 p.m. so we hungrily ventured out of our hostel and went to a pizzeria for a little snack. We split a large pizza and then walked towards the beach, snapping loads of photographs on the way like the good tourists we are.

What an epic colonial church.

At the beach we encountered a charmingly persistent little old ice cream salesmen. His gimmick was to yell “Beep, beep!” as he aimed his ice cream wagon at his potential customers. We couldn’t help but buy a moderately priced frozen treat from a peddler with such personality, such chutzpah.

For dinner that night we decided to eat at a Mexican restaurant on a street the locals called “Gringo Street.” Choosing to sit outside, we were treated to entertainment from a troupe of young breakdancers (you know they spin on their heads and do back flips and the like). The biggest crowd pleaser of all was smallest boy of all, an acrobatic little guy who couldn’t have been more than nine years old.

The following day we left Granada on a chicken bus and headed to Rivas. In Rivas we caught a ride to San Jorge, the town from which the ferries to Ometepe leave. We arrived with a little extra time so we ate lunch at a little diner and then walked down a long path along the beach to the dock where the ferry left. We had to pay a 10 Cordoba tourist fee at a gate and then a lady asked us to take medical form possibly a Swine Flu prevention measure. Four of the group had already passed through but Mike, Shannon and I reached the final gate right at 2:30 p.m. when the ferry was scheduled to leave and the guard, rather than letting us pass through and hustle to catch the ferry, closed the gate in our faces and locked it. We pleaded with him but he said he was just following orders. So the three of us had to wait around until 4 p.m. when the next boat left.

We reached the island of Ometepe at 5 p.m. and Angela was waited with a cab to take us to the hotel they had selected, the Finca Valencia. We drove half and hour across the island and found our picturesque hotel on a dark volcanic sand beach. We were all staying in a quaint cottage.

What a big friendly tree.

We ate at the hotel that night since we were more or less in the middle of nowhere and bummed around the hotel afterward.

The next day we went swimming in the fresh waters of Lake Nicaragua the largest lake in Central America. In the afternoon we took a walk through a nature reserve near out hotel. We saw swarms of little baby frogs, armies of ants, lizards and colonies of birds, who loved the lofty trees on the cliffs overlooking the expansive lake well stocked with fish to eat.

Look how many birds were in this just one tree.

We ate a competing hotel down the beach that night and used a luxury they had but we lacked at our hotel: Internet.

The next morning we packed up and headed back to San Jorge on the ferry. We had planned out exactly how we would get to our next destination, the beach at San Juan del Sur, but as usual several pushy cab drivers offered us their services. We tried to act disinterested to get them to lower their prices and we walked around looking for deals. Near the exit gate, a cab driver in a red cap offer us the best deal we had heard yet 230 Córdobas ($11.50). This upset the cab drivers we had been talking to earlier who had dropped the fare for each of their taxis to 240 Córdobas. The stockier of the two started yelling at this wily driver and next thing we knew he was throwing punches. We were a bit shocked, but decided hey I guess we will pay the 240. They later explained that this rival cabbie was a pirate who wasn’t certified and wasn’t part of their collective. He didn’t pay taxes and couldn’t be trusted, they explained. I ended up with the stocky enforcer taxi driver’s laidback sidekick. We played Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Reggae and other gringo pleasers and also took photographs of Shannon on his cell phone while he was driving.

Regardless, we got us to San Juan del Sur where we had a bit of trouble finding a hostel with room for seven, but they eventually squeezed us in the Casa Oro, a hostel well known among surfers and backpackers. We settled in and headed to the beach that afternoon to swim, play frizbee and take in some sun. For dinner we took advantage of our hostel’s kitchen and made Mac and cheese.

We played Frizbee into the sunset.

We drank beer and played Monopoly that night. Mike and I were a team that seemed destined for success, but we made some ill advised, essentially suicidal trades after becoming frustrated that the more proactive trades we were proposing were unceremoniously shot down—not to mention our slow realization that Monopoly is a dull game.

After the game, we went for a walk on the beach. We heard a discoteca pumping some music and some decided to enter, but the bouncer denied me for lacking a shirt. It’s so warm here though wearing shirts seem unwarranted.

Today we left at 11:30 a.m. for a surfing trip to Remanso beach. We packed our rented boards on top of the big truck and took a twenty-minute ride to the quiet little beach.

We decided not to pay for lessons, but in turns out that learning how to get up on a surfboard isn’t all that difficult and we all succeeded to get up without official instruction. The beginner friendly waves at the beach certainly helped us. We didn’t learn how do much of anything but go in a straight line on our long boards but we had fun doing just that. At sunset we packed up the truck again and headed back to the hostel.

We were still learning and didn't nail every wave as you can see here.

I cooked dinner for myself and have been spending a quiet night of all things blogging. Tomorrow it’s onto Costa Rica.

The Inter-American Highway

2009-05-12T20:06:00.000-07:00

It is just five of us, but we are all crammed into one hotel room, a little bit scared because we are the middle of Tegucigalpa and our guide book tells us it’s a dangerous city and people on the street have echoed that sentiment. We ate at the hotel cafeteria because we didn’t want to test our luck in the dangerous streets of the Honduran capital. I sit here typing now for there is little else to do.

There are five of us because one member of our group, Alex, is heading back home before heading to Israel and Angela was feeling very sick this morning so she stayed behind with Travis to visit a doctor. Her ears have been bothering her after our week of scuba diving in Utila. Hopefully it was nothing serious.

The eight of us pose with five of our dive instructors. Scuba Steve is front and center flashing his patented hang loose symbol, Maya our Danish spitfire of a lead instructor is behind Steve, Aurelian, the debonaire Frenchman is to the far left, hailing from Guatemala, Adriana, is to the far right and Wes the Coloradan is lurking barely visible in the back.

Angela’s sickness was the only damper on a stellar week that concluded in us receiving our PADI open water certification and doing our first recreational dives in which we went to a sailboat wreck that was carpeted in coral. We saw a variety of marine life including a green sea turtle, trumpet fish, and schools of blue fish (I'm not being vague, this is what they are actually called). The impressive thing is that the Utila area has been severely overfished and we saw only a hollow shell of what a thriving coral reef ecosystem would look like. It was hard to leave Utila and they were trying to sell us on the Advanced Open Water course to expand upon our first scuba course, but we realized we best move on to a new locale, which is why we are now in Tegucigalpa.

The view of the Nicaraguan countryside from my bus window.

Another bus ride and a taxi ride later and I am in Granada, Nicaragua in a Internet café across from our hostel, the Kalala Lodge. The eight ride was smooth and without a hitch except when we blew out a tire and had to stop for at least 30 minutes while they put a spare on.

The Tica Bus employees assess the blown tire situation out in the scalding afternoon sun.

We arrived in Managua around 6 p.m. on the Tica Bus from Tegucigalpa and we found a taxi cab driver named Eddy who would pack all our stuff in his cab, squeeze all five of us inside, stop at an ATM and for food and then drive us all the way to Granada, a one hour ride. We paid 200 Cordobas each (about ten dollars). The place we chose to stop for food was Quiznos. We couldn't help ourselves after seeing this little piece of home transplanted in Managua. The Chicken Carbonara I ordered tasted heavenly since I hadn't had one in at least five months. He led us to a hostel since Angela had our only guidebook for Nicaragua and we had no idea where to go.

We have heard from Angela and Travis and they are also in Granada and we should be able to reunite tomorrow. We don’t really know what we are going to do with the rest of the time. I suppose the beach is calling us, but we are content simply to have relocated farther south and neared our final destination of San Jose.

Diving with Maya and Scuba Steve

2009-05-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

5:40 a.m. came bright and early and we groggily set to packing our bags, perhaps slightly regretting trading hours of shuteye for more drinks at the bar. The sun was peaking out from the dark clouds over the Caribbean in a brilliant display. We loaded our bags into a boat and headed to Puerto Barrios.

So early, but the view was so beautiful in the Livingston harbor.

After an hour in the boat, we arrived and transferred our bags to a van. I happened to be sitting next all the bags in the front and I handed my friend’s bags up to them on the dock, but apparently everyone, even people I had never met before, expected that special treatment from me. As a result of my dockhand duties, I was the last one to get into the van and had the very last pick of seats. I had to sit up front in the middle next to the driver on a hard seat with minimal legroom for the seven-hour ride to Ceiba, Honduras.

By the end of the ride it felt like my sore tailbone and the rock hard seat were in direct contact—no seat cushion, no body tissue, no anything separating them—and I was so glad to never see that seat again. We bought a ticket for the last ferry to Utila at 4 p.m. and were disappointed that the price $23, was more than our travel guides suggested it would be. Since it was only 2 p.m. when we arrived, we had to wait around for two hours.

After a one-hour ride through the bucking waves to Utila we finally arrived. As usual, we were overwhelmed by hotel representatives at the end of the dock. Everyone wanted us to stay with them and dive with their shop. They were offering us free stays while we scuba dived, help with our luggage, and complimentary cold beers.

We narrowed it down to two choices. One was $279 and the other was $269, but when the more expensive one offered to put us up in our own private cottage and drive us to it in a van so we didn’t have to hassle with our luggage we were sold. To top it off, their dive shop, Utila Dive Center, was also the biggest and most respected on the island.

The crew enjoys the porch of our posh cottage.

We’ve been happy ever since making that decision. Our cottage is amazing—the key features include the air conditioning, the kitchen and the porch with hammock. Our dive instructor Maya is perfect. She is a Dane who decided she didn’t want to work in an office in Copenhagen so she came to Utila five years and now makes a living diving. Fittingly she is blond haired. Maya speaks English with a bit of a British accent and curses frequently, a combination that is disarmingly attractive.

Several other dive instructors assist Maya since our group is so large. Among them is Steve, a middle aged Canadian. Steve is a goon. Steve takes the beer rule a little too seriously. The beer rule says that if an instructor sees that a student has left their scuba tank standing up and unattended to, then that student owes the instructor a beer. Since the air is under high pressure in the tanks it makes sense to not leave then standing up in danger of tipping over, because the nozzle could break and send the tank flying like a rocket. A fair rule, but Steve tries a little too hard to catch people. Today he called Kate out on it even though she was only a few feet away from her tank.

The beer rule applies just the same for students who put their masks on their forehead inadvertently because for scuba divers this is a signal for distress. When we where getting out of the water he called me out for the mask rule too and said I owed him a beer. I don’t plan to pay up, because, in my book, we’re even because I deserve a beer for putting up with him all day. Steve also tries to act cooler than he is and is always flashing the Hawaiian hang loose symbol. Our relationship was rough from the start because when I met him, I said “Oh your name is Steve, like Scuba Steve” (the action figure in Big Daddy), but he didn’t look amused and said “Like I haven’t heard that one before.”

As big of a goon as he is, Scuba Steve hasn’t ruined by scuba diving experience and we have been enjoying ourselves.

Of course we have been doing more than just diving and studying here. Wednesday, we went to the Tree Tanic, a sprawling bar that is a cross between tree house and modern art museum. It was ranked the number one bar in the world on Lonely Planet Web site.

This afternoon we are doing our first real dive after doing three days of training in shallow water and watching cheesy PADI videos.

That saucy harlot Marie Sharp

2009-05-05T18:25:00.000-07:00

Last time I left you, I was at the Casa Perico in Rio Dulce relaxing in a newly acquired hostel room. I told you I was thinking of hitting up the complimentary kayaks and I did just that, although kayak may be too grandiose a term for the crude dugout canoes with no seats and wooden paddles that the hostel offered.

But proper kayak or not, I made a jaunt around the surrounding waterways, encountering some difficulty navigating in my cumbersome vessel the narrow channels of open water in the dense mangrove forest until a hotel employee passing in a motor boat told me to sit “más atrás” or farther back in the boat. After making that adjustment, I discovered that keeping control of the kayak was much easier. Boy did I felt stupid.

This is the Mangrove forest near our hotel.

That night, we ordered dinner from our hotel. I went with the spaghetti carbonara while several others went with a burger with fries. The food was pretty good until we dipped into the stores of hot sauce by the bar; then suddenly it became really good. Everyone tried some hot sauce expect for Angela who is a wimp and doesn’t like spicy foods.

The dinner was particularly special for Travis and I, as we were reunited with an old fling, Marie’s Sharp’s Habanera Sauce, with whom we spent one very intimate week in Belize, before we left thinking we’d never see her again. But, lo and behold, she showed up in Rio Dulce and old feelings and desires were rekindled. Suffice to say, Travis and I wholly surrendered our bodies to the throes of habanera passion.

After we had exhausted ourselves with an evening of habanera hedonism, we couldn’t help but want more; I seized the moment by stuffy that saucy tart Marie in my gym shorts pocket, absconding with her to my room where I could have her all to myself. Travis and I justified my kidnapping with the logic that we would appreciate that biting wench considerably more than any other suitor or condiment pirate.

Later that night we tried to get our work-in-progress band with its work-in-progress name, “The Fuck Before Time III” together to iron out some songs. We discovered that we needed a substantial amount of additional practice and/or training, or at least so guitar tabs in front of us to be worth a damn, but it was nice simply to have a guitar in my hands again after four months of sparing the world the ensuing auditory punishment.

Exhausted from a full day of traveling that started at 3:30 in the morning, I called it a night early and slept for nine plus solid hours.

In the morning, we caught a lancha to Livingston at 9:30 a.m. The boat took us on a tour of several notable attractions on the river. We saw a castle, lots of birds, a water lily garden where precious little wide-eyed kids canoed around us in convenient photo opportunities, a sulfur-y hot springs and a canyon. The two-man crew of the boat had a bit of trouble keeping their mutinous motor going and we stalled a few times while they repaired it.

The boat crew repairs their motor on the way to Livingston.

We arrived at Livingston docks around noon we were promptly swarmed by a small but boisterous group of hustlers trying to convince that the hostel they were promoting was the best. We let ourselves be carried away by a garifuna man with dreads and a Terrell Owens jersey who kept yelling, “Rastafari!” at the slightest provocation. He promised we could take us to a place that would let us stay for 35Q a night. I should explain that the garifuna people are black Caribbean people who ended up in Livingston and other places on Central America’s Caribbean coast after they escaped from slavery. They have kept their culture distinct from Guatemala’s other cultures and one of the main draws in Livingston is to see a Garifuna beach celebration complete with polyrhythmic drumming, dancing, and special mystery rum infused with medicinal herbs. Unfortunately we didn’t get the chance to witness that, but we can attest that Livingston had the highest concentration of black people we had seen in Guatemala. We could probably count the others we had seen on one hand.

Rasta mon, as I will call him since I don’t remember his name, and his friend in a Pittsburg Pirates cap took us the Casa de la Iguana, a sweat-inducing fifteen minute walk from the docks. The staff came out to show us around and we began the lengthy process of figuring out rooms. While we were choosing, rasta mon offered us some of his medicinal rum and hit on our females. Ultimately, four of us decided to share a two-person room called “Sex on the Beach” which was in the attic of one of the buildings because it cost us only 20Q each, while two others shared a single dorm bed and the final two were in hammocks.

Rasta mon offers Angela some of his special rum.

Rasta mon and his friend were expecting a big commission for bringing eight guests to the hotel, but our frugal ways thwarted them, as the hostel couldn’t offer much for guests that paid only Q170 in total by squeezing into two beds and two hammocks. Rasta mon yelled something like “I’ll cut your throat!” at the Iguana staff who only laughed.

While rasta mon may have worn on us after awhile, the Iguana staff made a good impression from the start. When we arrived three of them, Corey, Matt and Rad Matt were strewn about on couches watching The Office, a luxury we have been denied during our stay in Guatemala as we can’t get the episodes on cable or the Internet. They apologized for their lack of energy and explained that they had been up until 7 in the morning partying. They were charming even in their depleted states.

Matt, a bald but proudly so gringo ex-pat (think Moby but slimmer) showed us our rooms. Corey, a gringo world traveler, who kind of looked like a dark haired Patton Oswalt, explained to us how the hostel worked and opened up tabs for us. Rad Matt, the lone Brit of the bunch in glasses and bad teeth sat on the couch while the other two made fun of him. Corey claimed he got the name Rad back in the day when he was a techno DJ performer under the name Radical, which he categorically denied.

Corey gave us the down low on the city and told us about the Seven Altars, a series of waterfalls 8 kilometers from town. He told us that unfortunately, the wet season hadn’t gotten its feet turning yet and the river was flowing as a trickle rather a roar, but it was still worth seeing.

We decided to eat lunch at a little hole-in-the-wall place that offered meals for 10Q each and the head out to the Seven Altars. The plates of rice and ground beef were nothing special but that saucy temptress Marie saved the day, accenting the bland flavors.

We opted to take a taxi as far as we could on the path to save time, but we didn’t know how to going about doing that until a friendly Mexican lady with ample arm pit hair who told us that every car in town was a taxi and pointed us in right direction.

We were able to secure two taxis for the eight of us and it was only a 15-minute ride to the bridge where we had to get out and walk the rest of the way along the beach. We let the warm waters of the Caribbean lap up against our feet as we walked. When we reach the altars we paid a garifuna man in a hammock 10Q each to enter the site and went on our merry way. The river was rather sedated and water barely creeped over the falls. We navigated the slippery rocks upriver until we reached the biggest waterfall, where we hoped to cliff-jump into the pool below. I hopped in the cool refreshing pool to test out the depth and discovered that once you where five feet from the cliff-face the water was quite deep, so you only had to make sure you got a good jump to clear the jagged rocks hiding close to the wall. We all did it although I, for one, was quite nervous I would slip and fall into the shallows below. Luckily we were all sure-footed.

The river was rather tame at the Seven Altars.

We took a taxi on the return too and went to the Internet café to check on e-mails. We realized it was happy hour at the hostel bar so we went back and took advantage. Since we saved so much on food we didn’t feel bad about splurging on a few drinks. We couldn’t help but order a drink called Dr. Pepper which is half a beer and half a coke mixed together. You drop a shot of Amaretta in it and chug the whole drink. Surprisingly it tasted exactly like Dr. Pepper.

For dinner we got a delicious meal of shish kabobs, coconut rice and salad for Q30. We sat with a young lady from Manchester named Catherine, with whom we had great fun shooting shit about politics and differences in US and British language use. In celebration of our last night in Guatemala we all did a tequila shot and a crack whore (don’t worry mom it’s a drink not a disease infested prostitute/junky).

Unfortunately we planned to leave at 6 the next morning for Honduras and had to cut our night short. Pictures to come with this post, I just don't have the time or patience right now.

Goodbye Xela, hello Rio Dulce

2009-05-03T17:16:00.000-07:00

5 p.m. May 2

I had to bid Xela, my home for four months, goodbye yesterday. It was hard to part from the dingy yet oh-so-lovable city and its friendly citizens, especially my lovely host family. I’m not saying goodbye to Central America just yet though, because for the next three weeks six friends and I are trekking it from Xela across Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to Costa Rica before heading back to the states.

Today I am in Rio Dulce, tomorrow I will perhaps be in Livingston, the Garifuna haven on the Caribbean coast, before crossing the border into Honduras. The beauty of our travel plan is that we don’t have a plan. We have no reservations; we only know that on May 21 we will be onboard a plane leaving San Jose, Costa Rica for the States. The rest is improvisation.

At 4 this morning we boarded a bus to Guatemala City, before catching another bus to Rio Dulce. We left the temperate weather of the western highlands for the muggy conditions of the eastern lowlands. The heat was quite a shock, but a welcome change.

At 3 p.m. we arrived in Rio Dulce, and as soon as we stepped off the bus, hotel peddlers hounded us. Since we did have lodgings yet, we let one guy talk us into staying at his hotel, Casa Perico, since he said it would cost only Q40 ($5). He walked us to the dock and told us to wait there and mayhaps drink a beer while we waited for a boat to take us to the hotel.

When the boat arrived we piled our extensive collection of luggage into and headed down river. We turned into a tributary that wormed through the mangrove forests before arriving at our secluded hotel that harkened Swiss Family Robinson as it seemed to meld right into the surrounding forest. I immediately collapsed into hammock and felt right at home.

Angela captured everyone's excitement on the way to Casa Perico.

Now here I sit blogging in our dorm-style hotel room with no Internet, so this post may take some time to reach you, but I had to take the opportunity to write while I had it and figure out Internet later. But since we have free use of the kayaks here, I better take advantage rather than spending my vacation in front of a laptop screen.

I will keep you updated on the adventures and catastrophes of my trip as they transgress

Meeting Rigoberta Menchú (plus drunken antics)

2009-04-24T17:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes things just work out. Saturday I was able to meet Nobel Peace Prize Winner Rigoberta Menchú after a chance encounter with a cleaning lady provided us this unique and unexpected opportunity.

We had been reading Rigoberta’s book, Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia, for our ethics class. Ellory and I happened to both be reading that very book in the garden behind our school one Friday afternoon, when Adrianna, the guesthouse cleaning lady, saw the book in Ellory’s hand and mentioned that Rigoberta was coming to visit her town and we were reminded that this mythical character from the pages of our book was a real living and breathing woman in Guatemala. Ellory told her that she wished she could meet her.

We just kept reading in the garden, but later Ellory and I talked about trying to capitalize on this opportunity to see a world-renowned human rights activist while she was in our backyard.

Eventually I got around to asking Adrianna about the details of Rigoberta’s visit to her town and she told us she would talk to her parents to see if there’s was any chance we could meet her while she was in our area.

Friday, Adrianna told me that Rigoberta was coming to Olintepeque at 10 Saturday morning to talk at the political headquarters and we were welcome to attend the event. I asked Loloya, my Spanish teacher, for directions to get to Olinteque, which was only half an hour from Xela, and scrambled to spread the word to my classmates to meet outside Celas Maya at 8:45 the next morning to trek to Olinteque for the talk.

Friday night we had our traditional end of the week party at Celas Maya and afterward went to La Rumba. Many of us exceeded the necessary and sufficient conditions of drunkness, although I decided to take the night off because I was only one day removed from a brief but strength-sapping spat of diarrhea probably related to a smoothie containing blackberries of questionable quality.

Anyhow, Saturday morning rolled around and I was surprised to find that 15 of us had assembled for the trip to see Rigoberta, despites the excesses of the previous night. We all crammed onto a microbus that took us to a mall called País. From there we walked to a corner where chicken buses going to Olinteque pick up passengers. There was some confusion whether we were on the correct corner, and later on which bus to take, but we soon found a bus that was headed toward Olinteque and hopped on it. The ride wasn’t long and only cost us two quetzales.

The problem was that it just dropped us off on the side of the highway and we had no idea where we were. The ayudante pointed us in the direction of the central park and we wandered in that direction until we started doubting ourselves and asked for directions again. The church came into view and we knew we were nearing the city center.

As we reached the bustling central park we could see there was a wedding going on, but we couldn’t decipher where the political headquarters was. We were the only foreigners in the town.

The building was supposed to be behind the municipal building so we went around the block but couldn’t spot it. Directionless, we stood around in the central plaza and seriously feared that the event wasn’t going to happen or that we would never find it. We asked a few people in the park about Rigoberta and some didn’t even know that she was going to be in their town.

We headed to the street behind the municipal building again, asked for directions one more time from a shop keep and finally were pointed in the direction of the political headquarters. I asked the host if Rigoberta was going to be there, he assured me she would be, I asked him if we could enter the building and watch the event and he warmly welcomed us.

An ancient marimba player who had obviously past his prime, cajoled semblances of rhythms and chord progressions out of his rickety machine while we waited for the event to start. When Rigoberta arrived, the crowd applauded as she shook hands with everyone on her way to the front. Her vibrant Mayan dress gave her the air of a powerful matriarch.

She made some brief remarks before the MC proceeded to present awards to numerous local party leaders. We had never heard of Winaq, Rigoberta’s political party, before the event but we soon got to know the group, as all of the party leadership was gathered in the courtyard.

After all the awards had been given out, Rigoberta addressed the crowd and laid out the goals of Winaq. Ultimately, she wanted Winaq to become the dominant political party in Guatemala with a Winaq president in office. She stressed the party is not an indigenous-only club, but one that hopes build a coalition among the various minorities and oppressed people to make Guatemala a country for all cultures and peoples.

Alas, it would seem Rigoberta has a long way to go to achieving her goals, because the last time she ran for president, she gained only three percent of the vote. Still she stressed building the movement from the ground up and developing young leadership in the party. She even urged indigenous families have big families with lots of good children to carry on the movement.

After the talk, we waited for our chance to talk to Rigoberta and pose for a photo with her. There was quite a line, but we got our chance and even got her to sign our books and pose for a photo with our whole group. She was very gracious and the camera crew even asked some of us to go on camera to talk about what interested us about their party.

And if my day couldn’t get any more amazing, that afternoon we had a little party at my friend’s Travis apartment and relaxed on the roof with some snacks and beverages.

The view from Travis's roof.

Next, we headed to the big soccer game: The Superchivos versus archrival Cremas (one of the two teams from Guatemala City). I was in the group that had success smuggling alcohol into the game, but some had their contraband booze confiscated.

We seated ourselves in the rowdiest section and spent most of the game standing, dancing around, chanting and screaming. It was an exciting back and forth game. Xela scored first, but fell behind 1-2 before coming back to win 3-2.

Smoke from fireworks obscured the screaming crowd after a Superchivos' goal.

After the game we scampered though the streets still cheering and headed to our standby discoteca, La Rumba, to dance. Our Superchivos garb was popular with the club-goers, and some Latina shorties seemed very taken with the Gringo men. As Jordan later said of a Latina that was dancing with him: “Her hips were definitely not lying to me,” of course referring to one our of favorite club songs Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie.”

Perhaps I tainted my pure cultural experience watching Rigobarta speak with a night of rowdy hooligan antics and dance-whoring, but I like to think the two halves balance themselves out.

Las aguas del Pacífico, del Caribe y de Atitlán

2009-04-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

I have neglected to blog for a month so I have left a lot of gaps to fill in. Last time I blogged, I dwelled on my stomach ailments, but fortunately, I have no problems to report this post. Spring break came and went and only three weeks of class remain, so it’s starting to set in that our stay in Guatemala is almost over.

The idea that we are running out of time has been on our minds for a while, so the weekend before we started spring break, a large group of us hopped on the chicken bus to Tulate to relax at the beach rather than let another opportunity to travel and see Guatemala slip by. We hadn’t made reservations at a hotel but we heard from last year’s study abroad group that we could stay three nights at a nice all-inclusive hotel for only Q450. This proved to be false, so we ended up shacking up at a dive motel that had only one redeeming quality: a pool with a waterslide. On the bright side, it was about Q50 a person each night.

We didn’t let that get us down and the first night we swam in the Pacific, played soccer with some locals, ate at a restaurant with delectable fish and seafood, and got drunk and swam in our motel’s pool. Don’t worry there was a lifeguard on duty. Actually, his name was Carlos and he wasn’t a lifeguard so much as a motel employee who was at least as drunk as we were. That played to our advantage though because he was willing to turn on the waterslide and take down the kayak off the wall to use in the pool.

BECKY SUHR

On the down side, it turned out that Carlos was that special creepy type of drunk that breaks into women’s rooms in hopes of seducing them and watches young ladies while they use the motel’s community showers by peaking under the shower curtain. Suffice to say, the women of our group were creeped out. We also suspect that Carlos stole Jordan’s camera and Phil’s flashlight. Well, at least we had our fun in the pool.

The second day, I basted myself in the sun too long and scorched bright pink sunburns onto the pasty skin of my stomach. I decided to go to bed early rather than defile the serenity of the pool with another night of drunken escapades. Nonetheless, the pool was defiled anyhow by superior partiers than I.

Sunday we took the chicken bus from the coast back to our home in the mountains. We returned in time to attend a birthday party for Carolina, our director’s three-now-four-year-old daughter. We played musical chairs, broke a piñata, and went to a Guiseppe’s for pizza. It was quite a fiesta and it seemed like Carolina had a blast.

Just four days later on April 2, our spring break began, and our study abroad group broke into several smaller travel groups. Some traveled with their parents around Guatemala, some met up with their parents in to Mexico or Honduras, and one group took a tour of religious sites and Mayan ruins. Our group—Steph, Becky, Megan, Laura, Mike, Travis and I—set our sights on pure relaxation in balmy Belize. The seven of us rented out a three-bedroom house on the beach for six nights. Moreover, we decided that we would spare ourselves the lengthy bus rides by purchasing plane tickets.

So on Friday morning we touched down at the Belize City airport, which may have been the smallest international airport I have seen in my life. Like Nixon during the Watergate scandal, we walked down a staircase directly onto the runway. We were greeted by a bright sun and eighty degree weather. After going through the airport rigmarole, we boarded two taxis that took us to the harbor where we caught a watertaxi to San Pedro on Ambergris Caye, the island where are house was. From San Pedro a taxi took us to another boat, which finally brought us to our house a couple miles north of town. We had to take a boat to our house because no vehicles larger than a golf cart were permitted on the northern part of the island.

Our house was well worth the wait. We climbed off the boat onto our house’s palapa and crossed the forty feet of white sand that separated our house from the indigo blue Caribbean. We discovered our house was fully equipped with a living room, kitchen, air conditioning, a safe to protect our valuables, and a master suite with a master bathroom, a TV and an Internet jack. Moreover it was fashionably decorated inside with hardwood floors and ceilings and tribal accoutrements and outside with stucco walls and a red-tiled roof.

BECKY SUHR

We headed into to town to get some groceries and to meet up with Travis, who arrived later than us because he had bussed in from Flores rather than fly in. We brought Travis back to our princely abode and made ourselves a feast of spaghetti with meat sauce, complete with fresh parmesan cheese and garlic bread. After dinner I dipped into some Belizean coconut rum and kicked back in front of the TV.

The next day we relaxed on the beach outside our house and made plans to take a snorkeling and fishing trip the next day. We went the cheapest option we could find, which turned out to be with a guide named Martin. That night we dined out at Sweet Basil’s, a restaurant near our house, because we knew the maid was coming the next day and we didn’t want to have to wash our dishes if we didn’t have to.

We met Martin at nine the next morning at the Palapa Bar, which a short walk from our house. The skin on Martin’s sinewy body was tanned dark leathery. His accent was part Spanish, part Caribbean and part Creole. His boat was a little beat up but it would get the job done. He informed us he had been fishing and diving in Belize’s barrier reef all his life and had even dropped out of high school because all he needed to know was out on the reef.

First off, we did some fishing. The fish were biting fast and over the next hour we hauled in nine keepers—mainly groupers and snappers. Only Travis, the most experienced angler of all of us, failed to catch a fish. Even Becky, who somehow managed to break a rod during our fishing adventure, landed a catch or two.

BECKY SUHR

Next we headed to a spot called Mexican Rocks to do some snorkeling. We had enough masks but we were one snorkel short. Martin reassured us that snorkels weren’t even necessary; in fact, he preferred to go without because they only got in the way. We traded off snorkels so that one person wasn’t stuck without one the entire time. I discovered that my mask leaked considerably and learned to accustom myself to looking through a pool of water inside my mask. Still, the colorful coral of Mexican Rocks contained many interesting fish and we also saw a few stingrays lurking around the ocean floor.

Martin took us ashore so that he could prepare us a lunch of the fish we had pulled in. While he went off to cook, we stumbled into a swanky bar called the Rojo Lounge that included a beach side pool with islands on which patrons could lounge. We each purchased a vastly overpriced drink for the right to use this oasis. I paid ten American dollars for a “Dark and Stormy” a drink consisting of ginger beer and rum.

BECKY SUHR

After an hour, Martin returned with our lunch sealed in tin foil. We opened one package to reveal our fish grilled up with onions and peppers and another was filled with potatoes. He also pulled out some tortillas and sodas. Even if he had a few screws loose, Martin could fucking cook. The fish was cooked perfectly and allowed us to beam with pride at our ability to not only appease our hunger with the catch we pulled in, but tickle our taste buds too.

We headed back to sea and anchored near the spot where the waves broke against the barrier reef. Our bellies laden, we snorkeled up the barrier against a strong current, stopping just before the point were we were in danger of being thrown into the jagged coral by the surging waves. We spotted anemones and crustaceans as we weaved in between coral formations. We even made a game of swimming as far as we dared into the breaking waves before letting them launch us so that we had to dodge coral as we zipped shoreward.

On the ride back to our house, a loquacious Martin told us about the problems he had with his ex-wife and his teenage daughter as well as rambling on about other random subjects. We colorfully told us how he made fun of his girlfriend for her lack of a tan until she had pulled down his drawers to reveal he lacked a tan in some places too. We suspected he was drunk. It was not yet three in the afternoon.

Back at our villa, he set about relaxing for the remainder of the afternoon. Travis and I headed into town to purchase some drink supplies. We came home bearing fifty-five dollars worth of rum and mixers to find Laura had made us some good old Easy Mac for supper. After chowing down, Travis and I tried our hands at making piña coladas from scratch, by most accounts to utter failure since most people declined to drink our murky creation. The silver lining was that we bartenders had more drinks to ourselves.

After pleasantly wasting away the day on the beach, we decided to eat out for dinner Monday. We tried to locate a Chinese restaurant that my guidebook recommended but after a wild goose chase we discovered it had closed down. We chose another recommended restaurant called Casa Picasso instead. Steph and I split spinach manicotti and the house special sausage rustica over penne, both of which were delicious. We headed back to Sweet Basil’s for rum punch, probably the tastiest drink ever concocted. After collectively downing two pitchers of that sweet nectar, we returned to our house to set to work on the liquor with which we had stocked our cabinets.

This time Travis and I succeeded in mixing up some delightful peach spritzers. We played Presidents and Assholes, Moose, Zoomy Zoomy and Never Have I Ever until we simply descended into debauchery. Steph made us pizza, nachos and egg rolls to appease our late night hunger. We even got to prance around in the rain to top off our night.

If this isn’t a theme yet, we spent Tuesday lounging around and relaxing on the beach. For dinner we made chicken fajitas, which were good enough to convince ourselves that we didn’t need to eat out to placate our palates.

BECKY SUHR

Wednesday, Travis, Mike, Laura and I went snorkeling again, but this time we went to Shark-Ray Alley and Hol Chan Marine Reserve. We got to touch a shark, which felt like sand paper, and a stingray, which felt like tofu. We saw turtles and eels—not to mention the schools of fish that swarmed around us, looking like streams of flying cars weaving in between the bright coral skyscrapers of a futuristic city. The rest of the day couldn’t compare to our journey to the reef. For dinner we had pasta and it was good.

Thursday we packed up and headed back to Belize City to catch our flight back to Guate. We stayed in the capital Thursday night, and then took a bus to Panajachel Friday morning to spend the rest of vacation at Lago Atitlán. Mike and I stayed in San Marcos de la Laguna where we got to hang out with the Conk family. We tried to take a sauna Friday night at our hostel but the fire was not properly stoked and we ended up barely breaking a sweat.

Saturday Shannon, her brother Ryan, Mike and I went cliff jumping just outside of town. Later we took a boat to San Pedro and wandered around the town. We wanted to climb to the top of the city’s church to get a view of town, but the front door was locked. We found an alternate way up by jumping a railing blocking our way and succeeded in reaching the top. We returned to San Marcos to eat dinner with the Conks at Paco Real, a restaurant that had excellent curry. After dinner we attempted to sauna again, this time at the Posada Schumann where the Conks were staying, this time with much greater success.

Mike and I woke up at 5:30 the next morning and kayaked out into the middle of the bay to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately, clouds obscured the sunrise and Mike broke his flimsy paddle and had to make due with two broken ends. Luckily, eventually the sun broke through the clouds and put on quite a display. After enjoying the spectacle, we kayaked over to a cliff and scaled it from the side so we could jump off it. It was quite a way to start your morning.

Mike and I traded paddles before we kayaked back to the hostel so I went ashore like a butterfly with clipped wings. We had some scrumptious pancakes for breakfast and then boated over to San Pedro to do a horseback tour of the surrounding countryside. I had never ridden a horse before so it was a foreign experience for me. At first it seemed like a very rough ride, but soon I got the hang of it. I discovered that galloping is actually easier than trotting because it’s a smoother motion for the rider. We snaked through the forest on a mountainside path and visited a secluded beach. We had a spectacular view of the lake.

Later than afternoon, I went back to Xela with Steph, Becky and Megan, concluding my spring break travels. All in all, considering the time lying on the beach, the saunas and the comfortable accommodations, it had been the most relaxing spring break of my life.

This is your stomach speaking, we will be experiencing some slight turbulence...

2009-03-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks the state of my stomach has ranged from “experiencing some slight turbulence” to “a raging inferno where the forces of good and evil seek mutual annihilation.” I hope I’m now emerging from that storm and returning to the land of regularity. But, in two weeks I’ve learned not to let my hopes get too high.

True today my digestive system is working like… well like a system should, but it’s taken so long to get to this point and I’m not really sure what cured me. I’ve tried a variety of treatments from “ignore it ‘til it goes away” to high-powered antibiotics to Mayan natural medicine remedies to fasting and still I couldn’t string three days of normalcy together.

Part of the way I dealt with my mutinous stomach was simply to avoid letting it get in my way. I managed not to miss any class because of my troubles and I even did a full moon climb to the top of Volcán Santa Maria Friday. Doing a moonlight hike is hard enough because generally at 4 a.m. one would be sleeping rather than climbing a 12,380-foot volcano, but add to that the fact that I had only eaten one meal all day and hadn’t been able to hold it down and that makes for a challenging hike.

The thought in the back of head that was further egging me one was that the last time I wanted to do the full moon hike up Santa Maria I had also been plighted with diarrhea and that time I let my stomach get the best of me. I didn’t want to let that happen again. So after a day characterized by sleep punctuated only by trips to the baño, I joined the group headed to the volcano that towers over Xela.

We bused to the base of the mountain and at 1 a.m. began our ascent. Juan and Rudy our guides told us that we would take the climb slowly and take plenty of breaks but in my state I felt like I was pushing myself to the breaking point of my endurance until the sweet respites would could when I could throw my weary malnourished sweat-drenched body down on the side of the mountain and let my heaving lungs try to suck in enough thin mountain air to appease my thumping heart.

Anyhow, dramatics aside, I made it to the top with the rest of the group. It was 5 a.m. so we had to wait an hour in the cold, cold wind before the sun finally got its lazy ass up. Five of us huddled together under blankets to fight the cold. I fell asleep and when I awoke it was light out. I feared I had missed the sunrise but, as it turned out, it was so cloudy that morning that there had been no sunrise to miss.

Clouds. All of our horizons were blanketed with that white fluffy stuff. We looked to the north were Santiaguito, the fiery little counterpart to the sleeping bigger brother, should have been spitting up bright lava and saw only cumulous. We looked to the east where we should have been able to see morning sun dancing off Lago Atitlán but to no avail. To the south we might have seen all of Xela stretching out below us. When we looked to the west we received our slight consolation: Volcán Tajamulco peaking out above the clouds.

We cheered ourselves up by drinking hot chocolate, playing hacky sack and admiring the clouds, which, although they were blocking anything else we might have seen, were beautiful in their own right.

On the way down we encountered a flood of indigenous people headed up the mountain. Some were in the midst of chanting spirituals other were sprinting up in athletic garb. Counterintuitive as it might seem, climbing down the volcano was in some ways harder than climbing up because our legs were starting to suffer from the wear and tear even if our lungs were having an easier time.

It was noon before we finally returned to Xela and I was so hungry and I didn’t even worry about my stomach issues but instead devoured my lunch of gravy, beef and tamales ravenously. Maybe the time when the will to satiate petty hunger is greater than the will to avoid gastronomical disaster is the very time when diarrhea finally has been defeated, because I feel that my body was so starved for nourishment Saturday that my stomach just had to cooperate. And cooperate it has. I hope it continues.

Taking the chicken bus to paradise

2009-03-06T16:36:00.000-08:00

What is a chicken bus you ask? Is it a whimsical vehicle operated and patronized by poultry? Not quite. The chicken bus is what locals semi-affectionately refer to the public transportation in Guatemala. The name comes from the fact that locals often bring just about anything on the buses to sell at the markets, including chickens. Monday afternoon I took my first stab at taking a chicken bus in order to meet up with my parents in Panajachel and my premonitions of adventures were not proved false.

The refurbished school buses that make up the chicken bus fleets were imported from the states. Some still bear the markings of the school district from which they came. Although even cash-strapped school districts deemed these jalopies unworthy, here in Guatemala painting on some flames and racing stripes can compensate for any sense of inadequacy. Actually, it seems most cars on the road here made some sort of deal with the robot devil to avoid the trash heap and keep sucking up sweet petrol and spitting out increasingly noxious fumes.

I didn’t actually know what I was doing when I tried to catch the one o’clock bus to Pana, but I heard buses pick up on the corner of Avenida 19 and 7a Calle in Zone 3 so I wandered around this general area like a beheaded chicken. I heard there were direct buses to Pana but I wasn’t seeing any Pana-bound buses. Luckily, if you look confused enough, one of the ticket salesmen will eventually come up to you and ask you were you want to go. The guy who came up to me had gold teeth and his red T-shirt bore slogans in English promoting reading books although as far as I could tell this guy spoke no English. He said if I got on his Guate-bound bus he would drop me off at the crossroads for a connecting bus to Pana. I was sick of waiting so I took up his offer and stepped on the bus.

No, I did not actually see any chickens on the bus, but I did see people of all shapes and sizes. There were respectable looking men in business-casual and shady characters wearing the clothes they slept in, farmers with cowboy hats and teenagers wearing the latest American fashions of 1995. I—the lone gringo on the bus—meekly found a spot next to a mother in indigenous dress holding a sleeping child.

The bus headed north out of Xela. The interesting thing about chicken buses is that although they are the largest vehicles on the road, they also drive the fastest while simultaneously making frequent stops and taking in and ejecting large quantities of bodies. However, I must warn you that the idea of “fast” progress on a Guatemalan road, especially with a chicken bus, is very different. For a number of reasons it just takes longer to get places. For one, the roads are very windy since they often weave through the mountains. Moreover, the highways are littered with speed bumps because apparently this is seen as the only way to ensure that pedestrians will be able to cross them. A section of the highway near Xela is under construction right now further contributing to sluggish progress. And finally a chicken bus is always trying to pick up more passengers so they will slow down and honk their horns and yell at pedestrians trying to seduce more customers or just park it in a busy town and wait for the seats to fill up.

Nonetheless, we were making somewhat steady progress out of Xela until we reached a place called the Cuatro Caminos, where Highway 1 out of Xela intersects with the Inter-American Highway. Turn left and head toward Huehuetenango and Mexico or turn right and head toward Guate (Guatemala City). The fourth path, which basically no one ever takes, is continuing on Highway 1 east toward Totonicapán. Our bus waited at a stop light for ten minutes and then waited for no apparent reason on the side of the road. Cuatro Caminos is lined with numerous vendors and strewn with pedestrians. And endless stream of vendors entered the bus from the front offering newspapers, tortillas, bananas, French fries, empanadas, water, soft drinks and get-rich schemes. They entered the front of the bus and continued right out the back down which was opened for them in a continuous stream.

A few beggars also entered the bus. One woman had a bandage covering the right side of face and had a muffled voice like the grownups in Charlie Brown. I couldn’t understand her words but she pulled up her bandage to expose a vacant hole in her face where her right eye and cheek would be and I understood well enough want she was trying to communicate and reached in my pocket for some change. I was glad when the bus finally accelerated out of the commotion of Cuatro Caminos.

After that we had smooth sailing more or less. The mother next to me started breast-feeding her baby whose thirst for milk seemed unquenchable, but breast-feeding in public isn’t uncommon in Guatemala and by now I am used to that. Of course, the chicken bus passed slower vehicles on curvy roads with little visibility, but that is just living up to their reputation. I drifted off and next thing I knew the ticket-guy was tapping my knee to met me know we had reached my stop—Los Encuentros—that is, the place where the road heading south to Pana intersects with the Inter-American Highway. I hopped on another chicken bus, which took me to Sololá. The passengers of this bus included more foreigners. There were three bohemian-types with instruments sitting in the back and a few backpackers too. It was a short ride to Sololá where I switched to a Pana-bound bus.

We snaked deeper into the mountains and soon below loomed Lago Atitlan, its waves lapping up against towering volcanoes on all sides. It was about 3:30 p.m. when the bus dropped me off in the north part of Pana; I had made it to Pana in less than two and a half hours. On the down side, I could not see the lake so I set to walking. After thirty minutes I finally reached the shore. The vibrant afternoon sun beat down on the rippling surface of the youthful-ancient face of the lake. Beneath my sunglasses I joyfully stared dead into the sun.

Only minutes after I reached the shore, my parents pulled up to in a yacht and we had our hallmark reunion after I extricated myself from a persistent nut-peddler blocking my path. My parents were with their tour group so we followed the turista herd around the town for a while before we worked up the courage to break free.

Sadly, my parents had given up the will to even try to speak Spanish and had resorted to approaching savvy-looking Guatemalans and speaking very crisp English, hoping if they said their words slowly enough the confused strangers would somehow understand. Essentially, if they strayed from tourist-friendly zones they were helpless. I did my best to be their translator, helping them haggle down the price of a hammock to 230 quetzales (still not a great price).

My mom seemed very excited to be a country where she did not have to be the authority telling me not to consume alcohol and she even suggested we split a bottle of wine. At 5:30 p.m. we took a cruise back to their hotel in Santa Catarina. From the roof of the boat we watched the sun fade behind some bulky clouds low on the western horizon and filter out through gaps. It was picturesque and many pictures we did take.

At the hotel we had the chance to catch up and also exchanged presents. I gave them some trinkets I had accumulated during my travels and they gave me a care package including tennis shoes filled with candy bars.

As if things couldn’t get any better after taking a sunset cruise on one of the beautiful lakes in the world and receiving a care package of American goodies, I even scored a free dinner thanks to a tour group member who had succumbed to stomach ailments.

I awoke at 5:15 the following morning to catch the chicken bus back to Xela, hopefully in time for my 9 o’clock class. My mom called the hotel in Santa Catarina "paradise" and it was a bit sad leaving “paradise” but looking back I’m glad that in less 24 hours I had survived the chicken bus twice, reunited with my parents, and also got a brief taste of beautiful Lago Atitlan.

Nahuales

2009-02-28T05:59:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday I discovered my nahuales. In the Mayan religion, nahuales are the signs that influence your life. Each person has three principal signs and six signs that have a lesser influence. The principal signs are the conception sign, the birth sign and the destiny sign. The birth sign corresponds to the day one was born on the sacred Mayan calendar. The sacred Mayan calendar is 260 days and has 13 months of 20 days. Each of the twenty days of the Mayan month has its own nahual. For example the first day in the calendar, Bat’z’, signifies original knowledge, the unfolding of time, the umbilical cord and the evolution of humankind. The nahual is paired with a number from 1 to 13 designating the strength of the nahual with 13 exerting the strongest influence.

The Mayans also had a solar calendar with 365.25 days they used for more practical matters like farming. Once every 51 years, the sacred calendar aligns with the solar calendar, but obviously is very hard to figure out a sacred calendar date from a date on the Gregorian calendar.

It was quite an interesting journey trying to figure out my nahuales with my maestra Gladys. Gladys is an indigenous woman who teaches k’iche’ in addition to Spanish. We started talking about nahuales our second day and she said she would help me find out what mine were. I said why wait, I bet I could figure out what day my birth, June 14, 1988, corresponded to on the sacred Mayan calendar. I figured all I would have to do is figure out how many days I have been alive and divide by twenty. The remainder left over in the division would be the number of days to subtract for the current date on the sacred Mayan calendar.

The problem is, even if my calculations worked—and they didn’t—then I still would have no idea what my other eight nahuales might be. Consequently, Gladys told me she would enter the day of my birth into a computer program at her temple that would calculate my nahuales. The next time we met to have class she showed my nahuales, but it turned out that she had mixed up my birthday and the nahuales she had were not mine. The next time we met, I finally had my real honest to God nahuales.

According to Mayan tradition, people are supposed to keep their nahuales a secret because they contain your strengths and weaknesses and others would be able to manipulate you with that intimate knowledge. Often it is only the Mayan priest and you yourself who know your nahuales. So I guess I can’t tell you exactly what my nahuales lest you know all the chinks in my armor. But let me just say the nahuales were pretty accurate and reflected my traits well.

The purpose of finding your nahuales is self-realization and self-actualization. They do not tell you a foregone destiny, but rather tell you information about yourself. The task then is to balance out your negative and positive influences and find equilibrium. If you use heed the warnings and the counsel the nahaules provide then you will be able to reach your fullest potential and have the brightest future possible.

You’re probably thinking this sounds like a load of BS. Could these signs really affect our lives? The day we are born on really matter so much? I’m not saying I’ve converted to the Mayan religion, but I probably put more stock in this than in transubstantiation or parting seas.

A Hundred Mayan Ruins, Twelve Waterfalls, One Cave and some Deaf Karoke

2009-02-25T08:45:00.000-08:00

On Valentine’s Day we returned from our long excursion, a nine-day trek across Guatemala to take in the major sights. The long excursion is the hinge in the two phases of our program. Our five weeks of intensive one-on-one tutoring is over and on the sixteenth we started taking university courses. We are continuing with one-on-one tutoring but for fewer hours each week. We also do four hours of volunteer work each week. We have been busy so it was nice to have a vacation before we started our new schedule.

Leaving Friday, we stopped in Guatemala City for dinner at Frida’s, a gimmicky Mexican restaurant. My chicken mole didn’t do the unibrowed artist justice. We stayed at Holiday Inn and felt quite like a bit of home skin-grafted onto face of Guate.

Saturday we woke up early and headed to Flores. After quite a trek, we arrived in a beautiful island town surrounded by a greenish blue lake. It felt like paradise. The first night, we ate at Raices, a restaurant/discoteca adjacent to our hotel. We started with a group of dozen or so and ended up with almost all 23 of us. This created quite a headache for the wait staff, especially when trying to figure out the bill. Apparently, their solution was to try to charge us twice for many of our purchases. We in the first group thought we had settled its bill and we left while a second group stayed to enjoy more cheap drinks. When the second group received their bill, they found many of our purchases were on their bill. Jordan and I returned to try to figure out from whence these mysterious charges had reared their ugly heads and we frustrated the meseros enough with our half-ass Spanish that they just struck the contended items from the bill. Peeved as we were—being that Raices was one of two discotecas in town—we returned later to get our dance on.

The police ended up combing Raices that night, but they generally ignored the gringos. Still the fuzz killed the mood enough that we left for Adictos, the other discoteca in town. Adictos was even more en fuego than Raices so we were happy for the change. People we met were very friendly, whether that be Guatemaltecos eager to grind with gringas, a chica by the bar with an appetite for gringos, or the college students happy to shoot the shit by the beach after closing time.

Jordan and I ended the night by jumping in the pool (actually Ellory pushed Jordan in) and then we scampered around the hotel waking up our friends.

The next day we had no activities scheduled so we wandered around Flores a bit and took a tour of a Mayan site in the jungle. Monday we went to Tikal and saw the famed Mayan city. We scaled pyramids and saw some wildlife like leafcutter ants and howler monkeys along the way. I was impressed with the sheer scale of the ruined city. It was a 20-minute walk between the north pyramid and the central acropolis. More impressive is the fact that recently archaeologists have discovered the ruins of another ruined city, called Mirador, that dwarfs even Tikal.

Tuesday, we went to another Mayan cite, Yaxhá which hasn’t been as thoroughly excavated as Tikal but was situated on a nature reserve. We got an even closer to howler monkeys and heard a lengthy howling match between groups of monkeys.

Wednesday we took a bus to Coban. Since we already had to get up to eat breakfast at 7:45, Kate, Ellory, Shannon, Laura and I decided to get up a bit earlier at 5:45 so we could see the sunrise over the lake. We met in the lobby and headed towards the east side of the island. Noticing a glow on the eastern horizon as we walked, we decided to sprint the rest of the waterfront lest we miss the sunrise. When we arrived we realized we hadn’t missed it and we sat for twenty minutes watching the sky turn from dark purple, to a hazy blue glow, to white that tinted to orange before a brilliant yellow orb peaked out above the tree line and oozed its orange-golden blood on the canvass of the sky. When sun became too bright to stare into, we slowly reluctantly realized it was time to leave or the very least avert our eyes. We walked back to the hotel, grabbed a frizbee and killed the rest of the time until breakfast in the central park.

Once we hit the road, we were nervous because we knew that we had to take a less than dependable ferry across a river and if that ferry wasn’t running we would have to take a five hour detour. When we got to the river we surprised to find that it was little more than a creek. At perhaps fifty meters in width we were curious why they didn’t build a bridge across such a measly river. We would never let a river, especially so wimpy, go untamed in the states and we foreignness of this country felt particularly strong crossing the river.

We arrived in Coban, the coffee town the Germans built. We proceeded to find a taqueria where we could score some cheap Mexican food. There wasn’t much to the town as far as tourists would be concerned. We tried to take a tour of a coffee farm, but it was too late in the afternoon. Coban is not renowned for its nightlife and we stayed in the hotel, which had the finest accommodations in town (there wasn’t much competition), and played ping pong and took advantage of free internet access. The hotel felt like our sanctuary in a crime-ridden slum.

The next morning, we boarded a minibus and headed to Semuc Champey, a remote set of waterfalls that is said to be one of the most beautiful sites in Guatemala. During the three hour bus ride, we decided to play deaf karoke, a game in which performers cranks up their Ipods to full blast and screams their lungs out to a song of their choice. Performers are completely deaf to other people’s reaction and also quite unaware whether they are hitting any of the notes. The spectators don’t get to enjoy the accompanying instruments of the song, but they have quite enough entertainment watching someone butcher their favorite song. We heard a hilarious rendition of “Piano Man,” witnessed a Pocahantas duet and had a “Sweet Caroline” sing-a-long. We also managed to overlook the fact that the bus driver was very frustrated with having such a raucous group of passengers. At one point he turned the radio up really loud and sang a long, but we didn’t get the hint.

We arrived in Semuc and the bus driver was likely very happy to be rid of us. We got suited up and jumped into the river from a tree swing. I managed to belly flop on my attempt, but it was still exhilarating. We continued toward the waterfalls but when we reached the bridge across the river, we decided to jump in again. At about 10 meters above the water, the bridge took a bit of courage to leap from. When my turn came up I psyched myself enough to jump but found that I still had to wait for what seemed like five seconds but was probably only one to hit the water.

As, we continued towards the waterfalls on a trail that snaked along the river, the rapids grew stronger and we knew we didn’t have far to go. The roar of the rushing water grew louder and louder until finally we could see the main waterfall. What makes Semuc unique is that above the main waterfall, the river trickles down in a series of small waterfalls. It looked like the river went down a staircase before finally bursting over a cliff. It was beautiful. But we hadn’t seen it all. We continued upstream until we came to a place when the river plummeted into a cave and surged on underground. I really have no idea exactly how the river twists and contorts to traverse the limestone formations impeding its progress in beautiful fashion at Semuc, but I know it emerges from them and continues on as a single body toward the sea. I’m glad the river chose the path it did and not a smoother but less spectacular one.

Our hotel that night was a mile from the waterfalls but leagues away from anything else. Suffice to say, we ate and drank at the hotel there being to restaurants or bars anyway near. We also made a birthday cake of candy bars for Markie who officially turned twenty-one when the clock struck midnight. There is something about being deep in the wilderness that encouraged us to get rather smashed and pretend we were in the rowdiest discoteca around when we were on a deck dancing to jock jams medleys. Unfortunately, they turned off their generator at 10 p.m. and we resigned ourselves to a bon fire and the dock and the stars brightly shining above since the electricity was no more.

Friday, we headed into the caves near the waterfalls armed with headlamps and candles. An underground river ran through the caves and for some sections we had to wade and others we had to swim. My friend Laura “Wilderness” Wildenborg gives tours of caves for her summer job and she was her element and shared her extensive knowledge with novice spelunkers like myself. We entered several different rooms and passed through the corridors and ladders between them. At one point, we climbed up a rope ladder with a waterfall splashing down on top of us. Our farthest exploration was a big room with several table-shaped stalagmite formations. They had us extinguish our lights and observe a moment of silence in the darkness in a Mayan custom. On the way back, we passed down a hole with a waterfall glowing through it like a vertical waterslide (a.k.a. a goonie).

We headed back to Coban in the afternoon and had dinner together in the hotel to celebrate Markie’s birthday. Laura and Ellory presented her with a tiny plastic champagne bottle and a short story that went with it explaining that bottle was a traveling gift and she should pass it on to the next in our group to have a birthday.

Saturday we ate breakfast in the hotel and started our ten-hour journey back to Xela. The landscape changed before us as we passed through several of Guatemala’s 23 different biospheres. Mountains, forests, plains and volcanoes melted before our eyes until we were back in the highland city which we call home.

Dos Maestras

2009-02-15T20:02:00.000-08:00

El viernes, 30 de enero (I meant to finish writing this and post this long ago and have finally gottten around to it)

Today I finished my first week with my second maestra, Monica. I have to say Monica and Milena are polar opposites.

Milena is a foxy smartly-dressed 23-three-year law student who likes to make fun of fresas chicas, that is to say women who overdress and worry too much about their appearance.

Monica, on the other hand, is a fresa chica. She alternates between all-pink days and all-purple days. And when I say all purple I mean from purple fingernails, purple rings, a purple headband, purple earrings, purple eye shadow, purple lipstick, not to mention her purple clothes. Sometimes I would look at her and think "wow, you actually are wearing all purple."

Milena was a good teacher, but truth be told, studying with her felt more like talking to a friend than being drilled by a grammar and linguistics expert. Some days, we spent an hour plus gossiping. She even tried to help me with my love life. We laughed a lot and it was easy to go to class in the morning. I was sad when I had to switch away from her services (we are required to change teachers at certain points in the program).

Monica and I started off pretty well. She was a bit more of a nose-to-the-grindstone type of teacher and I thought that might be good to take my Spanish to the next level. I had high hopes. My nose might well be server by closer proximity to the grindstone.

Monica set to task on my sloppy pronunciation like a barber on a barbarian. Reading a page of Spanish text could take ten minutes as she corrected my manifold mistakes. Highlight-every-miniscule-pronunciation-mistake-I-make time could get frustrating after awhile. Maybe I have trouble being corrected by someone who wears so much purple that they look like they should be thrown into a bucket and stomped into wine. What’s more she gave me more homework than Milena did. Most irritating of all, today, she tried to make a Jehovah’s Witness of me.

It started innocently enough. We casually started talking about religion and next thing I know she was telling we to read the one true Bible and acknowledge the one true faith and stop wallowing in my pluralistic ways (I paraphrase). We argued for nearly two hours neither of us giving much ground. But besides being too match-y and trying to save my soul—which I had long since abandoned to the fiery pits of hell—I liked Monica too.

Fotos

2009-01-30T14:42:00.000-08:00

Why is there a wastebasket in the stall?

2009-01-25T13:41:00.000-08:00

Three weeks into my semester in Guatemala and I am catching on to the Xela lifestyle. It’s finally become natural to put soiled TP in the wastebasket not the toilet. Flushing TP or really anything but number one, number two and everything in between is a no-no in Latin America because they don’t have a souped-up sewer system here like we have in the states that can handle TP and everything else we think to flush. Moreover, I've done more than potty train myself here.

Quetzaltenango is a city of 250,000 people, making it Guatemala’s second most populous city. Located 8,000 feet up in the Western Highlands, the city is more commonly referred to as Xela (shay-la) short for its Quiche name Xelaju. The people of Xela have a sometimes not-so-friendly rivalry with the capitalanos (residents of Guatemala City), especially when it comes to futbol.

Some things about Xela are not very different from a typical U.S. city. First off, norteamericanos and europeos are everywhere. Many are here to learn the language, as I am, some are here to experience a more genuine Guatemala than engineered-for-tourists Antigua, and some seem to be content simply to be leading the affordable easy-going Xela lifestyle.

It’s not just the expatriate population that harkens el norte, young Guatemaltecos wear the same clothes as young people in the US. Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister are popular here although I get the feeling they paid a fraction of what we pay in the U.S. Perhaps these designer t-shirts were manufactured under the supervision of Guatemalteca hands in the first place.

Youngsters here have also seem to have succumbed to that unfortunate fashion trend in which you gel your hair into some bizarre formation, don dark-colored clothing, perhaps pierce bodily orifices, sport a melancholy sort of gaze and otherwise look like the riff-raff I imagine at a Panic at the Disco concert. Also all too familiar is the norte-style mall called Hiperpais (Ee-per-pie-ees) which features a superstore owned by Walmart. The foodcourt includes Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, McDonalds and Subway.

There are also stark differences. For one, there are absolutely no skyscrapers in Xela. Most buildings have one or two stories and never more than ten. In Zone 1, which is the center of the city, to call the roads cobblestone and narrow would often do them too much justice. The roads are uneven patchworks of miscellaneous-sized rocks sometimes wide enough to carry simultaneously a stream of cars and pedestrians. The roads bear the droppings of the city’s stray dog population. The strays rule the streets at nights rummaging through bags of discarded garbage for treasures. During the day, the dogs pass out on sidewalks just like homeless men. The grass at parks here is off limits, and since parks are the only places where there is grass, it is difficult even to find enough open space to toss around Frisbee.

But, what makes Xela Xela is the Mayan culture here. Wikipidia says that perhaps the name Xelaju may refer to the ten mountains surrounding the city. True, there are ten mountains encircling the valley on which Xela rests, but locals say that the name refers to the ten allied Quiche kingdoms that were ruled from Xelaju (the Quiches were a sister-tribe of the Maya) before the Spanish came and defeated the Quiche in a heated battle near the current city center.

Despite the conquest and colonization, the city retains its strong Quiche heritage. Some women still walk around Xela in Mayan dress. Mayan clothing always contains a plethora of colors and patterns, which are symbolic of their status in Mayan society. For example only single women wear red, while married women wear green. The majority of the population of Xela as well as the county at large is indigenous and they are proud of it. Mayan descendants love to tell you how their ancestors devised a calendar thousands of years ago that wasn’t surpassed in accuracy until the NASA era.

Like I’ve said, I’ve been here for three weeks. We receive one-on-one tutoring at a Spanish school called Celas Maya for fives hours a day. Our afternoons are free and we’ve been exploring the city with this time. I’ve been to a natural hot springs, a natural sauna, the local market and many other sites. In two weeks we are taking a weeklong trip across the country and after that we start university courses.

We live with host families. My family includes Dulce Mariola Cojom, her father Jose, her brother Jason and his wife, her 18-month-old daughter Sofia and nephews Gustavo and Eddy who stay here during the week to study at a nearby high school. Family life revolves around Sofia who like any one-and-a-half-year-old is an attention-whore.

Sofie loves to dance or should I say make us dance when we put on mariachi music for kids. She also loves to throw her sippy cup or her food on the floor about halfway through a meal. But, seeing her scamper around the house always looking dangerously close to falling, you can’t help but love her.

The first weekend I had to a fun Friday night at a discoteca called La Rumba and spent the rest of it battling “stomach problems” (euphemism for explosive diarrhea). The second weekend we took a group trip to Antigua and I enjoyed overpriced but gringo-friendly food and gawked at colonial ruins. This weekend, I hiked to Laguna Chicabal, a sacred Mayan lake in a volcano crater and have otherwise relaxed.

Sometimes my heads aches as I try to fracture it into English and español speaking areas and I certainly miss my family and friends, but I have to say I am making great strides in being a passable Spanish speaker and minor strides in being a passable salsa dancer, and, if I keep this up, I might one day fit in here—or at least come home and be way cooler than my friends.