Livingston and the Rio Dulce

For the last few days before I left the country, I decided to travel out to the Carribean coast, since that's one of the few parts of Guatemala that I hadn't seen yet. Joy and her friend Adam decided to join me, and I was happy to be able to avoid traveling solo. We took the bus from Guatemala City to Puerto Barrios, and then a small boat out to Livingston. (the only way to get there) The carribean coast of Guatemala feels a lot more like Jamaica than Guatemala, except that they speak spanish. Most of the people are a mix of Mayan and black, tracing their ancestors to a couple of slave ships that wrecked off the coast. The culture and music draw from both African and Mayan traditions. After spending the night in Livingston we took a boat up to Siete Altares (seven altars) a series of pools made by a small river just before it flows in the ocean. Then from there we rode into the mouth of the Rio Dulce (sweet river) and up to a small eco-hotel called Finca Tatin. We spent the next couple of days swimming, reading in the hammocks, playing scrabble, chess and cards with other visitors, and even took a few hour kayak trip. I couldn't have asked for a better end to my trip. The view from the last river pool of Siete Altares out to the ocean. Another pool, and the cascading stream stretching back into the jungle. A fisherman on the river in a hollowed-out-log canoe. The entrance to Finca Tatin, and some river-front hammocks. A house, with their laundry and canoe out front. All the houses sat on pylons against the river, most had a place where the trees had been cut down so that they could park a boat. Little convenience stores and the occasional restaurant lined the waterways, each with a small dock. I don't think that there were roads for miles, everyone gets around by boat. Joy and Adam in their Kayaks. Me, waiting for Joy to catch up....apparently she was busy taking pictures.

Monterrico

August 4th - 6th I went to Monterrico, a little beach town on the Pacific coast of Guatemala with friends. It was a great opportunity to thaw out from the cold weather of Xela and just relax. In addition to myself, the folks who went were: Richard - a british guy who I became pretty good friends with over the course of my trip, he works for Habitat Guatemala. Joy Joy's puppy Pana (named for Panajachel, where Joy found her on the street with a broken leg and decided to rescue her) Gina, the other American living with my host family Amy, an American who works as an anesthesiologist in Palo Alto Selvin, the Guatemalan who drove our microbus there, and spent most of the weekend with us. All the beaches on the Pacific coast have black sand, which means that by 10am the sand is unbearably hot. And since the waves are huge, and there's a strong undertow, we spent most of the time in the shade enjoying the view and pina coladas. Monterrico is on an island, separated from the mainland by a large mangrove-lined channel. On Sunday morning, we were scheduled to take a boat tour of the mangrove swamps at 6am. Richard and Selvin decided that they would go to the discoteca anyway, and left at about 10:30, after we had all gotten back from dinner. Since the room was so hot, Joy and I went up to the veranda to sleep in the hammocks, where there was some semblance of a breeze. We awoke at about 5:10 am to a commotion downstairs. Someone had gotten into Richard and Selvin's room and taken about 2000Q (approx. $275 US) from Richard's wallet. Selvin swore he had locked the room. The member of the hotel staff explained that someone had propped the gate open earlier, so a number of people had come in and out. Richard was angry, asking how this guy could not know how who was in his hotel. Joy and I leaned over the railing and quickly figured out what was going on. And as we stood there listening to Richard, neither of us immediately expressed concern over the situation....the first thing either of us said was that we were in awe of the fact that Richard was able to sustain a 10 minute tirade in Spanish. Something to aspire to, I guess. Some pictures of the weekend for the visually-inclined: A road sign, taken before sunrise on the walk to the dock for the boat tour. The beach, if you look closely, you can see how strong the surf is. Selvin goes for a volleyball as I look on - We lost about 10 games to the Guatemalan teams before it got dark. But right before they called it a night we finally won....some postulated that gringo night vision is better, but I think that the little light that remained reflected off our glaring white skin to illuminate the beach near us and give us the advantage. The sun begins to rise as we get underway in the boat Lillypads Another boat ahead of ours The view out the sliding door of the van, as we take the ferry across the channel Pana... agreeing with me that it's hot

Goodbyes

Just a few pictures from Xela that I took while saying my goodbyes: Here's the outside of my spanish school, ICA (large yellow building on the left with ICA painted on the very top) My host family: (Left to right: Me, Lilly, Maria Jose, and Michelle) 4 of my 6 Spanish teachers (actually, my favorite 4) who happened to be the ones there my last day at school - Strangely, they are also in the order I had them, from left to right: Edwin, Loli, Me, Elisa, Ingrid:

Home again, home again

I got back to Albuquerque yesterday evening. Took a luxouriously high-pressure hot shower, and had the healthiest food I've eaten in weeks. (salmon, broccoli and salad) I never thought I would be so happy to have some vegetables. After dinner Elias came over for dessert, and visited with me and the folks for a little while, though I was so tired at that point that I had to rally to stay awake for the 45 minutes he stayed. Supposedly I will get a glimpse of the elusive David Kunkel this evening at the Frontier's chess night....I'll believe it when I see him. It's time to get a bunch of these updates up that I've been lagging on. Between trying to get everything done and see friends before I left Guatemala (and the difficulty of finding internet access outside of business hours) I have a lot to post now. Now I'm sitting in the hammock in the back yard at my folks house using wireless. What a difference a day makes. On a slightly unrelated note, Spanish has no word (at least that I've been able to find) for the concept of home. They have a couple of words for house, but nothing that connotes the more sentimental meanings of the word. If anyone out there knows of a word I missed let me know, but I discussed the idea with my Spanish teacher for a while, and she decided that nothing equivalent existed.

Ciao Xela

Well, I said goodbye to Xela today.....had my last Spanish class, last Salsa dancing class, even got a little diploma which states that I'm intermediate level III at spanish.....whatever that means. Anyhow, after a long bus ride, we're (my friends Joy, Adam and I) in Guatemala City tonight. We leave the hotel at 5:40 am tommorow to catch a bus to the carribean coast. We'll be visiting the town of Livingston tommorow and then Saturday we're taking a boat ride up the Rio Dulce to Finca Tatin. Back to the states on Tuesday. Once I get back, I'll get pictures up from the last couple of weeks.

Momostenango

I leave for the beach in about two hours...yay! I'm ready for some warm weather and a somewhat more relaxing weekend than I've had in a while. I'd be alot happier though if we knew we had a couple more people going. I've been organizing the trip, and for one reason or another the group has been hemorrhaging people who had either committed fully or told me they were all but sure they'd come. We're down to five now, which is making the cost/person of the minibus that we're renting alot higher than anticipated. The latest blow was that one of our group got robbed by someone staying in his hotel last night, and can't afford to go now. I guess I shouldn't stress out too much; it's only about $40 per person for the transport, but here you can do a whole lot with that much. Anyhow, more updates when I get back. In the meantime, I wanted to at least post a brief summary (and some pictures) of the trip I took last Sunday. We went to Momostenango, a city about an hour and a half from Xela. They were having a huge city-wide fiesta to celebrate the day of San Felipe, the city's patron saint. (The fiesta lasts for about 10 days.....these people know how to party) On the way we stopped to spend a little time with a family who weaves traditional Mayan carpets, blankets, clothing, etc. Spinning the raw wool into thread. Various colors of dyed wool waiting to be used on the looms. The largest loom, about 8-9 feet across. They made us tortillas over the fire that rival any I've ever had. They also made a tea out of cinnamon and a grain that they toast (something like wheat....) that was pretty amazing. A formation of eroded sandstone outside Momos. Streamers adorning a building on the town square. A float of San Felipe carried in the parade. Dances, using caricature-like masks.....unless I'm mistaken many of the dances were poking fun at gringos, specifically the Spanish. One of the dances featured overblown caricatures of white people in ridiculous European-style clothing...clown-sized ties, etc. My god they set off a lot of fireworks. The noise was deafenening much of the time. Here, the remnants litter the ground.

The Finca, and its Discontents

On Saturday I went with a group to tour an industrial Coffee farm or finca, which is a pretty rare experience to get. There are a ton of finca tours in Guatemala, but they're all happy little co-operatives, or small, friendly, family-owned operations. The tours focus on the process of making coffee: when to pick the beans, how they're sorted and roasted, etc. It all ends up with a nice cup of coffee on the porch. On the other hand this tour spent a lot more time talking about the various ways that the owners (or patrones) often cheat the workers, and the vast discrepancies in income that these large fincas perpetuate. While the Guatemalan administrator of the finca allows our guide to bring small groups of foreigners to raise awareness, the owners do not know, and would probably fire the administrator if they found out. We were asked not to publish the name of the farm, so that our guide can continue to take groups in the future. The owners of the finca are a European family The finca we toured was about 1850 acres. It is the smallest of three fincas that they own. They show up once in a rare while, but aside from determining if the administrator has successfully produced the expected yield for the year, they have practically no involvement in daily operations. Coffee farming is a strange process. Coffee beans grow inside a small fruit, about the size of a grape. The whole process of removing the berry pulp, drying the beans, sorting them by quality, roasting them, and packaging them for wholesalers can be accomplished by 10 families that live on the farm year-round. However, for the two and a half months of picking season, the farm employs about 200 more people to harvest the berries. This process can only be done by humans, they have to move through the rows of plants, picking only the ripe berries, and leaving the rest to mature later. When you've finished a row, you go back to the beginning, and pick the berries that have ripened since your last pass....and so on for two and a half months. The automation that they have set up to process the beans is incredible. None of it uses any electricity, it's all powered by a small stream running through the grounds. Watching the whirring machinery in the building where all the processing is done was enthralling. There won't be a single bean to process until mid-September, and yet the wheels spin ceaselessly. The water powering the various mechanisms doesn't wait for the harvest. For the 10 families who live there permanently, life is relatively good. Which is to say that they would appear incredibly poor to folks in the U.S.. But each family has a small home, (well, everything is actually owned by the patrones, but they are granted access to it) and possibly a chicken or two. The houses are positioned strategically around the finca. Each family, in addition to their normal duties, is also responsible for watching for thieves that might brave the barbed-wire fences to steal from the fruit trees or the wood pile, or whatever. For the 200 people that come from hundreds of miles around (often walking) to gain temporary work during the harvest, life is decidedly worse. There is no school locally that will teach their children. The kids end up missing about a month of school, and are often needed on the farm anyway. The children are usually responsible for picking the low-hanging berries that are difficult for their parents to reach. We were shown a large building, perhaps 40 yards by 15 yards, which will house 30 families. These are not your average American “Mom, Dad & 2.8 kids” families. These are Guatemalan families, which means more like 5 children, and probably a grandparent or two. Pulmonary problems are very common, since people often work in the rain, and sleep crowded together on concrete floors. The patrones' helicopter pad in the foreground, while Santiaguito [see "Laguna Xicabal" entry for more on Santiaguito] blows off steam in the background. Interior of main coffee processing building Belts connect the wheels of different apparatuses Spinning wheel closeup A view of the lower fields of the finca While I couldn't take any pictures inside the temporary worker living quarters , this is the entrance.