Weekend at the Lake Part I

The day began with three bus rides between Santa Cruz and Panajachel, riding sometimes seven abreast down  out of the chilly Altiplano and into Atitlán's shimmering blue lined by volcanoes. Panajachel somewhat resembles the tourist hubs of Mexico, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, the ravages of tourism having long ago replaced any quaintness it may have once possessed with stand after stand selling Mayan "curiosities" and woven dreadlock caps. We caught a boat across the lake for 50Q and landed on the opposite side in the somewhat smaller Santiago where we had heard there was to be a festival this weekend of Mike's birthday.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Watching the procession"][/caption]

Midday found us watching as high school girls played basketball in the beating sun on a court directly adjacent to a stage with a marimba band playing away. At intervals the action was punctuated with the ear-shattering crack of firecrackers blasted from makeshift mortars in the town square. At one point a bank's alarm went off filling the air with an awful din, deterring neither players nor band nor pyrotechnicians.

We went up a small rise to the town church to wait for the procession of idols we were told would come. As we sat on the church steps, two little boys approached us and offered to take us to see Maximón. I had heard that Maximón is a deity who's not altogether benevolent, someone to appease lest he give an illness or a bad harvest. The children led down a side street to a little house pretty far off the beaten path where Maximón's carved effigy sat smoking with a couple of old men surrounded by candles and other related shrines.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="These asshats decided the entire ceremony was for them alone"][/caption]

We went to see the procession at the church, but some jerks were sticking huge video cameras in everyone's faces so we could hardly even see. They paraded the idols up to the church steps where various community members were seated in traditional dress. Three cases were brought in, each with about sixteen one-liter bottles of beer. Some of the men bearing the idols poured cup after cup of beer for the people on the steps to drink and for other men in the procession. Meanwhile a band played and men dance about drunkenly, a few of them speaking to the idols and kissing their garments.

After a while we decided to go back to are room, but we were waylaid by and Israeli girl named Heidi who convinced us to go back to town to check out the Salsa band that was now playing. We went and had a few beers and did some dancing before we decided it was time to call it a night.