Lago Lightinng

Panajachel, Guatemala
Oct 26, 2001


Me overlooking the Mayan ruins at Palenque, Mexico.

The water turned warm then hot. I stepped into the steaming stream and sighed; the first hot shower in ten days. I stood and let the water warm my neck and back for ten minutes before stepping out into my private bathroom and drying off.

I rented an expensive ($20) room in a small house run by Pedro and his wife in Chichicastenango, a trading city in the Quiche (key-chay) highlands. The spacious room sported Mayan wood carvings and a bright patchwork quilt. A yellow wood jaguar with red spots held the lamp by the bed. My private balcony looked out on the mountains behind the city, where a famous market took place on Thursday (the next day).

The previous six days took me from Flores along the backroads of Guatemala, leaving the El Peten rainforest and climbing the spiny central highlands, the Cordillera de los Cuchumatanes. Beat up chicken buses, old US schoolbuses with the same broken window latches, plied up and down single dirt tracks cut into the steep mountains.

With no set schedule, we stood by the road and hailed buses going in our direction, crowded with campesinos going to and from the small villages that became namesakes in our country jaunt: Coban, Sayache, Uspantan, Sacapulus, Quiche, and Chichi.

At each stop, the Mayan descendent women clambered aboard in their fantastically colored hupiles, hawking all manner of food and drink. A chicken wing in a scoop of greasy rice wrapped in three flour tortillas stuffed in a plastic bag became the staple that sustained us for these multi-hour trips.

Road dust floated in as the buses stopped every ten years to pick up or drop off someone. What about some central bus stop for heaven's sake! The rutted roads and worn out springs made for a proctologist's nightmare ride. Horns sounded at every curve and every few minutes the bus slid to a stop, in a standoff with a truck or a pickup filled with people. After a moment, one car backed up off the road. I never figured out the pattern of yielding the right-of-way.

One bus leg finds three of us gringos on the roof of one of the ubiquitous chicken buses. The colorful rides get downright exhilarating on the top as we duck low hanging braches every few seconds to the cry of, "ramas," (which I deduced meant braches). The hue of "libre," brought our heads back up from behind baskets of fish, backpacks, roped firewood, and someone's shiny red new wheelbarrow. Two hours brought some rain as we ascended the Cordillera - note to self: bring warm cloths on bustops. My shorts and shirt did not cut it up there, but we were forced back inside finally by the driver as we approached a police checkpoint, ending our Ramas-ride.

After stuffing my backpack to the brim with cheap Mayan cloth and carvings at the Chichi market the next day, I made my way (after one more hot shower) to Lago Atitlan. The lake fills an old volcano caldera and sits at 5,500 feet in the mountains. Three other volcanos rise above the lake to over 9,000 feet, like Mount Fuji xeroxed. I settle into a room on the lake in Panajachel, a small tourist town.

I have hot water here also, and a TV. I surf the channels and find The Simpsons, in English. I spend the next 30 minutes laughing aloud and surely annoying my neighbors, two Aussie women doctors. Surfing more, I miss ABC World News, also in English, but catch the local news feed afterwards...from WKRN 2 in Nashville! So I don't know the situation in Afghanistan, but I do know it will be in the mid-30's at this weekend's University of Tennessee's Vol's game. Go figure.

Stepping outside into the evening, rising clouds blot out the sunset I hoped to see. Instead, brilliant flashes of lightning begin to illuminate the sky behind Volcan San Pedro, across the lake from me. Shades of gray clouds layer over the black volcanic cone. The clouds light up bright white and gray, rhythmically with the staccato flashes.

Answering the call, Volcan Atitlan and Toliman emerge as solid black shapes, backlit by stoboscopic flashes against the halo of clouds clinging to their summits. The volleys go back and forth, from my left to right and back again as the gods in the volcanoes build to a crescendo. I can almost hear Moussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain in the background. The night grows colder as a wind blows in off the lake, but still no thunder accompanies the lightning. I shiver and pull on my fleece for the first time this trip.

Standing alone on the shore, I lose myself in the light show before I realize that two people stand next to me. It's Rachel and Natasha, my two neighbors from Perth, and bathroom mates. They invite me for drinks and pizza next door. I tell them I will be along in a moment, after a few more minutes of the lightning on the lake.

Oaxaca Dreams

Antigua, Guatemala
October 12, 2001



A church in Antigua, Guatemala. Beautiful architecture like this also reigns in old colonial cities like Oaxaca, Mexico.

I spent the last two and a half days here in this old colonial city tucked in a valley in the state of Chiapas. You fall right in love with Oaxaca (wa-HA-ka) upon seeing the tree shaded zocalo (square). Brightly painted buildings in deep blues, pinks, yellows and greens line the streets, while polished wood doors beckon.

The people charm away any remnants of the seige mentality inhereted from any time spent in Mexico City, where one watches over one's shoulder for pickpockets like bin Laden looks for Delta Force. Many other travelers I spoke to left Mexico after a day or so and gravitated here.

My first stop, following two German backpackers took me to a hostel recommended by the Lonely Planet, costing just P70 ($8) per person. I wandered over and opened the door to the communal toilet and found the set from Trainspotting. Bidding my cheaper German friends farewell, I hustled down the street to a hotel for double the price, but newly renovated and clean - and a bano privado (private bath) - Hotel Aurora.

For a while I recalculated the cost of a P150 room ($17), doing my best mental F9 and projecting the cost over the next year. After some mental gyrations I figured that the bank would not be broken and I could "rough it" and save on food instead. Good choice.

Food for the adventurous comes cheap, hot and plentiful, amidst a colorful setting too. Taking a break from the 36-hour endurance ride from Tijuana to Mexico City, the driver beckoned us off the bus in a small town. I grabbed my passport and got ready to run for it, sure we were being handed over to gunmen.

Instead, I found myself wolfing down some tacos at a sidewalk vendor, literally sitting under a street light with the smoke from the skillet, mounted on some contraption with two bike wheels, wafting into my face. Six tacos and P30 later, I thanked the driver for pulling us to his favorite spot...I never found out the city.

Similar dining experiences awaited me in Oaxaca, where a doorway leads to a old woman deep frying quesadillas in a wok for P4 each. Filled with cheese, coriander and covered with frijoles negros and a green salsa, I delighted in the authentic Oaxaca cuisine.

Mexican beer and salted peanuts heralded the night, seated in one of the sidewalk cafes lining the four sides of the zocalo. The distinctive Zapato indian people resembled American Indians, with sharp features, jet black hair and brown eyes. Tourist mingled with locals and other Mexican vacationers circum-ambulating the square.

After a day trip to the nearby Monte Alban ruins, just 30 minutes away, I prepared to leave my newly adopted home in Mexico. Two other travelers from the UK shared drinks with me last night, passing thru Oaxaca for a second time, so strong was their infatuation with the city. I plan to return also...someday.

Chicken Bus

El Naranjo, Guatemala
October 18, 2001



Classic chicken bus; this one is leaving Antigua to Guatemala City, the capital of Guatemala. Photo by Michael Seto.

The dilapidated bus rumbled in early, squeaking and bouncing along the rutted tracks in the grass. A young man in jeans and a t-shirt stood in the door, "Flores! Flores!"

We grabbed our packs, yelling back, "Si, si!" and hustled over.

He strapped our packs to the roof and we climbed onto the bus. Every seat was filled with Guatemalan farmers, women, and children. I spotted a couple empty seats in the back and we hoisted our day packs and squeezed through the aisle, no-one made any effort to move aside as we passed.

I sat down and said, "buenos dias" to the man next to me, who smelled of several days sweat and wore clothes whose mud stains looked permanent. He did not respond. Sitting there, I heard a squeal and glanced behind me, to see this old woman with a chicken squirming around in a plastic bag, I thought this is going to be interesting.

Andrew and Fiona and I met at the bus station leaving Oaxaco to Palenque. They were English backpackers and we hung out together and decided to travel to Mexico over a less common route Tenosique to El Naranjo to Flores, our ultimate destination.

This involved a complex sequence of transportation, which serendipidouly arrived on time. We rode a small van to La Palma in Mexico and there negotiated for a speedboat to take us on a three hour journey up the Rio San Pedro to El Naranjo, in Guatemala.

William, our Mexican speedboat pilot glided the boat in sensuous curves up the river, hemmed in on both sides by reeds and trees. Birds started and flew off at the sound of our boat. Passing some rapids on our right, I leaned over to get a better look as the broader river continued forward.

Suddenly, William banked the boat and headed straight for an impassable gap. We gasped and I crouched down, grabbing the back of a seat and flexing my knees, waiting for the impact against the rocks defining a five foot gap thru which water surged toward us. In a instant we exploded into calm waters on the other side of the gap, passing with inches to spare. I glanced at William as I sat back down and he smiled.

The remainder of the speedboat journey was as calm as the morning water of the river and we arrived safely in the scrap wood and aluminum siding rag-tag village of El Naranjo a few hours later - and hopped the chicken bus.

I looked at my watch after dozens of stops, where people jumped on or off the bus. One hour. The young guy who collected our 25 Quetzals told us the ride would be four hours. The bus smelled like a stale locker room and all the passengers needed a deodorant bomb to go off in the bus, including us.

Three hours into the journey down pot-holed dirt road, a trio of girls boarded, yelling in Spanish, hawking soft drinks and some tortillas. After some debate, I looked at her wares, a yellow chicken wing, sitting on some rice, wrapped in three small flour tortillas. The rice was orange from the chicken grease. I forked over 5Q and dug in with my fingers into the hot food. it was delicious.

We arrived in Flores a while later and found a nice hotel. After a cold shower and a beer, I sat on the porch overlooking Lake Peten Itza, on which Flores island sits, and thought, what a great trip on my first chicken bus.