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.

Guatemalan Women are Simply Amazing

Iglesia y Convento de Santa Clara

TechNOOOOOOOOOOOOOlogy

Somebody asked how all this stuff gets posted - given that I decided not to carry the additional weight and bulk of my tiny laptop.
This leads me to fear that eventually I'm going to have to talk about my love/hate relationship with technology. But for now maybe I'll just describe how this works - theoretically - when nothing goes wrong, which of course is never.
I'm so smart that I don't bring my tiny laptop. Why carry one more thing unless it's absolutely necessary? Don't want to have to worry all the time about it getting lost or stolen. Don't want to add another 2 1/2 pounds to my 12 pound backpack. So here I am traveling for 3 months with just my little PDA in one pocket, my digital camera in another, a bunch of memory cards, and a collapsible keyboard and a memory card reader stuck somewhere else in my garments. (Remind me to tell you later about my discovery of cargo pants – those wonderful traveling pants with so many zippered and velcroed pockets that purses and day packs have become obsolete!)
So whenever I get a chance – and the urge – I unfold the keyboard, plug it into the little handheld and write away. It´s pretty cool. I save what I write to a memory card and then later on when I get to an internet café, plug the memory card into the card reader, plug it into the computer and upload to my blog. Then I put the memory card from the camera into the card reader and upload some photos to go with the blog entries. Pretty cool, huh? When I see someone else whip out their laptop at one of the many places where they have wireless internet available, I wish that I had brought my laptop with me. But only for a minute. And then I proceed to feel oh, so superior for being able to do all of this without one.
Now this all sounds so totally cool and together that I´ve decided I really don´t want to tell you about:
Two days ago when I was being ever so efficient and editing all of my photos directly on the camera and accidentally managed to hit the ¨format¨button. Amazing how fast you can delete 939 photos of all the incredible things seen in 5 weeks in Antigua.
Earlier this month when my memory card reader died and I couldn´t upload anything without it. Anyhow, I was only moaning and groaning about that for a week or so until Gene went out and found me a new one.
Last year when I spent a ridiculous amount of time on our North American trip searching for the particular type of battery used by my digital camera; by the time I found one, the trip was nearly over anyhow.
The year before in Spain when the Palm decided not to see the keyboard. Just gave up on writing altogether.
And the year before that, in Florence, when I dropped the PDA down on the bed and it sort of deleted all of its data. Seems like that was before I started doing regular backups to memory cards.
So those are the things I´m not going to tell you about, because I want you to think I am incredibly cool and with it when it comes to utilizing current technology. Any more questions?

Museo del Libro Antiguo

Home of the first printing press in Central America - 1660. Interesting small museum - and another beautiful spot in the center of Antigua

Smells Like Coffee

On Thursday, we had made a reservation at Hotel Nazareno, so we´d have a place to stay our last few days here before leaving for Tikal to see the great Mayan ruins. It´s a pretty cool place, only a dozen rooms or so, with a beautiful courtyard and sitting areas in the center. Our room is upstairs with a beautiful window overlooking the cobblestoned road below. A big benefit we hadn´t noticed: We are next door to our favorite breakfast place, Fernando´s, where they roast their own coffee. Waking up in the morning is oh, so nice!

Last Day of School...

well, for a while anyhow. School was never this fun in the old days.
We were late getting around to breakfast again so we took our teachers out for donuts and coffee at the donut shop. Had some great conversation over coffees and decided to go tour La Iglesia y Convento de Las Capuchinas. This is a fascinating place, which I will try to tell you more about later on. The 4 of us spent over an hour touring Las Capuchinas and then decided we needed a refreshment break.
We walked down the street to our favorite Pupuso place and spent an hour or two in uproarious laughter over my Spanish, Chiqui's English, and everything else we could think of. It was just one of those days when everything was funny. I got Saira to teach me how to do that crossing yourself thing that all Catholics do all the time. I've always been intrigued by the people who cross themselves when passing a church or a cemetary, before and after eating, and on any other occasion which might seem like a good time for it. But I've never been able to quite catch how it all works. Saira is a devout Catholic and crosses herself all the time, so I knew she could teach me the technique, but I was afraid she would be offended by the whole thing. NOT! She was practically rolling on the floor as I practiced trying to get it straight, whether to cross to the left or right breast first (it's the left) and how close to the navel to come for the bottom part. The man at the next table was watching and listening in and I was afraid he might not like it that we were having so much fun. Saira had explained about saying "en el nombre del Padre, el Hijo y el Espirito Santo." When I asked her what happened to la Madre Maria, I thought the poor man was going to wet his pants! And when we discussed that Maria must be the most important part of the thing because every single Catholic girl gets Maria as part of her names, he was laughing so hard that I feared for his health. He left shortly thereafter, still laughing, so hopefully he wasn't too offended.
I think I got a great picture of Gene, Saira and Chiqui sharing a banana licuado (that's refresco for you folks in C.R; smoothie for you guys in the U.S.)! If it turns out any good, I will post the photo with this.

A Recycled Life

El Sitio was showing the film "A Recycled Life," and we knew we had to see it. It was nominated for best short documentary of the year and is about the 1700 or so people (babies, kids, mothers, old people) who live and work in the enormous landfill in Guatemala City. It is also about a young American woman (from Maine) who came to Antigua to study Spanish, saw the dump and the people who live there, and never left, working continuously to help these people. It is an absolutely incredible story. I will not tell you more, because it is really important that you SEE this film, even if you think the subject is not something you want to think about. I will be taking a survey (or why don't I just watch for comments here) to see who has seen it and to hear your reactions. I believe you can read more about it at www.safepassage.org. It´s available on DVD, along with the additional footage added after the Academy Awards.

Still Crazy ... After All This Time

Still having a great time. Just uploaded a bunch more pictures. Hope you all enjoy them. I keep finding something else I want to tell you about! But for now, see all the stuff I´ve added below!

Another Week Over Already

It's hard to believe that we've been in Antigua for almost 4 weeks already - and have been studying for 3 weeks already. Seems like I should be a fluent speaker of the Spanish language by now, right? Not!
We've spent a lot of time studying this week. I think that Gene is making some real progress. He says that he is still waiting for the "light bulb to go on in his brain," but I see things sinking in that just didn't stick with him before. As for me, I am starting to get familiar enough with certain words, phrases and concepts that they are becoming natural to me now. But I still seem to have a huge "CRS disease" (can't remember shit) problem. I rarely understand everything that is said to me and I always speak haltingly while trying to put ny thoughts together. I get more frustrated than Gene does, I think. Chiqui and I do a lot of just plain talkiing. I am determined to improve my conversation skills, but there are times when I think I was able to speak more 4 years ago than I can now. Good thing I am a very patient person, huh?

Guidebooks - Don´t Trust Them!

After a leisurely walk and an appallingly bad breakfast at a "recommended" eating establishment, we had a lovely day being tourists!
One of the important lessons to learn when traveling is to never trust guidebooks. Of course I could add never trust other travelers, never trust tourist offices, never trust travel agencies, and a host of other important things not to trust, but the subject for the day is guidebooks. Never trust guidebooks. Not that I'm a non-believer in guidebooks. I love the damned things. I buy at least 2 of them for every place that we go. Reading about places I'm going to visit, or that I might visit, or that I'm thinking about visiting, or that I dream of visiting, is one of my favorite passtimes. Guidebooks are a great place to start all this. But once there, they are inherently untrustworthy.
Assume for a moment that every single word written in a given guidebook is the God's honest truth when it is written. If there is one thing that I can promise you is always going to happen no matter where you travel, it is change. So if you have this year's edition of the guidebook, some of that material is going to be almost a year old - right? Wrong! Most of it is going to be years old! It may be that guidebook publishers like to say that their books are completely updated every year, but think about it. Is that even possible? Sure, a lot of it is updated, but most of it is just there, year after year after ... One instance in particular that we always remember is the time in Costa Rica when we walked and walked trying to find the cute-sounding bed and breakfast in Santa Ana. We finally stopped at a bar that we were familiar with, since it happened to be in the area. Over a beer, we asked the owner where this mysterious B & B that we couldn't find was. Laughing uproareously (and I am sure that is NOT a word in any language), he said, "You're in it!" It turned out that years before, his very bar had been a B & B. "Some owner before me, years and years ago..." he said. Since then, I take my guidebooks lightly.
Speakiing of taking guidebooks lightly, please do not ever carry around a whole guidebook if you do not need it. First off, when you first get a guidebook (assuming that you own it and didn't borrow it from a friend or the library), immediately tear out any pages with bullshit like advertising for travel agencies and resorts. You paid good money for this book. You certainly do not need to be bombarded with paid advertising! Tear it out, throw it away - immediately. Thank you. Now, you may read every chapter and every word, if you so desire, but before leaving on your grand adventure, tear out and take with you only those pages which will be useful to you on your trip. So, for example, if you have purchased a book about Spain, but are definitely going only to Madrid and Seville, tear out those pages to take with you and leave the rest of the book at home. How you handle the loose pages depends on your personality, but don't get all hung up on that thing your mom told you about not defacing or destroying books. Trust me on this. You paid for the damned thing. It's yours to do with as you please. And when you trip lightly up the stairs in the metro station, comfortable with your little 12 pound backpack, you will thank me for this. You have permission to laugh at those serious travelers who carry those huge honkin' 50 pound packs around. (We won't even talk about the volkswagon sized suitcases on wheels here). So tear the pages out, staple them together in sections (one for each town perhaps; or one section for sights to see and another for places to eat or whatever), or leave them loose, but carry them in baggies, or whatever works for you. Repeat after me: "Paper is heavy."
OK. Where were we? Oh, yes, I take my guidebooks lightly. Unfortunately, at times, I still take them. And I still need to try places that are made to sound really interesting in said books. So this place, being near the bus station and the market (always a good bet for good local food at low prices in places with genuine character), sounded like a good bet. Here's a tip: If it takes more than 5 minutes to get your first cup of coffee in a restaurant that supposedly caters to breakfast traffic, it's gonna get worse. Get the hell out of there. Another tip: If the coffee finally comes, but the milk takes another 10 minutes to appear, get the hell out. But oh, no! We've gotta check this out. After all, the guidebook said ... So we finally got the cold rubbery eggs with the bowl of room temperature purreed black beans (NOT what I expect when I order refried beans). Lovely that the little basket of cold tortillas arrived at the same time as the cold eggs. The saving grace was the golden platanos. If only they'd been warm.
We've had so many great meals here. And so many totally adequate meals here. I guess you have to expect a bad one once in a while. So I don't expect guidebooks to be perfect, and I know that places change and are not always consistent, but I still plan to write to the Rough Guide to Guatemala and tell them that they need to delete the Comedor Tipico Anigüeño from their next edition.
After breakfast, I took Gene to see the weaving museum that I had seen a couple weeks ago with Chiqui. I was even more impressed this time than on my first visit.

Santa Teresa & How to Tip

We were just walking up the street after having a nice little lunch near the park. Suddenly there was another awesome ruined church. I was taking photos through the iron gate and wishing I could get inside to see more when the caretaker arrived. He invited us in, said it was ok to take pictures and told us about the history of the church.
This convent and church were built from 1677 to 1687. Originally housing 3 nuns from Lima, Peru, the convent ultimately grew to 18. The 2-story building was badly damaged in the earthquakes of 1717. Some 20 years later the convent was restored. Then in the earthquake of 1773, it sustained extensive damage again. The impressive façade of the convent survived all the earthquakes, including 1976. The northern section of the building still stands and now houses the city jail for men!
I asked our friendly guide if he had been in Antigua and remembered the earthquake of 1976. Yes, he said, it was horrible. Actually the first one, on February 4, happened at 2 o'clock in the morning. The second one occurred on February 6, during the day, and was terrifying. When you see the enormous pieces of buildings which are now lying around on the ground, you get a feel for just how terrifying it must have been. The 1976 earthquakes left 23,000 dead and a million homeless.
I often marvel at how the people here seem so proud of the ruins, and want to tell the stories to outsiders. I am embarrassed to call a ruined building " beautiful," although of course they are. I'm not sure exactly how this works, but my feeling is that they are proud that they survived, and that their city is still one of the most impressive and beautiful cities in the world.
As we started to leave, our informal "guide" told me that it was "customary" to give a small "propina," or tip as a thanks for the information. This seemed totally reasonable to me, but I was embarrassed that I had no idea what to give. We gave him 10 quetzales and he seemed satisfied with the amount. Chiqui later told me that while it certainly is not required to tip such "informal guides," if one wishes to do so, 5 or 10 quetzales is considered adequate. So I think next time I will try to have the cash in my hand, ready to give when shaking hands good bye and thanks.
So many things to learn. Cultural differences are fascinating but bewildering. I have a tendency to not want to embarrass someone by offering money inapproprately. I guess it's better to offer it, but to do so in such a gracious way that it won't be considered an affront if offered at the wrong time to the wrong person. Much easier to do if fluent in the recipient's language. Another reason to keep studying!