Talking to the Other World, Part II

Group Email: 17/07/07

Dear Friends,

Today is our 4th day (though not in a row) in Antigua, which is the longest I have spent anywhere since leaving San Jose. I will be sorry to leave here, and not just because I have figured out how to get from the hotel to central park in less than half an hour. Thankfully the looming prospect of Tikal is enough to keep me going. Let´s hope I have not been spoiled by the wonderful cool weather of the last few days.

Just one note before I continue on with my Talking to the Other World. I have been asked to properly define chicken buses. I have heard this term used all over the world, and while the technicalities vary from place to place, the vast and unparalleled discomfort is truly universal. In Central America, Chicken Buses are old (and I mean really old) American school buses (some of which still have the names of primary schools on the side) ¨decorated¨ elaborately, inside and out. Highlights include a dip stick with a revolving Virgin Mary in inside it, Christmas lights on the handrails, giant American flag bumper stickers, hood ornaments shaped like naked women (of the playboy variety) and religious decals on every window. It is not so much the disrepair, bad music or lack of air conditioning that makes a chicken bus the unforgettable experience that it is. School buses are designed to hold 40 people, and on the trip from Lake Atitlan to Antigua we counted 75, plus luggage. Do I need to go on?


¨I am perfectly capable of ripping some guy´s throat out with my teeth. Can you say the same?¨ L.G.

The trip from Utilia Islands to Copan was another long 12 hour stretch, but not nearly so bad (could anything be so bad?) as the one previously described. We had to change buses twice (after watching some mesmerizing Spanish equivalent of Judge Judy on the ferry) along the way, both in towns where

There is a concept in anthropology called (I expect it has a more formal name, but all I remember is the phrase) Imagined but not Imaginary. The applies to things like borders: the border is not a fact, if you were to take away the walls and guards and passports you wouldn´t know where one country ended and the next began. However, because we have instituted walls and guards and passports the consequences of this imagined divide are real. I got thinking about this immediately after crossing into Nicaragua-- no sooner had we left the border than everything changed. The pavement disappeared, signs vanished, small children wearing ancient formal wear chased the van down the highway. And horses. Tall, bony horses were everywhere, grazing in ditches, in fields, flank-deep in the lake. I asked Jon who the horses belonged to, and he said ¨Ït´s more like, who belongs to the horses.¨

The transition from Nicaragua to Honduras was not as extreme, but it was still noticeable. Thankfully there were no begging children and fewer starving horses, and there was much squealing in the van as we drove through the town and saw Burger King, Wendy's, Baskin Robbins etc. There is just something about fast food when travelling; you don´t even want to eat it (I don´t, at least) but just seeing the sign seems to restore normality to the world. Í'm not sure what that says about ¨our¨ world.

The second bus dropped us off downtown (another town I never learned the name of) and we split up into four taxis to take us out to the long distance bus station. When our cab (which had large chunks of foam missing from the seats) arrived the first thing we saw was a hoard of men surrounding A, N, C and M, and A (who had rarely shown any enthusiasm for anything except dunkin donuts) shouting (words which will not be repeated here) at a smirking Honduran. When we stepped out of the car someone grabbed my arm, and someone else my other arm, and I tried desperately to make sense of the things that were being shouted to me, at me, all around me. People kept trying to take our bags away, leading us towards the parking lot and yelling out the names of nearby towns we might be trying to get to.

On top of it all there was a row of vendors pacing up and down by the fence, calling out food and prices-- full cooked chickens in tin foil, thick brown liquid in plastic bags, fruit and marshmallows, fried plantains and cigarettes. We managed to wrestle the bags away from the imposing crowd, all of whom were hissing at us (the Central American version of cat calling) and making faces so ridiculous I couldn´t decide whether to laugh or ignore it or make faces in return. By the end of it we had tried all of these things, as well as using a whole lot of words I had never said outl oud before; entirely deserved, I assure you.

This would have been one thing if it were just a question of walking to the bus, but none of us knew what bus we were meant to be taking, and the taxi with Jon in it had yet to arrive. More than 20 minutes we stood there, waiting for him, trying to figure out what we would do if he didn´t show up at all. The crowd around us ebbed and flowed, and we got more and more nervous, as a 10 year old tried to sell us porn and one of the vendors asked L if he paid her one dollar could he kiss me. I think it was about that point L snapped and started pushing him (literally) back away from us, yelling at him in Spanish; at first he just laughed at her, but he backed up and no one touched us after that. D lost himself some points by standing far too the side and watching this whole spectacle, but boy was I impressed with L just then. When Jon did show up (along with the Chicago teachers and the Sweeties) it turned out he couldn´t find a taxi and had stopped to buy a coffee.

Ït wasn´t a drunken decision. Well, it was a drunken decision, but I´m sticking to it!¨ M.K.

I have mentioned M only as a part of Team Canada, but she deserves her own bit here. Of that clique --sorry, group-- she was the most outgoing, and the one I had the most to do with. She was studying some sort of science I had never heard of, and is moving to Ontario for 8 months to do an internship. She is stunningly beautiful (the only one of ¨the girls¨ without blond hair), took partying dangerously close to the compulsive, and had a fling with Jon (though I was not supposed to know about that). This was her first travel experience.

About two days before we arrived in Antigua (and said goodbye to the first group) she suddenly decided to stay in Guatemala at the end of the trip. She said she would do two weeks of Spanish classes and then travel across the country on her own. For those two days she talked of little else, borrowing somebody´s Rough Guide and plotting out all the places she wanted to go and stay. I listened as this went from a off the cuff fantasy to a life or death mission. Now I am all about travelling; in general I don´t have enough good things to say about solo travel and all thrill and growing up it brings with it. But to hear M sitting there with her friends in the back of the van chattering away about sailing trips and 30 hours bus journeys I was worried for her. I couldn´t help but feel she was making it into some glamorous fantasy (and if there´s anything you can say for certain about this kind of travel, there is nothing glamorous about it), and really had no concept of what it is to travel alone. But then neither did I, not so long ago. I got an email from her today. She says she is lonely.

¨I just want to pop in, see them, and pop out again. 5 minutes, done.¨ D.L.

It is odd, considering that Copan has been my favourite thing of the trip so far, that I am not going to describe it for you in any depth. We had a fantastic, 75 year old guide who said he was in the Guinness Book of World Records for length of service. He made a lot of dirty jokes and talked as much about himself as about the site, and a creepy geographer in a Tilly hat (who was tagging along with us) described for me the best ways to travel through Egypt, and fought with the guide over the genus of the national tree of Honduras. I´m sorry, but there is only so much you can say about a ruin without seeing it with your own eyes. That´s what the pictures are for!

¨We wanted to feel in touch with the culture. Now we´re ready to go!¨ A.G.

The first night with the new group, the majority of them went off to do (yet another) volcano hike, and I stayed behind (letting my lungs require from the smog of Guatemala City). At about 8:30 I started out to find an internet cafe and ran into Jon, and two of the newbies in the lobby; he said they were off to the carnival, and did I want to come? We had heard that on this leg of the trip there was to be a father and (13 year old) son, but nothing could have prepared us for this father and this son. The father is 35 at most, and has long shaggy hair and the most piercing eyes I have ever encountered; he has a slow quiet voice (as if everything he says is coming from a great distance) and when Jon introduced us I thought he was going to kiss my hand.

He and his son had been in Antigua for a week doing language classes, and he described to me how they had a Mayan priest purify them ¨to prepare them¨ for the trip. He seems fascinated by everyone and everything, and I have yet to decide whether he is incredibly smart and insightful, or if he has fried his brain on drugs. For a few maddening hours I was afraid I was in love with him, but I realize now it is merely fascination; originality will get you far, in my books. R rarely talks. One can hardly blame him.

That night the four of us wandered through the market and listened to a terrible band singing Copacabana in Spanish, flashing strobe lights into the still, disinterested audience. Apparently this was the first night of the fair, and the place was thick with people, all of them in ¨traditional dress¨. Behind the endless tables of textiles and tomatoes there were a few decrepit looking carnival rides-- a ferris wheel, bumper cars, all twisted metal and old paint. A and Jon rode a flying pirate ship while River and I waited. We walked back to the hotel and A said if I needed to buy any jade he knew someone who could ¨hook me up¨. R told me the only thing he had learned to say in his week of Spanish classes was Shakira. Having a new group stopped being a nuisance.



¨I need a shaman. To help me talk to the other world.¨ A.G.

4 chicken buses later we were in Panajachel, a town (basically a market and a few hotels) on the shores of Lake Atitlan, enjoying the most comfortable weather of the entire trip, despite the rain. Panajachel is basically the stopover point for two activities: taking a boat trip to Santiago Atitlan, and the other is going to the tongue-twisting Chichicastenango (literally a giant market, a church, and mind-boggling assortments of tourists). Santiago Atitlan is a village noted for its puzzling ongoing mixture of Mayan religious belief and Catholicism (and remote enough that the men still wear ¨traditional¨dress, as well as the women).



The highlight of a visit here is the visit to the god/saint/devil Maximon (pronounced Mash-ee-moan). As it was explained to us on the boat, Maximon is in charge of all the evil and vice in the world, and people pray and make offerings to him, asking that no harm will come to them or their families. He is kept inside someone´s house, and every year on Easter he moves in with another family. A lit cigarette is kept in his mouth at all times, and every day he is given a shot of rum. From this description I wasn´t sure what to expect, but we followed obediently behind the the two 7 year old boys who met us at the dock and agreed to take us. We walked up a steep hill, stopping twice at small shops because Aaron wanted to buy cigarettes as an offering (apparently they do not sell cigarettes on Santiago Atitlan), and by the time we arrived in the dirt kitchen of Maximon´s current home I couldn´t have told you where we were if you´d paid me.



We had to wait a minute, as only 5 people were allowed in to see him at one time. K (who is my new roommate, and a good friend already) was talking to the man who´s house it was, translating something A was saying as he handed him some money. W (another new guy) who was standing next to them asked what the money was for.

A: I´ve sent him to get a shaman.
W: For what?
A: To help me talk to the other world.
W: Uh huh.

Before I could hear the end of that exchange someone ushered me through the curtain into the presence of Maximon. The room was very dark, and the first thing that entered my head was that I wasn´t sure which of the objects in the room was the one I was looking for. Directly in front of me was a clear coffin with white Christmas lights on top of it, illuminating a plastic figure of Jesus. Was this Maximon? I looked around and saw 4 men sitting at a table watching me through a cloud of smoke. What was I supposed to be looking at? Feeling rather stupid I started towards the door (from door to door the room was less than 10 steps across) wondering what it was I had missed when I saw him, standing in front of the kitchen table (for as my eyes adjusted to the light I realized we were in someone´s kitchen). He was a wooden statue, about as high as my waist, wrapped in women´s scarves of every conceivable pattern. In his hand he held a bowl in which to deposit the 2 Quetzals (Guatemalan currency) required for the visitation. And that was it. The scarves, the kitchen, the glowing Jesus... and back outside I went.

The rest of us sat on the curb for half an hour waiting for A, K (who was translating), P (who was video taping), and Jon (who was in the right place at the right time) to emerge from their time with the Shaman. This little ¨stunt¨ of A´s had made him rather unpopular with the other guys (not that I suppose he would care much about that) and I pretended I wouldn´t have given anything to see what was going on in that little room. Finally they stumbled out, reeking of incense and looking as if they´d never seen the light of day before. Jon kept saying ¨Wow¨, over and over again, and A put his hand on his shoulder and said Ït´s going to be that kind of trip!¨

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That about brings us up to speed on the peculiar goings on of the last week. (Not too bad for a week, is it?). Hope you are well and happy. Keep your eye on my blog for pictures.

Adios,

Nel

--
¨I believe in quality, descriptive, and well-crafted writing,¨ she began ¨And all I can think to say is Wow!¨ Nora Roberts