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.
No comments:
Post a Comment