And... I'm... Spent.

Last thursday I said some sad goodbyes and set sail for Xela. Since then I've been hanging around Guatemala's second-biggest city trying not to be too much of a travel-hipster. I climbed the country's second-highest volcano by moonlight and went for a soak in some geothermal hot springs.

I had a feeling Mike and his girlfriend wouldn't make it out here like he said, so it came as no surprise when I got a phone call confirming this and inviting me to San Pedro. Although I found that town to be somewhat of a mixed bag, I decided I'll go since I won't have another opportunity to say goodbye and it's on my way. This time I'm booking shuttles, though because I can't stand another chicken bus ride to save my life. The last one had me puking.

After that it's one more night in the capital the next night and my first flight early the next morning. It's certainly been a long, strange trip, but one I wouldn't change. All in all time well spent. Presently it all too recent to wrap my head around. I'm sure I will come here in my mind many times in the years to come and wonder what it was like to live in these moments. Who knows, maybe one day I'll return.

Chajchai

On Saturday I had the privilege to a watch a match of chajchai, the much-celebrated Mayan Ballgame of pre-Columbian times. It all began when I was hanging around Enlace and I happened across Matias on his way out the door. He said that if I was interested I should join him at the site of the new Popol Ja K'iche' (K'iche' Cultural Center) that was under construction outside town on the way to a Xatinap for a sort of inaugural event they were holding there in an hour.

An hour later I found myself seated among K'iche' from various communities who had gathered share in the ceremony in the unfinished center's honor. I watched as Matias, the MC called for shows of hands from the perhaps ten communities that were represented. Several important community members gave speeches and a group of youths performed a familiar routine of interpretive dance (estampa foklorico with play-acted scenes of traditional Mayan life). The mayor and governor we sadly not present when invited to speak.

Next, Matias invited us out to a nearby cement basketball court to observe a the chajchai match. Somebody had strung a rope from one basketball hoop to the other from which were suspended two smallish rings. Matias announced that if a member of either teams were to knock the ball through one of the rings, they would win the game. The ball they played with was made from solid rubber (not hollow in the middle) and weighed more than three pounds. It was made in Peten and supposedly cost more than 1,500 Q (about $200).

If I understood correctly, the players had come all the way from Chimaltenengo to demonstrate their sport. They were shirtless and wore colorful war paint. There were three on each team. The ends of the court with the hoops served as end zones. The object of the game was to get the ball through the other team's end zone. Each player could only hit the ball once before a player from the opposite team got a hit. They could only use their hips and knees. The game would be won, we were told, by scoring eight points. In order to get a point, a team had to start with possession of the ball which was obtained by getting it past the other team's end zone. I didn't quite catch how, but there was a way of losing points. Matias explained that matches could take days.

It was really interesting watching them play. At one point there was a side-out my direction and I put out my foot to stop the ball. It really is a hefty chunk of rubber. Nothing like I've ever played with.

Día de Los Muertos

Yes, it's been a while since Día de Los Muertos, but I thought I'd share with you my experience of this interesting Latin American holiday. During Día de Los Muertos the people of Santa Cruz Del Quiché celebrated the lives of those who have died. I believe the tradition behind the celebration comes from the pagan belief that on the night of October 31st the spirits of the dead walk the earth. Festivities are a held that night in the town cemetery as well as the following night after All Saints Day. In the weeks leading up to the celebration, people paint the tombs of their families and adorn them with fresh flowers.

The evening of the 31st I went and played soccer with some coworkers. It was a popular night and the field was booked back to back. Afterwards I went to Estaban's mother's house and joined him and his wife for tomales. The cemetery was next. Several blocks of the road leading up to the cemetary were lined with vendors selling pizza and sweets. Families milled in and out in ambiance resembling the market.

The cemetary itself glowed with the light of many candles. It looked like a city in miniature with all the little mausolea. The "main street" went from the cemetery gates to a chapel where a people prayed and vigil was held. On one side of the path, a band played cheery traditional music and a hum of warm chatter hung in the air. We followed pathways through the maze of many small structures the place that held Esteban's family's remains. All along the way people lit candles and put fresh flowers on tombs. In some places there were nothing more than mounds of earth marking graves that were partially covered in what looked to me like plaster.

At one point a loud, jovial chanting drew me to a particular patch of earth where about thirty youths and number of bystanders stood scattered amidst burial mounds. Older boys and girls took turns leading call-and-response songs and chants. I asked Esteban who they were and he responded that they were scouts! Sure enough, I was able to pick out the familar "boom chicka rocka chicka rocka chicka boom" familiar from many a camping trip with Steven and Kathy!

There's something deeply reflective about missing one of your own holiday and experiencing one in it's place that belongs to another culture. You can know in a technical way that it is done differently elsewhere, but until you're right there in it, there's isn't much else that can bring home so deeply.

Give me a break

Well here I was, chugging along on project two when my boss decides he's finally ready to follow through on my first godforsaken nightmare of a project that I handed off to him two months ago. It turns out that after several abandoned attempts at uploading it to his web host, neither of us knows where the most current version of the site resides either on his computer or mine. The version he just launched has some grave errors that need repaired. Too bad I don't remember a thing about what I did. Had he come to me back in September, I just may have remembered.

You may recall that I got to play cryptologist back in June when I arrived to be handed a complex, several-month-old project encompassing someone else's development of an entire directory system from scratch using what appears to be their own private version of the model-view-controller methodology. What made this take three whole months was that it had been done completely without documentation within a content management system which was itself practically undocumented.

Imagine my confusion when, upon learning that after two months I couldn't help him, he asked "didn't you document it?".

Dogs

In case I haven't mentioned it before, dogs here are ubiquitous. One sees them everywhere; in yards, on rooftops, and of course roaming the streets, fighting, mating and picking through garbage.

One day I was in the park with Pablo when I noticed a dog sprawled out on its side on a major pathway through one of the parks. "It looks dead", I remarked to Pablo. "It is dead," he replied.

Pablo explained that every so often somebody goes around town poisoning dogs. I didn't quite catch whether this was a deliberate, sanctioned activity or if it was done by "volunteers", but it didn't appear to be all that controversial to anyone to whom I mentioned it.

I really feel sorry whoever has the job of disposing of all the dog carcasses. I seem to have found the place where they are all put, though. there is a place with standing water behind the school near our house that always seems to have a handful of dead dogs. Ew!

Chomo kills my lizard

I had Chomo over to look at the mold growing on our furniture and he unfortunately insisted on killing the lizard I've been keeping as a pet all these months. It was so unnecessary.

He told me that it was snake. I pointed out that it had legs he said that they were baby and that the snake would lose them. He said it would sneak into my bed at night and that it would bite and I would die. I tried to tell him that that the last snake with legs died 95 million years ago and that the only kind of poisonous lizard is the Gila Monster but he was persistent in his superstitions and killed it anyway.

Worthless.

Rio Dulce and back to Guate

The next morning we caught another lancha up the river to Rio Dulce, a yacht-encrusted and rather dingy place situated around a major river crossing. We made our way up to the Litegua station and had just enough time to hit up a Dispensa for sustenance before our on-time (yep, you read right) departure!

We made it back to the behemoth Guatemala City just in time for rush hour. While mom used the bathroom, I found us a cab driver that looked like he meant business. The next half hour is a jumble in my memory of drivers blaring their horns and sprinting around one-another through red lights and passing on sidewalks. Our driver was no exception, even taking us through a Burger King parking lot to cut a corner at a busy intersection.

We checked into my usual airport-area digs for one last night before Mom was whisked away to the land where I long to be.

Finca Tatin & Ak'tenamit

Finca Tatin, up the river where we went turned out to be a little piece of paradise. I was reachable only by river and forest trail and for about 150Q a night (roughly twenty bucks) we could stay in a room with a shower and electricity for three hours a night. The place consisted of a main "lodge" area set near the water line and raised above a riparian area teeming with tiny crabs, turtles, and even jymungous banana spiders!

That morning we rented a kayak and paddled up some gorgeous waterfront to Ak'tenamit, an impressive little live-in school nestled into an alcove along a fork off the main river. At the dock we were greeted by a guide who showed us all throughout the place and described it to us in relative detail. I kept hearing and observing some impressive aspects that reflected what I consider very progressive and egalitarian views (students are required to provide support to their community before graduating, students are allowed to work in if unable to pay tuition in money) mixed in with what I have begun to interpret as rather conservative traditional Mayan philosophy (girls housed in separate village from boys, men most often in positions of authority. The tour was as much a cultural experience as it was a lesson in Mayan autonomy.

After a nap back at the finca, we tried in vain to work our way up to a hot springs near the water on the main river. We did however manage to amble our way up a quite hidden stream that leads to a community a few scant yards back from the main water front. Finding it not to be the hot springs, we doubled back and paddle the arduous kayak journey back to the Finca where dinner and jovial conversation awaited us before bed.

To the coast

After another hectic travel vignette involving a familiar microbus and a relatively luxurious four-hour Pullman we found ourselves in dirty, bustling Puerto Barrios. After bearing a barrage of taxi drivers and getting some cash we hauled our stuff to the local dock to wait for a lancha. After enough people had arrived to fill one, we took off across the bay to Livingston.

While we waited in Livingston for a lancha down a river, we met a girl and her mother who was visiting her. It turned out the girl, Melissa, was working on her thesis conducting a study on the effects of fair trade on a nearby co-op that produces women's handicrafts. Her mother was quite well-traveled and had sent both Melissa and her sister on foreign exchange in high school. She was very involved with the Rotary Club and regaled us with interesting information about the organization; a thing I will be certain to check into when I get home.

After a rather shy group dinner, sleep was a welcome repose from buses and boats.

The Copan Ruins

It was intoxicating for me returning to Copan after so many years. Watching the place unfold before me as watery memories crept from the structures and from the very earth. Honduras has proven easy to forget but difficult to put completely out of my mind. I feel that when I went there I perhaps took the course of my life into my own hands in a way that I seldom had before or have since. It fills me with curiosity to think of going back to La Esperanza although time isn't very forgiving; we can never truly go back. Only to the same place in a different time.

Our tour guide, it seemed to me, was very listo; he had taught himself English apparently by simply guiding tours. He stumbled along in English about his visit to Denmark and his anthropologist brother but did little to bring the ruins to life the way I have seen a good guide do. After our ruins tour we wandered off onto a free nature trail at the ruins' edge that took us through a shady glade with raised trail and standing water breeding mosquitoes and all other kinds of diverse rain forest life.

Copan isn't quite the sequestered, wild place Tikal has become through the efforts of the Guatemalan government. While signs of wilderness are everywhere, especially in many birds and butterflies and the variety of trees at the park, one doesn't sense that the only thing keeping the jungle at bay is the light of day.

Copan

After a lazy day of Mom's trip-planning and Charlie's web-conferencing we finally had a meeting of the minds as to how to spend Mom's remaining time in the country. I think Mom felt a little more at ease once she had a plan.

The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn and off for the eye-rattling seat-gripping three-and-a-half our bus to Antigua. Once there, we were churned out of the bus's human conveyor belt, luggage and all on the edge of Antigua. We hauled all our luggage to the corner of town and worked tour-booker lane until we had secured a ride to Copan Ruinas, Honduras for sixty quetzales apiece or about eighteen bucks total.

I don't know how we managed the five-ish brutal hours between Antigua and Copan, but somehow we found ourselves sipping cocktails near a room we rented in a family-run place preparing ourselves for the ancient adventure to come.

Atitlan: The Return

In Panachel, the sun was shining and the lancha (ferry boat) operators were charging tourists the same as locals. Our lancha took us to the general dock for Santa Cruz La Laguna and then was even kind enough to drop us off at the private dock of our intended hotel.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Charming and orderly: our German-run hotel"][/caption]

I have to nod to Brenda on this one for taste in scenery. The place was lush. Unfortunately, it wasn't open on account of the sawdust and noise from their ongoing construction. We ambled down the path along the lake until we saw another sign, 'Arco de Noe' (Noah's Arc). Upon checking the place out, we discovered it was a comely little eco-nest amid impeccable native landscaping. We decided to spend the night there and soon found ourselves dining by candlelight with a pair of cosmopolitan English 20-somethings and a non-couple from Belgium.

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In the morning we bid farewell to our fine hostel-mates and stringent German hosts. After a hike to a nearby village on the austere hillside along the lake, our next stop was Enlaceland.

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Back to Santa Cruz (Happy Birthday, Mom!)

The morning we woke up in Nebaj it was Mom's birthday! Having had no debit card (and thus no disposable cash) before Mom's arrival, I wasn't very prepared. I had had to sneak away during the night to a place labeled "regalos" (gifts) only to find it full of toy cars and things like cheap clocks and busts of Irish setters (wtf?). I had finally decided on some fake flowers in a plastic pot (the real deal would have been impossible to find at that hour) and an umbrella (think 'useful'). On behalf of Mark I got her some playing cards so she could make me play cribbage with her on her birthday.

Despite my bleek birthday offerings, Mom was gracious and seemed pleased with my gifts and my in-bed coffee service. After a breif foray into a traveling retail show at the local auditorium we hopped a brimming microbus (designed for 12 and carrying about 24) and headed home. Back in Quiche we webbed it up and cribbaged it up until going to be early.

Nebaj

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After some reading in a guide book and a bit of wrangling, Mom convinced me to go with her as she satisfied her curiosity about Santa Cruz's smaller neighbor, Nebaj. Situated in a dramatic setting about two and a half hours North, I admit I was glad to see it. With each little jump from home base, you get a bit more of the big picture.

After passing through Sacapulas the next hour or so was pure ascent! I don't think we lost a meter of altitude until we could see the town about half an hour away from atop a high ridge. From there, it was all downhill until we arrived at the bus terminal about three blocks off the central square. After a bit of wandering we found a hotel on the route out of town toward Chajul and, after getting a room, set out for a hike in the dreary waning daylight.

After following a dirt road along an ever-growing creek for about an hour we came across a series of picturesque waterfalls punctuated by breathtaking pastoral hillscape and culminating in perhaps a three-story waterfall set in a cornfield. Idyllic.

Holy Cross II

Somehow, after the prior day's bus adventure Mom was itching for more. Not I. She seemed dead set on seeing the entire country in fifteen days. Most of our second day consisted of a prolonged negotiating process whereby I tried to convince her not to try to do too much and she tried to convince me to get out and see Guatemala. Having failed to set up a Friday web meeting with Andy, Enlace's founder, I managed to check my email at a net cafe in town and learned that he wants to shoot for Thursday or Friday. I was glad to find this would buy us more time in Santa Cruz since it wouldn't be reasonable to try and go across the country and back before then. Besides, I wanted to take up Rosaura on her offer to cook us a meal one day.

At Enlace, strangely enough, there was no internet in either of the offices, yet the classroom mysteriously possessed high-speed access. More administrative cutbacks? Nice of them to tell me...

After food shopping some more and touring a bit of the city, it was back to the house for dinner and sleep.

Holy Cross

There's really no describing the bus ride from Antigua to Santa Cruz Del Quiche, so I didn't try. I just let Mom experience it for herself. I think a lot about Guatemala becomes clear after winding down into and up out of gorge after gorge and negotiating landslide after landslide while clinging seatbealtless to the backrest in front of you. I think she may have begun to see why I don't really do a lot of traveling here.

After dropping off our things at the house and going shopping for food, we payed a brief visit to Enlace and headed home. Mom set to work cooking dinner while I took a nap. Around 7:15, Brenda and pals (two of them) arrived on our doorstep after Brenda failed to meet with her new intended landlady. Luckily, they had already eaten and Mom's delicious chicken and beat greens were (almost) all mine!

Around nine Brenda, her friends Nadia and Joel, and Mike and I went to the birthday party of one of Mike's students. It turned out to just be the student and a handful of friends hanging out and drinking rum and coke. Brenda was feeling sick and since its best to have an escort in Quiche at night, I opted to walk her and Nadia home. Mom was still awake when I got back. I guess Mike and Joel stayed until the wee hours.

Pacaya: The Return

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="375" caption="Hello, old friend"][/caption]

The trip to Pacaya is much nicer when your bus doesn't keep breaking down. In the morning as we waited for our bus, my heart sank when I saw the same white bus and organizer lady as the one Lori and I had had. To my relief, however, she was beckoning a couple about a block behind us. The "bus" we got was really more of a van, and it operated without a hitch. On it there was myself and Mom, a couple from the Netherlands, and about a dozen Israelis.

The hike up was about as challenging as I remember, except when we reached the talus and barren black boulder portion, we took the better-traveled upper trail to a different part of the lava flow. The guide, it turned out, was a cousin of the guide Lori and I had gotten. I was the only person on the tour who spoke Spanish and thus wound up conversing with him quite a bit and even translating for him some of his explanations to other tourists.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Mom stands in front of recently cooled lava"][/caption]

The lava was every bit as scorching hot, but this time our fellow tourists had brought marshmallows to roast in the heat. I chided myself for not remembering. Also this time there were little dogs that had followed the first group up and followed us, the last group, down patiently and diligently begging all the way, their claws filed down to nubs by the volcanic rock.

Antigua

After a satisfying night’s sleep we set out again for Antigua on the same road. By the time we reached it this morning they had set up a detour converting the one-way road out of town into a two-way while they cleared the route in. All along there were visible signs of having cleared great boulders off the road. Evidently, the jungle doesn’t take well to being developed.

At Casa En Familia, we were escorted to our room and then to the Laundromat next door where a friendly lady smilingly weighed in my enormous laundry bag at twenty-nine pounds. After that we proceeded to wander the streets of Antigua which, even on the third visit, proved every bit ask oddly confusing and easy to get lost in.

After a meal, a nap, and trip to Bodegangonas we were ready for the 5:30 awakening and trip to Pacaya the following morning.

Mom Pays a Visit

Mom arrived at about 10:30 p.m. in good spirits and happy to see her son. Given her flight's delay and my arrival in town just at nightfall (a precaution), I waited a total of four hours at Arrivals to receive her. For some reason the guy checking passports at the door to Departures decided to ask for a boarding pass (unlike last time) and since I didn't have one, I had to wait downstairs and forgo dinner.

Upon greeting Mom, I called for a cab and got a busy signal. We had no choice but to take our chances with the taxis offered at the airport, but I had seen several people accept rides in these and the one guy running the airport taxi hustle made me relatively confident. I don't know why, but this time I had decided to skip the hostel by the airport and go straight to Antigua.

About ten kilometers from Antigua we were turned around by police. A landslide had blocked the main passage in and out of town. We could go around via Chimaltenango but it was nearly twice the distance and would run us another fifty bucks in the cab. I decided to cut our losses and scoot to my old standby, Hostal Los Volcanes.

Arriving at the hostel we were distressed to discover what money we had was yet not enough to pay for the trip to within 10k of Antigua and back. Not knowing what to do, we opted to stash our bags in our room and have the driver take us to an ATM. Luckily upon hearing our plight, the guy running Hostal Los Volcanes decided to loan us what we needed and save us the trip.

Sleep came easy.

Fresh Meat

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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 :-)