Dos Quetzalitos no es Caro

Well, things are on a roll down here in the Guatemala. Ryan and I moved into a new room last Thursday within the same guesthouse. While this one is a little more expensive, it has a private bathroom, which is much nicer. The water in the shower was actually almost too hot last night. How things change…

When we first moved in, however, the toilet wasn’t flushing, there was no shower curtain, and I woke up with what I assume were tiny bug bites on my arms, thumb, and legs. Since then, all of these things have been remedied for the most part. We have been washing our clothes by hand here. And it’s not so bad, but the cold water is piercing to my hands in the morning. I’m not sure how thoroughly clean everything is getting... I’ll have to look up washing clothes by hand on the internet, I suppose. How funny.

Oh also, this special picture hangs on our wall:



As far as our daily tasks, teaching English has been getting a little easier, although I still feel slightly inept. The students don’t seem to notice or at least don’t demonstrate noticing thus far. Starting today we have four different classes (all consisting of one student), so we’re going to see what splitting up the classes is like. Ryan will take the ones in the morning, and I’ll take the afternoon ones for now. More classes might be on the way, as well.

I’m enjoying the volunteering with Trama Textiles. Ola, the volunteer coordinator, gave me a giant coffee table-like book to read called The Maya Textile Tradition. It’s full of gorgeous photographs and has been really interesting so far. The more I read about Mayan history, and the history of this country in general, the more disgusted I am to read how the people have been treated, exploited, etc. for centuries, basically since the arrival of the Spanish up to the CIA-backed coup, the civil war that followed, and the present-day situation where indigenous people are generally poor and the majority of the land is owned by a wealthy 2% of the country. Then again, I’m also fascinated and reassured by the fact that their traditions and ways of life have stood up against all that for so long; that they haven’t gone out the same way that most Native Americans in the US have. Their weavings are a great example of this, and I’m really eager to learn more about it all.

And as a bonus, here you can see the view from the Trama balcony:




Last weekend Ryan and I decided to take a trip up north. It looks like on most weekends we’ll be doing some kind of traveling, whether leaving altogether or just taking little daytrips. So this time we headed up to the Cuchumatanes mountains. We mainly wanted to go to Todos Santos Cuchumatán, but in order to that, you first have to take a bus from Xela to Huehuetenango, (called simple Huehue by most), which is a good 2.5 hour ride. The ride to Todos Santos is an additional 2-2.5 hours. And since we couldn’t leave til around 1 pm due to an English class at 11 am, we decided to just stay the night in Huehuetenango and then head out to Todos Santos in the morning. Mistake.

The bus ride was mostly unmemorable compared to other rides we’ve had. I fell asleep through part of it, and this little brat wearing a Barney hat, (yes), sat down next to us for a while, taking up the majority of the seat.

We found Huehue fairly unlikeable. It made me appreciate Xela that much more and thank the high heavens that we are not living in Huehue. It was unbelievably traffic-filled with the sound of car horns ever-present. The one redeeming part of the city was its semi-attractive main plaza/park/church. We ate in a restaurant that was not half-bad either. They specialized in steaks and Chinese food. I was sold by the fact that they had ceviche, which I had not yet formally tried. It was quite tasty and you can see a picture of it below.. mmm.. along with the “café con leche” that Ryan and I ordered, which was really more like milk with a slight coffee flavor added.. ?



The hotel really just topped the evening off. Granted, it was dirt cheap, (around US $4 each), but the room was the size of a tiny cubicle, with only a little more space allotted in addition to that used for the bed itself. And the bed felt like sleeping on a wooden panel with an irregular bump in the middle… Needless to say, we were ready to wake up early and catch a bus to Todos Santos.

We were unsure of the bus times, so we woke up around 6 and first tried to find a bus or microbus that would take us to the crazy Huehue bus terminal. After waiting for 10 minutes on a corner and realizing we were in fact waiting for a bus to come the other way down a one-way street, we found where the buses actually pass and hopped on. Once we got to the bus station, we were dismayed to learn that the next bus to Todos Santos didn’t leave until 10:30 AM. At this point it wasn’t even quite 7. So…we took yet another bus back to the city and wandered about, eventually getting quite the large breakfast at a little restaurant called El Jardin. Eventually, we took another bus back to the good ole bus terminal, purchased our bus ticket, and just sat on the bus. Todos Santos really isn’t that far from Huehue, but it takes several hours due to the unpaved-ness of the road that leads up into the Cuchumatanes. This time we thankfully had one seat to ourselves, and were amused/embarrassed by an older American couple sitting in a seat one row up. The man somehow didn’t even realize where they were headed. He exclaimed, “So, we headed to the border today?” To which his wife responded, “No, that’s tomorrow! Today we’re going to To-dos Saaantos. It’s in the book. It must be important.” Unbelievable. She also put her hands over her ears towards the end of trip for who knows what reason and stared back at several children on the bus, giving them big goofy over the top grins. God bless America indeed.

After several hours we found ourselves in the lovely little Mam-speaking town of Todos Santos. The scenery was gorgeous. As the day went on, the weather got rather chilly, which was most unfortunate as the day before I had accidentally left my sweater in a bus. Oops. We started to explore the city, stopping in a little weaving co-op where I bought a lovely woven purse on sale. It was a nice shop as all the money from sales went directly to the women who made the weavings. I liked how each item had a little sticker on it with the name of the women who had made it.

We then wandered around some more, catching the tail end of the market, and strolling into the plaza where the inevitable church sat, a friendly reminder of Spanish colonization. We watched the men and women in their traditional dress, while many stray dogs ran around searching for food. The men all wore jackets with stripes with differently woven collars adorning each. Their pants were striped vertically with red and white, and atop their heads sat hats with brims, with a studded band around the middle, covered with strips of blue felt. It was interesting to see men all wearing traditional dress for once, since nowadays in the majority of Guatemala, that is quite rare. It is very common for women, but I have read that men often receive harassment if they were the traditional dress in certain areas. Todos Santos is unique in some ways however, as it was more or less isolated until the 1960s, and thus the people of the village have been able to retain their traditions easier.





Deciding to take the book’s advice, we followed this one cobblestone road up, past women washing their clothes and roosters and turkeys, and kids kicking soccer balls in the street. At the end of the road, was an old site where some Mayan rituals are still performed. There were several grass mounds, crosses, and fires burning. Once we reached the top, it really started to dawn on me how much I was enjoying the town of Todos Santos. It had such a tranquil feel to it. From up at the top of this hill, we could look across and see the entire town sitting down below in the valley, surrounded by the Cuchumatanes.







We began our descent down a smaller path, passing more turkeys on the way.



We decided to get a little snack of street food, before getting dinner later, as we hadn’t eaten since our giant breakfast. We went up to a stand that said Huehueburger and ordered one “hot dog pequeño.” Little did we know what this would entail. We were in for the surprise of a lifetime! The good man proceeded to split a hot dog in two and throw it on the grill. Then! He took out some tomatoes and onions and threw them in as well. Wow. But wait, there’s more. To our befuddled amazement, he then laid a hot dog bun on the grill to toast it. And and and! Then!—he spread something that we think was like 1000 island dressing on the bun itself! Following this, hot dog, tomatoes, and onions were all scooped into said bun in a single swoop. That’s it, you ask? No, I’m not done. The good sir then squirted something resembling ketchup, a green chile sauce, and mayonnaise on this smothered piece of meat. Ok, now I’m done. The verdict? Delicious—no, life-changing. Get yourself one of these succulent little babies today.

Whoo, ok. Now that I got that out, Ryan and I wandered into this Spanish school across from the little hotel we were staying at, to see if they had any information about bus times for the following morning. Well they didn’t really. But the girl who worked at the school was quite nice and American as well, and ended up showing us a documentary made partly in the late 70s and then the 80s about Todos Santos. It was most informative and at times quite startling and depressing to watch—mostly the second part which dealt more with the situation in the town during the Civil War years when the guerillas and army would both come into the town and tear them apart. It’s really sad, and though this essentially over now, the fear still remains somewhat. To this day it seems like people do not want to talk about what or express an opinion about what happened, out of a fear that they will be killed.

After watching the documentary, we were again hungry. (Though the hot dog pequeño was in fact delicious, it did not fill us up completely.) We stopped in the comedor Martita nearby, and sat at a table with some Todosanteños. We ordered some pollo frito and were soon joined by another couple who had just watched the documentary as well. We had an enjoyable enough conversation and then went back to the hotel.

And that about sums it up for our time in Todos Santos. The hotel room was much nicer than the night before… we did spend 10 quetzales more on it, though.. (about a $1.00) so maybe that has something to do with it.

The next day we again woke up early and caught a bus right away back to the dreaded Huehuetenango. This time however, we prepared. (Actually I don’t know what I mean by that. It sounded like the thing to say, though.) Before catching a bus back to Xela, we decided we might as well see these so-called Mayan ruins nearby called Zaculeu. We first picked up some slices of pizza from a stand called Pizza Movil so that we could have a little picnic at the ruins. Well, we caught the bus that we thought went to the ruins. (You know, when you hear someone shouting “Zaculeu, ruinas” you think they’re going to the ruins… huh) We told the driver that we were going to “las ruinas” so eventually the driver just stopped the bus and shouted “ruinas” which was our clue to get off. As we were getting off the bus, various passengers just sort of stared at us and we were not sure why. Well, we soon realized that we were not at the ruins. We followed the road up and asked a woman where they were. She said we just had to follow the road. So… we walked for about 10 minutes and realized we had just gotten the lazy bus or something because other buses went right up to the ruins. Eventually we reached our destination.

We were greeted by a man in uniform who asked us what country we were from. We later realized that this was because that on Sundays, Guatemalans get in for free. This would also explain why there was a fair amount of people visiting the ruins that day. While apparently Zaculeu are not some of the most impressive of the Mayan ruins comparatively, they were the first ones I’ve ever seen, so I was an easy sell. Plus, we figure it’s best to start at the bottom and work our way up to Copan (maybe), Tikal, and Chichen Itzá (maybe). Zaculeu was partially restored by the United Fruit Company some years ago, which means they went through and basically covered the ruins with plaster. So, this isn’t so cool since you can no longer see any original engravings on the ruins, but I guess it does give you more of the exact shape the ruins would have originally have had. Anyway, below you can see a picture of the ruins:



After the Zaculeu trip, we went back to the Huehue bus terminal for the last time and caught a bus back to Xela. The same man boarded the bus twice to try and sell people the newspaper “Nuestro Diairo.” We was very insistent and said things like “Dos quetzalitos no es caro!” (2 little quetzals aren’t expensive.) It was funny. Just me? Ok. This bus ride was strange in that the bus driver began by driving very very slowly. We still don’t know why. Then after maybe 10-15 minutes, his energy drink must have kicked in, because he began zooming down the road, going faster than I’ve ever seen a bus go before. It was a bit frightening. I just tried not to look at the road and stared into the Su Doku puzzle in my lap. He would also just lean on the horn as he spun around the curves of the road—I guess warning everyone who might be coming around the bend that he was on the way, and insane. Somehow we made it back alive. And in record time! Hey.



That’s the gist for now. Time is going by fast as expected. I’ve also begun doing some translating work from English to Spanish for another volunteer organization called AMA (Asociacion de las Mujeres del Altiplano). I’m not sure if I’m going to keep up with it or not though.

Teaching English is still going okay. One of my students is very young and doesn’t know any English though, so I’m basically teaching him from scratch, which is a bit of a challenge. Maybe he’s not as young as I thought though, cause his cell phone has gone off in class.. hmm.

Also—Thai food in Guatemala: not bad.

I leave you with that.