Guatemala II: The Brothers Eisenstein

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Cobblestone streets, colorful Colonial architecture, and countless mom-and-pop hotels, gift shops, and tour companies fill the tiny, round island of Flores from edge to edge, a vibrant, tourist-filled parasite that has taken over completely its host. The islet sits just off the coast of the rundown, authentic Guatemalan city of Santa Elena, like a satellite moon inhabited by another race, and provides for great sunsets over the Lago de Peten, as well as a popular base for tours to the famous Mayan ruins of Tikal. That is why I am there, and that is why my brothers are taking the extra flight from St. Louis to Miami to Guatemala City and finally to Flores to meet me there.

I am really excited to be able to share a bit of my Central America experiences with my brothers. With only 8 full days to be with them, I have hand-tailored our trip in order to maximize efficiency and enjoyability. I so badly want to show them the best experience and, frankly, to impress them with the country I was beginning to fall in love with, that I have been constantly second guessing the itinerary I have made up. Just a few days before their arrival, I made a spontaneous, dramatic change in plans, cancelled some hotels, added a whole new destination. Upon their arrival, I am hoping desparately that I made the right decision, although at the same time I know that it doesn´t really matter what we do, we will have a great time no matter what. Time, however, will vindicate my last minute decision.

Anyways, they arrive and we spend the night playing cards and catching up in the common room of Los Amigos Hostel, swings, hammocks, couches, tables, bookshelves, candles, art work and drooping vines haphazardly covering every inch like a slow, organic growth of hippiness. We head off early to our beds in our big, shared dormrooms.

The next day, we rent bikes that, although look like brand new hardcore mountain bikes on the outside, function like any other old, gearless bike in Central America: like crap. We make our way across the bridge, through the town and market of Santa Elena towards a cave I read about in my Lonely Planet. Realizing once we almost got there that we forgot flashlights, and that these are usually a necessary piece of equipment for caving, I hopped in one of the three-wheeled tuk-tuk taxi´s that operate incessantly in the area and, for a total of $1.25, got a ride to the hotel and back to where Corey and Michael were waiting.

Finally, down a long dirt road and past an electrical powerplant, we made it to the entrance of the cave, where sat a little wooden shack and a lady that had to be roused from her hammock to grant us entrance.

We were the only people in the cave, a cave that was geologically plain but fun to explore because we were completely, utterly alone, spelunking and climbing about without a guide or even a map. After going deep into the innards of the cave, where crouching-pasageways opened into grand halls, and where water dripped from the ceiling and our shoes squashed through thick mud and up piles of avalanched-rocks, we made the wise decision to head back before we became a newspaper headline: Three American brothers enter cave on first day of Guatemalan trip, never come out.

On our way out, Michael spotted a tiny hole, just big enough for an Eisenstein body to fit through, and goes up with his flashlight to see whats inside. He says it seems clear, that it opens up into a little room inside, and so, one by one we crawl though. Crouching on the inside, laughing at the absurdity of climbing through holes that small into unknown destinations in strange caves all alone, I spot with my flashlight, perched right above Corey´s bobbing head, several small, dark figures... bats! We must get out of here what were we thinking?! Suddenly a bat drop down and takes flight, right past us and out the small opening we entered through, and we realized that the only exit for both us and these bats was that small hole and that, while we climb through, the whole is completely plugged up. One by one we slide through the whole, hands and knees, as fast as possible, praying that a bat does not have the sudden urge to fly about while we are in the act of escaping. I am the first out, and as soon as I stand up outside the hole, a bat takes flight and bursts through the hole and into my stomache. We promptly make our way for the exit.

After this, we get back to the hostel, pack up our stuff and, because the last bus to Tikal had already left that day, have to pay (too much) to take a taxi the 90 minutes there so that we can check into our hotel, one of only three small hotels inside the park.

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The ruins of Tikal are located an hour´s drive straight into the jungle of northern Guatemala. The nearest civilization of any size is an inconsequentially small lakeside farming pueblo an hour away, except for the three small hotels that are situated on the outskirts of the premises. The nearest city of any legitimate size would be either Coban, Guatemala or Belize City, Belize, both about 6-8 hours away. Tikal is out there, surrounded by a thick, living and breathing jungle.

As part of my itinerary, I had reserved one night inside the park, despite the relative inordinate price, so that we could be inside the park when the sun rises and before the bus-loads arrive from Flores. Our residence, despite being a legitimate hotel, was still at the merc of its environment: electricity wsas available from sun down to 9 pm only, hot water only in the morning.

We dropped out bags off, relaxed, eventually turned the lights on, then loaded up on bugspray and ventured off into the noisy night to find some food. There was a restaurant at our hotel, but it was expensive, and we walked a few hundred meteres down the road to the comedor that was part of the smal tikal complex. We ate dinner and stocked up on chips and cookies to be our breakfast the next day inside the park. We also experimented with buying one sandwich to go, which the lady at the restaurant assured us would be ok the next day, but chicken salad is not known to keep well outside a fridge for 10 hours. We will see...

On the way back to the hotel, we came to a clearing in the trees, the hotel still a ways up ahead and behind vegetation, the light from the comedor behind us barely visible, the nearest civilization miles and miles away... and we looked up. Ho. Lee. Shit. I´m on another planet, I´m floating in space, I´ve gone back in time. The night sky, really, is not dark. Ironically, the sky is only made to look dark because of all the light we create on land. In its natural state, as it was here, the sky is bright, filled with the glow of tens of thousands of flickering dots. The sky in this state isn´t just dotted or speckled, it has texture, it has weight, it has depth, its almost tangible, like white paint snapped from a giant toothbrush onto a dark canvas. The concentrated band that is the Milky Way Galaxy stretched across the sky from one end to the other, a celestial rainbow. It is hard not to contemplate big questions when staring up at a sky like this. Hard not to feel humbled and overwhelmed. I had seen the sky at night before, plenty of times, but I had never seen the night sky, not like this.

When we got back to our rooms, we pulled our beds together and played cards by candlelight, our new game Yahniv (taught to me by some Israeli travelers a few weeks ago) quickly becoming part of our daily routine. We slept early, which is not hard to do in such electricity-free conditions, and arose early to be the first inside the park.

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At dawn the jungle awakens, and the howler monkey are grumpy risers. Entering the park at 6 am was like entering an ominous inevitability, like the waiting in line before a haunted house or an amusement ride. Cool gray skies, a few stars still visible in its rousing light, silouhetted the looming trees overhead, the air was still and fresh and moist with the due of early morning, and all around us sounded the the agregious, soaring, cavernous roars of invisible howler monkeys, calls far too menacing and entirely too loud to be coming from the tiny creatures producing them. The howler monkey, despite being quite small (about the size of a big spider monkey) is the 4th loudest mammal on the planet, behind three much larger relatives: the whale, the elephant, and the lion. The incredible calls start in a low, gutteral rumble, ascend to a booming, reverberating roar, and creschendo into breathless, stepped growls that tumbles back down upon itself to its starting place, where the rumble begins anew after a short silence and rises upwards to repeat the pattern in cycle. We were only able to experience this because we were there right at dawn: by 7 or 8 am, the monkey´s have quieted and later visitors to the park would have no idea what they missed.

Quick background: The architecture at Tikal dates back as far as the 4th century BC, though most of the structures were built during the Mayan Classic Period between 200 and 900 AD. During this time, the city was one of if not the most dominant site in the Mayan world, or ¨El Mundo Maya¨ as it is called, both politically, economically and militarily.

We made our way first to the Plaza Mayor, the center of town, as it was, where two huge, stepped pyramids (Pyramids I and II) face eachother on opposite sides of an open plaza. Standing here while the sun still sat low in the sky behind the massive main pyramid, and due covered the grass and birds chirpped and all was still and not another human soul, not one, was visible besides the three of us.. this was an awesome moment. So far, the decision to stay in the park and get their bright and early was really paying off. After taking in the atmosphere and imagining what this must have looked like painting in bright colors like it was at one point and populated by thousands of living peoples, we made our way towards tower IV, the tallest structure at Tikal and one that can be climbed. We wanted to make it there, again, before it became populated with tourists, and to see the un as it was still in the process of rising and shedding new, colorful rays across the jungle tops.

And we made it just in time.

We climbed the several hundred wooden steps that have been constructed along the side of the pyramid (the original steps are out of commission) and stepped out on to the top of the pyramid to behold a sublime panorama: green, rolling jungle filled the land to the horizon, where the sun sat perched straight ahead, casting the land in that magical, warm light that only dawn grants us, and casting the tops of several of the other large pyramids, jutting out through the canopy into the morning mist, in archaic silhouettes. An early morning fog was creeping across the tree tops and rolling through the valleys in the distance, each progressive hill line a little more obscure than the one in front, a perfect gradation that eventually merged with the orange sky beyond. We took pictures, of course, and then opened our snacks and sat on top to have our breakfast of cookies and potato chips and a 10-hour old chicken salad sandwhich, which looked and tasted good, but none of us had the stomache, literally, to try more than a bite. As we sat there, a small handful of other visitors with us, we watched as, within an hour, the sun had risen, the light had changed, the fog disappeared, and the view, while still spectacular, lost the magic it had had for that short time as the day was awakening.

The next few hours were spent exploring the rest of the site, climbing other pyramids and structures, taking majestic, surreal photos next to Indiana Jones-like structures, trying to listen in on some guided tours that crossed our paths, and watching as the park filled up with tourists. As we left the park a little before 11 am, four-plus hours of exploring already in the bag and its not even lunchtime, hoards of large tourists were just entering the park. At any time of day, Tikal would be a worthy trip, the pyramids and the views and the history are truly spectacular, but only in the morning, we found out, as teh sun is rising and the land rising from slumber, is the place truly otherworldly, enchanting and wonderful.

We went back to the room with enough time to shower and rest up before check out time, then walked to the little comedor were Corey and I had, quite possibly, the best fried chicken we´d ever had, and Michael looked on in regret with the pile of unidentifiable chicken mush on the dish in front of him. We caught the next bus back to town and checked back into Los Amigos for our final night in Flores.

There, while playing cards and eating food and generally hanging out that night, we met an Israeli named Aviv who had been living in Mexico for several years, who has a beard like a lumberjack, wears loose white linens and slippers, and who talks about ¨energy¨ and ¨letting go of time.¨ I told him of our plans to go to Lago de Atitlan, a lake in western Guatemala that I had read and heard only amazing things about. He told us of a place called San Marcos, a town with ¨great energy¨ and a hostel called Shamanek, or Chamenic, or something like that, he wasn´t exactly sure. Details, who needs them? Anyway, he recommended it to us if we wanted to, as he put it, escape the party scene of the other towns on the lake and go someplace with much better, more tranquilo energy and chill out. He mentioned something about some cliffs near San Marcos for jumping off of. I wrote down his suggestions, and then next day we took a short one hour flight to Guatemala and a bus from there to Atitlan, with a short one hour preview stop in Antigua on the way.

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The drive from Antigua to Atitlan traverses farms and fields and mountainsides of burnt yellows and greens, the road climbing slowly but surely to the elevated Western Highlands. The shelf of land that makes up Western Guatemala is raised a mile and more above sea level and covered with cragged mountain ranges and rolling hills. The air becomes colder and crisper, the landscape becomes more rugged and torn, and the mosquitos disappear. Coming around a bend in the road, one of many in the inevitably and unavoidably bendy, hairpin-filled roads that wind around and through the Western Highlands, The Lake appeared suddenly out the left hand side of the bus, filling our field of vision like a projection screen suddenly unrolled from the ceiling in front of our eyes. The bus stopped, and we got out.

The view is a view that renders language obsolete, that is almost too much to absorb, its existence in someway seeming fake, impossible, a blue screen. The lake, massive but manageable to the eye from this vantage point, glimmered like celophane in the midday sun, surrounded, completely and utterly, by mountains and perfectly-pyramidal volcanos in 360 degrees. The water sits like in a massive, natural bowl, as if, just possibly, it had been formed over millions of years of collecting the rain water rolling off the insides of the ring of protruding land that surrounds it. I realized quite readily that I had never, ever seen any natural site quite like this before.

We took some photos and then continued winding our way down towards the lake. All three of us, but Corey especially, had to find a bathroom desperately when we arrived in Panajachel, the main lakeside town where connecting boats to the other lakeside towns are made and where we planned to find a bathroom and then find our boat to San Pedro, on the other side of the lake. The bus dropped us near the dock, and as soon as we stepped foot outside the bus, we found ourselves running, packs and all, down the rickety wooden dock towards the boat to San Pedro, no time to think its leaving now! Suddenly, we were on a tiny lancha, as always overcrowded with people, a woman in the back yelling for the men to let her off because it was dangerous packed, and then we were off, water splashing in our faces and the lake seeming much larger than it appeared form above. We had no money, no idea how long the boat ride was, and we had to pee. I sat in the front of the boat, my brothers somewhere in the back. The boat crashed up and down in the choppy waters, splashing everyone involved until eventually a tarp was lowered over us, literally on top of my me, my head and hands used to hold it up and creating a little cavity of air for me and the small guatemalan family sitting with me.

I began to talk to the man next to me, who was sitting with his two small children. They were heading home from shopping for a new backbpack and some school clothes in Panahachel. The man, Noe (no-EH), asked me about my self and told me about his 2 years working, illegally I assume, in Corpus Christi, Texas. It happened to be Christmas Eve, and I asked Noe what Christmas was like in Guatemala, at the lake, and in his home. He described the big christmas eve feasts that his wife spends all day cooking and they eat as a big, extended family. Would I like to eat try it? He asked me. Would I like to join them for Christmas eve dinner?

I was taken back at first, instinctually hesitant to accept an invitation from a random Guatemalan man to join his family for Christmas dinner, despite the fact that he seemed like a friendly and harmless family man who genuinely wanted to share Christmas dinner with a new friend. It didn´t quite make sense, though he explained that American´s have a special place in his heart, that they had treated him so well when he lived in Texas and that he has always tried to return the favor when he met new ones in Guatemala. But... supposing it was safe, and I assumed no malintentions on his part, it would undoubtedly be quite an experience...

So, after Noé and his two little boys unnecessarily-wandered the city with us for an hour as we looked for a hostel, and after talking over the situation in private and considering the worst that could happen (which we figured was that they would simply ask us for money: we decided they were unlikely to kidnap and/or murder us) we agreed to meet him at his house at 8.

The room that we found was 50 Quetzals (less than $7) for the night for, after they dragged an extra one up, three double sized beds, a private bathroom and a view of the town and lake. Except for a few feet against the wall, the entire room was mattress, our three beds covering the floor completely with no space inbetween like a padded cell in an asylum. The bathroom was a nightmare, a n appendage the size of a telephone booth that contained a toilet, a sink and a bathroom in the same undivided space, the shower head located directly above the sink and the toilet. A shower curtain acted as a door, and the toilet seat was utterly unusable. There was a rooftop easily accesible from our room that protuded up above the rest of town and afforded great views and an interesting place to hang out, among wires and clothes lines and crumbling concrete blocks. We dressed in collared shirts, found a bottle of champagne-type drink to give as a gift, and found our way by taxi to Noe´s home for Christmas dinner, unsure what to expect but certain that it would be a weird and once-in-a-lifetime experience no matter what. It did not disappoint.

At 8 o´clock we arrived at the home of Noé, fifteen minutes by taxi (the 3-wheeled, doorless type, driven with handlebars instead of steering wheel by a boy who could be no older than 14) from San Pedro to the neighboring, residential town of San Juan. The address that I handed the driver, like all those I have encountered in guatemala, was part street address, part physical description, full nonsense. ¨On par with the stadium¨ it said, and somehow the prepubescent found it. We had him wait as I went in to check if the dark, unmarked home we stopped in front of was the right one. As I began walking down the unlit, narrow alleyway, Noé appeared, followed by a whole group of people of all different shapes, sizes and ages. This was it.

We were greeted by the whole extended family -- handshakes for Noe and the grandpa, awkward hugs and cheek-kisses for the grandma, wife, two sisters and two daughters, high fives for the two little boys we had already met earlier that day. Michael handed one of the adults the bottle of champagne, which was greeted with a response I was unable to gage. We were quickly ushered into a room, concrete, bare, windowless, unpainted and unadorned, except for the tiny, glowing Christmas tree that say on a table against the wall, surrounded by little sculptures and other Christmas ornaments and playing a Christmas carol with four, high-pitched notes in a constant, 15 second loop. Along one side was a long, skinny, low wooden table with a few chairs that reminded me of good fire wood. In the opposite corner of the room was a bed with traditional woven tapestry, and a guitar hung on the wall above it.

The whole family stumbled into the room after us, following us and staring like they were expecting some magic trick at any moment. Chairs were pulled out and we were gestured to have a seat, the rest of the family showing no intention to join us in sitting. Sparklers were lit and handed to us, and we sat there holding them until they died out, not sure what else to do but smile and look around.  Corey, Michael and I couldn´t help, however, but to laugh, and we spoke to eachother under our breath through big, dumb, confused smiles. What the hell is going on? Suddenly, plates descended on us, each containing two tomales wrapped in banana leaves (traditional Guatemalan Christmas dinner), accompanied by a slice of white sandwich bread and a mug of warm, milky, pulpy drink. ¨Solo nosotros [only us] ?¨ I asked, and they laughed, though it was no joke. The family continued to stand around us, looking on in anticipation. Are we about to be poisened?

We begin to open our banana leaves when finally some extra chairs are brought in and the two men, Noé and Grandpa, join us at the table. Their plates only have one tomale, ours two, and after we started to eat we wished we had none. A tomale, when good, is a mushy brick of corn meal filled with mostly unidentifiable meat product. These were bad tomales, terrible, definitely the worst food product I have ever tasted and was forced to then continue eating it, to the bitter end.

From there, the night just got more and more absurd, though everyone there realized this and we had lots of laughts and actualyl a lot of fun. One daughter thought Michael was really cute, and wanted to keep taking pictures with him. Another daughter brought out some paintings she claimed to have painted, the kind of cheezy, generic oil-paintings that can be found at any tourist trap around the world, and we bought a couple just for the hell of it. Michael kept offering Grandpa more champagne, and he kept accepting, each time his wife getting more and more upset with him. During a toast, my glass connected with that of the grandma´s, and she instantly recoiled in a pain and held her shoulder in grimacing pain the rest of the night. At one point, the guitar came out, and the whole family sand some guatemalan christmas carol. They asked us if we had wives or girlfriends, and none of us happened to at the moment, and they simply could not understand why that was. They seemed offended, even, that none of us had any relationships, this being an unbelievable thing in traditional Guatemalan culture when you are as ¨old¨ as we are. Michael searched rabidly through my English-Spanish dictionary in order to find the right word to try and explain why Corey did not have a girlfriend, and finally turned to the daughter and proclaimed ecstatically: ¨Estas feo!¨ which translates directly into ¨You are ugly.¨ A long silence ensued, and we tried to explain that he conjugated the verb wrong and meant to direct that at Corey, but there was no backing out of it.

From there, things just got awkward, and soon enough Noé stood up and we realized our welcome was worn out. We said goodbye, took a group picture (after which we realized we were GIANTS compared to them: look at the picture!), and Noé, his wife, and three kids walked us to the main road to find a taxi. The kids jumped on our backs and we gave them piggy back rides the whole way. We exchanged email addresses and then, finally, Noé pulled me aside and asked for some money so he could buy his kids some presents. Though he didn´t ask for much in US dollars and it would have been worth it to pay him for the experience he just gave us, I was so put off by the fact that the true motivation for this whole event turned out to (of course!) be money that I told him I had none on me. I regret doing that, I should have just given him the 100 Q (13 dollars) that he asked for, and if I did it over again I would.

My overall conclusion of the night is that Noé and his family were genuinely good people who were obviously poor and couldn´t be blamed for trying to get some money from the rich, traveling American brothers with the fancy cameras and new clothes. They gave us a truly surreal, once-in-a-lifetime experience, something that could be in a comedic play or movie and seem fully fictional. The kids were innocent and loved our company, the adults patient with our language barrier, and the food terrible. It was awkward, absurd, and unforgettable.

That night we laughed all the way home, and immediately sat down to brainstorm and record what had just happened so we wouldn´t forget any, zany detail. We walked around and got some tacos from a street vendor, since those tomales were not going to suffice. Fireworks were beginning to really pick up, and we got some beers and went to our roof and sat alone ontop of the town, waiting for midnight to strike. When it did, the whole town erupted like an attack from an invisible enemy. Fireworks and firecrackers were set off from every street corner and every rooftop in the city, from boats and mountain tops, from passing cars and running screaming kids. They exploded above us, below us, in front of us and behind us, some so close we ducked instinctively to avoid them. Looking out over the lake, the lights of towns scattered around the mountains floated in clusters like constellations low in the sky, and explosions of light could be seen, then many seconds later heard as it floated across the open lake to us. There was no organization, just pure everyone-for-themself chaos. With eyes closes, I could swear we were in battle, but we weren´t: it was just Christmas in Guatemala.

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Christmas day was a unique one. We took a lancha from San Pedro across the lake to San Marcos, with the intention of staying just a night and checking it out. I had been told San Marcos was chill, laid back, tranquilo, that it tiny and quaint, had a ¨good vibe¨ and a ¨special energy.¨ That was all I had been told, and having really no idea what exactly that meant, I had no idea what to expect. After having been there, I can say that those words are apt, that San Marcos is all of those things and more, yet I cannot come up with any better descriptive words than those, which is telling.

We got off the lancha and followed a local boy to the hostel that Aviv had recommended, knowing nothing about it, not even its proper name, only a close, phonetic approximation: Shamenec? Or was is Shamanic, like a shaman? It was neither, but it was close enough to get us there. We followed the boy through, then past town, past fields of maize and coffee and beans, along the lakeside, and up a steep, dirt path up the side of the mountain, a tough climb with or without hueg backpacks on, but especially with.

Tucked into the mountain side, half on land and half jutting out over the side towards the lake below and teyh sky above, sat Xamanec, a three-story wooden cabin. A massive wooden deck protruded out from the sloped mountain side, hammocks hung between pine trees, almost hanging off into the lake, pillows and tables and chairs ans sofas were thrown about, and stone paths connected the different parts of this secret garden. An opening in the trees let the spectacular view of the lake below and the volcanoes beyond -- and later, a perfect view of the setting sun -- to penetrate into the secret garden. One wall of the downstairs on the inside was littered with photos and drawings and posters and magazine cutouts, leaving not an inch of space uncovered, and contained a whole lot of Beatles stuff, another good sign. Two coffee tables surrounded by pillows sat on the wooden floor, and a kitchen made itself in the corner, covered in fruits and vegetables and chocolates and adorned with hanging pots and pans. The two bathrooms were superfluously huge, one so big in fact that it had a table and two chairs in it (for what?), along with two doors, a full wall of windows, a wooden sculpture (which held the roll of TP), a bookshelf, an array of lit candles, a toilet, shower and sink, and enough spare room to throw a football around. Some downtempo music played from inside, just loud enough to be heard from all around, just soft enough to allow for the conversation, reading, sleeping, and silent pondering that the place was so conducive to to continue.

But there was no one immediately about when we got there, no one to greet us or ask for a check in. Eventually, as we stood around and absorbed the scene, a seductive, cleavaged young woman, lounging in the sun down on the deck, noticed and lazily greeted us and informed us there were, in fact, three beds (of the 9 total beds) opening up at 4 pm (just a few hours from now) and if we stuck around, they were ours. We stuck around, and the longer we did so, the more young, beautiful women started coming out of no where. If it weren´t for the three of us, I would have assumed it was a requirement inorder to stay there to be young, female, and attractive, and to speak English in some intoxicating foreign accent. We made ourselves at home.

Then we changed into bathing suits and headed to go jump the cliffs while we waited for our beds to open up. We followed the path back down the mountain until it split, one way heading towards town, the other towards the lake. We followed it away from town, up and down rocks and boulders and along precarious cliff sides, hugging the rockface to our right while making sure not to misstep and stumble off into the lake (and rocks) to our left, all the while our eyes called like from Sirens to out beyond the shimmering, cobalt lake where the ragged mountain lines and conoidal volanoes, long since quiet and dead, sat in completel, unhindered view. We finally arrived to where a small group of people were standing and sitting on a small, flat opening on top of a sheer cliff leading dopwn into the lake, 40 or more feet below.

The closer and closer we got to the edge (starting, really, at the moment 30 minutes ago when we decided we would go jump off the cliffs and building steadily until I was confronted face to face with the inevitable jump) the more and more nervous I got. I could feel it inside me, my viscera twitching and spasming in anticipated fear. I had done this before a few weeks earlier, had ¨conquered¨ my fear temporarily and made two jumps off a waterfall from a considerable distance. This was higher. I told my self the only way to do it was to not think, to volunteer to go early, to not wait and ponder and stall.

We settled in, shirts off, towels down, cameras ready, took some looks over the edge and shared a couple ¨Oh, shit¨ moments. Michael volunteered to go first, motivated by the small, prodding crowd as well as his own reputation as the ¨Dare Devil Eisenstein¨ which always precedes him and inspires him to be the first to do whatever it is we are doing and to show no fear. Even he had a couple false starts . But eventually, he took a couple steps, lept up and fell for long enough to make a count, and pencil-dove into the blue waters. Looked easy enough, just do it.

Then Corey went, a good jump after a false start or two, and then it was my turn. I waited till Corey and Michael climbed back up the rock face to ready the camera. Then, standing a few yards back from the cliff side so that I was unable to see the invtiable drop from my starting position, and with very little warning (to others and myself), I ran towards the edge, planted one foot, looked out over and down into the waters below but it was too late, I was already falling. I was told I let out a very loud, but very hardy yell, not a scream, mind you, but a forceful, bellowing man-yell, though I don´t remember doing so. I do remember the exhiliration of plunging violently and forcefully feet-first through the surface, and the touch of the smooth, rocky surface below just barely brushing my feet, and I remember quite distinctly that it was instantly thereafter that the chill of the icy waters then plunged into my body. It wasn´t graceful, it wasn´t showy, but I got off the edge and that was my only goal.

Back at the top, before each of us jumped a second time, we reflected briefly on the fact that we were jumping cliffs a mile above sea-level in Gautemala, in front of a backdrop volcanoes so stunning and apocalypic it hardly seemed real... and it was Christmas day. We watched the sun set behind the volcanoes as they turned from purple to dark silhouettes and the sky turned soft reds and, further up, mauve and cool gray, and thick, voluminous shelves of clouds rolled in to fill the empty spaces between the mountains like advancing glaciers in an ice age, and two baby clouds, seperated from the pack, settled, just perfectly, on top of two volcanoes like nebulous, white yarmulkes.

Back at Xamanec, we unpacked and settled in, played some cards, watched the sunset, and met Alex. Alex is a crazy Czech, with the beard of a pilgrim, the face of a Rembrandt painting, and the voice of John Malkovich from Rounders (credit to Corey for that last observation). He talked sparingly, but when he did, insight, poetry, satire and farce spilled from his lips. At night, his Guatemalan knitted sweater-poncho and flat-brimmed, straw hat made him look like one half of a deranged folk duo. He had been traveling, or, really, just living vagrantly (for an unknown number of years) around Latin America, came across Xamanec, and took it under his wings. He built a kitchen, started serving breakfasts, snacks and family-style dinners, built a little home for himself in the attic, and overall changed the entire concept and atmosphere of the hostel. Since it is such a walk to town, he concluded, it was only natural that food be served on premises, so that, God forbid, no one would have to be leaving if they didn´t want to. He had been working, I believe, simply for food and rent.

We lounged around and waited for dinner for an excruciating long time, while the sounds of pots and pans and spoons and knives chopping and clanging mixed with the tantalizing smells of garlic and butter and unknown herbs and spices, and filled the air with culinary anticipation. I sat watching the last rays of the sun light the sky from across the lake and beyond the mountains. From up here, perched on the side of the mountain, nearly the whole lake was visible, contained and cut off from the world by the unbroken line of mountains that surround it, a entity in itself.  The lights and sounds from each individual cluster of buildings around the lakes edges float across the open water and reach me in muted but discernible tones. The lake is an organism, going through the motions of life, and I can see it playing out in front of my eyes like a grand game.

How did the happen? How did this form? What processes took place eons ago that shaped this place into being?Is the lake the culmination of millions of years of collecting the rain water running off the cusps of the surrounding mountains, like a giant cereal bowl? How did this spectacular, surreal natural environment shape the culture of the people who are now, in a rapidly increasing rate, populating this little world? And how do people not know about this? How is this still a relative secret? Has National Geographic not written a piece on this place? I mean, have you seen this place? This is the end of the earth.

Finally, dinner was served, and it was worth the wait. Lemon broccoli, pasta with garlic and butter, sesame salad, mushroom and squash medley, carrots and cabbage, greenpeans, hasbrown potatoes: so many flavors, so many texturs. It was the best meal I could remember having in a long time, including back home.

During dinner, everyone found it very nice, interesting, even ¨beautiful¨ that we three brothers were traveling together, a sentiment we had been recieving from everyone who met us and learned we were brothers. Because of Michael, it is not immediately evident at first, but it is always one of the first topics to come up in conversation and is inevitably followed up with ¨I thought you looked like brothers¨ or ¨I can see you two, but...¨ The next, inevitable question is ¨Who´s the oldest and who´s the youngest,¨ as if it isn´t obvious, and then ¨So where are you from?¨ The answer to these questions, but especially this last one, we had, by this time, answered so many times that it became routine, like lines from a play that we had fine tuned the performance of but that we always managed to make sound extemporaneous, though it was far from it.

¨Well, we are from St. Louis originally, but I´m living in New York city now,¨ and, on que from Corey´s look, ¨And I´m in school in Miami, and,¨ as smiles come across their faces, they look at me and, ¨Well, I don´t have an address right now, I´m just traveling.¨

End scene.

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We spent three nights at Xamanec, reading and talking and eating and relaxing, jumping off the cliffs a few more times and doing a little bit of exploring of what little of a village there is (all dirt pathes with meditation and yoga and ¨reaching inner peace¨ transcendental type places). We were simply unable to get ourselves to leave, much less move, so I cancelled our hotel reservation in Antigua AND Guatemala City and we stayed and escaped the world for a few days.

On Friday morning we finally roused ourselves and made our way to Antigua, knowing that we would only have enough time to do the one thing we all wanted to do while there, climb Volcan Pacaya.

Antigua is a beautiful, colorful, tourist-filled and expensive old town, with nice restaurants and cafés and hotels and crumbling old churches and cathedrals and monasteries on every street. It is much more like a European city than anything in Guatemala. Though we did not have time to explore the city too much -- we had opted to stay at the lake -- we decided early on that, though beautiful, it wasn´t our type of town, or at least wasnt what we were looking for. But we had come to do one thing and one thing only, and that was climb the Pacaya Volcano, an active, spewing volcano an hour outside the city.

After an atrocious, rushed lunch, Corey, Michael and I ran to where we were getting picked up by the tour van, just in time as they were just about to leave without us. It took an hour to drive to the volcano, half of which was spent, in an incredible struggle against gravity, as our van worked its way at nearly negative speeds up the steep road that led to the starting point of the hike. When we disembarked, a group of little Guatemalan kids holding walking sticks rushed our van and pleaded for us to buy a stick from them. We did. Then the guide simply started up. The path started as a very steep concrete road where men standing next to horses yelled out ¨taxi! taxi! taxi!¨. The concrete road turned into a dirt road, then a dirt path, and finally we were in the woods. We spent almost two hours hiking up a narrow path, under barb wires and hanging branches, past deep ravines and finally out into the open.

As we traversed the green mountain side, the setting sun burst deep rays through the bellowing clouds that were now at perfect eye level with us. The sky was darkening, and the land was falling in shadow below us, spread out as far as the eye could see. A dramatic volcano stood in the distance, its base seemingly covering the entire land and tapering up, eventually, to its perfect cone.

Around a bend in the mountain and suddenly Pacaya appeared before us: A rocky, brown cone, spewing smoke from its head, completely and utterly lifeless and barren, like the mountain of Mordor. The climb up was strenuous, and strange. The rocks under our feet -- sharp basalt, which is hardened lava -- spilled down with every step, avalanching and tumbling under our feet. If you slipped, and I did, the rocks were not nice to hands or knees.

When we began to reach the top, the ground under our feet started to warm, and hot hair spewed from cracks. Then, the ground -- deep, somewhere within the cracks and crevices -- began to glow and, finally, coming up over a mound of rocks and sudenly it was visible: a flowing, river or lava, its heat blasting you from 20 feet away, sludging slowly around and down the other side of the mountain. The undeniable power of the lava could be felt, and I imaged what, if anything, could stop lava from going where it wanted.

There was a group of people there, all trying to get a view, take a photo, stick their walking sticks in to the magma. There was no organization at all, people just climbing all over the rocks and eachother just feet from the lava, some of which was literally flowing just feet below us in the cracks. An old man stumbled and, I´m not going to say I saved his life, but I caught by his backpack him and prevented him from tumbling backwards into, at best a broken bone, at worst a firey death. A Japanese guy stuck his stick into the fire, then brought it out and lit his cigarette from it while posing for a photo.

If this had been in the states, there would have been an elevator that brought you to the top, and then a looking station, surrounded by glass and armed guards: this was simply not safe. But it is Guatemala, and the same standards do not apply. I am sure that people have been badly injured on this ¨tour.¨ As we sat at the top, the sun disappeared completely and the lava glowed like, well, like lava, in the darkness.

On the climb back down -- which require flashlights and a steady balance to keep the slipping rocks from bringing you down, and people did go down -- the sky above the volcano glowed ruby red.

This is what we came to Antigua for, and we were not disappointed.

The next day, we flew to Costa Rica to meet the rest of the Eisensteins.