Guatebueno

It’s completely impossible to wrap my brain around the idea that this Guatemala was our last port. In some ways it feels like we’ve been traveling forever and in other ways it seems like the summer jut began and we left home yesterday. In he last 10 weeks we’ve been in 8 countries. It’s mind-boggling.

In the end, I’m happy Guatemala was our last port. Of all the places we were going to go to it was the one I was most looking forward to. My memory of it was that it was like no place on earth, a living rainbow of people, places, land and ruins. While I was worried that it might not hold up to my memories, I was also eager to see it again.

In 1994, Ricardo and I had been in the Western Highlands of Guatemala while working on Let’s Go Mexico and Central America. At that time there was a fairly serious State Department warning against going to Guatemala. There had been some very unfortunate incidents against Americans involving mobs and suspicions about adoptions, etc. Sadly this has not changed. Several of the S@S trips left with armed guards accompanying them on their trips.

But while the safety hasn’t changed, neither has the beauty of the country. And even though we’d planned a very aggressive 5 days, it was worth every minute.

We started with a trip to Chichicastenango, which to this day remains the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. Despite the rather hellacious 8 hour drive (construction in Guatemala I hellish with hour to two hour delays common when they close the road to blast the rock), the company on the drive was great and we had a terrific time visiting with everyone while we drove.

Chichi (for short) is a small town in the Western Highlands that has the largest indigenous market in Central America. What’s more remarkable about it though is its tiny church, Santo Tomas.

The church of Santo Tomas was built over a cave sacred to the Maya Quiche of the region. As a result the stairs of the church are believed to house the spirits of the ancestors of the people of the region. They are sacred and cannot be walked upon except by the indigenous people of Chichi and the surrounding area.

The big market is on Sundays and so people come from all over the highlands to pay their respects to their ancestors’ spirits. The stairs become covered with flowers, berries, cloth, nuts, mushrooms and incense all to be purchased and given to the spirits. Daykeepers, the Mayan Quiche shamans whose job it is to know all the days of the very complex calendars of the Maya, the sacrifices, rituals and observances, chant on the stairs and in the church.

Inside the church are 12 low altars for the people. They run the length of the main aisle of the church and on them people light candles, sprinkle alcohol, and leave petals for their offerings. They do this while the Catholic mass is going on around them. The color of the candles and the petals indicate what they are hoping their ancestors will do to intercede on their behalf. White candles are for adults, yellow for children, red for love, pink for pregnancy. Black candles are to ward off evil or to cause it to others. And all of this takes place in the Catholic church and with the permission and blessing of the priests.

It was in Chichicastenango and because of this kind of tolerated syncretism, that the Daykeepers of the town revealed to the Catholic priest the Popul Vuh, the sacred mythological text of the Maya which had been hidden from the Spanish for 100s of years. Mayan religion, myth, culture and traditions continue to live on in Chichi and the area around it.

We spent some time shopping (which is to die for there) and some time in the market, but most of our time was spent in the church and at another sacred site called Pascal Abaj which is on a hill just above the town. We hiked up with some friends after touring the mask museum at the entrance.

The mask museum is a history of the masks of a particular family and of the celebrations and traditions the Spanish introduced to Guatemala. We have two of them in our house (for those who have been there) hanging in our entry hall. The masks are used during posadas to act out various stories from the mixed cultures of Spain and Central America.

At the top of Pascal Abaj were both a wedding and various other ceremonies in progress. Like the church, the Daykeepers perform the ceremonies for people. Daykeepers can be male or female and generally have apprenticed for more than twenty years. We stayed and watched for a while and then headed down so we could meet people for lunch and head on to Antigua Guatemala.

Another 4 hour bus ride has us at our hotel in Antigua. Antigua Guatemala is the old capital of Guatemala (really the old Guatemala City), which was destroyed by volcanoes and by earthquakes over the years. It’s now the old colonial heart of the country (the capital has moved to what is now Guatemala City).

We stayed in the most beautiful hotel of our entire trip, La Quinta de las Flores. It is a grand, huge courtyarded place full of fountains, flowers, plants and hammocks. The food was amazing, the room lovely, the people kind and helpful. Our first night we met up with some ship friends and had dinner together and then headed back to the hotel.

The next day we slept in late and then made a mad dash around the town. We shopped for gorgeous artesenia, some of the most beautiful of the entire summer. We walked through the main square, saw the old destroyed cathedral, visited the tomb of Pedro de Alvarado, the conquistador who defeated the Maya and wandered the catacombs. Then we headed to the Mercado where we managed to get The Kid a soccer jersey before grabbing a tuk tuk (a motorized cycle pulling rickshaw affair) to the museum of the music of Indigenous Guatemala.

We had a marvelous tour of the museum replete with demonstrations, explanations and videos of the various musical instruments of Guatemala. The national instrument is the marimba, which is like a xylophone but significantly cooler. The Kid bought a small one to round out his extensive collection of musical instruments from the summer.

By the time we’d finished, it was much later than we’d intended and we needed to catch our bus back to the ship at 3:45. It was now 3 pm and we’d not eaten since breakfast. We decided to go back to our hotel and eat so that we’d be there when the bus came. So we hurriedly headed back. In the process of the rushing, I managed to trip on the paving stones on my way to the bathroom and sprain my ankle.

We made the bus after eating the best potatoes I have ever had (salted and seasoned and then grilled and served with guacamole, fire roasted tomato salsa and delicious churrasco). I went to see the ship’s doctor who told me that I had sprained my ankle and I should stay off it. He then asked what I was doing the next day. Going to Tikal, I replied. He told me I wouldn’t hurt it further but I definitely wouldn’t be healing if I didn’t stay off it. Then he gave me a brace and told me to have fun. I love Doctor Milt!

The next morning we woke at the ungodly hour of 4 am to catch our chartered flight to Tikal. The view from the plane was astounding. One of the volcanoes here, Pacaya is very active right now and we could see it smoking as we flew northwards.

We reached Tikal mid morning and proceeded to hike all around and up the temples. You can no longer climb the limestone stairs of the temples the way you could when Ricardo and I were there in 1994, but there are wooden staircases to go up and the views continue to be spectacular. We found our way to the North Acropolis where Ricardo proposed to me in 1994 when we were last there. The real spot is gone now and the excavations under it have revealed a huge head of the god Chac, rain god of the Maya. I managed to do everything but climb Temple 4, which the guys did without me so that The Kid could see the “Star Wars view.” It was very magical to be back there and to share it with The Kid.

Later that evening we had a nice swim at the pool (and some pain killers for me. Maybe it wasn’t a nice swim but by the time I felt no more pain everything felt pretty nice). We went out to dinner with some friends to a place that served “typical” food. We ate agouti, which is a large rodent, as well as tapir, armadillo and wild turkey (which was the best of the lot). It was adventuresome, if not tasty.

The next day we took a launcha, a small boat, over to the zoo on the island. We got to see some birds, lots of monkeys, and most impressively a puma and a jaguar. I’d never seen a real jaguar before (just pictures) and they are incredibly impressive. No wonder the Maya considered them sacred.

We left the zoo for a swim in the lake which was very refreshing and which was a palliative against the crushing heat of the Petén. I sweat so much at that zoo I felt like I was a faucet. It was unbelievable. The water wasn’t cold, but it did the business.

We got back to the hotel at 12:15. And that was when the fun started. We tried to order lunch. Breakfast should have been a sign that we should have eaten elsewhere but even though it took us 40 minutes to order that morning, we had our food in another 25. Not so lunch. We ordered no problem. But it took then 30 minutes to bring our drinks. Then nothing. Nada. Zilch. I decided to go back to the room and shower, thinking that that would be the sign to bring lunch. Like brining a umbrella and then it doesn’t rain. But noooooo. I showered and dressed, and still no lunch. Finally after an hour and a half of waiting we got our food. Ice cold. We yelled at them. We got some bread. The people we were eating with got nothing. Finally they got fries but no sandwiches. Then only one sandwich. We gave up and ate our Pringles and butter cookies. It was a dining disaster to say the least.

We left the hotel, went to the airport and boarded our flight back to the port. On our flight back, we not only got to see the volcanoes, but there was a gorgeous rainbow, the second of our summer. Terribly fitting since Guatemala is a place I think of as being a living rainbow.

And now we are back on board the MV Explorer. We have about three more days of sailing before we reach San Diego. And then it’s back to Charlottesville. I can’t believe the summer we’ve had. It’s been remarkable, something I will never forget. I can’t wait to sign up to do it again. And I can’t believe I was lucky enough to do it even once.