Lake Atitlan, Guatemala
So we said hasta pronto to San Cristobol de las Casas and boarded a shuttle bus at 7:00 AM. The driver drove around town for a while picking up gringos at various hotels and hostels and then hit highway 190. We headed south for several hours until we hit the Mexican border town of Ciudad Cuauhtemoc.
The one thing I would recommend to geezers before starting a journey like this is to make bloody sure your bowels are good and empty. Sure, the shuttle bus makes pit stops every few hours, but if you have to force the driver to stop his hair raising passing of other vehicles on hair pin curves, you are going to be the star attraction on a busy and dangerous highway as you complete your ablutions.
The bus let us off at Mexican Immigration where we were shaken down for US $26.16 for an "exit fee". We had already learned about this beforehand, as one actually pays this exit fee when you buy your air plane ticket to fly into Mexico. Word had it that if you present a breakdown of the fees charged by the airline for your ticket, the 500 peso fee is waived. Who in the flock carries around that sort of information?
Our group of intrepid gringos then schlepped our bags (Lilly and I also had a box of spices, oils and other kitchen essentials that was now leaking dish soap) about 100 yards through no man's land until we reached the chaotic La Mesilla, Guatemala. It was the usual border town of money changers, food stalls, transportation drivers, drunks and a few crazy people wandering about.
I will say that our driver from San Cristobol kept an eye on us as we went through Guatemalan customs and helped us load on to the Guatemalan shuttle. He then took a load of foreigners doing the same thing in reverse back to San Cristobol.
Man what a long day that guy has.
I actually went back and forth between the two countries several times during the wait looking for something to put our leaking box in and no one seemed to give a hoot.
CA/1 Pan American highway is a dramatic mountainous road passing through highland coffee production areas. The largely indigenous population seems to live above the towns that dot the highway. At least from the shuttle window there seems to a lot more trash laying about, especially plastic debris of all kinds, than in Mexico.
The bus finally pulled into Panajachel on Lake Atitlan, altitude 5200 feet. The Lake is renowned for it's climate: eternal spring. Always perfect. 70's in the day and a nice little fire at night.
There was a huge eruption ~85,000 years ago that spread ash from Florida to Ecuador and buried Guatemala in 200 feet of ash at some locations. After the eruption, the caldera floor collapsed and gradually filled with water to a depth of 2000 feet in some places.
Panajachel is the gateway city to the many towns and villages, each with their own personality that dot the lake. The major ones are named after the twelve disciples of Jesus. The smaller villages have Tz'utujil or Kaqchikel names, where Mayan customs endure and traditional dress is quite common.
Travel is done on these public lanchas. Word on the street is that walking/hiking between villages, excepting a couple of the more heavily touristed ones can lead to you being separated from at least your wallet and at worst, your head.
All the villages have different personalities and we are wandering to San Pedro la Laguna for... I forget why we chose it.
In 1976 a 7.5 earthquake struck Guatemala killing 26,000 people, fracturing and slightly draining the lake bed and subsurface.
The Atitlan and Hawaiian calderas and volcanoes are on the tectonic Pacific Rim Ring of Fire. We witnessed live many of the same volcanic characteristics, such as caldera collapse, as when Kilauea recently erupted in Hawaii. Geologically speaking gentle reader, the past is prelude.
Here we stop at Jaibalito to pick up passengers; almost all were villagers. Not so where we are going. That is San Pedro Volcano above with San Pedro la Laguna at it's base.
In the beginning there were the indigenous people and they had their languages and their gods. Just around here there are some 23 languages that can vary from village to village. So can the gods.
Meet Moximon.
Moximon, a folk saint, venerated in the form of a wooden effigy in the village of Santiago Atitlan. Moximon is another example of religious Syncretism the blending of two or more religious belief systems/traditions into a new system.
Moximon is thought to be a blend of several historical, biblical and Mayan mythological figures like Pedro de Alvarado, a conquistador buddy of Cortes and governor of Guatemala, known for his cruelty and mass murder of native people, Judas Iscariot and the Mayan kinship god Mam.
Moximon appearance and the method of worship varies greatly in the Guatemalan highlands.
In some villages he is dressed in sunglasses and snappy bandannas.
In Santiago Atitlan, Moximon lives in a different household each year. That tradition has it that Moximon was always here. When the Catholic Spiritual Conquistadors wanted to get rid of him and install their god who lived up in the sky, the villagers moved the effigy from house to house so they wouldn't find him.
Moximon is also a trickster. Another legend says that Moximon was hired by traveling fishermen to protect the virtue of their wives while they were gone, but he disguised himself and banged every last one of them.
Here at least, he always has special attendants that stay at the altar year round smoking and drinking with him. Popular offerings include money, Coca Cola, tobacco and local moonshine called Quezalteca.
As the place of refuge for Moximon changes every year and is located in neighborhoods that are a warren of unnamed streets, the tourist has to hire a guide to find our boy.
We produced a pint of Quezalteca as an offering and the shamans quickly poured some of in the mouth of Moximon (sort of like a beer bong?). It came out of somewhere and after they lit a cigarette in Moximon's mouth, they offered us a drink. We politely said it was too early for us but but by all means gentlemen, please go ahead. They then promptly mixed two glasses with Coca Cola and it was down the hatch.
As one younger guy was *asleep* on one of the pews and the shamans did appear a tad wobbly, I asked our guide if they ever slipped out of the chairs and hit the deck.
He answered simply and without obfuscation:
Yes.
Man, aren't these Mayan religions creative? We are thinking about converting,
After the Spanish Conquest, there was/is a lot of competition for the souls of the residents of San La Pedro la Laguna, who have been living around the lake for ~12,000 years.
So there is the well documented story of Cortes' military conquest of what was the Aztec and Mayan Empires. After disease and warfare got most of the indigenous people and the military conquest ended, the Catholic friars arrived on the scene to orchestrate the *spiritual conquest* of those who were left.
Conversion to Christianity was an essential and integral part of the extension of Spanish power. They rounded up the people in the countryside, forced them into easier to control cities, based on the Spanish civic model of a church, a plaza and government buildings at the center of town.
They put this civic church model everywhere they could, some times in the same place, using the same stones as the destroyed ancient indigenous temples.
These Catholic churches remain at the center of many towns like San Pedro and seem reasonably well attended. Of course Rome has had to permit some local interpretations of the European version to keep the flock from going walkabout and/or straight on pagan.
Then along came the Protestants.
Our house is in a neighborhood way up the volcano caldera wall, far from the waterfront tourism of the counter culture. Above is the view of the Auditorio Bethel from our fourth floor terrace. It is an evangelical school with much activity. We hear the Christian singing starting at ~6:30 AM and finishing with vespers at ~8:00 PM.
The bells of San Pedro Iglesia Catolica compete with this evangelical singing, announcing something or another day and night.
Another evangelic church very near Bethel and our house.
From wandering and pondering around San Pedro for a month now, I would say evangelical Christianity is the dominant scheme to salvation here. There are many murals like these painted on many buildings.
So the next religious group doing their thing here is Jews. They are mainly Israeli Jews and I am pretty sure they aren't doing a lot of proselytizing. I started seeing lots of Hebrew signs and wondered what was up.
It is uncanny how much the local language Tz'utujil sounds like Hebrew. One narrative goes that the lost tribe of Israel actually ended up in San Pedrro la Laguna, Guatemala. Keep in mind that there are as many places claiming to be the home of the lost tribe as there are places claiming to have the Holy Grail.
Who knew?
I overheard an Israeli hippie telling some chick that "to get better falafel, you have to go to the Holy Land".
On a darker side, the Lev Tahor cult was expelled from San Pedro in August 2014. This ultra orthodox sect of Judaism had been accused previously in Canada of kidnapping, sexual abuse, child bride marriages, etc. The government of San Pedro accused them of discrimination against indigenous people and violating Mayan customs. They left pretty quickly after the judges' decision because they knew if they didn't, it wont gonna be pretty.
They basically have been on the run ever since, but in researching this, I read that the the main dude of Lev Tahor might be in jail in Canada right now for alleged child abuse.
Our final large
San Pedro is a backpacking hub in Central America and every one of them ends up at Lake Atitlan at some point. San Pedro has a a street along the shore with travel agencies, pizza, falafel, hot tubs, party hostels offering free booze at breakfast and bars with raves that go on late, real late. It is Gringolandia and the only locals you will see are touts and people selling things at inflated prices.
Less cheap booze and deep trance than San Pedro, San Marcos offers yoga, tantric meditation, massage, patchwork parachute hippie pants (that are the official dress code for gringos on spiritual quests the world over), vegan options, dirty bare feet, green smoothies, dreadlocks, Mayan tattoos and re-birthing centers.
Curiously, what you don't see in Gringolandia is very many Guatemalans.
Where you do see a lot of Guatemalans however, is in our neighborhood.
We rented a four story house in San Pedro for a month. It had three bedrooms, sleeping 12, three bathrooms and a roof top terrace over looking the lake. The cost for the month was $406.00. As I said, most of these towns on the Gringo Trail have a tourist part near the shore and the locals live up the hill. This house is on the far edge of the local part. We love it, as you can watch the indigenous people making tortillas, washing clothes, carrying firewood, going to the market.
One of the things that we liked the most about it was it was the entire house. When you are a perpetual stranger in this world, it is nice to come home and shut the big steel doors to the compound for the night. Although we expect one or two Kalani era visitors, there is no way we can use all of this space. However much unused space that there was, the Airbnb contract did state that the entire house was ours.
So it was alarming when our host called from Guatemala City to say that his father and brother were coming to harvest coffee and would be staying in the third floor bedroom for several nights. He assured us that they would be invisible, our privacy guaranteed, they would be leaving early and returning late.
Say what? Grandpa and son are going to stay in this house? Tonight?
Panic.
After back and forth blah-blah texting with the host, I realize that father and son are already upstairs. I go upstairs and meet Don Carlos, the actual owner of the house. What I gathered from the affable and jovial Don Carlos is that he may not be as worldly about the ways of Airbnb as is his son, who is the host of the house.
We had already established a good rapport with his niece next door, who had helped us with trash pick up, water delivery, firewood delivery, hand washed our laundry, internet service. The niece had confided in me some family gossip across the rooftop concerning a dispute as to who was actually in charge of the house. Turns out, the host of the site is only the step-son.
Who knows what the truth is.
Lilly and I talked about our options. I eventually may explain to whoever turns out to be really in charge of renting the house that it behooves them to include as much honest information about the house, amenities in the house, neighborhood etc, as it will be better for their long term on-line reputation.
I will assure them that most gringos are going to want to know if his grandpa and brother crashing in a portion of the gringo's Airbnb is included in the deal.
We were also in a very local neighborhood. As the discussions continued on the porch with my gringo accented Spanish, the niece on the cell phone to the host step-cousin in Guatemala City, inquiring ears wanting to know started to appear in windows and on the roof next door. Nothing threatening, just nosy neighbors and relatives, who probably had decades more information than we did, smelling a juicy drama.
There was talk of a refund, an extra free week etc. When Don Carlos asked me how much of a refund I wanted for an empty room, for two people to just sleep in for three days in a house that slept 12 and cost $100 a week, I said fuck it, give us a pound of your coffee and let's be done with it
And, if you take us along, we will work for one day free helping you harvest the crop.
We're thinking adventure with local guy Don Carlos!
The next day we caught the lancha to the non-touristy, non vegan non meditation village of Jaibalito. The boat lets us off at the pier and Don Carlos paid for us so we did not have to pay the de facto gringo tax. And off we went. The houses got poorer and poorer, the people looking a little more Appalachian, the mangy dogs a little more numerous.
As I huffed and puffed, I was beginning to recall the advice to really anybody about always using the lanchas to get from place to place on the lake and not hiking between anything but the vegan meditative villages. Then we headed straight up, really into the boonies. Can't lie that words like kidnapping or murder didn't cross my mind, as no one on God's green earth knew where we were.
We started at an altitude of 5200 feet and I know it must have been several thousand more feet of goat like paths up. Don Carlos is 66 and only had a small canteen. When I asked if we were half way, he said "mas o menos". More or less. I said "mas mas o menos menos"? At which point he politely asked me if I had any medical conditions
Don Carlos and I had been chatting away about organic coffee (ain't any), the geology of the caldera, the local language (he doesn't understand a word) Monsanto and more when we came to a fork in the path and noticed: no Lilly.
There were two choices, straight ahead following the coast or a right turn continuing straight up. 66 year old Don Carlos tells me to wait "in the shade" at the fork in case she back tracts and he heads off along the coastal pathway looking for her. 12, 15, 17 minutes pass and no sign of anyone.
Just Mr. Alone, sort of leaning into the mountain to keep from slipping a couple thousand feet into the lake and thinking "is this some kind of set up? How did I even get here? Does Guatemala even have a lost hiker search team and how do you even contact them? Mingled with thoughts of telling Lilly's family a week later that I really don't know where she went and so on.
Don Carlos comes back and says she is not down there. So he heads up mountain.
10 minutes later, he comes back down the mountain and says "ya esta". He has now walked more than a mile more than me and I start huffing and puffing following him back up to the high coffee fields. All kinds of dogs start barking and we can hear the chatter of the local girls, maybe 13 years old, picking and chattering but hidden by the bushes.
We start picking and put the coffee cherries in bags that hold 50 pounds. After about an hour, Don Carlos says he is hungry and suggests we head back to Jaibalito for lunch, as frankly (he includes himself) we are really not that good at it.
The three of us are at at it for an hour. I ask how much we caught and he lifts and ponders our bag's weight and says maybe 20 pounds.
A local girl can pick 100-200 pounds a day and carry it with a head strap back down to Don Carlos' storage shed. He says that there is an old woman in the village than can pick 500 pounds a day.
Time for lunch. The inn is owned by a German that resembles an eccentric Fidel Castro. Swept dirt floors, chickens, dogs and Mayan kids running about.
Not saying that this bag was made from the very cherries we picked but the coffee sure was world class.
This little serendipitous adventure really showed us the massive amount of labor involved in producing a highland (the best) cup of joe. Third world labor tending and picking the plants, transportation, and then the 10 steps from seed to cup
Actually, our house doesn't even have a coffee maker, so we have about seven more steps beyond that, what with pots, strainers, paper towel filters and so forth, to make a cafe con leche.
But once its made, and you settle down with the Washington Post on the sofa over looking the lake....makes you feel like you won at least one game.
I wanted to mention a couple of indignities that I have suffered at the hands of pre-teen to early teen age Mayan girls.
I have been the object of derision twice since being at Lake Atitlan. Washing of clothes here is done by females, either on rocks in the lake or on a concrete washing board/sink thingy called a pila.
One day I was washing a load of our kitchen towels on our ground floor pila and I kept hearing peals of girlish teenage laughter from our neighbor's rooftop terrace, four stories up. When I would look up, three heads would duck down behind the wall. Back to the pila, more giggling, more ducking my gaze.
When I was relating this anecdote to Don Carlos while we were walking along, he laughed and said that I had committed a pecado mortal, a serious and fatal sin 'cause here MEN NEVER WASH CLOTHES. And on a goddamned pila, for crying out loud.
The second time was when we were picking the coffee. We had only brought two bags for three people. As we worked, we separated to different bushes that were farther and farther away from the bags. So when I had two handfuls of berries, I would have to walk 10 steep feet to put them in the bag. Too inefficient. If I had me a Big Gulp Cup or something, I could fill the cup and then go empty it in the bag.
MANIFEST! I looked down in the weeds and saw this old plastic colander. Perfect, pick three quarts of berries then go put them in the sacks. If you scroll back up you will see that red colander in the photo.
Anyhoo, one time as I was taking my measly two handfuls of berries in my red colander to the sack, about three early teen age girls came barreling by, making time down the mountain path (as they were picking a lot higher up than I was) with 50 pound sacks of berries on their backs attached to a headband.
Sweet reader, the joyful laughter (I am thinking that they are thinking: fer reals?) that these girls had when they saw the method that I had chosen to pick coffee, using of all things, a goddamned red colander...resonated throughout the lake mountainous community.
The level of the lake is rising.
Nobody knows why, but the old timers say it has always fluctuated. They recently found ruins 1000 feet deep on what once was lake front property,
What ever the reason, old hotels and restaurants like these are almost submerged ruins, many in San Pedro are gringo owned. Now I know why the locals leave lakeside to the tourists and they build way up in the hills.
India from Portugal visited us for a few days and a few adventures. We all worked together in the kitchen at Kalani in 2014. India has been everywhere and still travels the backroads of the world three months of the year. Offered us a visit in Portugal...hmmmm.
Tending maize and drying coffee
Alas, there is trouble in paradise. As beautiful and picturesque as Lake Atitlan is, it was time to wander on. After several weeks we had run out of things to do. The local food is rather limited and the gringo food is expensive and meh. Also, after a while, the dirtiness of the towns started to wear on us, as there is a serious pollution problem. The people of the lake area are acutely aware that this pollution could be the beginning of the end of the lake as a tourist destination. Global over population is the problem but they (we) lack easy answers.
I think if we could have swum in the beautiful lake, we could have stayed busier, however untreated sewage, regular gray water and fertilizer runoff and more have made it unswimmable, at least for us. Ain't gonna consider eating the nasty introduced black bass fish one sees offered in the market.
This sewage and fertilizer runoff has caused serious cynanobacteria algae blooms that choke the life out of one of the most beautiful and deepest lakes in the world. The exhaust and noise from hundreds of motorized tuk-tuks, thousands of cooking fires, plenty of dog shit on the streets and a myriad of plastic crap everywhere that is never picked up, add to the problem.
I had to laugh when I saw the hippies walking around these cobblestone streets barefooted, blissfully unaware of the animal feces smeared in between their toes. That ain't organic compost dudes and dude-ettes. Its dog and cat shit from mangy dogs and cats that eat garbage.
It is not just Lake Atitlan and I guess I shouldn't be surprised as the too many, by billions, of people on the earth are fucking it up every which way. Wearily, I fear mankind is fated to drown in it.
Wandered through this graveyard one day. Lots of Mayan names with Christian inspirational sayings on the tombs. Saw one gringo picture and name on a grave, the only one we saw in the whole sprawling apartment complex like city of the dead. Born in 1942 died in 2016, not married; pondered how he ended up on the back row of a Tz'utuji cemetery.
Thanks for stopping by
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