Ed. Note: I began this post in Mexico, and came back to it 3 weeks later in Xela. So forgive the time discrepencies!
I am writing to you from one of North America's southernmost tips, in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, where I arrived yesterday and will leave on Saturday for beloved Xela. But Mexico has become pretty beloved as well in the past 30 hours.
I am writing to you from one of North America's southernmost tips, in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, where I arrived yesterday and will leave on Saturday for beloved Xela. But Mexico has become pretty beloved as well in the past 30 hours.
First though, the beginning of our vacay. Our friends Tara and David were orginally scheduled to be in Medellin, Columbia for a wedding this week. But the person they were planning on traveling with wasn't able to go, and so MRM invited them to Guat and then we all invited Nat, and that is how that worked out. Nat arrived in Guat City last Tuesday and took a bus to Xela to spend a day and half with me. It was like Christmas morning, waiting at the bus station, seeing her bus arrive, seeing her on it. Prior to now, I have never been out of North America with friends. Partly owing to not leaving the country all that much. So seeing Nat arrive, and having her in Xela with me was such an incredible treat.
There is a hostel at my now-former Spanish school, Celas Maya, and I booked Nat in the large room with a baño privado because she is worth it. There were two beds there as well so that we could have a slumber party for the two nights she was in Xela. The first night we went to eat in this building called El Pasaje which looks like a gorgeous, old train station with an open air corrider through the middle and restaurants lining each side. We ordered nachos and a chicken sandwich and a pitcher of beer. And then we ordered it three more times, because the staff kept forgetting, and after over an hour, it finally arrived. It was nice to catch up, to have someone to talk to in person who knows me very well, and can take me in stride. It was a relief to be with someone who I can simply be with. Even though I have become close with some of the folks I have met while here, after 8 weeks, I was sorely in need of an old friend.
I had planned lots of outings and sightings and cultural activities for Nat's brief stay, but she said all she wanted to do was sit and eat and drink and talk. And so that is what we did. I took her to a few of my favorite places, including the Taiwanese tienda that sells "empananas" in a stall near the park. We drank really great margaritas and really great mojitos, that look like pesto and taste like heaven. We stayed up way too late, laying in bed and talking about all the things you save to say until the middle of the night. And before I was ready, I put her on a shuttle headed to Antigua, for a few days with MRM.
Looking back, I wished I had gone to Antigua as well, but I had already paid for the full week of classes, and I was so in love with my school, and so sorry to leave it, that I didn't want to cut it short. Tara and David had been in Antigua with MRM since Wednesday. Nat met them there on Thursday, and we all met at the Lake on Saturday. I had a pretty cush last week of classes, all told. We took lots of excusions -- shopping, to McDonalds for french fries and to watch the World Cup, to the mall and back, more shopping, more snacking and eating out. It was nice, but I feel like I am not on my A game for school number 3, which I begin on Monday.
I was originally planning on taking the chicken buses to the Lake, but then packed all my stuff, realized how heavy my bag was, and decided against it. So I bought a shuttle ticket, which turned out to be only about $7 more expensive than taking the chickens. On the way down to the Lake there was this hilarious woman with us who was in her 60s and who is Australian but who lives in Europe for the winter and travels the rest of the year. She knew one word in Spanish, "perro" (dog), despite having been living in an apartment in Xela for the past month. She was freaking out over the fact that drivers here routinely pass on yellow lines, around curves, heading right for oncoming traffic. We taught her how to ask the driver to slow down, but she couldn't remember it and just yelled and shrieked the whole way down the mountain until she saw the Lake and then yelled "Look! AGUA!"
The Lake is, according to David, 1000 feet deep and according the Russian (who you will meet later) 30 million years old. It is very lovely. It sits in a mountain valley in between 3 volcanoes. The shuttle dropped me off in Panajachel, a 45 minute boat ride from Santiago, where we were staying. But the boats only leave when they are full, and when I arrived at the dock, it was in time to see the boat for Santiago pulling out, so I sat in the next one for almost an hour waiting for it to fill. The man sitting behind me was friendly and obliged me trying to practice Spanish, and we chatted while the others slowly trickled in. The ride across the Lake was gorgeous and freezing. We pulled up to Santiago and rising from behind the dock is a mountainside full of concrete houses that look like little more than shacks. It was a little depressing. The walkway from the boat to the shore was half underwater and rotted out in places and was about 5 inches wide in other places. I was scared I would topple off it because I bought the most awkward piece of luggage on earth, but I made it onto dry land mostly dry.
The website from our hotel said that it is "a pleasant 15 minute walk" from the dock to the cottages, but it was hot and I was a little lost, and soon gave up walking, and hired a tuk tuk, which is a tiny cab that is more like a motorized tricycle with a tarp hood. The tuk tuk dropped me off at Posada de Santiago and I was immediately in love. The owner, David, gave me the key to our cottage, which was one flight of black volcanic stone stairs up from the restaurant and one flight below the tiny stone gazebo "mirador" that featured a lovely view of the lake and Volcan Santiago rising behind it and into the clouds. We had a deck and a hammock and a fireplace and a stone tub with a wall sized window looking out into a small tropical garden. We even had a purified water filter at the bathroom tap, although I was the last one to realize I should be brushing my teeth with it, instead of the skeezy lake water.
I dropped my bags and headed back to the restaurant because the owner had told me that they were doing a group meal. I took this to mean that there was always a group meal for all the guests, and walked up to a table of people and asked them if I could join them. They looked at me funny and then looked at David, who then directed me to an empty table and handed me a menu. The group that I had asked to sit with turned out to be an "adoption group" but they never would explain what that meant. It was a bunch of older, awkward white people, and some Guatemalan kids that looked like they had been pretty Westernized, and also some white kids. But no one seemed to belong together except for one lady who was bossing everyone around. At the end of the meal, she whispered to another lady who was with them, like she didn't want the staff to hear, "I ate the tomatoes. But I cut the skins off." As she said this, she made a motion of cutting the skin off a tomato, and she was very earnest about the whole thing, which greatly amused us. By this time, the rest of our party had arrived, and it was officially Summer Vacation 2010.
I have to say, we all traveled very well together. You never know what you are getting into when you end up sharing spaces for extended time periods with other people. But we all got along splendidly, and maybe for me, too splendidly, as I felt so incredibly at ease that I let myself go and didn't so much as shave my legs or brush my hair for the time we were there. Sorry, guys.
Across the street from the restaurant and cottages was the Posada's private dock, and swimming pool, hot tub, sauna, and bar. And this is where we lived while there. I hadn't been in a sauna since the days when my family was members of the Green Hills YMCA. But Nat and I circuited the hot tub, pool and sauna for 8 hours and the next day I swear my skin felt newborn. Something that you have to know, and I learned this the hard way, is that you shouldn't drink alcohol while sauna-ing all day, because you will get dehydrated, and then drunk. And it will happen very quickly. Over the course of the 8 hours that we were down there that first day, Nat and I had 5 beers, which isn't even enough to be considered legally drunk in TN, but when I went up to shower, I didn't have the coordination to get into the tub, and crashed into the gorgeous and very rough volcanic stone, and now have a huge disgusting purply bruise to show for it. Alas.
We ate all our dinners at the Posada's restaurant. And some of the food was incredible. And some was so so. The service was terrible. But the staff were very nice. The owner seemed to spend the majority of the afternoon and evening walking around with a glass of wine in his hand, and I am not sure how much training he had given the staff to begin with, so while it was really irritating to wait over an hour for our meals, we didn't leave with bad feelings for those who worked there.
On the second day we ventured out to the town and hit up the Sunday market and the artisan market. David also wanted to take pictures. He has traveled extensively in Latin America and takes stunning photographs, some of which have been published in a collection. He showed us some of what he took, but I am really excited to see the whole collection, which I will link to as soon as he uploads them. At the artisan market Nat and I went in halfsies on a bunch of woven bracelets as souveniers for people, and I found a precious carved and painted Mayan mask of an owl. I love owls. I trust animals who are awake at night, I think they look after the rest of us. I hadn't purchased anything else for myself yet, but when I saw the mask I fell in love. And later at the market I found another tiny green Mayan owl carved out of chate, and I bought that as well. Also at the market, I began to get one of the worst sunburns of my life, a sunburn that is still causing me misery here in San Cristobal. (Ed. Note: I later found out that the owl is considered a death omen in Mayan cosmology, and when I asked what life omens were, and found out it was a pigeon -- a nasty, creepy bird if there ever was one -- I decided I would stick with the owl, thank you kindly.)
Monday morning we had scheduled a horseback ride with an American couple who have lived in the area for over 20 years. The schedule was as follows, get picked up, enjoy coffee and coffeecake at the house, meet our horses, enjoy a pleasant ride, return for a full breakfast. The night before, I was beginning to show signs of my sunburn, and was glowing red. For those of you who don't know, I have an autoimmune disease where my immune system destroys my melanin, or the cells that take up the sun's rays and eventually tan. With no melanin, the rays burn me really really really bad because I have no natural protection. Also, I was nearer the equator than I had ever been, in addition to being at elevation. So even on an overcast day I received what I affectionately refer to as the worst sunburn in the history of the earth. The night before, one of the waitresses had led me through the gardens with David's switchblade, cutting off huge pieces of aloe that Nat slathered all over my back and shoulders. In addition to the sunburn, I had been eaten alive by ants (we think) and so I woke up Monday morning, in mucho agony. One of the ant bites on my knee was actually pulsing and changing color. So MRM slathered me with sunscreen and I opted for a longsleeve shirt on the horseback ride. But, as I think I have mentioned before, I didn't bring pants on this trip, or closed toed shoes, so I wore capris and a pair of Nat's tennis shoes and thick hiking socks, but part of my legs were exposed on the ride and I ran into poison ivy. Yay! More misery!
So we were picked up and taken to a small aldea near Santiago and received a history lesson along the way about what this place was like during the war, and how dangerous it was. At one time there were many wealthy estates, but they were mostly abandoned 20 years ago when the fighting got really bad in the forests above the Lake. I believe Santiago was the town that had the most recent massacre, in the early 90s before the peace treaties. We arrived at the couple's house, which was gorgeous! It was this sprawling stone complex on one side of the road, and across the road and sloping down hill were the pastures and barns and rising in the near distance, Volcan Santiago.
The house they built by hand, allegedly. And inside the study/library were these strange glass and stone cages that at one time housed their pet ocelots. The couple was in their 70s and had 18 dogs, that all looked as starved as most of the street dogs here in Xela, and that really irritated me. We ate coffeecake with the wife, and she mentioned that no one (the locals) "messes" with them, because her husband is a "badass." We later realized that what she really meant was that her husband was a raging asshole, and no one wants to deal with him. She said he is Latvian, but the locals call him "The Russian" because they are, presumably, too stupid to know where Latvia is. So it was an awkward beginning. But she gave me a floppy ranch hat to wear to further protect me from the sun, so I tried to forgive her. We met her husband and the horses and he gave us a little riding lesson and when finding out I had the most experience with horses, offered me one of the stallions, who he said would keep the ride "interesting." I politely declined and instead was paired with a sweet mare whose name I have since forgotten.
So, one, I don't "vacation" much. And two, I have never ridden horses on vacation. Initially, I didn't want to go because I had pictures in my head of sickly, old horses forced to carry obese Americans around for 20 miserable years. And also, I have ridden horses enough for the novelty to wear off. And the sauna novelty hadn't worn off yet, and I reasoned that I would hang back while the rest of them went. But then Nat scolded me and reminded me that I would want to be in the photos on the top of the mountain with all of them, and to suck it up and come along. So I did.
The goal was to ride through the lowlands surrounding the lake and ascend to X amount of feet elevation and overlook the lake and the volcano from an adjacent location. And it started out nicely enough. We rode through a semi shaded coffee plantation with small, scrubby trees growing here and there, and our guide told us that this plantation was owned by a man in the City and that the workers receive 30Q for every 100 pounds of coffee they pick. 30Q is almost 4 US dollars. Think of how small a coffee bean is. How many of them you would have to pick for them to weigh 100 pounds. How much work that is, for less than what we pay per cup at Starbucks. Yay, free trade and export crops.
From the coffee plantation we wound through a small little collection of shacks with dogs and chickens and adorable little children following after us. Some of the dogs barked and lunged. And one got kicked sqaurely in the ribs by my horse. Then we entered a long stretch of corn fields and here is where things actually did get interesting. The "trail" that we took was a tiny, rocky stream bed that at times was deep enough and narrow enough that I had to remove my feet from the stirrups and try to fold my legs across the saddle behind me, and basically stay on the horse with my thigh muscles. Meanwhile, did I mention how rocky the creekbed was? It was TERRIFYING. I literally spent the 3 hour ride begging God to protect the horses' legs and ankles because I was convinced we would shatter a leg and not have a gun to kill the horse with. The horses were skittish of the rocks and kept trying to climb out of the creek, which meant that we were riding straight through a corn field, destroying someone's crop and livelihood. The guide would tell us to get out of the corn and back into the creek, but even he couldn't convince his horse to do it the entire time and the whole thing I found incredibly stressful and irritating. There were simply places where I was convinced the horses couldn't get through, and somehow we did. But there were times when I almost lost my leg or smashed my kneecap because the way was so narrow. There would also be places where the horses would have to jump uphill from a stand still position, which is awkward to do in a Western saddle. And these were Guatemalan Western saddles, half leather, half wood. So there was some chafing going on, in addition.
We made it up to this fingerbone ridge with gorgeous views on both sides of the Lake. We took photos, marveled. It was also the town dump and the dumptruck lumbered up there right before we headed back. I was exhausted at the thought of the ride back, but the horses made it with ankles intact. And we cantered through the coffee plantation, which was fun. All in all it was beautiful and lovely and I would never do it again nor recommend these people to anyone.
When we got back, the husband, the Latvian/Russian, was waiting for us. He noticed the bites and the blisters and the poison ivy all over my legs and gave me a lecture about how "most" bites at the lake are "acidic" and I needed a base, like ammonia, to make them stop itching. Only, he didn't have straight ammonia. But he did have Windex which he imported from the US for this express purpose, and before I really knew what was going on, this old man was spraying Windex all over me. Which, for the record, did nothing to stop the itching. Later on, he tried to spray Windex on Tara's neck but she was having none of that.
We ate breakfast with him and before any of us had really tucked into it, he announced that he was "an Anarchist. A real one." And proceded to launch into a lecture about indigenous peoples and how the Mayans aren't actually Mayan, but Olmec, but how it doesn't really matter anyway because all indigenous peoples are, according to him, "incapable of criticial thinking." He then listed lots of examples of this, and chuckled at how stupid they all are. He clearly wanted to bait us, and gleefully asked someone to argue with him, because he enjoyed arguing, and also said, "I will destroy your reasoning." He listed Darwin as a reference for his views on social evolution, even though Darwin never ascribed his theories to humanity. I wanted to ask his opinion of structural violence but was too tired and too sunburned and eaten alive to make much of a response. And no one else was saying anything, either, after MRM had been shot down early on. Except for sweet Tara. The Mayans believe that everyone has a don, or a gift, that they can use for good or evil. I am sure Tara has many, but one of them is the ability to enter into polite and civil conversation over breakfast with maniacs. At one point she asked him if he enjoyed fishing, because, presumably, you do some of that if you live near a lake for 20 years. He gruffly responded. "I never fish. Well, I spearfished. Every night, 20 years ago, for my dinner." I tried not to laugh at the thought of him spearfishing.
The meal wore on and on and his disdain for the people he has lived among for 20 years was beginning to enrage me. But somehow we extricated ourselves from the conversation after about an hour and made our way to the door. We stood awkwardly on the patio, surrounded by his 18 starved dogs (seriously, you could see where the leg bone articulated with the hip on some of them) when he casually mentioned that he and his wife had decided that they couldn't have anymore puppies because they were afraid the dogs would outlive them. He followed this with, "I took out their ovaries last year." At first I thought he was joking, and then realized that he fancies himself some kind of self made Everyman who has wrestled his existance from the land, and won. He's a douche.
On the way home David asked him something about travel back and forth to the US and he said, again, "I'm an Anarchist. I don't have a passport. I'm here illegally, of course." But his wife has one, and travels back and forth frequently, presumably to bring him his Windex and heart medications. So he is such a man of principle that he hides behind his wife's passport, has all their assets legally in her name, so he can strut around and feel invincible and better than everyone around him. We found out later that they let their dogs attack and kill the pets of their neighbors. I thought maybe the dogs do this because they aren't fed. And David commented that there wasn't a better metaphor for American culture than this guy, with his dogs terrorizing and killing the poor people's chickens.
We returned to the Posada and spent one more lazy afternoon above the dock. The next morning I was catching a 6am boat back to Panajachel where my shuttle was picking me up at the dock to take me to Mexico. And the rest of them were headed back to the States by way of Antigua, except for MRM who flies home in August with me.
All in all it was so incredibly wonderful to have 3 days with people who I love and respect and miss when they're not around. I wish it had been longer, I wish I could have taken them to Mexico with me, but I was so thankful we had the time we did.
Part, The Next, Mexico, to follow.
So we were picked up and taken to a small aldea near Santiago and received a history lesson along the way about what this place was like during the war, and how dangerous it was. At one time there were many wealthy estates, but they were mostly abandoned 20 years ago when the fighting got really bad in the forests above the Lake. I believe Santiago was the town that had the most recent massacre, in the early 90s before the peace treaties. We arrived at the couple's house, which was gorgeous! It was this sprawling stone complex on one side of the road, and across the road and sloping down hill were the pastures and barns and rising in the near distance, Volcan Santiago.
The house they built by hand, allegedly. And inside the study/library were these strange glass and stone cages that at one time housed their pet ocelots. The couple was in their 70s and had 18 dogs, that all looked as starved as most of the street dogs here in Xela, and that really irritated me. We ate coffeecake with the wife, and she mentioned that no one (the locals) "messes" with them, because her husband is a "badass." We later realized that what she really meant was that her husband was a raging asshole, and no one wants to deal with him. She said he is Latvian, but the locals call him "The Russian" because they are, presumably, too stupid to know where Latvia is. So it was an awkward beginning. But she gave me a floppy ranch hat to wear to further protect me from the sun, so I tried to forgive her. We met her husband and the horses and he gave us a little riding lesson and when finding out I had the most experience with horses, offered me one of the stallions, who he said would keep the ride "interesting." I politely declined and instead was paired with a sweet mare whose name I have since forgotten.
So, one, I don't "vacation" much. And two, I have never ridden horses on vacation. Initially, I didn't want to go because I had pictures in my head of sickly, old horses forced to carry obese Americans around for 20 miserable years. And also, I have ridden horses enough for the novelty to wear off. And the sauna novelty hadn't worn off yet, and I reasoned that I would hang back while the rest of them went. But then Nat scolded me and reminded me that I would want to be in the photos on the top of the mountain with all of them, and to suck it up and come along. So I did.
The goal was to ride through the lowlands surrounding the lake and ascend to X amount of feet elevation and overlook the lake and the volcano from an adjacent location. And it started out nicely enough. We rode through a semi shaded coffee plantation with small, scrubby trees growing here and there, and our guide told us that this plantation was owned by a man in the City and that the workers receive 30Q for every 100 pounds of coffee they pick. 30Q is almost 4 US dollars. Think of how small a coffee bean is. How many of them you would have to pick for them to weigh 100 pounds. How much work that is, for less than what we pay per cup at Starbucks. Yay, free trade and export crops.
From the coffee plantation we wound through a small little collection of shacks with dogs and chickens and adorable little children following after us. Some of the dogs barked and lunged. And one got kicked sqaurely in the ribs by my horse. Then we entered a long stretch of corn fields and here is where things actually did get interesting. The "trail" that we took was a tiny, rocky stream bed that at times was deep enough and narrow enough that I had to remove my feet from the stirrups and try to fold my legs across the saddle behind me, and basically stay on the horse with my thigh muscles. Meanwhile, did I mention how rocky the creekbed was? It was TERRIFYING. I literally spent the 3 hour ride begging God to protect the horses' legs and ankles because I was convinced we would shatter a leg and not have a gun to kill the horse with. The horses were skittish of the rocks and kept trying to climb out of the creek, which meant that we were riding straight through a corn field, destroying someone's crop and livelihood. The guide would tell us to get out of the corn and back into the creek, but even he couldn't convince his horse to do it the entire time and the whole thing I found incredibly stressful and irritating. There were simply places where I was convinced the horses couldn't get through, and somehow we did. But there were times when I almost lost my leg or smashed my kneecap because the way was so narrow. There would also be places where the horses would have to jump uphill from a stand still position, which is awkward to do in a Western saddle. And these were Guatemalan Western saddles, half leather, half wood. So there was some chafing going on, in addition.
We made it up to this fingerbone ridge with gorgeous views on both sides of the Lake. We took photos, marveled. It was also the town dump and the dumptruck lumbered up there right before we headed back. I was exhausted at the thought of the ride back, but the horses made it with ankles intact. And we cantered through the coffee plantation, which was fun. All in all it was beautiful and lovely and I would never do it again nor recommend these people to anyone.
When we got back, the husband, the Latvian/Russian, was waiting for us. He noticed the bites and the blisters and the poison ivy all over my legs and gave me a lecture about how "most" bites at the lake are "acidic" and I needed a base, like ammonia, to make them stop itching. Only, he didn't have straight ammonia. But he did have Windex which he imported from the US for this express purpose, and before I really knew what was going on, this old man was spraying Windex all over me. Which, for the record, did nothing to stop the itching. Later on, he tried to spray Windex on Tara's neck but she was having none of that.
We ate breakfast with him and before any of us had really tucked into it, he announced that he was "an Anarchist. A real one." And proceded to launch into a lecture about indigenous peoples and how the Mayans aren't actually Mayan, but Olmec, but how it doesn't really matter anyway because all indigenous peoples are, according to him, "incapable of criticial thinking." He then listed lots of examples of this, and chuckled at how stupid they all are. He clearly wanted to bait us, and gleefully asked someone to argue with him, because he enjoyed arguing, and also said, "I will destroy your reasoning." He listed Darwin as a reference for his views on social evolution, even though Darwin never ascribed his theories to humanity. I wanted to ask his opinion of structural violence but was too tired and too sunburned and eaten alive to make much of a response. And no one else was saying anything, either, after MRM had been shot down early on. Except for sweet Tara. The Mayans believe that everyone has a don, or a gift, that they can use for good or evil. I am sure Tara has many, but one of them is the ability to enter into polite and civil conversation over breakfast with maniacs. At one point she asked him if he enjoyed fishing, because, presumably, you do some of that if you live near a lake for 20 years. He gruffly responded. "I never fish. Well, I spearfished. Every night, 20 years ago, for my dinner." I tried not to laugh at the thought of him spearfishing.
The meal wore on and on and his disdain for the people he has lived among for 20 years was beginning to enrage me. But somehow we extricated ourselves from the conversation after about an hour and made our way to the door. We stood awkwardly on the patio, surrounded by his 18 starved dogs (seriously, you could see where the leg bone articulated with the hip on some of them) when he casually mentioned that he and his wife had decided that they couldn't have anymore puppies because they were afraid the dogs would outlive them. He followed this with, "I took out their ovaries last year." At first I thought he was joking, and then realized that he fancies himself some kind of self made Everyman who has wrestled his existance from the land, and won. He's a douche.
On the way home David asked him something about travel back and forth to the US and he said, again, "I'm an Anarchist. I don't have a passport. I'm here illegally, of course." But his wife has one, and travels back and forth frequently, presumably to bring him his Windex and heart medications. So he is such a man of principle that he hides behind his wife's passport, has all their assets legally in her name, so he can strut around and feel invincible and better than everyone around him. We found out later that they let their dogs attack and kill the pets of their neighbors. I thought maybe the dogs do this because they aren't fed. And David commented that there wasn't a better metaphor for American culture than this guy, with his dogs terrorizing and killing the poor people's chickens.
We returned to the Posada and spent one more lazy afternoon above the dock. The next morning I was catching a 6am boat back to Panajachel where my shuttle was picking me up at the dock to take me to Mexico. And the rest of them were headed back to the States by way of Antigua, except for MRM who flies home in August with me.
All in all it was so incredibly wonderful to have 3 days with people who I love and respect and miss when they're not around. I wish it had been longer, I wish I could have taken them to Mexico with me, but I was so thankful we had the time we did.
Part, The Next, Mexico, to follow.
