Guatemala: A Travelogue

Matt Freedman
Spring, 1992

Arrival

February 6, 1992, around 10:00 PM, I first saw the lights of Guatemala city from the window of my plane. Fifteen months after I had first conceived this trip, I was finally here. I was extremely nervous -- I had cut myself off from everything and everyone I knew, and I was face to face with two months of unknowns. I had not been out of the USA in over three years, and I was not sure I still remembered how to be an international traveler. As the plane descended I started seeing the billboards and signs of any big city -- but all in Spanish (except for the not-at-all reassuring Burger King just before the runway). After landing, I was able to sublimate my nervousness as I busied myself with finding a place to stay for my first night. I ended up in a quaintly horrid room, in a rather unpleasant hotel. I quickly buried myself in a science fiction novel, to avoid dwelling on my stress.

Antigua

The next morning I dashed from the terrifyingly large, dirty, noisy, crowded, alien capital of Guatemala. I arrived in Antigua, a much more tranquil town, only about 45 minutes from Guatemala City. I made my way to the central square, and started to unwind almost immediately. Antigua is stunningly beautiful, at first it is difficult to believe it is real. In a sense it is not real, for, as in Venice, the force of law is used to keep the appearance of the city as it was a couple centuries in the past. The architecture is all spanish colonial-style, with narrow sidewalks, cobblestone streets, ornately decorated public buildings, flowering plants -- especially purple bougainvillea -- everywhere. But the first thing you notice is the setting -- Antigua lies literally in the shadow of a spectacular 10,000 foot volcano, with two others almost as near by. The city is at about 5000 feet, and possesses a fantastic climate. Every day is sunny and dry, with a high around 80-85 degrees, but due to the altitude it gets delightfully cool every night (some people actually called it cold, but I liked it). Of course February is the dry season, so it is not like this all year.

Antigua was at one time the capital of all of Central America, and later of Guatemala. As such, it was a thriving metropolis, with dozens of huge stone cathedrals, churches, convents, and monasteries. The city was flattened by earthquake one too many times, however, and the capital was moved, but the church ruins remain mostly intact (so to speak). These piles of rubble are scattered all through the city, and each has its unique beauty. Most can be explored at your own will (and at your own risk).

Walking the streets of Antigua you quickly see why they ("they" meaning the Guatemalan tourism agency) call Guatemala the land where the rainbow meets the earth. Bright, brilliant, beautiful color is everywhere. Besides the ubiquitous polychromatic flora (three vocabulary building words in one sentence!) one sees the costumes of the indigenous people, who come from all over the highlands to sell their wares. Almost every indian village has its own style of traditional costume, but each item is unique and beautifully intricate, often combining psychedelic colors that we do not see in the US outside of Grateful Dead concerts. All over the city there are mini outdoor markets where people gather to sell their traditional (and not-so-traditional) weavings, clothing, jewelry, et al.

Back to the narrative. That first day I had arranged to meet my friend Brad, who had come down to Guatemala the day before me, to make a similar, but shorter trip. We both prefer to travel alone. Travelling with a friend certainly can be a good security blanket, but it also insulates you from much of the experience. Yet, that first weekend I really appreciated having a security blanket as I adjusted to being in a new country. He soon left, though, leaving me feeling quite uninsulated.

Within a week or so I felt pretty adjusted to life in Antigua. I settled into a room in El Refugio, a slightly shabby hotel, with a very nice atmosphere. At $2.40 a night, it was rather expensive for Guatemala, but not bad for a tourist spot like Antigua. There was a very nice roof-top where we -- I soon made a group of friends at the hotel -- built camp-fires most nights. Most of them had been living in Antigua for at least a month, and I could understand why. The Antigua expatriate life-style is very seductive. Each day you meet incredibly interesting people from all over the world. There is plentiful inexpensive and delicious food. The night-life is fun, but not overboard. Life is tranquil. It is no wonder that more and more northerners are moving there permanently.

The perceptive reader is saying to his/her self at this point "But wait, this is all well and good, but I have not read anything yet about interaction with any Guatemalans! It sounds to me like a bunch of gringos having the time of their lives at the expense of local culture. Antigua must be some sort disneyesque `Guatemala-land' run for the benefit of the incredibly rich northerners, where local traditions and artisanship are sold wholesale, and the citizens are victimized by inflated tourist prices, and have little choice but to work in some way for the tourism industry, thus feeding the system."

Yes, it is very true that Antigua is not a very typical Guatemalan city. It is completely over-run by gringos (though it is nothing like a Cancun or Tijuana). Thus while you (a northerner) can enjoy all the amenities of a tourist town (first-world style restaurants, hotels, bars, movies etc.), you miss the cultural education and experience that can be gained by travelling in the third world. I felt this conflict intensely. The question of whether tourism in the third world is a Good Thing (it undoubtedly gives people desperately needed economic opportunities) or a Bad Thing (warping local culture) can be debated endlessly. I had a fantastic time there, yet I had meaningful conversations with almost no Antiguans. I had arrived in Antigua planning on studying Spanish for four weeks (Antigua is the Spanish-school capital of world, with almost 50 different schools). But I quickly realized that Antigua is just not a very good place for concentrating on your studies. It is just too easy to speak English all the time outside of class, and too difficult to make meaningful contact with local people. Many students live with local families, but all too often the family situation ends up being a dorm-room shared by 4 or 5 other students, with almost no real opportunity to join in family activities.

Lake Atitlan

After two weeks of fun and school (6 hours a day, one on one tutoring), it was time to see the real Guatemala. So I headed to Panajachel (if you are familiar with the country, you probably realize that was a joke). Panajachel is actually much worse than Antigua. On the shore of Lake Atitlan -- quite possibly the most beautiful lake in the world -- it has become the prime tourist destination in Guatemala for foreigners and Guatemalans alike. It reminded me of every beach town gone utterly commercial I have ever seen. But instead of the endless rows of booths where merchants in Venice Beach sell Harley-Davidson underwear, the endless booths here are filled with Guatemalan "typica". Brad and I had arranged via telegram to meet here. After spending a day doing our shopping -- it is a great place to shop (So much for the moral high ground!) -- we took a boat across the lake and escaped to Santiago Atitlan.

While it does get a small stream of tourists from Panajachel, Santiago Atitlan has managed to retain its character. This city is fairly infamous among humanrights circles for its history of massacres by the military. In addition to the mass slayings of the early 80's, just over a year ago there was an incident where eight or so people were murdered by the army during a peaceful protest of military abuses. In the aftermath, the people won a rare victory, forcing the army to abandon its base there. During the time I was living in Antigua, a bus filled with residents from Santiago was stopped, and all the passengers robbed. After they were forced to lay on the ground, six of them were killed, and others wounded. The guns were recognized as being military issue -- it is widely believed that the killings were done by the military as a one year anniversary reprisal. Despite what the Guatemalan and US governments say (in an attempt to restore US military aid), this sort of occurrence is by no means exceptional. Though the wholesale slaughter and torture of thousands of people each year, as happened in the late 70's and early 80's, has abated somewhat, people are still "disappeared", murdered, and tortured every week in Guatemala. On a day to day basis, however, it is no longer obvious that you are traveling in a fascistic police-state. The war with the guerrillas has subsided, and though there are often soldiers around, they never seem to be doing anything at all. Still, Guatemalans remain reluctant to speak about politics, for their words can easily get them killed.

A question I asked myself, and other people, before I left was, "Is it wrong to travel in a country ruled by a morally repugnant government, and thereby lend your economic support to it?". The usual answer is that is ok, because you can best learn about the situation by seeing it yourself, and when you return you can educate other people about the situation. I hope that is what I am doing now.

Another facet of the situation in Guatemala that quickly becomes apparent in Santiago Atitlan is the poverty. In general, the cost of living for first-worlders is incredibly low in Guatemala. Once you get away from main tourist destinations, rooms are usually $1.00 or less a night, and a decent meal in a restaurant can usually be had for less than a dollar as well. Transportation costs are negligible (if you ride the buses). Even in Antigua, you can have a full meal at the nicest restaurant in town (which is very nice) for $5.00. But for a typical Guatemalan, that meal could easily be a week's income (no, I do not have actual statistics handy, so I have to make them up). In Santiago Atitlan you are quickly surrounded by children, all extremely persistently, and desperately, trying to get you to buy things from them. I am not sure why it is so bad there, in particular, but possibly it is because a recent cholera outbreak has frightened away many of the tourists that the people have come to depend on.

While in Santiago, we visited the home of Maximon, a semi-mayan, semi-catholic saint, represented by a wooden mannequin who chain smokes cigarettes and chugs cane liquor. We watched a fascinating ceremony (all in the Cakichiquel language), where a woman was apparently healed of something via copious incense, chanting, and gifts to Maximon.

We then took a boat to San Pedro la Laguna, another small town on Lake Atitlan. San Pedro is right at the foot of the San Pedro volcano, a massive green cone towering 4500 feet above the lake. I was amazed to see how high up the volcano, and at what steep angles, the people plant their crops. This is necessitated by the fact that all the good land was long ago stolen for the coffee and sugar cane plantations. Thus the indian subsistence farmers are left with the remaining scraps.

We shared a lovely thatch-roofed bungalow, with phenomenal views of sunrise over the lake and the omnipresent volcano. We also had the owner's playful pet spider monkey living next door. San Pedro is a remarkably beautiful, extremely slow-paced, and very isolated-feeling place. The pace of the town is well-illustrated by the most popular comedor (restaurant) in town, which literally takes 3.5 hours to serve a pizza. Brad and I rented horses one afternoon, and toured the area. The horses, following the local trend, were extremely slow-paced also. This was fine with me -- that morning I was recovering from a bit of intestinal turbulence, so my stomach could not take anything faster than a slow walk.

Brad and I said our goodbyes, and I was on my own again. One day I climbed the volcano, but since almost the entire thing is farmed, there are trails everywhere, making it rather difficult to navigate. As I struggled up the ridiculously steep path (they do not seem to believe in switchbacks in Guatemala) I was amazed to see campesinos (including young boys, and very old men) cruising up and down the mountain carrying huge loads via forehead tump-lines. I never did find the summit, but I had a great hike, and some good Spanish practice in trying to understand directions.

Quetzaltenango

After a weeks vacation at Lake Atitlan, it was time to go back to school. This time I went to Quetzaltenango, also known by its indigenous name of Xelahu, or just Xela. At around 300,000 people, Xela is Guatemala's second largest city. Yet it feels very small and provincial. It is not a major tourist destination, but it certainly has its own charm. It is definitely an "authentic" Guatemalan city, which is perhaps its biggest draw. It also has several Spanish schools, the most well-known of which is Proyecto Linguistico Quetzalteco, a collective which uses its profits to fund various educational projects. They combine excellent teaching with a variety of cultural, historical, and political programs. In general, the students in Xela tend to be much more serious and politically aware than those in Antigua. When you do spend social time with gringos, you usually keep speaking Spanish. However most of your social time is spent with your host-family.

In Xela I quickly discovered that Guatemalans are in fact much more friendly than I had first thought. Sitting on a park bench for less than an hour, I was approached by at least four different local residents who were simply curious to speak to a foreigner. A couple had a bit of English that they wanted to try out. Mostly they are curious about going to America to work. They invariably ask how much a plane ticket costs. These conversations quickly bring home the incredible disparity of our economic situations.

I ended up in a comedor with Marvin and Mario, two Quetzaltecos. After a couple Gallos (the national, and only, beer in Guatemala) they suggested that we go visit some amigas (female friends, not computers) of theirs. I was a bit leery of this, but they insisted we were just going to the house of some friends to meet and talk to them, so I agreed. We got in a cab, and I soon found myself in a rather seedy part of town, in a dark tavern filled with Guatemalan men, and two couches upon which sat a dozen or so women, all wearing shockingly revealing clothing (of course the same clothing in a club in Seattle would not even warrant a second glance). My new friends could not understand why I was not interested in going off with one of the prostitutes any more than they could understand why I did not smoke cigarettes. In Xela, as in other Guatemalan cities, virtually all men smoke, and virtually all men go to prostitutes.

Like all of Latin America, machismo is extremely pervasive in Guatemalan society. It is completely normal, and expected, for men to make crude comments to women walking down the streets. One of the main topics we discussed in our cultural programs in Xela was the role of women in Guatemalan society. Sad to say, it is a pretty bleak picture. For example, many men refuse to let their wives use birth-control, because they think that will cause them to start sleeping around. Nobody was able to explain the logic behind that one. There are virtually no women with any significant power in government or industry. There is however the beginnings of a feminist movement in Guatemala, and we went to an interesting panel discussion on International Womens Day. Unfortunately, it was quite sparsely attended. And like many organized events there, it started almost two hours late (and nobody seemed to notice or care).

Another fascinating political event I attended was the University of San Carlos "Huelga de Dolores" or "Strike of Pains". This goes on every Friday during Lent. A group of students, in robes and hoods to hide their identities, gives speeches protesting the injustices in Guatemalan society. It is also a festive occasion -- bands play, and the speeches are often quite humorous (or so I gathered from the crowd's reaction, I could not understand enough Spanish to make sense of the funny parts). It also can be quite dangerous for the students involved. As recently as three years ago in Xela, several of the organizers were murdered. And this year, after I was back home, police sprayed machine gun fire into a crowd in Guatemala City preparing for the Huelga de Dolores there, killing one person and wounding several others. Fifteen other involved students have since been reported as disappeared.

Todos Santos

ust last year, Proyecto Linguistico established a sister school in Todos Santos, a very small and isolated village high up in the Cuchamatanes mountains, the tallest range in all of Central America. Five of us students set out together for Todos Santos. First, a two hour bus ride to Huehuetenango, the departmental capital, then another grueling four hour ride climbing at a snail's pace up an endlessly switchbacking, rough, dusty, road. As there are only two buses a day, they are always jam-packed. Of course, buses on most routes are jam-packed. They are virtually all Bluebird brand American schoolbuses, painted in gaudy colors, and decorated with religious icons. Three people sit in each seat, and the aisles are full with other people standing up. Often there are people hanging on the ladders in the back, and out the front door. It never ceased to amaze me just how full they could get these buses. The truly incredible thing though, is seeing the fare collector work his way through the most densely packed buses to collect the money. Often times after finishing he will go out the back door and magically reappear at the front, without the bus even slowing down. On many routes the buses pass police checkpoints, at which time the driver instructs people in the aisles to duck down so that the bus appears less full.

Todos Santos lays at about 9,000' elevation, at the bottom of a spectacularly beautiful valley. The population is nearly 100% indigenous (Mam), and highly traditional. Spanish is definitely a second language. Almost everybody still wears the traditional costume. For the men, garish red and white striped trousers, topped by shirts with intricately embroidered collars and cuffs. For the women, plain blue skirts, with phenomenally elaborate purple and/or red woven huipile (blouses). At first glance everybody seems to be dressed exactly the same, but as you look closer you realize that there is indeed room for individual expression in the particular details of the patterns used in the embroidery. Tourism is just starting to develop there, with a steady trickle of visitors, but is still impossible to buy a post-card in Todos Santos. There are no phones, and only the central areas of town have running water. Bathing is usually done in a "chu", much the same as a Native American sweat-lodge or sauna.

Todos Santos is also a very impoverished area. Due to the chronic land shortage, families usually can not grow enough food to feed themselves all year, so the men (and sometimes entire families) are forced to migrate to the enormous plantations of the Pacific coast. This is a very difficult transition for the highland Indians due to the extreme heat of the lowlands, the poor working conditions, long hours, bad pay, and bad food. In addition huge amounts of pesticides (many of which have been banned for US use, though they are manufactured by US companies) are used on the fields, often-times directly sprayed on the laborers as they work. The system has not really changed that much from 400 years ago when the conquistadors first enslaved the Indians and forced them to work the same plantations.

In the early 80's, Todos Santos was the scene of many guerilla/army conflicts, which climaxed in 1981 with a brutally systematic massacre of suspected guerilla sympathizers, along with other personal enemies of the army's informants. The name of the village is spelled out in white-washed rocks on the mountain-side above town, which is kind of cute until you find out that it was put there by order of the army so that they could identify the town from the air. Another artifact of those days is the Civil Patrol, an organization of civilians who for a couple days a month join armed patrols to provide a first buffer against the guerillas. Those who refuse to join this "voluntary" organization face severe retribution. In addition there is the risk of conscription into the regular army. Every once in a while the army will quietly come into towns in the highlands and literally grab young men off the street. If they can not prove that they have a job, or own land, they are forced to join the army.

All the students at the Todos Santos language school stay with local indigenous families. This is a totally different experience from the mostly middle-class ladino (non-indian) families in Quetzaltenango. Here, the house is usually a single room with a dirt floor for the entire family, with a wood-fire for cooking right in the middle. My family had just joined the program, so I was their first student, making for a very special experience. There were four children, ages 10, 9, 8, and 2, and a single mother. The mother supports the family by selling tostadas at the market, making somewhere around $10 a week. The children were utterly fascinated by everything I had with me, especially my pocket alarm clock, and mag-lite (pocket flashlight). They would fight over the privilege of carrying my flashlight at night (the house is lit by candles), and constantly ask me what time it was so they could see the alarm clock. They also quickly discovered my camera, though now that I have gotten my pictures back I see that they did not quite get the concept of aiming it down-pat. My downfall was showing them the "Superman ride". I had not realized quite how attached to them I had grown until it was time to say good-bye, a truly sad occasion.

That is one of the best, and worst, things about traveling -- every day you meet incredibly interesting people, but you are constantly saying your final goodbyes to them. I met so many wonderful people there, both Guatemalans and gringos, people I would love to remain friends with for life, yet I am already forgetting most of their names and faces.

There were some tremendous opportunities for hiking around Todos Santos. Though it is rough and beautiful country, it is definitely not wilderness, in that there are people living and working virtually everywhere. After sweating and straining for almost four hours to hike from town to the top of a 12,000 foot peak, I was shocked to see a little house and fields just below the summit, on a completely barren, rocky, wind-swept slope. One morning a group of six of us set out at 6:30 AM to climb to Puerto del Cielo (Door to the Sky), a small aldea (sub-village) located on a ridge about 3000 feet directly above Todos Santos. The morning started out clear, but within an hour it was clouding up. We were disappointed, thinking we would be rained out. We entered the clouds, and I was surprised to see a forest of large conifers, wrapped in mist. It was virtually identical to many forests I have seen on hikes here in the Pacific Northwest (which is not to say "seen one, seen `em all"). And not long after that, we climbed out of the clouds. The sight of the Todos Santos valley filled with what looked like an ocean of brilliantly white fluffy clouds was one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen. A thick overcast always looks prettier from above than it does from below.

Finally I backpacked out of Todos Santos, to San Juan Atitan, an even smaller village two valleys over. Again traditional costume for everybody, it was similar, but still quite distinct from that of Todos Santos. I was definitely the only gringo in the town. I took portraits of about 15 men, all of whom I now need to send prints. I hitched back out to Huehuetenango at sunrise the next morning. Hitch-hiking is easy in the highlands in the sense that almost everybody will stop for you, but in many areas if you do not get out there when the trucks leave at 6AM, you may not see another vehicle all day.

Nebaj

And I thought the road to Todos Santos was bad! I was soon on my way to Nebaj, once again climbing high up into the mountains, on a road widely considered Guatemala's most terrifying. This is a narrow, twisty, bumpy, one-lane road with huge dropoffs, and no guard-rails or shoulder. Vehicles often have to back up for several kilometers to let another on-coming one pass. Because the bus was so crowded, and I wanted better views, I rode up on the roof. This ride was one of the most exciting parts of my whole trip, better than a roller-coaster, because the danger seemed a bit more real.

Nebaj, along with the villages of Chajul and Cotzal form a region known as the Ixil triangle (the people, again virtually all indigenous, share a language and culture called Ixil). Ten years ago, this area was the epicenter of violence and repression in Guatemala. An estimated 30,000 Indians were murdered, and hundreds of villages were burned to the ground, with survivors forced to move to the army-built "model-villages" (often compared to concentration camps), so that they could be more tightly controlled. I believe that the scars still show in the attitudes of the people. In general, I did not find them nearly as open and friendly as the Todos Santeros. Their communities are very tight-knit, and they seem a bit distrustful of outsiders. Though once you do start talking with them, they open up quite a bit.

The Ixil triangle is one of the few areas where the guerillas are still reputed to be active. There was a heavy army presence, and the civil patrols were much bigger than those in Todos Santos, but I never saw any guerillas myself. I did hear a third hand story of some Americans working on a volunteer project who got trapped in a guerilla-held village when the army surrounded it.

In the Nebaj market, I got into a long theological debate with a Guatemalan evangelical christian. In Nebaj, like most of Guatemala, there are more and more "evangelicos". In recent years the Catholic church has been involved in liberation theology and other movements aimed at reforming some of the gross injustices of Guatemalan society, while the evangelicos concentrate more on the "final reward" after a lifetime of suffering, and work hand in hand with the government to support the status quo. This particular man I spoke to believed that his god protects true christians -- that is why the conquistadors were able to vanquish the pagan Maya so easily, and hence none of the 30,000 people slaughtered in the last decade were "true" christians.

Chichicastenango

After an even rougher ride back down, in the back of a truck full of empty soda- bottles (I never realized how much harder the suspension of a truck is than that of a bus), I found myself back on the gringo trail. After over three weeks in the "real" Guatemala, seeing just a handful of other tourists, Chichicastenango was shocking. This city is one of Guatemala's most popular tourist spots, because of its gargantuan Sunday market.

Virtually every town of any size in Guatemala (and all of Latin America) has a "mercado". Sometimes inside, sometimes outdoors, it is a crowded collection of tiny stalls, narrow aisles, people on the floor with baskets, live animals, dead animals, weavings, traditional clothing, beans, peppers, tamales, cheap western clothing, household wares, miniature restaurants, sounds, smells, and atmosphere. Seattle's Pike Place market, and other American versions are like tiny, anal-retentive, restrained versions of the Latin American market. For the Guatemalan highland Indian, market day is life's economic and social center.

Chichi has the most famous market in Guatemala, it is an immense affair, taking place in the town's central square, and sprawling out in all directions, filling the side-streets for several blocks. At the core of the market, is a small traditional market where Indians buy, sell, and barter for their basic foods and other necessities. But the vast bulk of it is devoted to "typica" or pseudo-traditional clothing, textiles, masks, jewelry, etc. for sale to the hordes of tourists bussed in from Guatemala City and Antigua. The market is spectacularly beautiful, and the items for sale are truly gorgeous, yet at the same time to me it felt like a perversion of Guatemalan culture. As in the rest of the world, when large-scale tourism arrives, prices quickly inflate, and crime skyrockets. In my three hours in Chichi I met two people who had already been pick-pocketed that day.

Ruinas de Copan, Honduras

My next destination was the Mayan ruins of Copan, in Honduras. Copan is not known for the size of its pyramids, or its scale. In fact it is a rather compact place, with a modest collection of structures. What really sets it apart are the carvings. It has the most intricately detailed, and best preserved figures of the Mayan world. In particular the stelae, which at other sites take the form of a large block of stone with shallow bas-relief carvings, at Copan are almost completely three-dimensional. The front half is usually a highly stylized and incredibly intricate sculpture of a historical or mythical figure, while the back is a series of hieroglyphs describing the event and date which the stela was erected to commemorate. The calendar, and the passage of time were central to the religion of the Maya. In fact, some archaeologists have suggested that certain stelae were worshipped as personifications of particular points in time. A week after I was there, the discovery of a perfectly intact royal burial tomb was announced.

When I left the US I had no plans to go to any countries other than Guatemala. But I kept hearing intriguing things about Honduras, and since flexibility is absolutely crucial to a successful trip, I went. Having done no background reading about it, I really had no idea what to expect from Honduras. I was actually surprised to see how different it really was. From what I saw (which was not too much), Honduras seems much more westernized than Guatemala. While Guatemala definitely feels like the third world, Honduras seemed more like Mexico -- half in, half out. I spent one night in San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city. The atmosphere of San Pedro somehow felt much more "modern" than anywhere I had been in Guatemala. Yet at the same time, it had not been too grossly americanized with fast-food chains etc. The people I met there were extremely friendly and laid back. Another difference is that the national beer of Honduras is much better than that of Guatemala. Then again, it may be that I was generally much thirstier, due to the fact that the climate of Honduras is far hotter than what I was used to coming from the highlands.

Roatan

What had really drawn me to Honduras was tales of scuba-diving in the Bay Islands. This is a small group of islands, about 8 hours by boat, or 15 minutes by air, north of Honduras' Caribbean coast. Culturally, the islands seem much further from Honduras than that. The population is for the most part descended from African slaves and British settlers. The islanders generally speak English or Garifuna, a creole dialect. Spanish is spoken only by those who have emigrated from the mainland. The islands were once used as bases by English pirates such as Henry Morgan, who made their living raiding the Spanish fleet coming from the colonies in Central America.

I flew across the channel to Roatan, the largest of the islands. Roatan is your basic tropical paradise. Incredibly beautiful beaches with almost nobody on them, coconuts palms everywhere, hot and sunny every day, phenomenally clear blue water, fresh-fish barbecues on the beach, etc. Personally, I do not travel to relax, but for the excitement, so I usually get bored quite quickly on beaches. But even I was soon won over by Roatan's charm and slow pace of life. I was also forced into matching the pace of life for a few days after a large predatory rock leaped in front of my big toe as I was speed-walking barefoot down the beach. All of the budget-travelers/back-packers tend to congregate at the town of West End. The rest of the island is pretty much taken over by large, absurdly expensive all-inclusive resorts. Even West End is shockingly expensive by Honduran/Guatemalan standards, but compared to the rest of the Caribbean it is fairly cheap.

I had never done scuba before, but I had heard amazing stories of diving in the reefs here, and I was eager to learn. I payed $50 for a "resort course", where they spend about an hour and a half teaching you the basics of how the equipment works, and one or two key safety concepts, then take you on your first dive (I actually read the certification textbook to see what they were not teaching me). Diving was truly the most amazing (legal) thing I have ever done in my life. You see the incredible beauty of tropical coral reefs all your life in Jacques Cousteau films, and still photographs, but nothing can prepare you for the real thing. There is just so much to see, so many colors, so many preposterously beautiful fish swimming around. In my seven dives I saw 5-foot long fluorescent green carnivorous Moray Eels, gigantic rays seemingly fly by, clouds of tiny jelly fish, brilliantly colored coral shaped like volkswagen-sized brains, miniature castles, tubes, fans, and more. I saw my teacher blowing air-rings that looked like quick-silver doughnuts floating to the sky. In a night-dive I saw clouds of bio-luminescent algae flying off my flippers, like slow-motion sparks. Snorkeling in a tropical reef gives you a taste of this world, but really being able to go down there with scuba gear is another universe. For the first time in my life I had absolute freedom of movement in three dimensions, with virtually no effort. You can rise, sink, or swim practically by just thinking about it. At first, the concept of breathing underwater was a bit frightening, but I got used to it within just a few minutes.

On my second dive we went down to 100 feet, and on my fourth dive we explored a cave (where a claustrophobic diver had panicked and drowned herself a few weeks before). In the litigious United States you simply would not be allowed to do these things without extremely extensive training and certification. In Latin America there are no handrails (metaphorically speaking, of course). You are responsible for yourself, nobody is there to protect you at every turn. When I returned home I laughed out loud when I was walking on the UW campus and saw a bright orange and white saw-horse in the middle of the sidewalk, set up to cover a 6 inch length of protruding pipe. In Guatemala you can be walking down the street and have to skirt an unmarked 5 foot deep hole left over from some semi-abandoned construction project. All the ruins are almost totally open, you can climb to the top of virtually anything, and nobody is going to stop you from killing yourself by your own stupidity. And, they let you ride on the roofs of buses. Just try that next time you take Greyhound.

Guatemala City

After 5 days on Roatan I had less than one week left before I had to fly home (hint: if you have made it here, you are almost finished, just hang on a couple more pages). Rather than spend another two days in a bus to get back to Guatemala, I decided to fly back. This process involved four airplanes and three countries -- Roatan to La Ceiba to San Pedro Sula to San Salvador to Guatemala City. During my last few dives my sinuses had started to cause me extremely painful headaches as I went down, and even more pain coming up, until the pressure would equalize, and the headache would instantly disappear. By the time I landed in Guatemala the air-pressure changes from four takeoffs and landings had given me the worst headache I have ever had in my life. However, that night I stayed in the Pension Meza, a rather wild gringo budget hotel (it feels more like it belongs in Amsterdam than Guatemala). I met a guy who was a pharmacy school dropout, and after I described my headache, he gave me two neo-percodan, two valium, one beer, and some local "herbal" remedy. Needless to say, I was soon over my headache.

I took a day off to recover, and see a bit more of Guatemala City. What a difference seven and a half weeks of cultural acclimatization makes! While the first time I came through the city I had been utterly intimidated by it, this time it was an entirely different place. Though it is loud, polluted, dirty, commercial, and only vaguely pretty, it has a certain charm. I randomly bumped into my first and last previous acquaintance from the US (just a guy I had met on the Green Tortoise two years before whom I remembered because he had told an extremely funny anecdote about waking up in the woods one morning covered in ash from Mt. St. Helens, but thought it must be nuclear fallout from the destruction of Seattle). We spent the day wandering around in the central mercado, and searching for a tattoo artist.

We had some leftover food from the market, which we gave to some street children. This was a group of five boys, between the ages of 8 and 13 or so. They were all incredibly dirty, and hungry. They had a jar of glue that they were sniffing semi-surreptitiously. There are thousands of these orphaned and abandoned children living in the streets of the capital. They are responsible for a growing wave of petty, and not-so-petty crime. The police have responded by rounding them up and murdering them (apparently this has been documented, and is not just a rumor).

Tikal

The final place I wanted to see before I went home was Tikal, justifiably the most well-known of all the Mayan ruins. Around 900 AD it was perhaps the largest and most important city-state in Central America. It is in the middle of the Peten, Guatemala's almost totally undeveloped tropical rain-forest. It can be reached by a 10 to 18 hour bus ride (depending on whether the roads are all-but-impassable, or merely horrible) or a 30 minute flight. I heard an interesting story from some people who had taken the back roads to Tikal riding in Coke trucks. The trucks go in groups so that they can pull each other out when they get stuck. Apparently the pot-holes in the road were big enough to literally swallow an entire truck. I flew.

The site itself is in the middle of a large national park. Once there I discovered that since my guidebook had been written a year and a half before, prices there had been enormously inflated. There are three hotels, the only places to stay within an hours drive, and they had apparently discovered the power of monopoly. A campground that had formerly been free, was now charging the princely sum of 40 Quetzals. However, once I entered the site itself, my annoyance was instantly forgotten. Tikal is truly magical.

The site is enormous, covering many square miles, with only a fraction of it excavated and restored. Though the central area, with its instantly recognizable pyramids, is swarming with camcorder-toting tourists, it is easily possible to walk for an hour through the jungle exploring the remnants of a great civilization without seeing another person. Just the spider-monkeys, howler-monkeys, toucans, parrots, and other wildlife for company. Though the open areas were oppressively hot under the jungle sun, it was surprisingly cool and comfortable under the thick layers of tree-cover. You can scramble up roots and ladders to reach the summit of Temple 4, the largest structure in Tikal, towering more than 200 feet above the jungle floor. You climb through the layers of the forest canopy until you are above all the trees, and see an undulating sea of green stretching for miles and miles in all directions. The canopy is pierced only by the upthrusting roof-combs of the five other large pyramids. This is an ideal spot to watch the sunset, but do not forget your flashlight! With no moon out, it is inky black when night falls in the jungle. I ended up leading out eight people or so with mine. My second day in Tikal I got to know the jungle even more intimately, as I spent 2 hours trying to find the right path to bypass the guard booth and get back into the ruins.

Antigua

With only two days left in Guatemala, I went back to Antigua to start re-acclimatizing myself to western civilization. Within my first hour back, Esperanza, one of the 12 year old indigenous typica-vending girls I had become friends with six weeks earlier spotted me on the street, and yelled out my name. Since I had previously avoided buying anything substantial from her by claiming that I could not carry extra weight, I was now out of excuses, and ended up with several nice weavings. Esperanza was now a professional vendor, having finished her state-required five years of school while I was gone. In the manner of children everywhere, Orfa, the girl whom I had met as her best friend, was now her hated enemy.

I had only one thing left on my to-do list for Guatemala, which was to meet the woman of my dreams and fall in love. Fate smiled on me, and it happened, though with only a day and a half to spend together the timing could have been a bit better. Before we knew what had hit us, we were ripped apart by American Airlines, and I was on my way to Seattle.

Seattle

And then I was home. By my last day in Guatemala I felt like I had been away from Seattle for a very very long time. It had been two months, but I had seen so much, done so much (though this write-up may seem long, believe me, it is just scratching the surface). Time goes so much slower on the road, because every day is so distinct from the last one. You feel more alive and aware, because you have to be. Every day is filled with challenges to meet -- find a place to stay, find the right bus, do not do anything stupid that will get you robbed/killed/food-poisoned. Seattle felt far far way.

But as soon as my friends picked me up at the airport, and I got back to my house, I felt like I had been gone almost no time at all. Everything was the same (except the trees had magically grown their leaves back over-night). I was shocked at how little culture-shock I actually felt. It was like I had just woken up from a dream. I try to recreate it in my head, but once you wake up from a dream it is gone forever. You can piece together a shadow of it, and write it down as I am doing here, but it never really comes back. I can show my pictures to people, and have them read this essay, but how can I expect to convey what really happened, when I am already losing my grip on it?

However, even if you forget the specific details of a dream, it can still change you. This trip gave me my first real perspective on the third world. You can read books full of statistics on the unequal distribution of the world's wealth, and how much we as Americans have in contrast to the rest of the world, but seeing first hand just how poor the people in a third world country really are is a different matter. Traveling alone is also a tremendous boost to your self-confidence. After meeting the endless small and occasional large challenges of life on the road in a place like Guatemala you get a much better sense of what you can really do.

It is a bit of a cliche, but it is nevertheless true -- Guatemala is the ultimate land of contrast. On the surface it possibly the most beautiful country on earth. Spectacular mountains, lakes, jungles, plants, animals, costumes, villages, climate. But underneath this beautiful surface is a volatile and dangerous ugliness. The land itself can be murderous, with regular earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. But far more deadly is the power-structure. The state of Guatemala was born out of violence and vicious repression under the conquistadors, and the situation has not improved very much in the last 500 years. Yet at the same time it is a fantastically rewarding place to travel in. It is easy to be seduced by the beauty, friendliness, and rhythm of life there. As long as you bring with you a bit of Spanish (or at least the desire to learn), and have a solid understanding of its historical and cultural context, I would strongly recommend it as a place to travel for anyone.