Lazy in Panajachel

It's true that I haven't been posting lately. We are still in Panajachel on Lake Atitlan. We are in our third week of school here, and so have been busy studying. Two days ago the rains finally came. Fortunately for us, it generally doesn't start until afternoon, so we usually make it back to the hotel to study - or check email - before the rains start. Just like Costa Rica! We know some other people who have classes in the afternoon - and have to get back to their homestays by pickup truck (a common mode of travel in the smaller villages). Life hasn't been as easy for them the last few days.We have also visited a couple of the wonderfully colorful market days in different villages. I could people-watch all day at these things! We haven't heard from any of our friends and family lately and are hoping that all is going well back home and that we will soon get some news. We have great teachers here and, little by little, our Spanish improves.

Day at the Solola Market with My Teacher

Breakfast at the Lake

Views at Breakfast

Solola-First Day of School

We like our new school. Gene's teacher is Veronica and mine is Zoila - another law student! She's very interesting and, like my teacher in Antigua, has many of the same interests as I have - politics, culture, history, women's rights and such. She wears traditional dress (traje) and is beautiful. I think we are going to have some interesting classes.

Home Sweet Home - For Now

We moved to a bigger room in the back of the patio. We have more space - and also a nice little table outside our room for studying. Well, ok, it's also a good place for playing cards and drinking wine!

Making Tortillas

Street Scenes

Back to School

So we registered for school again - to start on Monday. Hard to know anything about a school until you've tried it, but we both had a better "feel" about this school than the other one here in Panajachel. After our brief visit to San Pedro on Thursday, we decided to stay here in Pana instead of spending time over there. This town, which seemed big at first, is pretty nice. Nice waterfront, lots of good restaurants, a great hotel, and it's very clean. We liked the two people we talked to at the school. More later. Will try to remember to take some pictures, too.

Another New Friend

I wouldn't buy any of her plastic "jewelry" for 5 quetzales, but told her I'd give her 5 quetzales if she'd let me take her picture. She's looking a bit impatient here after my flash refused to work the first 2 times!

Trip Around the Lake

Washing Clothes at the Lake

Yesterday we took a boat trip around the lake. We visited 3 villages, San Pedro La Laguna, Santiago Atitlan, and San Antonio Palopó. It was a very fun day but we still haven't had a clear view of the lake and the surrounding volcanoes. We've seen such awesome photos that we figured it always looked like that, with the volcanes rising from the land all around the lake. Alas! The lake and the volcanoes have been shrouded in fog since we arrived at the lake.
Our traveling companions were 2 fun young women from England who had just completed year long internships in New York, one with a law firm and the other with an investment banker. They are doing a Central America trip before returning to England and back to school. Our other companions were 3 delightful guys from the U.S. Two of them are young doctors from Buffalo, NY, and the other is a lawyer (from Philadelphia I think) who was a school friend of one of the docs. We had some good conversations. The doctors have promised us they will try to change the US medical system, but readily admit that they see the traps that lie in wait for all doctors who want to make changes. Neat guys.

All of the villages are much bigger than we had expected. I think the word village throws us off. Plus we have a hard time truly envisioning the result of rampant poverty and lack of birth control.
San Pedro was much bigger and more congested than we expected. The entire town is built on very steep hills up the side of the mountain. Envision, if you can, the road up to our house in Costa Rica. Then make it 2 or 3 times as steep, and you’ve got the roads in San Pedro. After walking up the first street, we quickly decided that a Tuk Tuk would be a good idea. We hired one to take us on a quick tour of the town and to show us where the Spanish schools were. There was a strong smell of garbage everywhere we went. A rather scrubby and dirty town, it struck us as not particularly interesting. It is a very poor town – poorer than we probably could have envisioned prior to our trip to Guatemala. We are getting over our gringo preconceptions of “charm.” We passed the requisite Catholic church and the diminutive market and found neither to be interesting. San Pedro these days is known as the bohemian center of Guatemala, catering to a young, mainly European counterculture. It is also reputed to have some of the cheapest accommodations in Latin America, as well as inexpensive language schools. We did indeed see a couple of very nice hotels for amazingly low prices ($9 to 13 US) – with lake views, no less. We have had several people along the way tell us what a great little town it is. We don’t get it.
The next village, Santiago, had a substantial market area near the docks with some incredibly beautiful woven things with patterns we had not seen elsewhere. I would like to return another day to do some shopping (yeah, I know, where would I put it in the backpack?) and to take some photos of the amazingly colorful traditional traje, worn by both men and women. This town also was very hilly, but not as steep as San Pedro. Nevertheless, we wisely elected to hire a Tuk Tuk again to take us to the home of Maximón, the evil saint (more on him later when I have time to write more). In verification of one of my rules of travel regarding not taking many fluids, I decided I didn’t really have to use the bathroom after checking out the public facility. You’ll be grateful, I know that I am not going to discuss that particular issue further. But don’t drink too much, always carry toilet paper, wet wipes and antibacterial hand rub with you. I know you’re all saying that advice doesn’t sound like Laurie, and you are right. That’s exactly the point. I wouldn’t give that sort of advice unless it were really needed. So then I decided to try one of my favorite things, a tamal, from a vendor on the foot path. It was my own stupid fault. I could see that the banana leaf was too green and that this stuff had not been cooked. I could also see that it was cold. I also knew that when I asked the woman if it was a tamal, she sort of said yes, but she also gave me one of those paragraphs of explanation. Well, anyhow, it’s biodegradable, we said as we threw it overboard. I really do not know what it was, but it looked like some sort of very dead red meat with a cup of blood poured over it. I hope I didn’t kill any fish.
Our last village was San Antonio. There really was absolutely nothing here that would interest a traveler, in my opinion. All the houses were perched precariously on the side of the mountain. Of course they are built of concrete block and any other material that can be found. To describe them as concrete block really isn’t right. They are shacks that people in other countries would not use to house farm animals. Very ugly. I am being blunt here to make my point. The level of existence of most of the indigenous Maya people is hard to fathom.
We had 45 minutes to see the “town” so we stopped at the “café” for a bite to eat. But they didn’t have any food to offer. So we ordered liquados. I didn’t realize when I asked for a banano liquado that they would run down the street to get some bananas to make it with. So the rest of the group sat at the table waiting for a chance to place an order. San Antonio apparently is the green onion capital. There were whole groups of women and children on the side of the road sorting and bunching the onions, which presumably were to be shipped off to market somewhere. Picturesque? I guess so, but not a job many of us would want. Jeff, one of the doctors, is one of those great guys you meet in life who cannot say No. He also speaks absolutely NO Spanish. He wandered off from the café and when it was time to get back to the boat, we realized he had disappeared. When he Women Sorting Onions didn’t show up in a few minutes we all became worried that he had got lost in the maize of the village and couldn’t ask directions to get out! After 10 minutes or so, he showed up, his arms full of fabrics, saying “I didn’t really want to buy anything!” Turned out that he had asked some woman where he could find a bathroom. She said he could use the bathroom in her home if he would buy the bundle of weavings from her for 200 quetzales ($26 or so). The toilet, he said, was a hole in the floor of the dirt floor of the house, but it had toilet paper, and that was all that he asked! “Anyhow,” he said, “I told my mom I’d bring her some fabrics!”
On the way back on the boat, we noticed how many mansion sized houses there are along the waterfront, not in the Maya villages, of course, but out in their own isolated paradises. There’s the 3rd world and then there’s the rest…

More of My Favorite Women

Dinner at the Lake

And We Finally Take a Ride in a Tuk Tuk!

Our New Home - for Now

Mario's Rooms
For $17 it's a cute place with free internet, free coffee, and cable T.V. Not the cheapest place in town, but feels like a good deal to us! Has hot water in the shower, too!

Next - to Lago Atitlán

We had originally planned that after Tikal, we would travel to Copan, Honduras, where there are also some amazing Mayan ruins.. But then when we started realizing how hot both places were going to be, we decided we would possibly leave Copan for the next trip. Tikal was indeed hot, although not really unbearable. Someone who just came from Copan told us that it was even hotter than Tikal. So we're back in Antigua, and will leave for Lago (Lake) Atitlán tomorrow morning. Everything that we read about Atitlán sounds beautiful and fascinating. The lake is surrounded by interesting Mayan villages.
Aldous Huxley said of Atitlán:
"Lake Como, it seems to me, touches the limit of the permissibly picturesque; but Atitlán is Como with the additional embellishments os several immense volcanoes. It is really too much of a good thing.
So at 8 tomorrow morning we will be picked up by a shuttle (large van, I think) for the 2 1/2 hour trip to Panajachel, one of the major lakeside towns. Will be checking in again as soon as we get a chance to get to an internet cafe. Will let you know how our reaction compares with Huxley's! I found some great photos of Atitlan at Eve Andersson´s blog.
Meanwhile, today, we're off to see another procession (we have no idea what it is for) from the Catedral, after which we'll proably do some more sightseeing. Or maybe we'll just spend the afternoon enjoying brunch at some beautiful relaxing restored hacienda. Whatever we decide to do, it will be fun, and we'll be thinking of you!

Tikal-Ancient Mayan World

Suddenly, arising from the midst of the jungle, there stands an impossibly enormous Mayan temple. More than 60 meters tall, it is shockingly just there.
I've read a lot about these ruins. The guidebook has told me that Tikal is the most magnificent of the Mayan sites. Nevertheless, I am unprepared for the size of this structure. I am unprepared for the incongruity of its surroundings. There are hundreds, if not thousands of structures here. Some of them were constructed as long ago as 250 B.C. Most are still buried in tons of dirt, trees and roots. Only in recent times has Tikal been "rediscovered," and serious work to excavate and restore began only in 1956.
The people who created these masterpieces seem to have disappeared around 900 AD. It appears that severe climate changes, including extended draught, may have scattered the remains of the group, but no one knows for sure what happened to these fascinating people.
It is not possible to describe this place so I'm not going to try. Here are a few of the pictures we took. It may be true that a picture is worth a thousand words, but there is no way you can get a sense of this place from the photos. If you ever get a chance to visit Tikal, jump on it. It is truly indescribable.