*ugh* London is just as I remember it cold, dark, wet and miserable!
Christmas away from home is always strange, even when you have wonderful new friends to spend it with (thanks John and Fai!). The strangest part this year is not that I miss people, but which ones I find myself missing in the worst way.
D, I promise next year will be better - how does Bermuda sound?
Guidebook in hand, we headed off to Guatemala. We – myself, and the four British girls from the hostel in San Cristobal – had decided to take the 11am bus towards the border. That was our first mistake – always take the earliest bus possible. The plan was to try and make it all the way to Todos Santos, a traditional village in the highlands, by late afternoon. Given our information, this seemed to be no problem, but our information was wrong. By the time we reached the town just before the Guatemalan border, it was mid-afternoon already. When we got there, and needed to get a taxi to the actual border crossing, my annoyance with the British girls began – they had no cash on them, which is stupid, you never know if you will be able to cash a traveller’s cheques or use an ATM, always carry some cash. Of course, neither of these things were available, so I ended up having to pay for the cab, the bribe we got stung for at the border because they were stupid, the bus ride into the nearest big town, and accommodation for the night before they could get any cash. Later they whined when I informed them that they owed me $8US each. As you can see from these rough beginnings, it wasn’t going to be long before we parted ways.
After a night in one of the worst hotels I have ever stayed in (I didn’t even dare sleep between the sheets) in Huehuetenango, we headed to Todos Santos. It’s a slow, bumpy, don’t look down ride up the mountains, only 20kms, that takes 4 hours. Guatemala is where American school buses go when they die; when they’re too old and tired and don’t meet the safety standards anymore. The buses are then painted, and named (like the Chico Yera) and put into use on the roads of Guatemala as public transport. The buses have little suspension, tiny seats, and typically each seat is occupied by 3 people, or more! It takes some getting used to – they’ll stop anywhere, at anytime for anyone – but the trips are interesting, and the people you might meet, especially if you speak a little Spanish, can be lots of fun.
Todos Santos is a very traditional community – everyone still wears traditional dress, and life is simple. Western life and values haven’t made many inroads in their area of the highlands. They are suspicious of outsiders to the point that a couple of years ago a Japanese tourist and guide were beaten to death for taking photographs and being too interested in the local children. We spent two days there, walking the mountain tracks past traditional homes and lifestyles. I also had a traditional Mayan sauna called a chuj – like a regular sauna, but in a small adobe hut only really big enough for two, and kind of smokey. One the way to Todos Santos, I met a cool girl from the Netherlands named Ulreike who I was soon to find out, the British girls annoyed, as much as they did me. She headed straight to Chichicastenango and I arranged to meet up with her there after a small side trip to Quetzaltenango, also locally named as Xela.
The couple of days spent in Xela were the last shreds of my patience with the English girls. We parted ways after two days in Xela, they heading off to Panajachel, the party town by Lake Atitilan, and I heading back into the mountains to the market town of Chichicastenango to meet up with Ulreike. Getting off the bus in Chichi, I knew where I was heading to meet her, but kept getting incorrect directions from the same guy until I realised he was doing it on purpose so that when I was tired and frustrated I would let him take me to a hotel where he got a kickback. Well, that was his plan anyway. I guess he didn’t plan on me screaming at him to fuck off, and then me heading off to a café so I could calm down. Luckily for me, as I was waiting to get a drink and something to eat, Ulreike walked past and saw me. She had been unable to find the place to stay that we had agreed to meet at either, but had found somewhere else nice, and we headed off there. After going out for dinner that night, we had a chance to practice our Spanish – the pension’s owner stopped in to talk to us as we drank some beer on our patio area. By this stage my Spanish was getting pretty good – I could understand 90% of the conversation, but my own vocabulary was limited, I couldn’t put together sentences. The next morning we got up early to visit the market, trying to be early enough to avoid the tourist buses – we took the arrival of the tourists as our cue to get breakfast. Despite some serious bargaining, I didn’t buy anything. I had hoped to get a bedspread, but the only place we came close (we were going to buy two together to get a better deal), they tried to rip us off by giving us only one good one, and an inferior one once they had agreed to the price we wanted. We walked, and boy were they pissed. In the early afternoon, both Ulreike and I caught a bus to other destinations – me heading for Panajachel, and her back to Monterico where she had been volunteering in a turtle program.
I hit Panajachel in the mid-afternoon and promptly ran into a friendly Canadian guy on a bike who had lived there for 20 years while looking for the place I wanted to stay. Pana is well known as a Western hippie drop out town from the 1960s/1970s now catering to Guatemala’s burgeoning tourist trade. After dropping my bag, I wandered back into town to look around, knowing I didn’t have a lot of time there. Unfortunately, the first people I ran into were the English girls. I said a brief hello, then headed back to my investigating. While in Chichi, Ulreike and I talked about them a bit. The conclusion I came to was that, while I regard myself as more of a traveler, they were much closer to the tourist end of the spectrum. Where I would make an effort to see a lot wherever I was, they were more likely to spend the night out drinking and then sleeping all day. They also had a low level of respect for the local customs, traditions, and above all, people. One of my favourite comments from them was “I can’t take another chicken bus (as Guatemalan buses are called), I can’t stand smelling like chickens anymore”. The funniest part of that was that we hadn’t even been on one bus where there had been chickens! It seemed that the travel experience they were looking for was a western one, but just cheaper, and requiring little effort – they were certainly in the wrong country for that. I spent my only full day in Panajachel taking a tour of the villages around Lake Atitilan. I met a cool Germany couple that I agreed to meet up with for dinner in Antigua the next day.
The bus to Antigua involved a change at a stop along the highway. Somewhere between bus number 1, and making my way from the back door through crowded bus number 2 down to the front, my purse disappeared. I only had $10US in my wallet (which is always a good policy, only ever carry a small amount in a purse and hide the rest elsewhere), and my ATM card, which for some reason had never worked in Guatemala, though it should have. What really pissed me off in the end was the loss of the purse – it was a one of a kind from Todos Santos that I couldn’t replace without going back there. The bus was stopped, and the police half-heartedly searched some people on the bus (someone else had been robbed too), but I think the purse was probably long gone. There were a bunch of European guys on the bus too. The weird thing was, none of them asked me if they could help, or if I needed anything – I would always do that for other travelers.
The second day I was in Antigua I found a wonderful place to stay, which was great considering my plan to stay over a week. I met a lot of interesting people, especially ones doing a whole range of volunteer work in Antigua – it’s a city that attracts a lot of travelers – its small, quaint with its cobbled streets, and quite safe compared to Guatemala City which is just an hour away. I enrolled in Spanish classes and spent 6 hours a day filling my mind with Spanish. The second Spanish teacher I had was great – funny and with a dirty sense of humour – great for learning a new language. She even came with me when I got my second tattoo while there. It took an hour and a half, and let’s not lie, it fucking hurt! I am incredibly happy with it though, and the artist was a real perfectionist, so it turned out wonderfully. I had the tattoo the afternoon before I was to leave for Tikal, which is up in the northern jungle area of Guatemala adjoining Mexico. Early the next morning (after my Spanish school’s party the night before), I had to be up early to catch a shuttle I had organised to Guatemala City so that I could catch the express bus to Flores, the gateway to Tikal. The first thing I had to do was repair my backpack – one of the straps was broken. Unfortunately, while doing this, I managed to slash my finger quite deeply with my swiss army knife. I managed to stop the bleeding quickly and clean it, but I had a shuttle and a bus to catch. It was 6.30am, and I didn’t arrive in Flores until 5pm. The finger hurt all day, and I was quite concerned. When I got to Flores, the first thing I did after finding somewhere to sleep was to find a doctor (who understood English) who promptly poked me with needles, gave me an antibiotic bomb dose and 5 stitches.
The next morning, after taking some helpful Ibuprofen, I caught an early bus out to Tikal where I took a tour of the ruins site with three PeaceCorp workers from Nicaragua. We hired a tour guide for what turned out to be a five hour walk around the site. He turned out to have been one of the locals who had worked on the original dig done by the University of Pennsylvania on the site in the 1950s when he was 15. Seeing the ruins would not have been the same without his knowledge. It was a long day, and the next one was even longer. To catch my flight from Cancun to Havana two days later, I needed to get a 5am shuttle from Flores, through Belize to Chetumal where I could get a connecting bus to Playa del Carmen. The shuttle was 2.5 hours late, meaning I didn’t make it to Playa del Carmen until 11pm, and had to get the airport shuttle to Cancun at 8am the next day. Tired, finger in pain and worried about its lack of feeling and movement, I was finally on my way to Cuba after the two false starts due to hurricanes and my long diversion through Guatemala.
Despite all the warnings of violent robberies, attacks against tourists, and daylight assaults, I never felt unsafe or threatened in any way when I was in Guatemala, even when I had just been pickpocketed (I did feel pissed off though). The people were friendly, and always intriguing, and the country unfailingly beautiful.
Antigua Photos
http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4291001289
Tikal Photos
http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4291001525
Other Guatemala Photos
http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4291240525
*sigh* Long bus trips, no sleep, crappy food. The things I do. Vancouver to Regina, 27 hours.
I am here in Regina for another week - party party for Jim's departure on Saturday night - and then I am flying to London via Boston. I am really looking forward to getting to London to see Sarah (who I haven't seen in, oh, I think 2 years), Dee (who left home just before me), and some of my Burning Man family.
Hmmm.... loving being in Vancouver, walking around the city, playing pool and drinking beer with Andy-roo, hanging out with Dondi, meeting some of his friends. Its all good people, all good.