Fresh Meat

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="393" caption="Cheryl"][/caption]

If I haven't been posting as much lately it's because I've become very engrossed in my work. I've begun a new project, and details will be forthcoming, but for now just know that I'm very motivate and can't stop working on it!

The big news in these parts today is that our new companion, Cheryl has arrived! Cheryl hails from Idaho and it turns out she actually has plenty of experience teaching English. Before coming here, she taught ESL to refugees from many different countries who had immigrated to Boise. She has the kind of energy and enthusiasm that Mike and I haven't seen in weeks. Let's hope her classes begin before she has too much opportunity to become like us :-)

On Not Belonging

Being a minority means even little children can tell you what you are in a way that makes you wish otherwise. Whether white, black, latino or asian, there are words that people of other races use for us when they don't like us. It is only through the virtue of having belonged to a majority that I have been able to take pleasure in the words various people might choose to call me, for better or worse.
Now that I am so completely outnumbered, it is much harder to ignore how someone means it when they call me a gringo.

At first you try to remain high-minded, constantly reminding yourself that those who call you gringo, nigger, gook don't know you and thus are powerless to judge you. But eventually you realize that the implication of this belief is that you must be so different from the rest of your kind as to be above judgment. "Oh, not I," says you, "I too hate gringos too." But is this any excuse? And are you really that different?

We all like to think we've been misrepresented by the rest of our race, that the stereotypes people have for us are never true of us. But a stereotype exists not because every example proves it, but rather because there aren't enough counterexamples to disprove it. One of the stereotypes I fail to disprove is that of the aloof gringo. Someone from Guatemala would be correct to assume that I will most likely ignore them if I meet them on the street. This is because of a stereotype I have for Guatemalans, namely that when they try to get your attention it is because they want something from you. This stems from a stereotype they have that, as a gringo I have lots of disposable income which I have come to Guatemala with the intention of spending.

I suppose I should want to crusade against the stereotypes and put an end to such negative interactions. But it's evident that plenty of people here would much rather see me go home.

Antigua: Circumspection

After more reading I found myself sitting near a fair German lass studying Spanish. After about three more of my chapters, a rather striking black man approached her and asked for a cigarette. She begrudgingly offered it up only to hear him answer that he doesn't smoke (forward of him, no?). The girl, it turned out, was Leah, a recent resident of New York City where she had just finished working for several years as an au pair. The man, I learned, was Stephan, a Belizian tour guide and pro diver whose first language was English. Rest assured, the conversation was anything if not interesting. The rain had let up so I left for a park I had visited with Lori.

For another hour or two I read rather gloomily until it got dark. When I returned to the hostel, Leah was hunting for me to bring me to a bar to meet a local guy she had met through an online friend she had made before coming to Guatemala. She had with her Stephen as well as a charming German chap she had met named Rene. The three of us followed her to a bar where she introduced us to Emilio and everyone hung out and got to know each other a little better.

After that is was off to a Salsa club where a former member of Buena Vista Social Club was playing with his band and some really incredible salsa dancers were doing their thing. The place was generally packed, but the way it was set up, it never got too ridiculously crowded. I hadn't had a chance to talk to Emilio at the other place, and it turned out he was pretty cool guy. He had grown up in Antigua and had worked as a tour guide, his degree being in studies related to tourism and its industry. Presently he was working as an entrepreneur and bartender while freelancing on the web.  He had me thinking positively, for the first time since arriving in Guatemala, about topics related to business, especially vis-a-vis tourism and even Antigua in particular.

Having exhausted quite a bit of my steam in coming to the capital that day, and genuinely buzzed about the fun evening I had had thus far, I decided to head back while it was all still aglow. About that time, Rene pooped out and with him Leah, so I took the chance to duck out with them and head back to the hostel. Back there, the courtyard was full of loudly-singing hippie travelers complete with guitar. Crawling into my bunk I wondered how I was going to fall asleep with them carrying on just below me. Luckily, rain began to fall loudly on the metal roof, eventually drowning them out and lulling me off into dreamland.

Antigua: Resurrection

Antigua can be decidedly glum when you're there the second time and its without your lover. Especially when it's pouring down rain. I cought a bus from San Lucas to Antigua and after skittering through its soggy streets, ducked into the nearest cafe to let the rain die off. It just so happened that this cafe belonged to the place where I was planning to spend the night. Coincidence? After getting a bed and locking up my things I retired to the covered courtyard to read.

Glancing at my watch I was dumbfounded to find it was only about 2:00 in the afternoon. If I so wished, I had an entire ten hours of reading to look forward to. I nearly finished my book and enlivening talk broke it up nicely. My first visit was with a couple of Israeli girls with whom I was sharing the table. They were kind and sweet, even giving me what was left of their challah (about half a loaf!), a kind of bread that told me is eaten at the Shabbat and which seems to melt in one's mouth. They were off to Atitlán, so I bid them "shalom" and continued to read.

After about an hour I found myself chatting with a couple of Seattle-ites, clearly best friends, one of whom was an Oceanography grad at CW. Both of them had done their undergrad at UC and were now out to see more of the hemisphere. I described to them my misadventure outside Patzicía and they were duly impressed. It turned out they were waylaid by the same event.

Visa Rigmarole III

At whatever time some protesting jerks decided to lock up the Inter-American Highway, the traffic had been about the same leaving the capital as it was going in. This meant I had only to walk a little more than half a mile up the road beyond the manifestación before I found buses that were in the same position as the one I was in when it decided to turn around. I found a bus for whom turning around meant going back to Guatemala City. A few minutes later about a busload of people came who had had the same idea and in no time at all I was on my way again to renew my Visa.

A cab ride from the bus stop in Guatemala City, and I was at the immigration office. It went off like butter. There was almost no line for anything but the photocopier and I had all my documents in order. I don't think I was even there an entire hour. I've read that the holdup at Immigration in Guatemala has to do with obtaining a lawyer's stamp. Perhaps the limited traffic into town that morning meant the Immigration lawyers had more time for things like my tourist Visa.

Having set aside an entire two days for the task, I didn't know quite what to do with myself. I stood on the steps of the immigration office pondering my options. I could try to get back to Santa Cruz and save the extra day, but I didn't know how long it would be before buses were running again, or even how to determine whether or not they were, without just hoping the nearest Tecpan or Encuentros bus and seeing how far it took me. Better to run for Antigua and wait to the thing to blow over.

Visa Rigmarole II

Travel is strong medicine. I think, in a large way, I felt the travel aspect of going to Guatemala was largely in the past when I departed for Guatemala City yesterday morning. To some extent I felt I had lived that out when I was first arriving in June and also last month from when Lori arrived to when she and Beth departed. So when advice finally moved me in the direction of the Guatemala City visa option, I decided to take it.

Phase one of said Guatemala City trip went decidedly haywire. At about 7:30 am, five-sixths of the way into the three-hour bus ride from Santa Cruz to Guate, my bus ran across an obstacle. About thirty kilometers Northwest of Chimaltenango, mid-morning traffic on the Pan-American Highway ground go to a halt. After a brief cell phone conversation, the driver informed us he was turning around and going back to Santa Cruz. "Well, I'm not," I thought to myself.

Hopping off the bus, nearly without my bag (kindly passengers fished it out for me when, outside the bus, I noticed I didn't have it), I began to hike up alongside about a half-mile of gridlock traffic. After a little while hiking, I came upon what was causing all the backup. In the middle of the road, a bonfire was burning, hewn tightly with men with bandannas over their faces holding what looked like police-issue billy clubs. Perhaps one or two hundred people milled about on the road alongside it as well on a crossing bridged erected at the bus stop for Patzicía.

I put my head down and tried to look clean and discrete as I made my way through the crowd to the other side of the obstruction. "Que está pasando?", I asked of an onlooker ("What is going on?"). "Es una manifestación," he responded. A demonstration. A banner facing down the road toward Guatemala City read something about Tecpan not allowing something. I would have tried to read it better, but I would have had to ask some people to move from in front of it, and I reasoned that that was probably not a good idea. Besides, I was in a hurry and I kind of felt like a walking symbol of the discontent being expressed by the people on the roadway.

On the other side, the police were slowly arriving. As I neared them along the road, I noticed I was the only person venturing within perhaps five yards of them. While well-equipped and acting civil, they were clearly outnumbered and unready to confront the demonstrators. I didn't want to hang around for whatever was to come next.

Visa Rigmarole

Well, the time has come. I am here on a 90-day visa and yesterday (a state holiday) was my 90th day in Guatemala. That means its time for me to renew my visa here in Guatemala. This is done in one of two ways.

1. Go to the Guatemalan immigration office, present a photocopy of a credit card, passport and fee, and wait for what I've heard can be up to a week. Return when notified to pick up new visa.

2. Go to Mexico for three days. Get a new entry stamp upon returning to the country.

Thinking in terms of economy I first opted for option number one. Bad idea. Mike did that too. It turns out after at least seven prior volunteers, Enlace still has no clue how this process is handled. It ended up costing Mike bus and taxi fare in both directions to learn that he hadn't completed all the required steps in order to renew his visa and could he please come back when he was prepared.

Deciding to cross all my T's and dot all my I's prior to going, I called INGUAT, Guatemala's tourism department, to get the scoop in advance. After being referred and transferred between at least three different offices and talking to several different people, I got the same response: For information, come to the immigration office between 8:00 and 4:30 Monday through Friday. Interesting... Isn't that what Mike did?

No dice, people. I'm not going to roll over.

Mexico, here I come.

El Remate

After a long, lazy morning we decided it was time to move on from Flores. Mike had told me about a sleepy little town called El Remate about an hour from Flores which is the closes town to Tikal on the lake. After the hike with bags in tow to Santa Elena, we baked in the sun on a street corner until the nearest colectivo, a shabby old charter bus, came by to take us the rest of the way. To our confusion, it dropped at a seemingly remote crossroads called Ixlu. Not knowing what to do, we asked the nearest passerby which way to El Remate and he pointed up the road.

Is we followed the road in the throbbing mid-day sun, a guy of maybe twenty came along on a bike, and began to engage me in conversation. I normally just ignore kids like this, but he seemed genuine, so I humored him. It turned out his family ran a hotel on their property and it only cost 30 quetzales a night (about four dollars) per person. Not really knowing what to expect, we decided to take a look. The family property was set on a hillside on literally the first street as you get into town. The "hotel" was just three rooms made from raw wood obviously procured from the surrounding forest covered by a thatched roof. Not wanting to keep looking and, at least in my case, wooed by the price, we decided to stay.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="430" caption="Not bad for four bucks a night"][/caption]

Next thing, we tore off our clothes and hopped in the lake. It felt ssooo goood to go for a swim. The water was lukewarm and we had a little dock to ourselves. It turned out the guy, Juan Carlos was also the in charge of the town's tourist information office. After lunch at a touristy place with a tempting pool, Beth went back to the room and Lori and I wrangled Juan Carlos to help us rent a kayak. We launched in the pouring rain but by the time we were a good distance out in the lake it let up and we were in a blue paradise with miles of lake out on the horizon.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="430" caption="View from our room in El Remate"][/caption]

That night we decided to try a restaurant recommended in one of our tour books. A road off the main route took us along hotel and restaurant row for what seemed like forever before we finally arrived. The place looked closed, but when we rang the bell they beckoned us in. After sitting at a table and reading the menu, Lori and Beth decided they weren't pleased. I made up a cursory excuse and we absconded with our heads down. Where we decided to eat, there turned out to be several very drunk men who made a scene and seemed to take forever finally to leave, loitering loudly and drunkenly with their motor bikes in the entryway.

Back at our room, it started to rain and to leak through our thatched roof. Luckily I had a poncho which I draped over the mosquito net before drifting off to sleep.

ARCAS

When I awoke we still had a few hours remaining of daylight and Lori wasn't fixing to waste them. She had read in one of our guidebooks about ARCAS, a wildlife refuge across the lake from us that houses animals rescued from the black market and she rallied us to go see it. As it was only accessible by boat, we hired a boatman for about thirty dollars to take us there and back.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption=""Excuse me, kind sir. Might I trouble you for a banana?""][/caption]

After we arrived at the ARCAS visitor center, were we escorted around to various cages by a pretty uninformative, gentle-seeming man. First stop was the monkeys. I don't know why, but there is something innately funny about monkeys. As soon as we arrived at they came right up to us, even sticking their hand through the cage like little beggars. After that was an assortment of birds including one that looks like a turkey and which I hear winds up on local menus from time to time. Next was my favorite; a kind of boar called a "chancho de monte" which means literally "mountain pig". I found these funny as well. They had tiny little feet that the placed ever so delicately when they walked. Judging by their demeanor, one might have mistaken them for royalty.

Next came something I will never forget. I real live jaguar mere feet away. As we walked up, it was in the far corner from us and it began to check us out. As we talked to the guide and asked questions, it stood and began to pace a little, its huge paws spreading out against the soil on the floor of its cage. Then without warning it lunged at Beth. She about jumped out of her skin. I would have too if it had been me. Judging by the rate at which it covered the distance between it and ourselves, we probably would have been toast if not for the cage. "It really wants to hunt," remarked Lori.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Hungry for BETH!"][/caption]

After the jaguar came more birds and number of deer. The deer we clearly quite tame, following us along the trail and scratching their antler against the cage. There was one deer that had to be kept apart from the others because they kept picking on it. We learned that the animals are quarantined at ARCAS and then released after forty days. Lori and I both wondered how much of a head start they give deer before releasing jaguars.

After about an hour and a half at the reserve we said goodbye and went to the dock where our boat was waiting. We trolled back to Flores with the waning daylight painting pale blue and pink swirls on the lake dotted every few seconds with a flash of lightning.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Lori and Beth on the boat"][/caption]

Tikal

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="431" caption="Tikal at sunrise"][/caption]

It wasn't until we went to set our alarm the night before that I learned we had arranged to leave for the ruins at 3:15 in the morning the next day. We set out amidst barking howler monkeys and chirping cicadas down the four-kilometer trail to Tikal's tallest structure, Temple Four, to catch the sunrise from its top. It turns out they were only allowing tour groups to do this for another ten days. After that they were to adopt UNESCO hours of opening and closing.

Something you have to realize about a place like Tikal is that it really is an ancient city. Many archeological sites, it seems, are more on the scale of a town. We were hiking at a good clip for about an hour and a half just to get to the middle of it. Because Guatemala's rain forest is protected, they've really just cleared off the structures and left trees and brush to grow around which gives the park a unique feel. The only place you really gain a sense for what it might have looked like in its day is in the central plaza where you kind of step out of the pyramid-strewn jungle at the end of the tour, into a grass-covered open field completely surrounded by structures and two stories off the ground. Incredible.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="431" caption="Lori checks out the view at the end of the tour. The tower in the upper left is where the picture at the beginning of this post was taken from."][/caption]

Lori and Beth and I held up pretty well throughout the five-hour tour, and even did better than most with our backpack full of goodies we had procured the evening before in a fit of wisdom. But by the time eleven o'clock rolled around under the glaring sun, I could tell that morale had begun to dwindle and we were all quite ready to go. Too bad for us, we had to sit in the bus aisle. Poor Beth kept nodding off with no place to lay her head. If I had known it would come to this I would have insisted we book with a different agency.

By the time we got back to our hotel I was so spent and sleep-deprived that I went right to sleep.

Flores

Once again at our hostal in Guatemala City, Lori and I awoke at 5:00 a.m., met Beth at arrivals and went right upstair to departures. In a stroke of trip-planning genius Lori had booked our flight to Flores for just about exactly as long after Beth's arrival as it takes to get through the check-in line and through security, and to walk out to the gate. It wasn't long after we sat down to wait, that we heard the first boarding call.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="424" caption="The lake from our room"][/caption]

Fourty-five minutes later we were in Tikal's "gateway" city of Flores. A dense little of node of hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops and tour agencies on an island in Lake Petén Itzá. After stashing our bags at the hotel we learned that we had five hours before our room was available. Not being one to sit on her laurels, Lori promptly found us a cave and we set off through Flores' dirtier big sibling Santa Elena, past a power plant and down a dusty dirt road .

An oldish gentleman with decent English tooks us on a rather unscientific tour of the cave, mostly pointing out mineral formations that resembled things like horses and women. He was careful to point out all the photo-ops and even made sure to ask us if each picture had come out okay. Some highlights included seeing live bats and scrambling on our bellies through narrow passages. My favorite part was when he turned out all the lights and it was just pitch black. For a while we even stood in perfect silence and in perfect darkness.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Climbing into a cavern"][/caption]

Santa Cruz del Quiche

Sunday we had our first opportunity to sleep in. After lounging around like layabouts until about ten it was time to hit the road. Though I would soon regret it, I decided it was time for Lori to see a little peice of real Guatemala. Instead of finding some kind of Shuttle up north, I opted to take her on the chicken busses. First from Antigua to Chimaltenango on Route 1, then very bumpily from Chimal to Los Encuentros and finally along the ridge from Encuentros to Santa Cruz.

Upon arriving at the volunteer house and decompressing a bit, we decided to hit an ATM and have a bit of a look around. But when Lori went to get her debit card, it became clear that there was a problem. Lori's wallet had been gone through, with her debit card and two credit cards missing. Strangely enough, the theif had left behind more than a hundred quetzales of cash as well as her passport.

Though we hurried to Enlace to block the card, when she accessed her account it appeared it had already been drained. Her available balance was a little more than eight dollars. Upon calling her bank it indeed turned out that someone had spent large sums at McDonald's, Radio Shack and a home improvement store. They told her that if she wanted a chance to get her money back, she would have to go to make a police report. When we told this to my coworkers at Enlace, they laughed. The last place anyone in Guatemala wants to go for anything is the police.

Not knowing what to do, we nevertheless arranged for Pablo to go with us the next day to the police office in hopes of filing a report. Upon arrival at the office the next day, we had the tremendous luck of bumping into a city council member who periodically works with Jesus and Pablo on City Hall's various web projects. He made a couple phone calls and within minutes he had Santa Cruz's Asistur (federal tourist assistant) officer at Enlace with us taking down information.

It turns out when you make a police report, they file something called a denuncia with the Public Ministry. With Edy from Asistur, we were able to bypass the police completely and go directly to the the Public Ministry. After what seemed like hours of waiting and then hours of translating and hashing out the details in writing, Lori's misfortune was now a matter of public record and we had an official document ratifying our claim that the latest charges to her card were fraudulent.

Though I would have liked to have spent more time in Santa Cruz, we had to be at the airport the next morning to greet Beth, so with just enough time to hit Gautemala City before dark, we were on the bus there.

Pacaya

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="401" caption="Approaching Pacaya"][/caption]

The next day we rose early to catch the shuttle with a bunch of other tourist to Volcan de Pacaya, an active volcano about half an hour from Antigua. On the way up we were told that there had been a major eruption in 2004, and then ten days ago there had been a spurt in activity with new flows of lava arising.

The journey to the volcano itself was a little obscene. First there was the bus. It broke down twice costing us what seemed like forever each time. Then there was the dispute about whether or not we would all hike all the way. Apparently the guide wanted us to remain as a group and if some people couldn't make it to the top we would all hang back. People made a big stink of it which turned out to be for nothing because there were enough tour groups coming and going that the guides could sort of share the load.

Children accosted us trying to sell us walking sticks, and on the trail through the woods, men kept appearing out of nowhere with horses in hopes that we would be too weak or lazy to keep hiking and would buy a horse ride. After about twenty minutes of hiking we reached a black, crumbly talus that seemed to want to give way under our every step. Another five hundred yards and the trail turned straight up the slope.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Looking down to the northwest"][/caption]

From this point on, the climb consisted mainly of resting one's weight as delicately as possible on ever-shifting, razor-sharp rocks and darting precariously from one foothold to the next without looking down. The higher we got, the hotter it got until with were standing mere feet from oozing liquid stone that made a sound like squishing mud. It was so hot that it hurt to stand for long in any one place and I found myself playing hot potato with our entire body, bouncing from one foot to the next, shielding myself with one arm and then the other.

Once everyone who made it all the way was satisfied and had taken enough pictures, we all went back down to the edge of vegetation and ate lunch near under the watch of two men with shotguns. After that it was back to the bus where we were told very brazenly to pony up a tip. For one last time, our stalwart bus bit the dust. After switching buses such that some people had to sit in the aisle we took the underwhelming industrial road back to just outside Antigua.

For all the B.S., I would say it was a worthwhile experience. I would recommend that anyone who does it bring sturdy leather gloves and boots that lace up to mid-ankle because otherwise you wind up digging tiny shards of volcanic rock out of your hands and emptying rocks from your shoes repeatedly.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Molten Rock"][/caption]

Antigua

I hope my loyal readers will forgive my half-month hiatus. From August 22 (happy birthday!) to August 31 I was on the road with Lori and, for the last four days with her sister Beth.

Lori arrived around 5:20 a.m. in Guatemala. In order to avoid the roads at night, I had taken a chicken bus (a big, colorful refurbished US school bus that plays chicken with other vehicles in order to pass) to a hostal about five blocks from the airport. After a warm reunion, we were off to Antigua in a shuttle.

I had taken Mike's advice a week prior and booked us a room at "Casa en Familia" a charming, unmarked little hotel toward the North end of town. I proved a good tip. The price is very reasonable, the service is good and the lady in charge is as sweet as can be. They even have a fridge for guest, of which we made ample use.

Apart from strolling the streets and taking in the sights of all the church ruins, Lori and I did little the first day besides catch up on sleep and and book a the following day's trip to Pacaya. Never before has doing so little felt so good.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Lori Stands on a scenic Antigua street"][/caption]