Guatemala

Guatemala
February 15-March 16, 2011.

We're here for a month, for the purpose of learning Spanish. We've both had some instruction before, but never used it much in conversation since then. We'll do a couple days in Antigua, a week of classes in San Pedro de la Laguna, a week in Nebaj, then a third week at another school which we had not booked in advance, but ended up back in San Pedro, as the smoke was unbearable in Nebaj and there were reports that Xela and Coban were just as bad.

Antigua was once the capital city of Guatemala, but after a few earthquakes and some volcanic activity, they moved it to the present site in Guatemala City. The city is built on a grid of cobblestone streets with lots of colonial architecture and many churches. Several of the old buildings are still just ruins from the tremblers so many years ago. It's very popular with the tourists, as it is only an hour from the airport and has a rich history.

Antigua is also our base for a hike up Volcan Pacaya. The trail goes straight up the cindercone. It was nice to be out in the woods and on a trail (even if we were traveling as a herd). At about 2km we reached the rim of the caldera and looked down on a 6 month old lava flow. The caldera is blown out to the west, and the south side rises high to an active fumerole, blowing gray smoke.

From the edge of the caldera we hiked down onto the new but solid flow. The rock is very light and vesicular and jagged. We met another group at a large trench which was really cranking out the heat. We eat marshmallows roasted on a volcano. How cool is that! As we descend, the sun sets in a burst of colors. In the distance is Volcan Agua and Volcan Fuego. Once it is truly dark, we can see red flashes from the active summit of Fuego. The nearly full moon helps light the path.

From Antigua we catch a bus to the town of Panachel on the North shore of Lake Atitlan, and catch a boat to San Pedro. Images of the countryside are of simple homes (corrugated tin, wood, adobe) with a plot of cultivated land, also steep hillsides with landslides onto the road from above or undercut it from below. Towns are more likely to have concrete houses, each within a walled courtyard. In some of the towns the walls form a continuous 8ft high canyon which we drive through.

The grounds of the San Pedro school are quite lovely and manicured with pathways running hither and thither to nooks between trees, many with a student and teacher. We meet Juana, our host, and follow her across the street to her compound and house, and our room for the week. It's a basic room but is private. We meet Happy, a cheerful cocker spaniel, and Pepita, a solid gray cat with yellow eyes. For US$150 per person per week we get four hours of one-on-one Spanish lessons, a homestay, and three meals a day.

First day of classes! After breakfast of avena de arroz (rice porrige) with melon and banana, we cross the street to school and meet Lorenzo, our teacher. Together we take a table under some trees near the lake and begin with introductions then a review of verbs. Nan has better vocabulary but I seem to have better pronunciation. We're about the same with gramar. We work at this until noon with a few breaks, then quit for lunch.

On our first day off we go into the nearby hills for a hike. First we stop at the local market. There's lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, a few chickens, and many people re-selling packaged goods or clothing or batteries and such. At one end we find a few women selling tacos and enchiladas which we buy for our breakfast and lunch. We also get some mangoes, little finger bananas, and a strange new fruit called zapote.

We find a nice trail along a shoulder of the San Pedro volcano through coffee plantations. Coffee prefers to grow with shade, and the avocado tree is one of the favorites. The ground is littered with thousands of ripe and over-ripe avocados. Mmmm. The trail we're on serves the coffee farmers and branches frequently. Eventually we work our way down to the next town down the lake, San Juan.
Back to school the next day, we're at a table by the lake. We start with conversation and try to describe what we did yesterday, in Spanish. By noon our brains are full.

Guatemala has a strong Mayan heritage, and San Pedro is proud of it's ancestry. Lorenzo, our teacher, explains many aspects to us in the course of our conversation practice. There was a war here from the 60s until 1993 when the Guatemalan Army was trying to eradicate the Mayans. There are many scars. There are several regional differences in Mayan culture and food. Here in the San Pedro area they speak Tzutuhil. Traditional food is often cooked wrapped in a large leaf with ground maize, like a tamale, with tomato, peppers, chicken, turkey, etc as may be regionally available.

After a little more than a week here in San Pedro we pack up and head North, across the lake, then four different chicken buses to our destination of Nebaj. We had heard that these chicken buses are retired school buses from the US. Not so. They are made by the same manufacturer, but are all quite new and gaily painted and decorated.

The terrain is mountainous and quite dry. The road is well paved with speed bumps in every town. The road twists and turns and with many hairpin turns, winds down to cross rivers and streams, then climbs back up to the ridges. We stop frequently to pick up and drop off passengers and their stuff, which is usually tied to the roof.

The driver of one chicken bus has ADD. We were seated behind him, and were amused. While negotiating a speed bump, he was changing gears, adjusting the volume on the music system, tooting the horn, talking with his assistant, talking with another bus driver on CB, and of course driving.

In the town of Sacapulas, our minibus driver stopped for a longer than usual break. We had gotten used to very quiet vendors in San Pedro and other towns. But here about six or eight roadside vendors descended upon us with baskets of fruit, soda, tamales, colorful popcorn balls all balanced on their heads. Each was constantly calling out their wares at full volume and as a song/chant. What a cacophony!

In Nebaj we are hosted by the family of Tomas and Rosa, along with Elena, the grandmother, and a bunch of kids. Freddy is 12, Marie is 24, Jacinto is 15, and there are more. It's hard to keep track of them all. The neighborhood is dirt roads with a variety of houses. This house is all concrete including a flat concrete roof with rebar sticking out. Other roofs nearby are corrugated steel, clay tile, or like this one.

Around 6pm we are summoned. The sauna is ready! We collect towels and such and head to the roof. The night is dark and the stars are out. The little cinder block room is lit by a single candle, and the walls are black from soot from the charcoal fire used to heat the big kettle. It's very warm and humid of course, and we wash up and pour basins of water over each other.

Elena, the grandmother, makes the tortillas right here. From a bowl of maize batter she takes a dollop. By patting and slapping it between her hands it soon becomes a thin disk about 10cm across, which she places on the hot steel plate over a small wood fire. She picks them up by the edge to flip and soon has enough for everybody.

Later, Marie walks with us to school where we meet our teacher, Hugo, who takes us to another nearby building, a hotel, and up onto the roof where there are a few classrooms. The smoke from thousands of wood cooking fires plus diesel trucks and buses, tuctucs, motorcycles, and small stationary diesels that power maize grinders hangs heavy over the city every morning. It stings our eyes and noses. Those who live here are accustomed to it.

Part of our package here includes a cooking class, scheduled for one afternoon. We meet Maria and two of her kids and learn to make boxbuls (pronounced bosh-bule), a traditional Ixil Mayan dish. Maria has a bowl of masa (ground lye-soaked maize) and a basket of guisguil leaves. We each take a leaf and she shows us how to smear masa onto it and fold it double. We soon make a pile of them, and Maria puts them all in a kettle of boiling water for 20 minutes over a wood fire on a low hearth. Meanwhile Maria places three chilis and six small tomatoes and salt on a stone grinding board and proceeds to turn it into a red salsa. The cooking fire lacks a chimney and the dark room is thick with smoke and burns our eyes. We opt to eat outdoors with chickens underfoot.

One day we take class to the market. Hugo leads us through town and into the main market area. We've been here before, but he knows the names of many of the strange and familiar fruits and vegetables. We pick up a shadow by the name of Diego, about 8yrs old, who follows us around for much of our visit. We also go into the big Catholic church in the center of town and watch a small assortment of people each doing a prayer ritual. It was a fun and interesting way to spend half the class.

Besides the smoke, Nebaj stands out in our minds as a prolific producer of litter. There is no municipal garbage service so trash either lands on the ground and stays there or is burned, adding to the smoke. The people here mostly speak Ixil, and our Spanish is of limited usefulness in the markets. There are very few tourists here. Some come for the trekking in the nearby Cuchumantanes, but don't stay in town very long, and there are some NGOs based here.

In addition to teaching us grammar and vocabulary, Hugo has also given us a history lesson of the area. The Mayans in this area are the Ixil tribe (pronounced Ee-sheel) and most of the people speak Ixil and not Spanish. During the 80's (Reagan's reign), the Guatemalan army engaged in a war of genocide against several of the Mayan tribes, especially the Ixil, with Nebaj as the center. The people fled into the mountains and guerillas took up arms against the army. Many people were killed or disappeared.

For our last few days in Nebaj have decided to take a trek here in the Chuchumontanes, the highlands of Guatemala. The air should be cleaner there. Our guide, Jacinto, served as police during the war/genocide, and laments the hardships his people endured. In the course of the hike we saw trenches dug as traps or foxholes, a partially exploded aerial bomb now used as a church bell, and he pointed out a town where the guerillas pushed the army back.

We start with a microbus ride in a bus built for 15. As we pick up and drop off passengers, we hit a peak of 26, with the driver's helper occasionally riding on a ladder on the back. The suspension bottoms out on the worst of the bumps, but I guess that's normal. We disembark in a town and follow substantial trails down down down, across a river, and up, up, up to the town of Xeo (shay-oo) where we get a traditional lunch of tortillas and guisquil soup. The path we follow would be barely passable with a very robust 4wd vehicle. The gradient is constant and unrelenting, for 2000 to 3000 vertical feet with switch-backs. It is very tiring, but the views are very nice. Ridge tops are around 8000ft above sea level.

At night the stars were magnificent, the most impressive we've seen, including a bunch of them which are not visible back home.

Breakfast is in a family's home in the town of Cotzul, tortillas and guisquil and egg soup cooked over wood on a hearth on the dirt floor. We are so much taller than these people, that we sit on an upturned stump of firewood. The chairs they have are barely high enough for a kindergartener.

Leaving Cotzul we drop several thousand feet of elevation at the same unrelentingly constant gradient. This is a pine forest, and is a source of lumber and firewood for the people who live here. It is not being over-exploited though, and the forest is healthy. So far. There's a nice river at the bottom, with a covered bridge. Another unrelenting constant climb, past two more villages, and on back to Nebaj.

After a week, we've had enough of Nebaj and it's smoke and litter, so we walk to the microbus stop, and bounce and twist our way to Quiche, change to a chicken bus to Encuentras, and a second chicken bus to Panahachel. Toilet facilities are rather sketchy at the bus stops, so we avoid eating or drinking until Pana, where we take a long break on the shore for lunch before joining a dozen others in the boat to San Pedro. How very different this town is from Nebaj. We're far from the only tourists now, the air is much cleaner, the ground not littered, and Spanish is very common.

From the Mayab school we take a tuktuk to our new homestay. Each homestay has been very different. Our first was directly across the street from school. This one is on the far side of town and up a long, steep hill. In Nebaj we were in a poorer neighborhood, and now we are among more affluent homes. At the San Pedro school we lived with a mother and teenage daughter. In Nebaj there were at least eight plus an occasional grandparent or neighbor. Our current host, Roberto, is an architect and builder/contractor. Also in the house are his wife - Eveth, two children - Cecilia age 8 and Francisco age 2, and Isabel, the housekeeper/nanny. Roberto has taught at the Mayab school, and Eveth teaches grade school nearby.

Most of the restaurants serve western fare – pizza, burgers, pasta, salad, and some mexican or tex-mex food, and the occasional Asian or Israeli fare. Mexican is also available from street vendors. There is a rich culture of Mayan and/or indigenous Guatemalan food, but none is available for sale except as street-food. We count ourselves very lucky as Roberto, Eveth and Isabel enjoy and know how to prepare some of their traditional foods. Over lunch we discuss the lack of these foods in restaurants. Even so, we get rather tired of eggs, black beans, and tortillas.

The classrooms of the Mayab school are in a garden setting. This school tries to teach a little Mayan along with the Spanish. One of their afternoon activities is a demonstration of a Mayan ceremonial ritual. I noticed many similarities between it and Pagan and Native American rituals.

The Mayan calendar is an important part of the culture here. On December 21, 2012, the 5,200 year old calendar will reset back to zero for the first time ever. There are hollywood doomsday predictions, but the people here view it as a very lucky event. I'm sure there will be celebrations. Mayan culture is based on circles, and to start a new circle is a glad tiding.

We are also here for the beginning of Lent, which is celebrated with a procession. The streets were empty of people and vehicles, although people were lined up along the edges. Leading were about 50 young men, some carrying large noisemakers, they were followed by at least 200 women walking solemnly in two lines. Then came a float with a statue of Jesus bearing the cross, carried by about ten men. There were stations along the way with lots of candles and incense. The float was turned toward each station and set down for words of prayer and invocation and hymns, mostly in tzutuhil as far as we could tell.

Nan's birthday falls on Sunday, our host family is not obligated to cook for us, and we have no classes. Wow. A totally free day! We opt for a hike along the lake. There is a nice path all along here, maintained by the people who use the lake. When every fourth person down the trail happens to be carrying a machete, the trail is automatically maintained. But the farther from town the more it deteriorates, so we head inland to a more major trail. This leads through an abandoned coffee processor to a beach, but they're burning the crops adjacent to the beach, and the smoke is too thick to continue.

Back through the town and we explore the old coffee facility. There's a very large concrete paved area, about two football fields, for drying the beans, several closed and locked adjacent buildings, and a large open structure with corrugated asbestos roof, where the beans were cleaned and hulled. Most of the machinery is still there, including an electric generator and it's engine, the hulling machine, large concrete vats, and various pipes from one vat to another. We sit there to eat mangoes and contemplate why so much effort was put into this structure, which seems nearly intact, and demand for their product remains high, and now it lies here abandoned.

We follow this trail back towards town a bit, then drop back down to the lakeside. We meet two local men resting on the lakeshore, and carry on a conversation in Spanish with them. We would not have been able to do this just a few weeks ago. All this learning is paying off! At the rocky point we take a break for a swim in Lake Atitlan. It's refreshing, then we sit on the rocks to dry and eat lunch.

We went out for dinner at the Clover restaurant, very good and a welcome respite from eggs and beans, followed by dessert next door where they also had wifi. Here we got to chat with the waiter/bartender who we had met earlier as a fellow student, and another customer from Oregon, who had been laid off and decided that was her impetus to leave the US go live in an affordable country.

On our last day of classes, Nan and I borrowed the information packet they hand out at the Mayab School office to prospective students. The English in this is horrible, as it started as rather verbose Spanish, and was translated using the Google translator. There were lots of words but little meaning, often the wrong word, and often the wrong grammar. It was quite a challenge.

We caught the 9am chicken bus to Chichicastenango, changed buses, and arrived back in Antigua early in the afternoon. Later we enjoyed dinner at a Thai restaurant. The going rate is about twice the price as it was in San Pedro.

Antigua is only an hour from the airport (instead of four or more from San Pedro) so we catch a morning bus, change planes in Ft Lauderdale, and arrive home about 3:30 am.

It's been a very fun month, and our Spanish has improved dramatically. It was interesting to learn about the Mayan culture and their very recent war, fueled by US funding and arms. It was also encouraging to see how resilient a people can be after facing such random and senseless killing.