Renewing the Visa -- A week-long Journey. Days 1 & 2

Thursday, we left Santiago Atitlán at 6:15 am, flagging down the bus a few hundred meters from where we sleep. We woke up at 5:15, breakfasted on coffee and corn flakes and whizzed out to the road. The bus came within a few minutes.

$3.75 each to get to Guatemala City, arriving at 10 am at the new station. Outside, we found a cab. He wanted Q60 ($7.50) to go downtown, but we got him to drop to Q50. He promptly took the taxi sign off the roof, and we drove on. A block later the police stopped us. They talked with him and reviewed his papers before approaching us -- "You're foreigners, right? Do you know this man?" they asked.

"No, we're just taking a taxi to the Litegua station downtown."

The talk went on. You have to be careful to get a legitimate taxi. You'll know them because they have a sign on top. Many people want to rob tourists and pretend to have a taxi service.

Of course I've heard these horror stories for years. I hadn't been very careful. Anyhow, his history was clean, and the police said there should be no trouble riding with him. I more or less knew the way, so I kept an eye on our route, which was uneventful. We got to the Litegua station, and bought tickets to go to Rio Dulce, about 5 hours away, for Q60 each.

Your tourist visa is good for 3 months. To renew it, you can spend days in line in ugly Guatemala City, or you can leave the CA4 (4 country area of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua) for 3 or more days. Since I really like southern Belize, I want to share that with Geneen and renew the visas at the same time.

While waiting for our bus to leave, we walked around the block and bought lunch: a hot dog for Q6 (75 cents), some tortillas with a chile relleno for Q7 and some outstanding grilled pork with tortillas for Q10. We couldn't eat that many tortillas and left them with some fat in a bag on a bench when we were through in the hope that they would go to good use.

During the long hot bus ride to Rio Dulce we watched some stupid Matt Damon movie where he's a spy with memory loss. It's better in muffled quiet Spanish, but still not worth the effort of lifting your eyes to the screen.

We asked to get off before the bridge (yes, THE bridge. The only way to get up north at all in this aprt of the country. If that bridge goes out, how on earth do you get to Flores? Through Cobán? Yeah, right.) Anyhow, if you walk down under the bridge and all the way to the water, you get to Hotel Backpackers (Q150 double with private bath), which is run by Casa Guatemala. There's a dock for swimming, free internet (so what if it doesn't work? It's FREE!), a great restaurant, and the rooms are like the ones in Thailand in the movie The Beach where you can stand on the bed and look over the wall into your neighbor's room. The rooms are built on a dock that juts out over the river and you can see the water through the cracks in the floor. There is a sheet covering the screen that separates you from the world. The fans in the room keep the environment just barely bearable. After a dinner of fried fish (Q60. Geneen had fried chicken for Q50. I know, but she doesn't eat much seafood), I slept great.



We woke up at 5:30 am since we'd gone to sleep so early. By 6, we were drinking coffee on the dock with music blaring from speakers nearby. We wondered why so many people prefer that to quiet...?

By 9:30 we were on a water taxi heading to Livingston (Q125 each), and that ride is among the highlights of my time in Guatemala. You head through the Golfete, which is wide, and then the Rio Dulce narrows the last few miles before Lívingston.



We saw plenty of neotropic cormorants and white herons, and something the driver called gallina del monte (but my research indicates he should have said Gallito de Pantano, or Northern Jacana).



Some young people in Barra Lámpara wanted to sell us their findings:





In Livingston, we checked in to the Casa Rosada, same price as last night's hotel. Little cabins by the Rio Dulce. The first thing I did was jump in to the water and swim around for a few minutes.

Our mission was street food. I found tortillas and beans with chiles from a toothless Mayan woman for Q1 (12.5 cents) which was pretty filling. I don't know if the giardia or the beans were more filling...

Geneen held out for Garífuna food, which we found on the beach on the other side of the peninsula. Fried fish tail (huge portion!), slices of cabbage, and a whopping portion of some fried dough made of green plantains and (I think) flour. I had to help her eat it, and it is in my top few favorite meals ever. Now, I guess she eats fried fish!



But even better than the food was the location. We sat at a plastic table a feww feet from the water's edge, next to a man asleep in a hammock. A little boy and girl played in the sand. The little girl later decided to comb the sleeping man's hair, which he slept through. A pig ran by. Another came by and stayed for a while until a dog chased it away.



The food cost Q30 and the drinks were Q17 (beer and soda). The chef had to get out a piece of paper to add the 2 numbers. I was happy she got the change right...

We walked a few more kilometers of narrow beach over shells, dead fish, shoes, bits of plastic, discarded vials, fallen almonds and coconuts, passing vultures, pelicans, seagulls, Garífuna, Mayans, Ladinos and white tourists. We arrived at a slightly better beach and swam for a bit. Geneen was starting to get too much sun, and we were hoping to find a taxi back. A few meters from us, people were boarding a boat for a hotel right by ours. The captain agreed to take us for the cost of a cab (Q20, or $2.50, for both), and we were back in a flash!

The Routine

Wednesday I was till tired from Monday's soccer practice. I hadn't slept very well the past two nights since I kept waking up feeling that something was crawling on me, but I never found anything.

After an uneventful morning in which it was difficult to concentrate on my programming projects, I headed over to the soccer field for practice. Practice is supposed to start at 12, but for most events, one doesn't show up at the appointed hour here. This is not true for work or professional sports or school, but this is how our players saw practice. Coach Gaspar and I were ready to go at 12, but didn't have a quorum of ready players until 12:45 or so.

We ran them and did many of the same drills I use in Tucson, and when it started to rain hard, we continued. We did lunges, sprints, the most exhausting exercises. I left with a real sense of satisfaction -- this team is starting to take shape, the coach & I work well together, the players are working hard and we have a lot to teach them.

I'm getting a little Tz'utujil from it. After we scrimmaged today, he was lecturing the team in their language, which hasn't added words in centuries, but borrows from Spanish. For some reason they tend to use Spanish numbers and dates, and since most of the soccer terms are borrowed words, I can catch xome of it. Today I understood "Chamuc mojon puest," and I was so proud. No assigned positions in a pick-up game.

But most of the time, after he talks to the team I have to say, "Maybe the coach already said this, but..."

Anyhow, Wednesday, after practice I was exhilarated and very wet. I rode my bike home, not minding getting splashed by passing trucks and tuc-tucs. Took a shower to get all the sand off my body and put on clean dry clothes. All of a sudden I was famished.

Geneen agreed to go out for fried chicken and tortillas. I assured her the rain was about to let up, and as soon as we stepped out, it did. Three minutes later it was pouring hard, but we were prepared in raincoats and with an umbrella.

We rode a tuc-tuc to the market, where there are four or five fried chicken places within a block of each other. On the way, we drove through deep puddles, and got wet again. We passed long stairway alleys with so much water streaming down that they looked like waterfalls. The people descending the stairs were taking a big risk, I thought. Imagine losing your footing in that!

As we were buying chicken, two members of the team passed by, slapping hands with me and calling me 'prof'. Then we walked around the corner to where some ladies make tortillas. I frequent their business rather than others because they sometimes offer black (you may call them blue) corn tortillas as well.

Six inches of water rushed downhill on the side ofthe street in front of their grill. We had to stand in the rushing water waiting as they made our order of 25 cents worth of tortillas. One of them (María) pointed at Geneen and asked me "Her name is Genny, isn't it?" It turns out Geneen had met two of the three in the Hospital a few weeks before.

They were very smily and talkative -- they must be used to me by now.

We bought sodas in a store a few doors down, and grabbed a tuc-tuc back to Hospital, where I wolfed down my food, giving Canchita the bones, which she later vomited.

Canchita is the hospital dog and merits a blog entry of her own.

Afterwards I tutored Edwin in math and English. He's 15 and attends a boarding high school in Guatemala City, but, since the government closed all schools for these two weeks due to swine flu, he's got time on his hands.

That was my Wednesday, and my Thursday was nearly equal, except instead of the trip to get fried chicken, I gave a math class for the nurses. This is our third or fourth one, and I started with high expectations, that these are people who have to administer medication and must be pretty adept at certain things, such as ratios. Each class I've had to lower the bar -- today we discussed some very basic concepts about fractions, such as how to represent them graphically. Things like two-thirds. I'm not saying they're stupid, not at all, but that they come from a culture and an educational system that does not stress these skills.

The Soccer Team of the Municipalilty of Atitlán

About four weeks ago, my friend the administrator of the Hospital, invited me to a meeting at the town hall. The town is forming a soccer team, and he wanted to introduce me to the board that's been put together for that task, to present me as someone who could "coach the coach", who could be the team trainer. Perhaps my best selling point is that I'm a foreigner, but I was honored, and went.

The meeting went well. Some members had grand ambitions of someday having an athletic club like they have in Europe or Argentina, with the men's soccer team being the main part of the club, but having all sorts of other teams for both genders, all kinds of facilities, a restaurant, etc.

Others simply wanted to prepare for the fair that's coming up on July 24, that Santiago Atitlán won't gets its ass kicked.

The area doesn't have a great soccer history. There is one guy in town who played semipro for a few years, what they Division 3 in Guatemala. He was picked for the coaching job, but the board feared he didn't have a lot of drills to offer, and that a foreigner could be more like a drill sergeant and command more respect.

The idea was to invite 30 or so players, practice for a month or more, and then select the best subset for the games in late July. Some wanted to invite less; a few of us wanted to invite more. If discipline is expected to be lacking, you'll do best uninviting the first few that show a lack of respect for the team's interests.

Most of the board were hoping to start June 1. I let them know I'd be gone until the 7th, and the coach suggested we start then.

A budget was also presented at the meeting, with some rather ambitious requests, such as practice shoes for the players (I mean, come on!), but many necessities as well like balls, cones and vests.

I met with the coach again the following day; we exchanged ideas and I let him know I'd call him the day I was back in town, and that whatever day and time he wanted to practice would be fine, that I could arrange my other activities around that. (That's right, I have no real schedule at this point in time. It's amazing! I'm doing several web-based projects, and was planning to return to teaching, but Guatemala has closed all schools for two weeks due to swine flu.)

What happened next is depressing, but it gets better, so you can probably handle it. We got back Friday, and I saw him Saturday. Most people play soccer Saturday and Sunday, and we were hoping to start Monday.

The equipment wasn't due to arrive until Wednesday. I suggested we start training anyhow -- we can run, discuss strategy, do all kinds of strength training exercises. "Well, the committee doesn't want that. They want us to wait until Wednesday."

On Wednesday, he told me, "They've arrived but they're too big. I'm sending them back." I guessed correctly -- "The cones? What about the balls and vests?" "The cones are too big, and we still don't have balls or vests."

The story drags on, with similar events on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, with he and I staring at an empty field some of those days. It wasn't his job to notify the players -- someone else on the committee was allegedly in communication with the captains of the teams of the town, and advised them to send So-and-so and Whats-his-name, but somewhere communication was breaking down.

Today, Monday, practice was to happen at 11. I showed up at 10:50 with a sheet of paper with a sequence of drills scribbled on it. There was the coach, sitting in the bleachers by the dirt field, with some cones and a bag of balls. Today, the president of the committee is going to talk to the players, he told me. We sat until 11:30, when he said, maybe I should come back tomorrow. I walked up to the market, and bought cucumbers, carrots, sweet peppers, a mango and some spicy chili powder for tonight's food. (We made hummus the other day, and I've got some whole-wheat bread with nuts and garlic worked into it rising at home.)

I passed the field on my way home, and saw the committee president's motorcycle in the middle of the field. Nine players were jogging around the perimeter of the field.

Practice was happening! I quickened my pace, shook hands with the president and the coach. The players were nearing their last lap, and we set up for drills.

The players are 17 and 18, enthusiastic, decent, but with lots of room for improvement. We trained, then scrimmaged some other people who happened to be around (but only managed a tie!), and then I suggested, almost jokingly that we run more. They'd already been going hard for an hour and 15 minutes. The coach disagreed, but every one of the players wanted to do more training, so we pressed on, and then the coach organized a few more drills. We went until everyone was quite exhausted, and set a time for tomorrow.

Despite the fact that much of the conversation was in Tz'utujil, I felt things went pretty well. We'll see how many people show up tomorrow...

Trip to Ixil -- the Finale

After several days of hiking, Geneen couldn't take much more, so we traveled to Cotzal by tuc tuc and then by van. The poor tuc tuc could only go about walking speed uphill with us giants inside, so we got to see a lot of the countryside that way.

There was not much happening in Cotzal. The men wear black felt hats, as opposed to the straw hats of Chajul. The market was totally closed, and we hunted for a comedor (eatery) listed in Moon's Guatemala. We found it, and ordered eggs, beans, tortillas and coffee for $1.25. It was good though we were getting tired of the same foods. Fruits? Veggies? Anyhow, no milk for the coffee, no napkins, no salsa for the eggs, no change for a Q100 note (about $12.50). No nothing going on in Cotzal. Bus to Nebaj.



By this point, Geneen had become very travel-weary. We decided not to do anything else in the Ixil triangle, but rather to start heading south. We zipped off to Quiché, the departmental capital 2 hours away.

Selected a hotel from the travel guide, which cost twice as much as the guide said it would (Lonely Planet, it turns out, has the correct price of about $20 for a double). No toilet paper, towels, or soap. we asked, and received them. Only one pillow. we asked a nd got a second. Then at bedtime, though we had 3 beds in the room, only one had sheets. Asked and got that. In the morning, when we were ready to go, we had to wait 5 minutes for the receptionist to appear to give us back our key deposit.

Quiché was nice though. Very relaxed small city, with good food (we found fruits, veggies and pastries!!), easy to get around, very friendly.

The next day we went to Chichicastenango, 18km to the south. On Friday, Chichi is the deadest place you could ever imagine. We had planned to hit it on Sunday, which is market day, but thought it might be at least half as good on a Friday. It's not. We dragged about and killed two hours there and then found a van that was heading to Panajachel, just a boat ride from home.

We discovered that Pana is the most fun town around. Yes, it's touristy, but fun. For one thing, there is plenty of choice of restaurants. Our favorite has become an Uruguayan one, where for Q58, or about $7 US, you can get an unbelievable cut of meat, potatoes, veggies, and garlic bread. It's outside, so a stream of vendors and beggars from the street flows up to the table.

A 10 year-old Kakchiquel girl with a huge smile on her face comes up to us. She knows she's adorable, but tries to look pitiful. "Buy something," she whines. No one is buying anything today. I need money so the family can buy tortillas."

We resist, but she stays. I've said no to the first several, and the pressure has been intense. Her outfit is beautiful, she has a bundle of colorful chalinas (little shawls) stacked on head, her smile is amazing. After being denied in all my attempts in Ixil to photograph people, I try again: "I'll give you a quetzal (12.5 cents) to take your picture."

"Cinco quetzales!"

"OK, but I might have to take two or three pictures for that amount of money."

"If you take two pitures, ten quetzales. Fifteen for three."

The first one was perfect.

Trip to Ixil Part III -- Chajul

We awoke before 6 to a green valley filled with mist and fog. We have wonderful pictures, but my camera has stopped talking to the computer, and I keep striking out when I try to get an SD card reader. Patience! It will be worth it.

Breakfast consisted of pancakes smothered in fresh cream and sauco (Elderberry?) jam, with coffee with milk that left the cow an hour ago. Round two was eggs and black beans (smothered in the same cream!) and tortillas.

In Tucson I rarely eat corn tortillas. Not only do we get such good flour tortillas there, but there aren't women in every kitchen patting that day's ground corn into tortillas. I've tried, but haven't had much success. Here, I'm a huge fan of the corn tortilla. Everything about them is just right.

Our mission for the morning was to head west for several hours, then try to catch a bus back to Nebaj by early afternoon. Had the dogs not left on their own, the mission would be to escrt them back to whence they came.

We headed west, descending along a sometimes raging creek, seeing steeply terraced milpas (corn fields) and little houses with tile roofs. For a while we followed an Ixil woman, her two sons and two sheep. The sons and sheep bounded playfully with high levels of energy. People working a hundred meters away waved.

In the distance we could see a cell phone tower, and, though there are no printed maps of the area we could find, one place in Nebaj has a map drawn on the wall, which we'd stared at for a long time, so we knew there were villages ahead. But when we came to a fork in the road, we weren't sure which way would be best. I thought uphill looked better.



Soon we were in the town of Kambalam. Cute little kids from their houses would call out phrases in English, like "Waht is your name?" or "Good-bye!". (Adios is a common greeting in Central America when someone is passing by.) Every motorcycle, truck or bus honked in greeting when we passed.

Two hours or so into our hike, we encountered a group of women resting in the shade. The bundles of wood they carry on their heads lay next to them on the ground. I asked them the name of the next town. "Nebaj", they told me. OK, so I'm not very good at navigating. We should have gone downhill. They told us it's pretty far, about an hour walking. Since we didn't have firewood balanced on our heads, we were unfazed, and continued into town.

From Nebaj, we got on a bus to Chajul, the northernmost vertex of the Ixil triangle. North of Chajul there isn't much. You could hike for days, maybe weeks without going through anything bigger than a tiny hamlet. You'd pass through jungle, then cross into Mexico. Yes, I want more adventure hiking!

In Chajul, a family of nine daughters and one son enthusiastically invited us into their home. The mother was bed-ridden in the main room of the house, and four of the daughters pulled out the weavings the have for sale. Chajul gets some tourism, but not much -- the only other light-skinned person I saw was an Ixil boy who lacked the normal pigmentation with blond hair and pink skin; maybe albino is the word, but I don't want to wax technical! The daughters were in their teens and twenties, and eager to talk about their weavings. Very effective saleswomen as well -- we bought one of their hand-made shawls for about $18. Hardly a "fair-trade" price as it must have taken weeks to make.

We got to watch several women do back-strap weaving while in the Ixil region. The patterns they create with such ease are complicated and symmetric.

Trip to Ixil Part II -- Acúl

Spent the first night in Nebaj and awoke before 6 am to the sound of marching band music. That was so sad, because it wasn't Guatemalan music at all. Plus it wasn't very good!

The day before, on the bus heading to Ixil, which is known for its remote beauty and traditional architecture, the bus was blaring "Baby Don't Hurt Me" on its ample speakers. I rarely hear traditional music -- I think I hear more Guatemalan style folk music in Tucson than here.

Anyhow, that first night we decided to find a restaurant that was a little outside of town, and had to ask directions. That can be difficult, and we ended up walking a few miles in total, but the churrasco (grilled beef) was well worth it.

So, after waking to the sound of the school band, we grabbed a quick breakfast and were on the trail to Acúl by 7 am. Acúl is a 7 km walk up and over a mountain from Nebaj. Early in the walk, 3 dogs were accompanying us -- a female and two interested males. It seemed like she was nearing that time, and one male was considerably more aggressive than the other, who went home after a few minutes.



We were surprised how long they stayed with us -- we thought one or two km would have been a lot, but as we entered the village, the two were still with us. We worried that they may be a liability, because if they killed a chicken the people would blame us.

About half of the village was very friendly, and returned our "Buenos Días" in a very friendly manner. One woman started screaming shrilly, not straight at us, but almost. I have no idea what that was about.

Then a group of four girls, around 12 years old, would stare at us, and then after we passed they'd run fifty feet ahead and wait for us to pass again. They didn't seem to speak anything more than the most basic Spanish, but laughed at us quite a bit. It was a little unnerving. It got worse -- soon there were six or seven boys and several more girls, and they started shouting something about "Allez gringo" or "Alllambrinco" -- we couldn't tell.

The dress they wear is exceptional, but the Ixil would not give permission to have their picture taken, even when we offered a little money.

Just past the town is a cheese farm (if you haven't been to Guatemala, you might not know what a luxury this is!) that also serves as a tourist destination. Not one that is overrun by tourists, though. Sure, we have rooms. Uh, let me get my clothes out of here, I shower here sometimes. Why is the bed wet? Uh, I guess someone who was wet sat on it. Hmm, I never noticed that window is broken. The other room? You'd rather stay there? --This was the grandson of the Italian immigrant who founded the farm in 1938.



The view is like something in the Swiss Alps. Very green, dairy cows, wood buildings, clouds starting to drift over the mountains...

No, they're not our dogs. They just followed us from Nebaj.

Lunch was huge -- chicken (raised on the farm!) in a brown gravy, tortillas with fresh cheese (all from the farm), rice... We saved the bones for our escort dogs. We hadn't encouraged their presence at all up to this point.

Right after lunch, we went to read in our room. We were worn out from all the walking, and needed a break before the next bit of exertion.

Shortly into our reading it started to rain. Hard. I fell asleep for probably 2 hours. When I woke up, the girl dog had finally packed up and left, but the male was still there, and was not getting along with the dogs that lived there. So much growling.

We walked several more miles, getting to know the town better and heading further west as well. Finally, after 6, our other escort disappeared.

There were two other guest parties, one of whom we got to know a bit -- a father and son from Huehuetenango.

We chatted with them till nine, and again at breakfast Wednesday, and then headed out on our next trek.

Trip to Ixil

Monday morning we walked to the pier at Santiago and boarded the boat to Panajachel. We waited about30 minutes, then we zipped across the lake. There was a bus waiting to go to Los Encuentros. There, another bus was pulling out to Kiché. I had to go to the bathroom, but it was already rolling. In Kiché, we waited 5 minutes befoe our bus left for Nebaj. What an easy trip! We were there by noon!

Nebaj is the largest town in the Ixil triangle, a region that suffered incredible violence during the Guatemalan Civil War.


Here's a photo of the market at closing time, in the area where all the butchers are....

Were in Chajul now, at an internet place, and the keyboard is awful! I have so much to say, but it will have to wait...