It's Saturday morning, and I just got back from a 3.5 mile run on this beautiful sunny day. After showering and eating breakfast of mango, and granola and corn flakes with skim milk from a box, I'm sitting in my room using Dragon NaturallySpeaking to type this travelogue. I finished two weeks of Spanish-language classes and have quite a bit of Spanish homework to do before the end of this weekend.
Two weekends ago I was lucky enough to go to with a group of ten female gringa students on a school sponsored trip up north. After traveling through the outskirts of the capital, we traveled through various climates within a couple of hours: semiarid fields, desert strewn with cacti, pine forests on steep hills, and later through semi-tropical rain forest. We were heading to the city of Copan and then beyond and to tour some caves and beautiful waterfalls and pools where the Rio Cahabón flows through a 300 meter tunnel before reappearing in a series of waterfalls at the national park called "Semuc Champey." I'll send you a link to my photos, but I didn't take photos during the best part of the trip when I traveled with two young women and a native indigenous K'ekchi guide swimming and wading 2 kilometers into a cave holding candles in our hands. It was an incredible experience climbing ropes and slippery ladders to traverse the flowing river in the cave and to see the natural stalagmites and mineral deposit formations. Yes, there is life after age 40!
Last Sunday I was invited to go to the beach at Puerto San José with the father of the family: Papa Neto and some of his friends and workers. We left early in the morning and drove down the highway past the three cloud shrouded volcanoes near where I live. I had never been south except for running a few kilometers. Soon vistas of flat land stretching towards the ocean could be seen, and off in the distance Pacaya, a volcano south of Guatemala City. It was amazing to see how I really lived in the hilly Altiplano and we were heading into the tropical flatlands filled with sugar cane. The temperature rose noticeably as we dropped down from the Altiplano. Double length trailers brimming full with sugar cane were everywhere, and the air was thick with the smell of burning cane. After harvest, I suppose they have to burn the cane fields before they can replant. We passed a number of small towns and some amusement parks with waterslides. Outside of one park, a couple guys were walking with an elephant. Yes, an actual full-size elephant, and I joked with Papa Neto that I appreciated him driving me all the way to Africa. Apparently one of the tourist traps has an "African safari zoo" with tigers and everything.
Puerto San José is a small sandy ocean side town where local Guatemalans go. I didn't see any other gringos all day -- they go to other beaches. Unfortunately in typical Guatemalan style, they don't have garbage collection so there is an incredible amount of litter, but that was easy for me to overlook by instead being grateful for all the beautiful palm trees, smiling people, coconut and fruit stands, and multicolored stores and restaurants. We parked at one of the many humble (North Americans would probably use the word "ramshackle") hotels, "Viña del Mar." Breakfast consisted of a picnic lunch of toasted French bread with black beans smeared in between, some cheese, and an orange that the daughter Evelyn had packed earlier in the morning.
I will never forget sitting on the beach, while Indigenous Mayan women were wading in the water and simply enjoying themselves. They were fully dressed in their beautiful huipiles (blouses) and full length skirts which are supposedly six meters long when unwrapped. Their cotton clothes must have weighed a ton after being soaked with salt water. Sometimes Indigenous Mayan women wear their beautiful clothing as part of their jobs to "entertain" tourists. As I stated earlier, other than myself, I didn't see another gringo all day. These women certainly weren't doing anything except laughing smiling and enjoying themselves on the black sand beaches.
We sat in the shade watching kids and teenagers play around in the hotel swimming pool, while vendors try to sell us bootleg music CDs, shell jewelry, and other artesania. After wading in the water (beware the strong undercurrents further offshore) and enjoying a few "Gallos" (Guatemalan beers) during the morning, Papa Neto invited me to eat lunch: Guatemalan fish stew, which consisted of a 7-inch fish (head and all), one and a half palm sized complete crabs, and eight jumbo shrimp with a slightly spicy vegetables broth. Later when I told Evelyn (daughter) about it, she thought it was funny that in the U.S. we only serve shrimp with the heads removed. I was a little concerned about how my stomach would react, but my friend David later reminded me that Papa Neto knows where it's safe to eat, even for vegetarian gringos.
The fact is that I have been befriended by Papa Neto -- what an honor. And while drinking cheap Guatemalan booze the other evening, he told me about his wife dying 1-1/2 years ago. Although Papa Neto chases the cats out of the small dining room and harasses the noisy parrot on a regular basis, he really does have a heart of gold. After Holy Week, one of the weekends he has invited me to travel with him to Totonicpan in the Western Guatemala Highlands to deliver some coffins (empty of course) and procure some lumber to make another dozen or so for the upcoming week. Papa Neto (actually his name is Ernesto) and I are bachelors together. The first week I was here he took me walking around to the stores at night to try to get access to a phone that would take one of my North American calling cards, but to no avail. So instead I bought a Guatemalan calling card, and he allowed me to use his cell phone to call Mom and Dad. In the evening, he'll say "let's go down to the corner" or "let's head to the store." The fact is that after dark, it's not the safest for a gringo to be wandering around the town alone, so I appreciate his company, besides his great sense of humor. The other day he even showed me his personal small living room and bedroom with a small LCD TV that helps him fall asleep. Papa Neto is a fairly successful businessman/carpenter who employs a group of approximately six to eight guys who helped him build beautiful caskets. Some of the caskets look like they are metal or bronze. I consider him to be an artist who in the tradition of European guilds has a group of apprentices under him. In his kindness, Papa Neto has even hired Julio, a young man who is developmentally delayed, to help work in his workshop.
I feel the content, safe, and accepted here within this family. One daughter lives a block and a half away with her husband and eight-year-old daughter. One son who works for a local bank lives with his wife and 18 month old son across the street, another son who works in the coffin workshop, lives right next door with his wife and two children. Papa Neto's youngest daughter Evelyn still lives at home. The fiancée of my friend David, pretty Evelyn is in her early twenties, and prepares most of my meals herself. I'm actually not sure why she does it, because my host family is well off enough to employ an indigenous Mayan maid, Clara, but I think that Evelyn actually enjoys making salads and other vegetarian fare for me. However, she does think it's totally unreasonable to put black beans in Tupperware for me to take to school for lunch. She is afraid that the other students/staff will see me eating beans and tortillas for lunch and incorrectly think that my host family isn't feeding me well. I tried to explain to her that I've been a vegetarian for years, and I really enjoy beans. She explained to me that Guatemalans eat beans sometimes for breakfast, and sometimes for dinner, but not for lunch, the big meal of the day. Black beans for lunch are simply “fodder” for our laughter filled conversations. By the way, Evelyn is one of my better Spanish-language "teachers," because she laughs and corrects me almost every time I misspeak.
So you may be wondering, what have I been eating? Tortillas and different types of non whole-grain bread are always available. Beside cereal and milk or yogurt for breakfast, sometimes I get pancakes made with a little bit of powdered macadamia nuts. Sometimes I get black beans with scrambled eggs, or fried sweet plantains. The coffee is local Guatemalan Antiguan, but I'm told that the best handpick Guatemalan coffee beans are exported to the United States (Starbucks is a major importer of Guatemalan Antiguan beans). Juice is usually "fruit nectar" juice with lots of Guatemalan sugar and FDC red and yellow dye. For lunch it depends upon whether I take a lunch to school or come back on the bus to eat with the family. Lunch at school is often veggies with cilantro, pasta with cheese, tortillas and apple, and a can of juice. If I return home, I'll probably be served a large bowl of rice vegetable soup (minus the chicken), with chunks of vegetables on the side: corn on the cob, a boiled potato, and two local starchy vegetables: guicoy and güisquil, fresh handmade tortillas from the local corner store, and to drink either horchada (blended rice, water, sugar, and cinnamon) or un liquado (blended papaya, mango, watermelon, etc). Dinner is a smaller meal than lunch and is usually served between 7:30 - 8:30 p.m. I might eat sweet peppers or green beans dipped in egg batter (sort of like chile rellenos but without the spiciness), fried plantains smothered in honey type sauce, or black beans and rice with tortillas and stir fried vegetables, tostadas with guacamole, or vegetarian chow mien from a local "restaurant." Saturday evenings we always have tamales. But these are different from Mexican tamales, they are corn mush wrapped in banana leaves instead of corn. I of course, get the ones without meat. Thanks to Evelyn, my digestive system has been in great shape except for one day when I had a cold and ate guacamole tostada and atole (corn mush, cinnamon, and chile drink) from a street vendor near school and later regretted it.
The calendar on the wall in the dining room still says January 2007 (sometimes it seems as if time stands still here). I sit at the dinner table wonder why so many rooms including this dining room are painted aquamarine green -- is it because people miss living where the forests have been cut down? Perhaps Papa Neto will turn on a black-and-white TV in the dining room during dinner to watch one of the Mexican telenovelas (soap operas) or to watch a fútbol (soccer) game. Even still, there is lots of laughter and discussion of what happened during the day. My comings and goings are often topics of great interest to the other family members: What funny thing happened to Guillermo after classes today in the central park? What the heck is "tofu" and why is that funny gringo unsuccessfully searching for it around Antigua? Yes, the gringo wants more black beans!, etc. It's all very enjoyable. Approximately a week ago I finally started being able to understand enough Guatemalan slang and shortened Spanish phrases to understand most of the mealtime conversation even when it doesn't pertain to me. Halfway through dinner, my friend David walks in after a very long day's work delivering crates of beer, purified water, and soft drinks for a local bottling company. He kisses and teases Evelyn and relates some funny story about his job that starts at approximately 6:30 a.m. and often doesn't finish until 7:30 p.m. In the almost 4 weeks that I've been here, David hasn't been able to get a day off from work even on the weekends. Supposedly after Holy Week he can get a Sunday off. Not only does he help support his aging mom in a nearby town with whom he lives, but he also financially helps his fiancée (they're not married yet because weddings cost a lot here compared to people's salaries).
I have a number of other friends here and many more stories to tell in future travelogues. But now, I have more Spanish words to memorize, and I'm trying to get through the second chapter of the renowned Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias’ novel "Hombres de Maiz." I hope you are all well and also enjoying time with your friends and family, whether they are "adopted family" or blood relatives. Blessings and peace.
William (Guillermo) Straub
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