Salsa, Guate City, & Pana!

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These were the boys from Holland that were living with me!

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     This entry is way overdue. A lot has happened the past 2 weeks so I will try my hardest to remember it all but be warned it is kind of long. We took a tour of Antigua for 5 hours and visited all of the main cathedrals. The main Cathedral near the Central Park was built in 1543 and destroyed in the devastating earthquake of 1773. This same earthquake also prompted the transfer of the country’s capital from Antigua (where it had been for 233 years) to Guatemala City. The Cathedral was eventually rebuilt but only 25% of it and the other 75% still stands in ruins. The coolest part was that we got to go down underneath the old cathedral into the catacombs where they used to pile up the bodies of important people. My favorite place ended up being a hotel. It was a monastery that they began building in the mid 1500s. It took them about 200 years to build the place. In the 1980’s they did a little restoration and turned it into the paradise that it is today. The original ruins are still on site and the pictures cannot even come close to depicting how absolutely breathtaking this place is. Although the tour was a little long we visited a lot of really interesting places and learned a lot about Antigua’s rich history.
     That night we all met up at a café, along with our advisor/ assistant director, Freydy, to listen to some music, and then went to a popular bar and danced salsa all night. Freydy, as we soon discovered, loves to dance and is crazier that some of us students! Merri and her friend Mira (who is in her 70s & is here studying Spanish) tagged along. I was shocked to see how well Mira could move. She is apparently taking dance lessons here too! The bar, La Sala, is one of the more popular places in Antigua where people from all over the world can mingle. That night we danced until we were all about to pass out. 
     The next day we had a class trip to Guatemala City. We didn’t get to go to a few of the scheduled places because of the rain but we did visit a few museums. It was really interesting at first but after a while it became redundant. It was a lot of information about ancient artifacts of the Maya that have been discovered. The museums themselves were very impressive and housed the only self-flushing toilets I have so far experienced in this country. We got to talking about how much money must have been spent on restoring and housing these remarkable artifacts. It is really interesting how much money the government here spends on preserving and celebrating the Maya culture and history yet does very little to assist the living culture. Indigenous people here are viewed to be the lowest of the low and make up the majority of the poor population. Their social standing could be likened to that of African Americans in the south. The government continues to keep this large group of people underprivileged while profiting off of their culture and history. The hypocrisy is astounding.
     Anyway, after the museums we got a driving tour through the city and ended up in the new “hip” area of the capital. There were restaurants and shops and bars. It was quite chic! We went to one saloon type places for a few beers before heading to a restaurant for dinner. The place we settled on had really amazing music from the 80s and 90s playing. We were a large group of 11 and dominated an entire corner of the restaurant. The other patrons must have found us rather entertaining: 9 American students and 2 Guatemalans (Freydy & our driver Josue) dancing like maniacs and doing shots for about 5 hours straight. We didn’t get back to Antigua until about 130 in the morning. It was so much fun!
     As if things hadn’t been busy enough on Sunday we decided to take the necessary hike up the mountain to La Cruz (The Cross). This is a point high up on a hilltop that overlooks the entire city of Antigua. It was breathtaking as is most things in Guatemala as I have learned! See pictures of our experience.
     We had a normal week of classes. It is hard to get out of the tourist mode and into the student mode here especially since there is so much going on all the time. My classes are cool; my history class is still my favorite. It is so wonderful to have teachers that are actually knowledgeable about the stuff they are teaching. A quote from our history teacher while talking about the idea of revolution “when I was in the mountains with my AK47 I wasn’t going to make love with the enemies, I was going to kill our enemies…” That sort of put things into perspective! It is really interesting to be a tourist and student in Guatemala right now with the elections coming up this Sunday. Everything is very different here and as an outsider it is so obvious and transparent. Their campaigning consists of trucks driving around each town with music blaring, a giant picture of the candidate, and at times children piled into the bed of the truck. Lately the local candidates have been throwing mini-fiestas in the main squares of different towns where they give out food, spew a bunch of bullshit promises, and give the people a false sense of their investment. The people seem to cling to the tiniest glimpse of change for the future and are the first to turn a blind eye to the truth. The truth is that all but 2 presidential candidates have been funded by drug money. On the other hand I will give the Guatemalan people some kudos. Their involvement in the election process is impressive and really puts the American people to shame. People of all ages, economic backgrounds, and education have some knowledge of the candidates and are partial to one of the 19 major political parties.
     Anyway, after a full week of classes we were all excited to have our first real weekend to travel. Having been unofficially elected the “planner” and “mother” of our group (which I have so lovingly titled “the naughty nine”!), I threw together a simple itinerary. We left early Friday morning by shuttle for Panajachel, one of the 5 major towns surrounding Lake Atitlan. The ride was approx. 2 hours through winding mountains, jack knife curves, non-railed cliffs and lanes only meant for one vehicle. It was nauseating and at times terrifying! Yet we got to see, in my opinion, some of the most beautiful parts of the country. I was teasing one of the guys in our group who was complaining about how bumpy the ride would be because of the dirt roads we would have to take. I mocked him by saying “Brian we are going to Lake Atitlan, not discovering Guatemala!” Little did I know we spend a decent amount of time driving through a town where paved roads had not yet reached. Where houses were squished together simply to keep them standing up because a number of them were simply mud slabs and pieces of wood. This was poverty at its extreme. I half expected to see children with bloated bellies sitting naked in doorways covered in flies. Yet the streets were full of people dressed in beautiful, vibrant indigenous clothing. Children were running around barefoot kicking a ball. Young couples were in alleyways trying to steal a moment from the conservative public eye. After some more stomach churning curves we finally made it to Pana where we unloaded and sought out our hotel, Hotel Chaparral. It ended up being a really nice place and for only $20 a night we each got our own bed, a private bathroom, and hot water!
     We were all starving after the car ride so we walked down to the water edge, stuffed our faces and negotiated ourselves a boat ride across the lake to Santiago Atitlan. Such a large natural lake is such a novel idea to anyone from Arizona we were all thrilled to be on a boat. The view from the middle of the lake was somewhat overwhelming. Water for miles surrounded by several towering mountains and volcanoes. We eventually learned that Lake Atitlan was formed when a volcano collapsed forming a caldera, which is now filled with water.
     Santiago was an experience and worth seeing. It was probably the most poverty that any of us had experienced or witnessed first hand. One of the local sights is a Maya deity known as Maximon. Little children offer to take you to him for a little bit of money. So when a little boy came up to us and offered to be our guide we accepted. However, a much larger boy came up and offered to take us. The two argued and we said that because the smaller boy had offered first we would go with him. Well the older boy was not happy about this and proceeded to punch the little boy in the face and yelled, “fuck you” as we followed the sobbing boy. We really were not sure what to do but we followed the boy anyway through a massive open-air market that wreaked of fish and rotting food. He led us into a “house” where we paid a few Qs to see Maximon. It began raining so we decided to head back to our hotel instead of taking a boat to the next little town. We are reading a book in our literature class about a woman who traveled through Guatemala with her father who was a coffee plantation owner in 1886. She talks about how beautiful and quaint the towns look from far away but how poor and uncivilized they are once you reach them. How true this proved to be even 100 years later.
     We finished the day out with some shopping at their local market where desperate people practically threw themselves at us. One annoying thing here is that no restaurant keeps you safe from the street vendors who continuously harass you throughout your meal. Later we indulged in a delicious dinner at a restaurant called Café Sunset and instead of going out dancing that night we decided to buy some cards and beer. We spent the night watching TV, eating chips, drinking beer, and playing cards. It was fabulous! We slept well that night.
     The next morning we packed up our backpacks, sought out a cheap breakfast and decided that we wanted to make the hike to the nature reserve I had read about in my travel guidebook. We got directions and decided to walk instead of taking a tuc-tuc, which ended up being quite the adventure. We hiked, single file uphill for a mile along the side of a highway that wound around a small hill as giant school buses and motorcycles zoomed past us coughing out exhaust. We all laughed on the way up each commenting that if any of our parents were to see us at that moment they would have flipped out! We survived and once we reached the top the view was reward enough. We walked another 10 minutes or so to the reserve. The people there were nice enough to let us drop our backpacks as we began another hike. It is a good thing that everyone in our program has a strong desire for adventure because that’s exactly what it was. I could hardly contain myself when we entered the park because it was so beautiful. We spent the next 3 hours hiking through the jungle to the top of a mountain to see a natural waterfall. Along the way we witnessed a few monkeys who were about as interested in us as we are in garbage. Except for one brave guy who ventured a big closer and proceeded to itch his butt and stick his tongue out at us as we took pictures. We continued on over several hanging bridges which were our only option to the other side of the river and/or over ravines. One bridge passed right next to a waterfall and was about 60 feet off the ground. The little pieces of wood strung together with wire swayed back and forth as we all trudged across admiring the awesomeness and danger that was below us. The trail we were on made a complete circle around the park and along the way we encountered a clearing. There appeared to be no use for this area other than the 15ft pole with 4 ropes tied to the top. We quickly put use to this makeshift swing and laughed until we were all crying. By the end of our adventure we were all exhausted and sweaty and ready to come home. After an hour of waiting for our shuttle we finally boarded and made the 3-hour nauseating ride home. It was our first successful solo trip and we were all feeling quite satisfied with ourselves!
     That’s it for now. Elections are on Sunday and Monday is considered a holiday so we might be able to travel this weekend but it all depends on the hurricane. Last time we only got a week of rain, which isn’t anything new for this area of the country. But this time people seem to be a little more worried. We will know by Thursday if travel will be possible. Until the next escapade!!