Curva Peligrosa y el Ombligo

Antigua - Lago Atitlan - Flores, Guatemala

The amazing Lake Atitlan, Colette took this photo from a lancha heading to the markets in Santiago Atitlan one morning

This week´s title was inspired by none other than the proximity of a common Guatemalan road sign´s texting to the Croatian language (Hrvatski) and, well the amazing place that is Lago Atitlan (Lake Atitlan) in the Guatemalan highlands.

"Curva Peligrosa y el Ombligo" [Dangerous Bend and the Umbilicus]

The lake was named the "Umbilicus of the World" by Martin Prechtel in his amazing book describing his life as an initiated shaman living in Santiago Atitlan some 30 years back (today this is a large town on the sourthern bank of Lake Atitlan, home to 40,000 Tzutujiles).The book is named Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, published in 1998, and if you haven´t read it yet, I strongly recommend it for anyone who feels that some ounce of their natural, wild self still exists somewhere quietly, hidden deep inside their hearts and souls.

Coffee is the rule in Antigua, Guatemala (this sign is from Fernando`s, one of the nicest cafe`s in town)

An antique coffee ball roasting machine desinged by none other than a German

Workers in the coffee drying fields

So much coffee...

These photos are courtesy of a tour we took through the La Azotea coffee farm

This was a little church inside the farm compund, maybe for the workers? 

The bus ride from Antigua to Panajachel, the most common tourist entry point to Lake Atitlan, is nothing short of amazing...amazing for having survived that demon ride through hell´s scorned and twisted gates! Picture this folks; our driver is a well worn Guatemalan cowboy doning a white cowboy hat, he drives as if each day is his last and perhaps he is a little hungover from last nights celebration for having survived the previous day on this very same bus.

This is a Subaru Impreza, some 40 years older than Colette`s BAM-056 Canadian version, that we found in Antigua

I bet every morning this man wakes up, makes love to his wife for what might be his last time again, kisses her after breakfast and says "Don´t wait up for me!" and steps out his door facing another day of probable death. once he hits that driver seat he rides that pony like its a bat from the devil´s very own cage for what seems to be his next attempt to score a PB (personal best time) on the leg between Antigua and Panajachel on Lake Atitlan. This journey they say is supposed to take around 4 hours; we get there in 3 hours and 15 minutes!...after many stops along the way picking up the local Mayan highlanders heading for the weekend markets around Lake Atitlan. This bus hurls along the two lane and sometimes one lane highway, around and up and down such tight bends that your liver screams for mercy, and at such a speed that I swear TO GOD, the bus could not, I repeat COULD NOT have gone any faster - for the laws of physics themselves would not permit it!!!

Happy having survived this improbability of life´s existences, we reach the tranquil shores of Lago Atitlan. Despite arriving in Panajachel, the place itself being very beautiful with scores of handicraft shops to browse and quite a welcoming tourist trap, our destination is San Marcos La Laguna. A short lancha (taxi boat) ride across the lake, San Marcos La Laguna sits comfortably on the far North-Western edge of Lago Atitlan, a modern spiritual meccha for many a crusty hippie, artesan and "spiritual healer".

Making another bracelet at Hotel Aaculax in San Marcos La Laguna

San Marcos La Laguna is an amazing place. Even the most hardened sceptic could not deny that after a week spent here they felt nothing, not even a slight change in their attitude. This place evokes tranquility, not only because there are more spiritual or yoga or healing ceremony retreats here than in West End, Brisbane (or Kensignton in Calgary) - but also because its home to the Kakchikeles (traditional Mayan people living along the northern bank of Lake Atitlan), and its just so damn beautiful.

The ornate and beautiful Hotel Aaculax, we spent three nights here

Your happy hosts in San Marcos La Laguna

We fall for its charms, and those of the many little villages around the edge of the lake. There are in fact two major traditional language groups of Mayan people here, Kakchikel (northern bank) and Tzutujil (southern bank). The days are spent quietly, paitently and calmy. San Marcos La Laguna has no roads in Barrio 3, the part of town where the tourists prevail, only little dirt paths with hand painted signs telling you where you can eat, sleep and get "healed". Swimming in the lake just off the rocks to the West of town is a calming and refreshing experience, and if you dare you can take the 10 meter plunge off the timber deck built for this purpose. Colette jumped twice on our last day there!

We take another week of Spanish through the Orbita Spanish School from San Pedro La Laguna, run by Rene, a really clever and very polite man and single parent of two amazing kids. Here in San Pedro La Laguna the local language is Tzutujil, same as in Santiago Atitlan. While their program is really well structured  for a period of up to 8 weeks or more, we insist on only practising conversation which turns out to be the right course of action. After many weeks of grammar, we just needed to know how to use it.

Colette studying at the Orbita Spanish School in San Pedro La Laguna (Rene the director was her teacher)

Not a bad view from my study desk hey? (this is my teacher Myra, she was lovely)

In San Marcos La Laguna we stayed at El Arbol, the only Mayan, and in fact Guatemalan owned hotel in San Marcos La Laguna. The owner Rigoberto and his whole family are amazing and outwardly honest and hardworking people. They are also very industrious, owning the hotel, a handicraft shop selling colourful Kakchikel clothes and wowen gifts, a tienda (regular little corner shop) selling water by the volume for your bottles and home made cakes and breads made by doña de la casa (Rigo´s wife) and also a very affordable restaurant serving up some local breakfast choices.

The gorgeous and affordable Hotel El Arbol, San Marcos La Laguna

Our breakfast table at Moonfish in San Marcos La Laguna, the amazing food at this restaurant is all local, organic and healthy - and super tasty!

This drinking spot in Santiago Atitlan does not want guns inside...or your dogs!

I really took to the village, making friends with many artesans (local and foreign) and local children and other townsfolk. The kids here like in many poorer parts of the world are used to being given gifts or money by ignorant toursits. While the intention is sweet and good, the reality and its consequences affect the local people badly since the kids learn that they can just beg or ask for things to get by in life. I refuse to give anyone anything for free and find myself teaching kids how to make bracelets, taking classes in Kakchikel in return for bracelet gifts (which I also had to make while I was there) and just generally trying to teach good examples. Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man how to fish...and well you get the picture.

My young and beautiful Kakchikel teacher Juana Evelia, she is the only girl in San Marcos La Laguna selling pure cacao chocolates made just across the lake in San Pedro La Laguna (she is 11 years old and is wearing the bracelet I made for her as payment for the language lessons)

The outcome is that I really get to know some of the people here quite well, I learn a little of the local language which comes in handy and earns many warm smiles, and finally my experience of our time here is so much richer. The Kakchikel language is beautiful, rich and warm...just like the locally grown coffee and chocolate!

Seq`ar [pronounced sick-arsh] - means Buenas Dias or Good Morning

Xq`aq`ij [pronounced sh-kak-ich] - means Buenas Tardes or Good Afternoon


Utzauach [pronounced utz-ah-watch] - means Como Estas or How Are You

Tiosh`xawa [pronounced tee-osh-shower] - means Gracias A Ti / Muchas Gracias or Thank You Very Much

...and my personal favourite...

Chuac`chic [pronounced chew-a-cheek] - means Hasta Mañana or See You Tomorrow

...I will miss this place, and ache to return soon.

We became good friends after seeing each other lots over the week and had a great time making jokes, she was truly sad when we said goodbye to her the night before we left (it broke Colette`s heart to hear Evelia say "Yo voy a ser muy triste que ustedes salen...")

We leave the lake and its amazing wonders after kitting ourselves in some of the amazing colourful locally handmade clothing, and take a 12 hour bus ride to Flores, in Peten in Northern Guatemala. The journey amazingly takes us past the three largest lakes in Guatemala, first we start from Lago Atitlan, we zoom past Lago Izabal near Rio Dulce, and end up on the shores of Lago Peten Itzà in Flores. All in one day, and what is the meaning behind all this water? Are we not made of 70% water? Interesting...

Where we are off to next we don´t know, maybe its time for a rest in Flores...either way the "Umbilicus" part of the title is very suiting, without disregard to our proximate new family member way up in that cold part of the world. Is it time yet?

Cross-country Guatemala: Rio Dulce to La Antigua

It is difficult to leave Guatemala. Just as difficult as keeping yourself from falling in love with Guatemala. This little piece of tierra firma contains all that is life on planet earth. Among the most beautiful scenery and landscape, some of the most pristine rainforest and jungle, rivers, streams and water bodies, cultures and colours, foods and smells, breathtaking Maya sites, moments of tranquil silence and spiritual contemplation - there are also many, many problems, blemishes and imperfections.

Where there is natural beauty there is also destruction. With wealth comes poverty. Happiness and grief. Health and sickness. Abundance and waste. Kindness and cruelty. Equality and discrimination. Pride and shame.
 

Lonely parrot in Livingston, Guatemala



The fishing boats prepare for tomorrow´s catch, Livingston

Our beautiful room in Livingston at the Garden Gatehouse

Just like the human spirit, Guatemala contains chaos as much as it contains serenity. To truly fall in love, one must become aware of flaws as well as beauty, because without the flaws, it just doesn´t function and it isn´t living. You cannot love something that is perfect, nor someone who reflects perfection because perfection represents death, death of the human spirit and of nature itself. Each day you must decide whether today is the day you love it, or the day you hate it. Either way you stick by it because the ups make the downs possible, and the downs make you appreciate the ups.

Entonces, todavia estamos aqui. [So, we are still here]

We caught a ride on the back of a tractor to get to Finca Paraiso near El Estor

The miraculous hot waterfalls of Finca Paraiso, hot water pours upstream of the waterfall from a spring in the mountain and this waterfall meets a cold water river from the rain catchment

Just amazing, the top is the hot water and the bottom is cold water

A natural wonder visited by many tourists coming from Rio Dulce which is around one hour away by bus, we took a boat through Lago Izabal courtesy of our dear Afghani friends

We ended our week of study in Rio Dulce, our heads hurting from an uptake of enormous amounts of information. Ileana is a wonderful teacher, disgustingly knowledgable in both Spanish and English, she pushed us hard. And good on her, in that one week we progressed a huge deal, learning a whole second half of the Spanish language which is used for ideas and intentions - subjuntivo. A perfect example of this would be to say "I hope that you call me tomorrow when you return home". "Call me" and "you return" would be conjugated as subjuntivos because they only exist in the mind, you cannot be certain that either is or will be taking place. Hence we have a whole second set of conjugated verbs which makes up roughly half of the Spanish language. We resisted at first claiming that we wouldn´t need it yet, however being the clever and competent teacher that she is, she pointed to the fact that not knowing subjuntivo was causing 50% of all our lingual errors. She was correct.

Peering over the rooftops of Antigua, the volcano Pacaya looms over the stone town

Waiting to catch the 8am bus from Rio Dulce to Antigua, shortly after a sad farewell to the gang at Xalaja, we treated ourselves to a warm breakfast of bean panini from a street vendor. As we happily munched our breakfast treats, I noticed a guy pushing a tall wooden cart filled with freshly baked goods. I shot across the street and purchased two sweet buns and a small tear-apart number they call francesa. Now we had our munchies for the five hour bus ride. The only stop before the bus change in Guatemala city was at a little roadside service place. Hordes of locals here were selling all kinds of fresh fruits and even some small chocolate muffins. We really slept poorly the night before following our farewell night with the Afghani´s (Basir and his cousing Ali from Toronto) where we played poker and drank shots of tequila, a great combination no doubt. A few hours before the gambling and shooting started, I re-designed Basir´s vacation home in Rio Dulce in just two hours, he was more than happy about this. The tequila was quite pure and clean leaving little headache, but we only caught three hours sleep, leading us to the deicion that eating a bag-full of already skinned mandarins at the rest stop might just give us the vitamin boost we so badly needed.

The courtyard of the Spanish embassy in Antigua, there´s a lovely cafe here too

The town´s poor gather in a protest walk, many of these people survive on what little they manage to sell at Antigua´s market (one of the neatest in the world maybe) - the municipality aims to reduce the area of the market to free up more commercial space

A horse drawn cart for romantic rides through Antigua rides through our view of Parque Central, don´t they have these in Venice and Rome too?

The ride through this line of Guatemala takes you from a very tropical and wet carribean coast, through a dry and hilly desert region, to climb up toward Guatemala city with magnificent views over the ever changing landscape. The weather was changing too, the air quickly becoming crisp and cool. We experienced all this through sleepy eyelids, finding it near impossible to stay away on the reasonably comfortable ride. Colette woke me just in time to see Guatemala city as we dove further and further into the civic chaos. Zona 6 was when I first become aware that we were indeed entering something which we hadn´t experienced in nearly 5 months, a real metropolitan city. Zona 1 in the centre of Guatemala city is the oldest and most beautiful part we saw, the bus station where we changed buses was right smack bang in the middle of all of this. Despite only spending and hour or so on buses zipping and crawling through Guatemala city, I was very happy to have seen it and we spent this part of the ride very wide eyed at all the civic existence which radiated around us.

The Burger King was here, even big corporations play by the civic aesthetic rules in Antigua

McHappy? Ronald enjoys the sunshine in one of the town´s nicest courtyards with views to Pacaya, the courtyard is only a part of the MacDonald´s that exists here...it is ridiculously fancy for what it is, and people sure go here for some reason

Once you exit Guatemala city heading toward Antigua, the bus ends up hurling down an extremely steep and windy, albeit well surfaced, road. Every second turns boasts a safety stopping ramp which, take my word for it, look extremely used. Lucky, I thought. We entered Antigua, a small, short and wonderfully mosaic collection of stone buildings. After insisting to be dropped off at the "bus station" instead of the Parque Central, we ended up walking the 12 or so blocks West to the part of town we planned on staying in. Great thing too as we got to see a big part of Antigua and what was even better, we ran into our friend Hila from Isreal whom we met in Rio Dulce, just two blocks before we hit the park. Impossible had we been dropped off at the centre, since neither of us seemed to remember her saying she would be in Antigua this week.

Notice the motorbike parking sign? It´s a little tile forming part of the sidewalk in Antigua

What about the Universal Access signs? Yes, in Antigua you can get just about anywhere in a wheelchair...in your face first world!

It was her last day in Guatemala, and it was Valentine´s Day after all, so we insisted on her joining us for a lovely dinner at an Argentine restaurant. The place was gorgeous, full of colour and life as you might expect, and the tapas were tounge melting treats of Argentine/Italian origins. The hosts were really joyful and spoke quick fire spanish to us, really testing our newly acquired knowledge. We got lucky with our decision to draw the night out with little bites and plenty of good Argentinian Malbec because sometime during the night a really talented fellow got up with his guitar and sang some really lovely tunes. We called it a night when we ran out of money and kissed and hugged Hila farewell, promising to visit Isreal sometime in the future. Look out bank account, here we come!

Our rooftop, we did yoga with views of three volcanos this morning

Pretty things come in threes, Colette´s wonderful photo on top of our lodging

Learning how to jugle, in a nice office

Antigua is a like a good rash. You scratch it because it feels good and the more you scratch the deeper you get, but you just can´t stop thinking about it and hence scratching some more. The town has it all, in swats and heaps. Delicious restaurants, wickedly good coffee, bakeries, street vendors, handicrafts, markets, scenery, weather, art, history, gardens gardens gardens, courtyards which make you feel like you are living a poem - and all beautifully arranged on a canvas of colonial antiquity brigthened with flashes of indigenous character. No other city or town in the world has played the civic design card as well, even the street signs are part of the beautifully arranged tiled sidewalks and building facades. World Heritage foundation would surely be proud of this little number and they truly belong on the top of that list for Heritage towns.

This lovely stone courtyard resides inside one of Antigua´s oldest cathedrals dating back to the 16th century...and I swear I have seen this in a computer game, Marko?

It pays to be pious, these guys are remembered by being carved into this amazing wooden door

Jumping from sheer grace, we take a stroll through one of the strictest ex-nunneries ever...apparently it was so isolated even the food had to go through a steel turnstyle similar to a prison cell´s

Ofcourse there are also hoards, and hoards of tourists, Yankee missionaries and other such ignorant folk...including us two dazed mongrels, who at times truly look like we belong back in the bush with our extensive wardrobe of putrid greown (grey and brown) one choice pants, nasty ass cracker backpacker sandals that have seen better days and not many tops to choose from. I feel somewhere between homeless and tourist. We dine well and speak to people with some sense of dignity, but man do we look poorly dressed. We were clever when we first arrived in finding two heavier sweater like garments for the cold weather just within hours of arriving, because it really gets chilly here right now.

Wonderful colour, captured in paint...Colette really wants the middle one

One of the many merchants of the region´s handicrafts, these amazing goods are handmade in the many villages near and far of the country´s capital

In stark contrast to his dress, we were surprised to find this gentleman quite cold and unresponsive

Our touristic non-existence was gratefully broken yesterday when we walked into the only surf-shop in town (Global Surf Guatemala). Yes there really is one. They sell surf stuff and take people on learn-to-surf tours into El Salvador. Turns out that one of the owners is a rather warm and interesting Isreali fellow named Ori (why are there so many Isreali´s here?), within minutes of meeting him he invited us to coffee, to which we happily obliged. After a few hours of excellent conversation with Ori, he decided to treat us to a non-tourist experience for a dinner at his house that evening. Great! We bought some banana bread for desert and two bottles of cheap and good Chilean red, and off we were to his place just South outside of Antigua in what you might call the suburbs. We made a great and simple home-style red sauce pasta and were joined for dinner by his good friend from England named Jessica. We had a great evening with all kinds of engaging conversation topped off with some excellent inspiring videos on You Tube...and if you haven´t yet seen these then you must (list at the end).

One of many stunning courtyards that abound in Antigua

All in all, we still hope to make it to San Marco on the side of Lago Atitlan for another week of Spanish lessons...but with so many indulgences and the general waft of delicious Guatemala-ness, one just cannot be certain of their future.

You Tube must watch list:
+ Flute and human beatbox which transcends human limitations, Nathan Lee and Beardyman
+ The world´s most ingenious busker from the UK, DubFX (don´t miss "Love Someone")
+ Bass playing which just isn´t possible from Victor Wooten and (don´t miss part 2!)
+ Voice soloist Bobby Mcferrin most famous for "being happy" (he does a Bach celo solo too)