Coban, Semuc Champey, Caves and Bat Crap

This morning we got an early start from Coban, a lovely old city with a little colonial influence. It’s the center of coffee and cardamom production in the area. Best of all, it’s the base for much of Guatemala’s biotourism, offering the easiest access to Semuc Champey, Grutas de Lanquin and el Biotopo del Quetzal.

First, we took a long and bumpy ride out to Semuc Champey, a limestone bridge over the Rio Cahabon. On top of the limestone bridge there are all of these lovely little pools. In places, the water is almost eerily blue. Some of the pools are ankle deep, while others are deep enough for swimming and diving. Along the edges of the pools the forest rose up steeply. All sorts trees and vines hang over the water, creating an especially exotic feel. Since we got such an early start, we had the park almost all to ourselves for most of the morning.

We waded upstream, to where the river runs under the bridge. The river had an incredible amount of force and made an absolute din. There used to be a rope ladder down to the river, but I was actually glad it was gone, so I didn’t have to admit that I was scared to climb down. At the end of the bridge, the streams rejoin in a massive waterfall. The water turns back to its normal brown and continues on its way.

After Semuc Champey, we headed over to the nearby Grutas de Lanquin, a series of limestone caves over the Lanquin River. To make the caves more accessible the Guatemalan authorities built a catwalk and put up diesel powered lights for the first few thousand feet of the cave. Despite the construction, the caves were extremely slippery from the moisture and guano, and I fell down a few times. Yet, somehow being covered in mud and bat crap didn’t detract from the experience.

Caves are extremely important in the Maya cosmology. They created and enhanced many caves as sacred spaces. The Maya divide the world into three parts, the underworld, the earth, and the heavens. Caves are seen as a gateway the underworld, where ancestors dwell.

The caves had a cathedral feel for us as well. They roof was hundred of feet above us, with stone spires called stalactites hanging down. Ahead of us, massive towers called stalagmites rose up out of the ground. Every formation was unique, and looked like different animal or object. The cave forms, a karst landscape, are created when rain and groundwater charged with carbonic acid dissolve the limestone and when calcium carbonate deposits are created by slow drips. Despite the lighting, everything had an eerie glow about it. The sounds were also amazing: the muffled roar of the river below us, the echoes of our footsteps, and the occasional bat.

After exploring the caves a bit, I can totally understand why people are so into spelunking. If I weren’t afraid of bats, the dark and being lost, I would be really into it too.

Sayaxché, Dos Pilas and Aguateca

Sayaxché is a small town located on across the Rio de la Pasión on the highway from Flores. You have to take a little ferry to get to town, which was super fun. While there’s not much tourism in town there are a number of archeological sites strung out along the river.

We hired a boat to take us to an hour down the river, through the uninhabited jungle, to one of the better preserved sites, Aguateca. The influence and fortunes of Aguateca, and its sister city, Dos Pilas, rose and fell like so many of the other sites I’ve discussed, following a pattern of overexpansion and overinvestment of resources in status symbols, and falling prey to environmental phenomena, changing trade patterns, and in this case, hostile neighbors.

Dos Pilas rose to prominence in the Late Classic period. The city was founded by a faction who split with Tikal around 640 CE. Their leader, Lightning Sky, was a member of the royal family who formed an allegiance with Calakmul and broke away during Tikal’s decline. For the next few centuries Dos Pilas was in a constant state of war and seige, fighting with Tikal, Ceibal, Yaxchilán and Motul and fending off Putun forces from Mexico. As a result Dos Pilas was abandoned, despite heavy fortifications, only a hundred years later around 760 CE.

Aguateca was Dos Pilas’ slightly less powerful sister city and trading partner. Many of the monuments there mirror those at Dos Pilas and show shared military victories. When Dos Pilas was abandoned most of the nobility migrated to Aguateca, a more defensible site. The city is surrounded by five kilometers of stone walls, no small feat given the steep terrain. Despite these extensive fortifications, Aguateca appears to have fallen around 790 CE, a mere thirty years after the Dos Pilas leadership moved there. Aguateca’s downfall is especially interesting because all evidence suggests it was sudden and violent. Some structures show fire damage, while many valuables ceremonial objects were smashed and household objects were left behind.

Aguateca’s defensive properties also made it amazingly scenic. The site is situated a few kilometers up steep, slippery, rocky embankment from the river. Some of the structures are situated on the bluff, making spectacular lookouts where you could see miles downriver. A deep chasm cuts through the middle of the settlement, spanned by a single bridge. I know the rainforest wasn’t as dense when the city was in service, but the thick, dark, almost oppressive foliage and the howling monkeys made the ruins seems even more mysterious and inhospitable. And while it probably wasn’t a key part of the Mayan defense strategy, the mosquitoes were so bad they certainly kept us from staying too long.

Since I know you're all sick of photos of archeological digs here's Lola, our hotel's parrot, and the Rio de la Pasión.

Tikal and its Downfall

Today we visited Tikal, the most magnificent of the Guatemalan Mayan ruins. You probably remember it as a rebel base in a scene in Star Wars IV. The site has that sort of otherworldly aura, which attracts George Lucas, tens of thousands of tourists and us all the same.

The entire area was shrouded in a soft mist and low light, which added to the air of mystery and history. Located in lowland rainforest, Tikal is surrounded by giant ceiba, tropical cedar and mahogany trees. The ruins rise above the forest floor, towering up to two hundred feet above. Many of them are unexcavated, hidden under oddly rectilinear hills. They’re protected by huge park, which is also home to all sorts of animals. We saw coatis and occellated turkeys, heard howler monkeys and macaws, and were warned of jaguar and jaguarondi.

Tikal was settled around 900 BCE, but for the next century it was overshadowed by nearby El Mirador. Around 250 CE a massive volcanic eruption rocked the Mayan world and El Mirador fell from power, allowing Tikal and nearby Uaxactún to rise to power. The two were rivals until Tikal aligned itself with Teotihuacán, in modern day Mexico City, which armed Tikal with slings and arrows, allowing them to definitively defeat Uaxactún around 400 CE. At that point Teotihuacán appears to have taken over leadership of Tikal, starting a new royal line. Over the next half century Tikal dominated the area, growing rapidly. At its peak, Tikal was estimated to have somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 inhabitants.

At the same time Calakmul, to the north, was also expanding. Calakmul slowly surrounded Tikal with allied cities, including Naranjo and Waka’. Tikal attacked one of Calakmul’s allies, Caracol, in modern Belize, around 550 CE. In turn Caracol retaliated with reinforcements from Calakmul, defeating Tikal. For the next hundred years there was a hiatus in new construction. Eventually Tikal recovered, defeating Calakmul and undergoing a renaissance around 700 CE.

Then, around 900 CE all construction at Tikal, and most other Mayan sites, came to an abrupt halt. There are no new written inscriptions or steale after 910 CE. It’s as if the entire civilization, at the time one of the world’s most advanced, suddenly collapsed. How did it happen? It appears that Mayan civilization’s splendor and spectacular collapse may actually be connected. In Collapse, Jared Diamond’s new book, he posits that many societies exceed their ecological carrying capacities, often for empire building and conspicuous consumption (i.e. pyramid construction) purposes and are then unable to cope with changing environmental circumstances and subsequently collapse. Tikal is an extraordinary example of such a collapse.

Tikal had palaces, plazas, observatories, ball courts, residential complexes and steale. The most memorable are Tikal’s massive pyramids. Most of them were constructed in the Pre-Classic era, then renovated and expanded in the Classic area. Each successive ruler would add onto earlier pyramids in an attempt to increase their prestige. Rules would often build matching pyramids, mirror images of one another, to increase the temples’ power. By the late Classic period the pyramids were enormous, geometrically perfect, with steps up the sides and temples at the top, which were once opulently adorned, crowned by elaborate cornices.

All this construction required considerable resources. It’s important to remember that the Ancient Maya didn’t have metal tools, pulleys, the wheel or large domesticated beasts of burden. All building was done with brute strength. Stones had to be quarried, carried to the site and situated on the structures, sometimes hundreds of feet off the ground. Then, as if building massive pyramids weren’t enough, the pyramids were covered in a thick plaster. The plaster was fired at high temperatures, in furnaces fueled by massive deforestation.

Ancient Mayan farmers were incredibly agriculturally productive, especially in comparison to modern farmers, who barely eke out a living in the area. At its height the area had an estimated population density of between 500 and 1,500 people per square mile, compared to the area’s current 35 people per square mile. Despite this incredible productivity, the ruling class, with their resource intensive conquests and construction, were unsustainably parasitic. When times were hard, especially during droughts, there wasn’t enough food to go around, let alone support such aggrandizement and opulence.

The Ancient Maya also had an incredible water storage system. While we think of the Petén as a rainforest, there’s very little precipitation in the dry season. Underground there’s a layer of porous limestone, which traps little groundwater and precludes digging wells. Still, Tikal isn’t situated on a water source. Instead the city constructed a catchment system, plugging up holes in the karst to cisterns. They could store enough water for 30,000 people for six months.

As a result, the Ancient Maya’s fortunes could change very quickly, as happened around 800 CE. It appears that a series of significant drought years depleted the water supply and caused crop failures. The rulers themselves may have been ousted for failing to predict the droughts or appease the gods and prevent them, which would explain the end of new construction. The droughts probably increased the death rate and decreased birth rate more gradually, until the Ancient Maya as we know them were no more.

Let that be a lesson to modern day empire builders: Exceed your ecological carrying capacity and even the most impressive societies will collapse.

Yaxhá and Ancient Maya 101

Today we visited Yaxhá, a major Mayan ruin. Yaxhá is significantly larger than any of the other sites I've visited this trip, but still smaller than Tikal, which we'll visit tomorrow, and El Mirador, which is virtually inaccessible in the rainy season and a five day hike in the dry season. Yaxhá would likely have been much larger, if not for its close proximity to and conflicts with Tikal. Yaxhá did dominate the nearby Maya state of Naranjo and trade with sites like Quiriga and Ceibal. Yaxhá hasn’t been excavated and restored to the same extent as Tikal, but so far they’ve found around five hundred structures. Since describing the site, building by building, wouldn’t be too interesting, I thought I’d share a little bit of what I’ve be reading about the ancient Maya.

Maya society was ruled by a hereditary monarchy. This included both a royal family, called the ahau, and a lesser nobility, called the cahal, who formed a royal court in the city-state or ruled subsidiary settlements elsewhere. Larger city-states center on the royal palace, with lesser palaces, pyramids, temples, acropolises and ball courts built around them, all linked by causeway. The colossal pyramids were built to commemorate important events, from passing centuries, to battle victories, to births, marriages and deaths, and to enhance each successive ruler’s prestige.

The highest Mayan royalty saw themselves as part human, part god. To maintain their status above and exact tribute from mere mortals they shrouded themselves in mystery and religious ritual. They would fast, abstain from sex, and alter their consciousnesses with drugs including my favorite, the mushroom of lost judgment. Many of the monuments depict Mayan rulers in elaborate regalia, including jaguar head helmets, stingray spine codpieces, quetzal feather capes and oversized, ornate jade and gold jewelry, making them appear larger then life. In these outfits Mayan rulers presided over elaborate public ceremonies, including blood sacrifice. Mayan rulers made public blood sacrifices from their own bodies, pricking their penises or tongues with obsidian blades. They also made blood sacrifices of their enemies, generally in gruesome public spectacles. Captives were had their hearts removed while they were still conscious, were decapitated, or were thrown down pyramid steps. (Pathetically ironically, a number of tourists have also died falling down the pyramid steps, perhaps appeasing the international travel Gods.)

Mayan rulers were backed by an elite, scholarly priesthood. They developed the Americas only written language, which has both phonetic symbols and logograms, and was used to record important events on many of the monuments we’ve seen so far. The Mayan priesthood also developed and advanced mathematical system in base twenty, complete with a concept of zero.

They used this numbering system to create a complex calendar. We’ve seen dates carved into many monuments, marking important events in the ruling elites lives. The calendar was based on a day unit, called a kin, a twenty day month unit, called a uinal, a 260 day year unit, called an almanac. Each day of the almanac has a particular name and in many indigenous communities people still name their children after their almanac day. They also had a year called the haab, consisting of eighteen uinals and five kins, or exactly 365 days, a solar year, which was used parallel to and periodically coincided with the almanac years. After unials came tuns, katuns, baktuns, pictuns, calabtuns and kinchiltuns, which work out to 23,040,000,000 days. Baktuns, a period of 5128 days, were used in historical contexts. The Mayan long count calendar resets after thirteen baktuns. Since the current calendar began on August 13, 3114 BCE, it will end on December 10, 2012, which some people believe will be the end of the world!

The Mayan priesthood was able to calculate the solar year with such precision because they had an incredible understanding of astronomy. Most major city-states, including Yaxhá, had observatories. The Maya were especially interested in zenial passages, and many of their structures are aligned with the sun on the equinoxes. Other buildings are aligned with the Pleiades and Eta Draconis. Above all else, the ancient Maya were concerned with Venus. They believed its appearance in the night sky could signal auspicious times to strike at enemies, among other things. While astronomy dictated armed conflict, it also had more practical applications, to agriculture. Modern astronomers have recently learned what the ancient Maya knew thousands of years ago, that precipitation and weather patterns can be predicted by the appearance of certain groups of stars in the night sky, which are occluded by invisible clouds in La Nina years, but not in El Nino years. This understanding of astronomy, and control of calendar, which dictated all-important ritual days, explains much of why the Mayan priesthood had such sway on the rulers, and by extension, the rulers had so much influence with the common people.

Since the more impressive structures are stone, easier to find, and more interesting to tourists they are generally first to be excavated and less is known about the common Maya. All accounts I’ve read suggest that the ancient Maya aren’t so different from their modern ancestors, indigenous Guatemalans like the Quiche, Kaqchikel and Mam. They were swidden subsistence farmers, supplementing corn and bean crops with fishing, hunting and gathering. Extended families lived together, and it appears that land was communally owned.

The site was as beautiful as it was impressive. Yaxhá takes its name from the Maya word for green-blue water, since the city was situated on an immense, intensely turquoise lake. The largest pyramid is called the Temple of the Red Hands, because the sunset, reflected in the lake, is so stunning from the top. In 2005 Survivor was filmed in the park. Fortunately, most reality TV fans don’t actually make it off the couch, let alone into other countries, so we saw few other tourists. We did see lots of spider monkeys, macaws and coatis in the park.

This evening we went into Flores, a lovely little colonial city on an island in Lago Peten Itza, accessed only by causeway. While it was wonderful to have dinner there, I’m glad we’re staying in El Remate, twenty kilometers down the road to Tikal and Yaxhá. There are fewer tourists, and we have the most charming hotel, built into a hillside, complete with thatched huts, mosquito nets and hammocks, overlooking a crocodile infested lake!

Pirate Attacks and Finca el Paraiso

Today we set out from Rio Dulce, north towards Poptun and Flores with detours to the Castillo de San Felipe, which we saw from the river yesterday, and Finca el Paraiso.

Castillo San Filipe is a somewhat surreal apparation at the mouth of the Lago Izbal. In the middle of indigenous Guatemala sits a perfectly presereved Spanish castle. Tall stone towers capped with tiled red roofs, rise up on the rivebanks. The walls are crenellated, with cannons jutting out over the buttresses. A drawbridge leads through the heavy walls and into the plaza, with elegant walkways above. Below the walkways were a labrynth of cool and dark keeps, storehouses and cellars. The Spaniards constructed the castle in the 1650s, rebulding and refortifying it a number of times, to defend the Lago Izabal against pirate attacks. From the castle they would string a chain across the channel, a rude awakening for unwelcome vessels.

Finca el Paraiso was an hour and a half further down a deserted and delapidated dirt road. While the trip tried the boys' patience, the results were well worth it. At the heart of a working finca, a short walk through the forest, there was this amazing little lake and thermal waterfalls. While the swimming hole was cold, the falls were almost scalding sulfury water. Underneath the falls, the noise, heat and spray were almost overwhelming, but a little further away they created a pefectly warm pool. The shores of the stream were lined with smooth bolders and stones on one side and a network of huecos on the other. You could climb into the caves, where there were all sorts of petrified plants and prehistoric looking frogs.

For a few hours, we had what was perhaps the most beautiful and peaceful spot in all of Guatemala all to ourselves, swimming and splashing. It was amazing. Personally, this is where I would have constructed my castle, as a defense against unwanted tourist-types.

Tonight we’re stayed at Finca Ixobel (pronounced Isabelle), outside of Poptun on the highway between Rio Dulce and Flores. It's a beautiful place, surrounded by pine forests, with lots of ponds perfect for swimming and foothills and caves perfect for exploring. We rented a tree house, complete with bunk beds and hammocks. It includes fabulous family style meals, made mostly from organic food grown on the finca itself. The Finca has a great family feel and a definite draw for laid-back traveler types from all over the world. Some of them had been staying at the finca for weeks, earning their keep.

It’s run by a wonderful woman named Carole DeVine, whose husband was Mike was kidnapped murdered by the Guatemalan military in 1990. His murder and the activism that followed forced the US government to suspend military aid to the Guatemalan government. While a number of soldiers were convicted of the crime the captain escaped from prison (probably with government complicity) shortly after his arrest and the others served limited sentences.

Livingston and the Dreadlocked Rastas

Today we continued ever eastward, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. We hired a lancha to take us down Lago de Izabal and El Golfete, into the Caribbean Sea and the town of Livingston. The ride was absolutely beautiful, past the Castillo San Felipe, speeding down the immense golf before it bottlenecked into narrow channels, with sheer rock walls and rainforest rising above us, and shallowed out into lagoons complete with lily pads and little birds that walked on water.

Livingston is often called La Buga, the mouth, as it’s situated at the mouth of the Caribbean Sea. Livingston is accessible only by boat, and is unlike anywhere in Guatemala. It’s populated by black dreadlocked Rasta-types, and has a distinctly laid-back feel, complete with black women braiding their babies’ kinky hair on front steps, teenagers listening to LA hip-hop and Caribbean reggaeton while playing soccer in the streets and old men smoking ganja and shooting the breeze. These Anglophone Afro-Latinos are the Garífuna.

The Garífuna, which means cassava eaters, are descendants of the Arawak indigenous group and the survivors of two slave ships which wrecked in 1635. The Garífuna originated on St. Vincent, in the Lesser Antilles. In the late 18th century the British, seeking control of St. Vincent, imposed treaties, waged war on, rounded up and deported and otherwise decimated the Garífuna with man-made famine and disease. The British abandoned the remaining population in the Honduran Bay Islands, where the Spanish began hiring them, first as agricultural workers and then as mercenaries.

Today there are enclaves of Garífuna on the Belizean, Honduran and Nicaraguan Atlantic coasts. There’s also been an exodus of Garífuna to New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans. Most now Garífuna work as fishermen, in agriculture, or in tourism. The Garífuna still face terrible discrimination, especially in Guatemala, where they are isolated and number only a few thousand, and since they have such a unique culture.

We heard Garífuna people speaking both English and Spanish, and language is a blend of Arawak, French, Yoruba, Bantu and Swahili. Apparently most Garífuna people are Evangelists or Catholics, although many also practice Dugu, a form of ancestor worship akin to Haitian Voodoo. While Garífuna popular culture definitely draws influence from Caribbean, especially Jamaican, and African-American culture, Garífuna music, called Punta, still has a strong West African feel.

We only had a little while in Livingston, so we had a leisurely lunch, sitting on the front porch of a big plantation style house, sipping iced tea and eating ceviche, pan de coco and fried plantains. Then we hired a boat to take us up the Caribbean coast, past beautiful palm lined, gently sloping white sand beaches to Siete Altares. Siete Altares is a series of seven pools, prefect little swimming holes connected by picturesque waterfalls, hidden in the jungle. It would have been the perfect place to while away another day, but alas, we had to get back to Rio Dulce and on with our adventures to the North.

Credit to Corbis for this photo of Livingston, taken in the early nineties. I didn't want to harsh the buzz by pulling out my camera.

Eastward Ho!

Shawn and Scott arrived today! It was quite an ordeal, from my bus trip into Guatemala City, to their flight being delayed, to renting a car. We finally found an automatic with 4WD, a necessity for the rough roads ahead, and headed eastward to the absolute edge of Guatemala, the Belizean border, and the town of Rio Dulce.

On our way to Rio Dulce we stopped to visit Quiriga, another archaeological site. Surrounded by a sea of banana plantations and an abandoned railway hub, courtesy of the United Fruit Company, Quiriga is a beautiful, peaceful park, which belies it's busy history as a trading hub.

Quiriga was settled in the Late Preclassic, between 400 BCE and 250 ACE, and was originally under the control of Copan, another site to the South. The site was an administrative, religious and commercial center, providing strategic resources, access to rivers and an ocean port, linking cities from modern day Mexico to Honduras. In the Classical Period, from 200 BCE to 900 CE, Quiriga, led by King Caucac Sky, split with Copan, defeating their King Eighteen Rabbit. Quiriga entered an expansionary period, which lasted two generations, during which each ruler commissioned intricately carved sandstone towers, or steale, some over 10m tall, to tell their stories. Two generations later Quiriga's fortunes, as well as those of many other Mayan cities, waned, a result of environmental factors, like drought, compounded by over expansion and investment in impressive but impractical steale.

In Rio Dulce we stayed at Hacienda Tijax, an incredible experience in it of itself. To reach the hotel we had to cross a number of suspension bridges strung across a mangrove swamp. The resort itself consisted of all these charming little cabins, linked by causeways, with mosquito nets strung over camp cots, which made me feel even more like an archaeologist or explorer. The dining room was a thatched hut, which opened out onto the river and beyond it, the Atlantic Ocean. The balmy evening, cold beer and a power outage, perfectly timed during a spectacular sunset made for a great first day together.

Soft as Fontenelle, the Feathers and the Thread, My Crane Wife

Today, still unable to surf, I explored El Paredon. It's set on a spit in the Pacific Ocean. Although it can be reached overland, almost all traffic is by boat.

It's a tiny town, which takes no more than five minutes to traverse. There aren’t any cars there, so all the roads are sand and everyone goes barefoot. It has a single store, which sells soft drinks, junk food and little else. Most people fish, or work in Sipcate. Pigs and dogs run wild between the thatch-roofed houses. All of the women were congregated on porches, cooking, washing, mending at chatting outside to avoid the heat indoors. When the men weren’t out fishing they all gathered around the watertower. They would hang their nets from the tower to mend them by hand, a tedious and impressive task. After school, the town’s children played a pick-up futbol game with the French boys who were staying at the camp with me.

I asked a boat owner if I could hire him to take me down the canal, to see the cranes that nest in the mangrove swamp. He agreed to take me, as long as I helped him with his fishing first. Now, this seems a little silly to me. This man wants me to sit in his tiny, tippy little boat and throw easily tangled nets overboard, possibly endangering his livelihood? But I agreed. Then he didn't actually let me do any fishing, thank goodness. He may have been teasing, but it was hard to tell.

Instead, we puttered up the Chiquimulilla channel. Then, he turned of the engine, and paddled the boat into the mangrove swamp. There was an amazing variety of flora and fauna, but the fellow only knew the names of a few things, and I certainly couldn’t translate them into English. (With the exception of turtles. There were a ton of turtles!) There were also beautiful water lilies and bromeliads growing among the mangrove roots. There were tons of birds, which after a little investigation, I think were cranes, heron, cormorants and kingfishers. These white cranes were by far the most spectacular. They would fly low over the water, and then in an instant they would dive down and grab fish from just under the surface. They would catch them in their beaks horizontally, but then they would flip the fish vertically and catch them so that they could swallow them. I wish I could do that!

For dinner I had to settle for fish straight from the ocean that the camp barbecued for us and a coconut I convinced a kid to get out of a tree for me. Not such a bad life, really.

Squirt the Sea Turtle

Today, when I went to unpack my bag, I realized that I had been robbed! On one of the many bus journeys I took yesterday, one of the ayudantes must have opened my pack, and pulled out the bundle on top. Their loot was all of my underwear and my swimsuit. While I was annoyed, I also found it rather funny. After all the US Department of State warned me that Guatemala was a treacherous, dangerous place. They just didn’t tell me my underwear would end up in a market somewhere.

Undeterred, I set off to surf. But surfing topless presents some unique problems when you fall off your surfboard. Because, as it turns out, I absolutely suck at surfing. I got wailed on over and over again until the wind kicked up, and my instructor declared that it was time to go in, lest I drown with my lousy surfing.

So I spent ventured over to the neighboring tortugaria. For a small donation the ranger gave me a bucket of baby turtles to release. I spent the entire afternoon sitting in the sun, racing my baby turtles to the ocean and playing out Finding Nemo dialogue. The Guatemalans must have thought me absolutely insane, but as it turns out pretend sea turtle surfing is almost more fun than real surfing.

Squirt: Good afternoon. We're gonna have a great jump today. Okay, first crank a hard cutback as you hit the wall. There's a screaming bottom curve, so watch out. Remember: rip it, roll it, and punch it.

Surfing Sipacate

After a couple of false starts, I finally set out for Sipcate, on the Pacific Coast, for some surfing. More precisely, I was headed for El Paredon, a small spit along the Pacific Ocean, with an even smaller town and surf camp.

The staff of the surf camp was a little sketchy on travel directions. They explained that from Escuintla I should travel west to La Democracia, south through Siquintlá and La Gomera, to Sipcate, then east again to El Escondite and finally further east to El Paredon

What they failed to mention were the modes of transport, as well as the lengths of the legs. As it turns out, Escuintla to La Democracia was one leg and La Democracia to Sipcate was another leg, with a little layover in both of the towns. It took almost four hours to travel a little over forty highway miles. As I arrived in Sipcate, the sun was beginning to set and I was beginning to worry.

There were no other buses in Sipcate, so the next logical step was to take a tuk-tuk to El Escondite. I hired a driver, and away we went. And went, and went, and went. We drove down a dark and deserted dirt road, with no houses, power lines, or other signs of human habitation. There were just sugar plantations and potholes, as far as the eye could see. After four or five miles, the road abruptly ended, dead ending into the water. (Which I would later learn is called the Chiquimulilla Channel.) I paid my driver, slung my backpack over my shoulder and stepped out of the tuk-tuk to survey my surroundings. Before I could ask anything, in the blink of an eye, the driver accelerated into the black night. I was alone, in the dark, at the end of a deserted dirt road, at the veritable ends of the earth.

After a few moments of carefully reasoned, rational freaking-the-fuck-out, I realized that my driver would not have left me alone in the dark to die, eaten to death by mosquitoes. Boats must pass up and down the channel periodically, even past dark. So I sat down to wait. And wait, and wait, and wait. I'm a patient person, but after an hour or so, I was beginning to get a little panicky. I was beginning to wonder if swimming down the channel to the Pacific and El Paredon would be preferable to plodding back down the dirt road to Sipacate.

Finally, I heard a low buzz from up the channel. Lo and behold, there was a boat! A little, leaky lancha, with cracking and peeling red paint, rusting hardware, and a reappropriated Gallo Beer banner for an awning, was puttering up to me. The pilot pulled up to the pier, and helped me aboard, over a huge heap of fish. I helped him unload his catch, tossing the fish to the bank by their tails, and then we were off to El Paredon.

As it turns out El Paredon was actually only five minutes up the channel. And so I arrived, at the beach exhausted and mosquito bitten. The next day, this is what the channel looked like. The chanel and surf camp actually show up on Google Earth as well.

Steve Irwin Style

Reporting live from the interior coastal city of Escuintla, Guatemala, where Hurricane Dean just passed by, we have our foreign correspondent, Ally, reporting live on the scene.

Ally, what's it like down there?

It's (adverb) (adjective) Scott. Hurricane Dean is one (adjective), (adjective), (noun). In Escuintla, the effects have been (adverb) (adjective). Further north, where I'm traveling over the next two weeks, I expect to see (adjective) (noun) and (adjective) (noun). In the rest of the country, people are (adverb) (adjective). This is Ally, reporting live, in Guatemala.

Thanks Ally, and now back to our regularly scheduled programming:

I've been in Escuintla to visit Autosafari Chapin, an animal conservation park and zoo for wealthier Guatemalans. The park is amazing. It has animals from all over the world, endangered and otherwise, separated into different drive-through paddocks. The crazy rainstorms, a residual effect of Hurricane Dean, made the animals shy and the Ally wet, but it, combined with the Monday morning, meant that I had the park to myself. It was just my driver and me touring the park.

Moreover, my driver had a very Guatemalan safety ethic. After the first five minutes or so of me saying “a little forward,” “a little back,” and so on and so forth, he inquired, in jest, if I wanted to drive. We set off, with me at the jeep’s wheel, struggling with the stick shift, him screaming instructions in Spanish, the driving rain creating puddles deep enough to drown a small child.

The enclosures were separated by reed fences, each one opening into the next. As we entered the enclosures, my guide would jump out, gesticulating wildly, to get the animals into my photo range. He herded all the zebras over to me, ripped branches off of all the expensive, imported African plants so that I could feed the giraffes and hit the rhinos on the rumps to make them appear more interesting, as well as getting dangerously close to the crocodiles to point them out. In the hippo enclosure some of the animals were in pens. When I inquired why, my guide explained that those animals were aggressive, and had attacked jeeps. Apparently, it did not occur to him that all hippos are aggressive.

I’m sure the animals’ aggressiveness was heightened by the presence of baby hippos. Taking the cues from the Chapins, the Guatemalan zoo animals have been and have been busy getting busy. The zoo encourages breeding by placing the predators upwind, as evidenced by an abundance of baby animals. Needless to say, the juvenile jaguars, lions, giraffes, hippos and monkeys were adorable!

After the dangerous drive around the park, we took a little, leaky, lancha out on the lake adjacent to the park. In the middle of the lake was an island, infested will all sorts of simians. On our arrival, our boat was inundated with monkeys, searching for shelter. One of the little howler monkeys leaned over and put my hood down, exposing my hair just long enough to leave me laughing, soaking and sodden.

(Thanks to Special Correspondent Scott Couric for the weather commentary!)

I, Indiana Jones

Today, I continued my archaeological adventuring on my own. I traveled some two hours east, paralleling the coast, to the town of Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa. Santa Lucia is known for two archaeological sites and two museums, El Baul, Museo El Baul, El Bilbao and Museo Cultural Cotzumalguapa.

Unfortunately, most all of the archaeological sites are on privately owned plantations, and preserving the area's archaeological heritage is not a major priority for the government or the finca owners. Many of the monuments have been moved from their in situ locations to company museums. This limits access to the monuments, which modern day Maya worshippers would otherwise visit. At the sites where the monuments were left in situ alcohol, wax and seeds are ritually offered on a regular basis, staining the tops of the statues, as pictured here. Most of the ancient city has yet to be unearthed, still under sugarcane fields. It was incredibly frustrating to walk over giant mounds of earth, knowing that the knolls were actually buildings. I was tempted to start excavating them myself on the spot.

Because so little has been unearthed there is little information available about the sites. My information was gleaned from my illiterate cab driver, a little kid, Wikipedia and a Lonely Planet guidebook. Talk about academic excellence. My advance apologies to any professors who may be reading this.

As I understand it the area was first occupied as a trading hub by the Pipil peoples. The Pipil currently live in coastal El Salvador. They are related to modern day Mayans and claim Mexican ancestry. The height of their society here, when all the building was done, was the Late-Classic period, from 500CE to 700CE. The Pipil primarily grew cacao, the currency of the day. Their city spanned 10 square kilometers, including dwellings, administrative buildings, obsidian and jade workshops, saunas and a ball court. The Pipil had a far more detailed, ornate and flowery style than the Mayans. For instance they used vines, unfurling out of mouths, to indicate speech. Their figures are slightly more pot-bellied, reminiscent of the Olmec style. However, Mayan influence is apparent in the inclusion of long-count calendar dates. The same animal motifs appear in all the monuments in the area. Jaguars and frogs were most prominent in the Pipil art.

El Baul, pictured here, and El Bilbao are quite a way off the beaten track. I adored this, because it means I was the only tourist in town. However, it also meant that I had to convince local children to guide me to the sites (for Q1, or 15 cents). However, their guide services did not include security, and they insisted that I bring my machete to widen the path and dissuade would-be thieves. You can see how I felt very Raiders of the Lost Ark, no?

Ally the Archaeologist

After my crazy backpacking adventures, I arrived home to find that my friend John, who was supposed to be joining me this week, would be unable to come. Instead I convinced my friend Leslie that she should come on some of my costal adventures with me. First on our list, the archeological site Tak’alik Ab’aj, or Standing Stone.

Leslie and I set out from Xela this morning. We took an hour and a half long bus ride to the city of Retalhultu. The bus ride usually takes an hour, but we were delayed by a political protest, complete with burning tires blockading the streets. Then we took a taxi to the nearby town of El Asintal. Finally, we paid a fellow with a pickup truck Q4, about 50 cents, to take us the remaining distance to the site.

The site was amazing. It covers some 6.5 square kilometers, with 83 buildings and 270 stone monuments. Unfortunately, like almost everything else in Guatemala, much of the land has been sold to private enterprises, and the site is spread over a number of fincas, as well as the national park, so we weren’t able to see all of it. More sites are still being excavated. We got to see an archeological dig, where they were excavating with pick-axes, brushes, sieves and the like. They had built a structure over the dig to protect it, cordoned off quadrants with string and were numbering individual stones. Tromping through the jungle and watching the excavations, I was sad that I didn’t have a pith hat to wear.

The site is strategically located in a mountain pass, and would have been part of an important trading route between Pre-Colombian Mexico, El Salvador and other parts of Guatemala. Cacao, salt, quetzal feathers, pyrite, obsidian, and jade were all traded through Tak’alik Ab’aj. There are also large amounts of igneous rock at the site, which was evidently quarried near Tajumulco, more than a hundred miles away.

The site was first occupied by the Olmecs in the Middle Pre-Classic period, between 800 and 400BCE. The Olmecs terraced the land with giant stone staircases, erected large stone steale above altars which were used for offerings and sacrifices and carved squat, pot-bellied sculptures featuring were-jaguars, crocodiles, frogs and owls. The Olmec culture was gradually subsumed to by the Mayan culture in the Late Pre-Classic period, from about 400BCE to 250CE. You can see the change in architectural style, as the sculptures become more detailed and lifelike, the incorporation of writing and a change in astronomical orientation. The Olmec oriented their observatories towards the Big Dipper, whose trapezoidal shape reminded them of the sacred jaguar's mouth towards. The Maya oriented their observatories two degrees east, towards the star Eta Draconious, which is extremely bright shows up in the same place every year, making it an ideal calendar star.

Around 250CE, in the Early Classic period, the society appears to have undergone some sort of collapse. There was no new construction and the population quickly contracted. Some statutes were defaced, indicating armed conflict. This collapse predates that of many other Mayan city states. It appears that a reorientation of trading routes, to favor Eastern sites like Quiriga and Coban led to Taka’lik Ab’aj’s decline. However, the city was not completely destroyed and in the Late Classic period, between 600 and 900CE, Tak’alik Ab’aj experienced a revival, where many of the mutilated monuments were reerected.

The park also included a little zoo. The zoo had jungle owls, monkeys, pizotes, turtles, mountain warthogs, an ocelot, and, best of all, a raccoon. Since raccoons are uncommon here, they're often kept in zoos or as pets. Makes me feel good about that rabies shot I got!

Todosantoseno Triage

On Monday morning I woke up at Don Alberto's house with something in my eye. Chile? Salt? Volcanic rock? Small animal? I have no idea what it was, but I have never known so much pain! I took out my contact lens, to no comfort. My guide offered to poke his finger into my eye in an attempt to extract the particle, but I declined.

There are no roads from where we were staying to San Todos Santos Cuchumatanes, the nearest town with a hospital. As such, my guide and I literally ran the last eight miles out to Todos Santos, me whimpering pathetically practically the entire way. I'm sure the countryside was amazingly beautiful, but I was in so much pain that I paid it absolutely no mind.

However, going to a Guatemalan hospital was an important and informative cultural experience. Upon seeing the line, filled with babies screaming, bleeding people and all manner of broken elderly folk, stretching around the block, for I opted for the private clinic. There, they chard me Q250 ($35) up front and found me a doctor in under five minutes. While I was pleased with the service, it was a painful reminder of the stratification of society and access to medical care here, and in the States for that matter.

The hospital was exactly as I would imagine hospitals were in the States in the 1940s. The exam room was sparsely furnished, with gray metal and green vinyl fixtures. There was a strong scent of alcohol and anesthetic. My nurse was dressed in a white dress and cap, with a little red cross on the cap and sleeve. Since I couldn't see very well, I closed my eyes and imagined the scene in black and white. I half expected to walk into the hallway and see Ricky Ricardo, pacing, waiting for Lucy's baby to be born.

As for medical care, they decided to anesthetize my eye and flush it out with water with a six gauge syringe. Needless to say, it's a little unnerving to open your eye and see a syringe just millimeters away. My eye felt much better afterwards, although I still couldn't see.

I stumbled around Todos Santos half-blind, blending in suspiciously well with the stumbling half-drunks. As in the States, the indigenous people here are incredibly prone to alcoholism. By the end of market day, its hard to make your way around the unconscious campesinos, machetes in hand, lying in the street.

In addition to being impressed with the Todosantosenos' drunkenness, I was was very taken by their dress. Here the men's costumes are more eye-catching than their female counterparts. They wear these thick red and orange striped trousers, with an heavy black sash tucked through the belt that hangs between the legs. Purple shirts, with red details, were most popular. However, due to my temporary blindness, I didn't get to see too much and I was unable to take any photos, so this photo comes to you courtesy of Corbis.

Ally, Otherwise Known as Osh

When I awoke, at 5am Xexocom had an awesome surprise for me. The entire town was standing around when I emerged from the school, still sleepy-eyed and shivering in the sub-zero cold. Apparently the mayor was so excited to meet me that he had invited everyone to gather in the town square. The children, and some of the adults absolutely stared at me, and some of the children timidly stepped out to touch me. Other pointed and cried "Osh!" which is apparent Ixil for "White Woman!" I've been called gringa more ways than I can count now. And I felt it, as the tallest person in the entire town of fifty people. I was already somewhat sleepy and stunned, standing there like a spectacle, when the school children, all dressed uniform, filed into a line and began to sing the Guatemalan national anthem. Once I recovered from the shock of the serenade, I thanked them profusely, and as a token of my appreciation, gave out pretty much everything in my pack that I didn’t need. Thank goodness I brought plenty of stickers, and band-aids were equally popular when I ran out, but I can’t think of any gift I think would have been appropriate after such an incredible experience.

The hiking was absolutely amazing as well. The scenery was breathtaking, both figuratively and literally. The Cuchumatantes are, after all, the Sierras of Guatemala. We continued to climb out of Xexocom, making our way up steep, stone pathways, through wizened stands of pine trees. We hiked hard for three hours before the trail sudden stopped climbing, flattening off into a high plateau. All of a sudden, it was as if we’d been transported to the rural Wales or the far reaches of Scotland. Intensely green grass and peat covered the ground, punctuated by granite boulders so big it seemed as if they must have grown out of the ground they sat on. Icy streams crisscrossed the plain, cutting deep gullies in the frozen ground.

We continued across the stunning, stark plateau through the most of the morning. Just as I was beginning to believe it was the most desolate, isolated spot on earth, we saw sheep, and then a soccer field, lovingly cleared, complete with a goal constructed of sticks, and finally, a tiny town! It was an honest to goodness hamlet, with all of three houses, pictured here and called Chuatuj. Only the children were at home, and they hid from me! As they explained to my guide, their mothers were out herding sheep and tending gardens, while their fathers were working in larger towns. We sat outside and ate lunch, beans and tortillas and eventually some of the older kids came outside to share our food and sell us a few potatoes, still hot from the fire, which were welcome warmth for my cold hands.

After lunch we continued on for another few hours, until we reached this sign, which struck me as hilarious. It’s in the absolute middle of nowhere, accessible only by a day and a half’s walk. It must have been both heavy and expensive. Moreover, most of the people who pass it can’t read and have lived in these towns their entire lives. If you are here and you don’t know where you are, you have a serious problem. A few hours later we crossed through Chortiz, an equally tiny town, and began descending a steep trail into a river drainage.

We spent the rest of the afternoon climbing in and out of various river drainages, scrambling along the hillsides, along various thoroughfares that were called roads, but in the rainy season could only be described as mud chutes. On a number of occasions I slipped and fell, sliding hundreds of feet down the hills, getting covered in dirt and dung. While I struggled along in my Chacos, the campesinos sped by me in their rubber boots, barely concealing their laughter at my falls, which I must admit, were pretty funny. A number of people with horses also passed us. I was rather disturbed to see the pack animals, the area’s only source of supplies from the outside world, laden with Coca-Cola, Fanta, Chicky, a chocolate cracker, and Guatemala’s generic Cheetos. Way to go cultural imperialism!

Eventually we made our way out of the mountains and into the town of San Nicolas, where we were to spend the night. San Nicolas is much less indigenous, more ladino community, so I wasn’t such a spectacle. Our hosts were Don Alberto and his family. They’re sheep farmers, but they also ran the general store, so I sat in the store and talked to just about everyone in town. before turning in early, utterly exhausted from my incredible day.

Acul and the Army Aldeas

When I woke in the morning, Nebaj seemed just as exhausted as I was. I found a hearty hiking hangover breakfast of fried bananas, black beans, eggs, queso fresco and tortillas at a comedor and set out to meet my guide.

He, however, was nowhere to be found. I had made a reservation, but the office was closed and none of the neighbors knew anything of it. I stood outside, frustrated and flustered, unsure of what to do next. The snafu set me back about four hours, but eventually I found another service, albiet a little more expensive.

My guide Paco and I set out from the parque central. As we walked towards the outskirts of town the street turned to dirt road, and then to a stony, muddy track, as we wound through the farms. The path was impossibly steep, straight up the side of a mountain. As I was huffing and puffing my way up I was passed by quite a few campesinos, carrying quarter-chords of firewood on their heads, or herding their cows up the hill at a run. After about three hours of hiking we reached a pass, where we could look out over the countryside. There was nothing but forest and a few scattered cornfields, for as far as the eye could see.

In the valley on the other side of the pass was Acul. Acul is significantly larger than the other aldeas in the Ixil region because it was a model community. During the Civil War, in the early eighties, the army created what they called model communities, or development poles. In the Ixil region, where I was hiking, the army pursued a scorched earth policy. They sought to starve out the guerillas by stomping out their support, essentially squelching entire communities. As Efrain Rios Montt once said, they had to "Drain the pond to find the fish." To that end, the army would raze entire villages. They would burn and loot farms, often massacring residents and forcing others to flee as refugees. Those who remained were rounded up and relocated to model communities, making one larger town where there were once many distinct towns. There, the army could control the population and conscript the men and boys, as well as securing strategic regions. My guide, who lived in Acul, told me a little bit about life there.

Life was highly regimented. Wake at 4am, for flag raising and a patriotic speech. Breakfast at 5am, two tortillas and beans. Work at 5:15. Educational hour at 12, military exercises for men, cooking and health classes for women. Lunch at 1pm, two tortillas and beans. Work at 1:15. Political reeducation at 6pm, singing of patriotic songs. Dinner at 8pm, two tortillas and beans. Family time at 8:15. Bed at 9. Repeat. It all seems very pinko for a political regime premised on fighting communism to me.

Another big part of life in Acul were civil patrols and conscription. All adult men were forced to spend one day a week in a civil patrol. Those who didn't were branded guerrillas, often forced to flee, kidnapped and tortured, or killed. Because the army didn't trust the residents of Acul, who might have guerilla tendencies, they under trained and equipped them. The men were forced to patrol and scout for the army and to act as decoys for guerillas ambushes, armed with only machetes. The army encouraged patrollers to be particularly brutal, to prove their allegiance with the army. They would often force patrollers to kidnap, torture, rape or kill community members suspected of being communists, who were generally just more educated, organized, or assertive citizens. These events were public spectacles, designed to ensure obedience to the army. More often than not, the victims of the victims were friends or family members.

Boys were conscripted into the army for two year terms at the age of twelve. The army would arrive, unannounced, in schools, to collect the children in pick-up trucks. In other communities, families would hide their sons, or send them away. In Acul, this was impossible, because the army knew who everyone was, and where they were at all times.

After Acul, we hiked an hour to Xexecoup, and another hour to Xexecoum, beyond that. (Correct spellings unknown. My guide was completely illiterate.) Xexecoup and Xexecoum were both more typical highland towns, a dozen or so tiny tin-roofed houses scattered around corn fields and cattle enclosures. As a result of their experiences with the military and their scorched earth policy, they were very suspicious of outsiders, and especially me. None of the villagers wanted to sell us food, or give us a place to stay. Eventually, we convinced them to sell us dinner. After rice, beans and tortillas, seeing that I spoke Spanish and ate my tortillas with salt and chile, they decided that we were trustworthy and let us stay in the schoolhouse pictured above. (Granted, that was on the floor, with a single blanket, no electricity and extra bats!)

A Party is a Party in All Parts

After the hike from Xela to Lago de Atitlan, I left San Pedro for the pueblo of Nebaj, fifly miles north, in the Ixil Triangle region. From Nebaj, I'm planning to hike the same distance I'd hiked in the days before, plus another twenty miles, across the Cordillera de los Cuchumatanes, the Sierras of Guatemala, back to Todos Santos Cuchumatanes, and then to take a bus back to Xela, completing a big circle.

Getting to Nebaj was an adventure in it of itself. The ride required a camioneta, microbus and pickup truck over six hours. It was getting dark and there was a driving rainstorm as I rode the last hour into Nebaj, on a steep, winding and bone-jarringly rutted dirt road, in the back of a pickup truck.

Because Nebaj is a very small and traditional town, I was terrified that I would arrive to find all the windows dark, everyone already in bed. Imagine my delight when approaching town I could hear bits of banda and ranchera music, punctuated by fireworks. When we rounded the corner to town, we could see a ferriswheel, and the town's annual fair in full swing. I felt like they were putting it on just for me!

However, because it was feria, there were no rooms for rent anywhere. I must have asked at every hotel in town. There were absolutely no white people around to ask for advice, or to share a room. I couldn't even find someone who would rent me a blanket and some floorspace. Fortunately, just I was beginning to get desperate, I bumped into a blonde girl. "English !?!" I asked her. As it turned out she was a student in Vancouver, BC, was super sweet and was willing to share her room with me. We romped around the central park for a bit, watching the fireworks, mingling with the locals, dancing to the marimba, drinking Gallo and sampling the local tamales.

Many of the campesinos from the surrounding countryside also came out to enjoy the festivites. Everyone was strutting around, dressed in their Sunday best. The local dress, calle traje, here is breath-taking. As in other parts of Guatemala, the women wear elaborately embroidered blouses called huipiles and skirts called cortes, held up with wide belts called fajas, covered in symbols that represent Mayan mythology and the local flora and fauna. Outsiders often think that the patterns are random, but in reality, they require incredible effort and skill. The planning, hand dyeing, and weaving on a backstrap loom require hundreds of hours of work. A good huipile will cost at least Q500 ($65). Thus, women generally only have a few and they will last for decades.

While there are some constants to traje, it is also highly reigonal. Indigenous people can often identify where other indigenous people come from just by looking at thier clothes. This was a terrible problem during the Civil War, as army officials identified certain areas as enemy zones. Wearing traditional traje, which is one of the most important parts of the indigenous identity, was like being branded a target. When homes were burned or looted, all of the women's traje were lost. Replacing them would take years and in the meantime women would be forced to wear rags.

In Nebaj, the traje is generally green, with an especially elaborate huipil. Most indigenous outfits include a shawl, called a rebozo, which doubles as a baby wrap, a knapsack and a headcovering for hot days. In Nebaj, the rebozo was green or maroon, striped, with white stitching of stars and flowers stretching across the width and tassels on each end. The women were also wearing their hair up, braided under bundles of thread with pom-poms on either end called cintas.

Unfortunately, because Nebaj is a very small town with few tourists, entirely indigenous, and was particularly hard-hit by the Civil War, people are very wary of outsiders. The women were absolutely unwilling to have their pictures taken, which is understanable. I had to settle for buying a shawl and sharing this picture, which is from Corbis.

To the Lake!

We got the clients up at 3am and herded them up into the hills over town to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately, the clients were kind of grouchy and the sunrise wasn’t very good. Fortunately, I had purchased a few watermelons in Xipiran and hidden them in my pack. They were a welcome surprise when we sliced them up with breakfast and I was glad to be unburdened by them!

By that point the sun was high in the sky and we began hiking along the hills that ring the lake and up to La Naríz, a little peak overlooking the lake. From there we descended into San Juan la Laguna, where we went for a little swim and had lunch at a local women’s cooperative. The women weave, grow an awesome kitchen garden and raise some sheep and goats. I could have easily have hung out there for a lot longer, I so enjoyed sitting, talking and working with the women. I want to be a farmer when I grow up!

From there it was a short hike into San Pedro. San Pedro is one of those quintessential ex-pat towns, full of hippies young and old, and lifelong language students who don’t actually speak any Spanish. We left the clients to soak up the bong-smoking, bongo-bashing bohemian atmosphere, while the guides and kids caught a combi back to Santa Lucía Utatlán. We parted ways there, and I headed north to Nebaj, while the boys headed back to Xela.

Highland Hiking, Hangin' Out

We had breakfast in a comedor off of the market square. I love Guatemalan breakfast. It consists of tortillas, eggs, beans, queso fresco and black coffee. Unfortunately, although Guatemala is one of the world’s greatest coffee producers, almost all coffee is instant. Good coffee is grown for export only. Even then, most of it fetches pretty pathetic prices. Starbucks, the single biggest buyer, forces prices to exploitatively low levels.

In the morning we hiked along the valley floor, through farms and a few small villages. It drizzled off and on, Seattle style, but it was so beautiful we didn’t pay it much mind. We climbed out of the valley though the forest, on a maze of footpaths and game trails. While the locals navigated the trails with heavy loads and no hesitation at the forks, our clients struggled up the hill and we had to keep a close eye on them, lest they get lost. The boys were a huge help, each one sticking with one of the slower hikers, taking some of their stuff and showing them the way. Eventually the trail emerged on a high ridge, where I took this photo, before we plunged back down again.

In the afternoon we followed a river through the valley, zig-zagging across it again and again. Some of our female clients exemplified gringa stereotypes, taking off their shoes at every single crossing, timidly hopping from rock to rock, occasionally falling in. Again, the boys were a huge help, finding sturdy sticks and ferrying the girls’ packs across the biggest fords. Just as we were climbing out of the river valley it began to rain in earnest, soaking us to the skin. It’s a steep, slippery ascent up to the road and many of the clients were already wet from the river, so Xiprian, or Santa Clara La Laguna was a welcome sight.

This Quetzaltrekkers trip has been staying with the same family for years now. The mother, Doña Ana, had warm water for washing up and a hot dinner waiting when we arrived. Afterward, the father, Don Pedro, played guitar and he and the guides sang folk songs in Spanish. Before bedding down we built a fire in the courtyard. We roasted marshmallows and Abe read us some of the new Harry Potter, which he’s been hoarding and been hauling around, although it’s crazy heavy.

Just a Leisurely Jaunt Through Guatemala

This weekend is my last at Quetzaltrekkers. While it's hard to leave so soon, I'm also totally excited for my last trek. Instead of Tajulmulco, I’m helping guide a hike from Xela to San Pedro, on Lado de Atitlan, with Fydor and Abe. We’re also taking a few of our favorite older boys from the orphanage along, as a treat for them and a break for their house parent.

The trip actually started at Casa Argentina, with a walk to the bus station. From there we took a camioneta up to Xecam, a tiny town high in the hills above Xela. The road was so steep, rock and winding I was amazed the bus could pass, but glad to be riding. Xecam was little more than a few houses, a church, a school, cornfields and sheep. So we set out, with still more climbing to be done. We wove in and out of the forest and people’s fields, always ascending. By midday it was clear that a few of our less fit clients weren’t going to make it, so we were forced to send them home at the first road crossing. From there we hiked up onto a ridge overlooking the Santa Maria valley and had lunch.

In the afternoon we descended quickly through the cloud forests and into the corn fields around Xetinamit. Eventually we ended up on a winding road, where we could let all the clients and the kids hike ahead and hung back, stopping for a swim in the river and to smoke. As we were rambling down the road, singing Cielito Lindo, this man overtook us and started singing along with us. Then he was gone as quickly as he came. It was soo cool.

The road ended in Ixtahuacan, or Nueva Santa Catarina. During the civil war it, like many other indigenous villages, was renamed. As the war went on the town, like many others, was split, with some in support of the military, others in support of the guerillas and still more stuck in the middle. Eventually the town divided in two, Viejo and Nuevo Santa Catarina, and the two still haven’t reconciled. Despite its horrible history, small and indigenous Ixtahuacan was very welcoming. They let us camp in their school for a small donation and all the kids came out to play soccer with us in the square.

As a special treat, we take interested clients for a temescal, a traditional Mayan sauna. It’s an amazing, if somewhat unusual experience. First, the sauna structure is itself absolutely tiny. You have to get on your hands and knees to crawl through the doorway and inside it’s just tall enough for someone small, like an indigenous Guatemalan man or a western woman, to sit. When we three guides were all inside, it was like something out of a Marx brothers movie. Once inside, you seal the entrance, so that the warm air escapes. In one corner there’s a fire so hot that you have to switch places to avoid sitting near too long. You pour water on the fire to create steam and put copal in it to clear the lungs and the head. Once you’re warm and sweating, you bathe by pouring buckets of icy water on yourself, a pleasant shock to the system. This particular temescal was constructed of concrete masonry units, coated in layers of soot

Temescals are very important in indigenous culture. They’re an efficient way to bathe in extremely cold highland weather, as you only need to heat a small space and many people can share it at once. They’re also important in indigenous medicine, used for all sorts of infirmities. Traditionally they were used for spiritual cleansing rituals too, after battles and before rituals. When indigenous couples are married, the temescal is often one of first things they build, sometimes with the help of the community. When their children are born, the parents may then bury the placenta in the temescal.

I don’t know about burying placentas, but the sauna certainly was soothing before bed.

Hogar, Sweet Hogar

As I mentioned before, I've begun guiding with a local NGO called Quetzaltrekkers. It is absolutely awesome. I love the work and I love my coworkers, but the best part are the organizations we support. This is the sort of thing I could see myself doing for the rest of my life. I am happy and I am at home.

All of the profits from our treks support three organizations. Escuela de la Calle, Primeros Pasos and an orphanage. Escuela de la Calle serves who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend school, with a full range of services, like hot lunches, health care and after school activities. Primeros Pasos is clinic on the outskirts of Xela that sees kids and adults and does home and school visits.

My favorite is our orphanage. We have anywhere from eight to eighteen kids, from four to eighteen years old. Right now we have twelve, ranging from six to fourteen, ten boys and two girls. There's only one adult in the house, so the older kids, especially the girls, end up taking care of the younger ones a lot. The Quetzaltrekkers staff tries to go over to the house a couple of nights a week, to have dinner, play futbol, help with homework and just hang out.

The kids seem so happy and full of life, especially considering what a hard time most of them have had. Very few of them are actually orphans. Most of them were abandoned by a single parent or another family member when times got really tough. Some ran away when their parent's alcoholism became incapacitating, or abuse unbearable. Some of the kids do have caring parents who are concerned with their welfare, and have sent to live at the orphanage in town so they can attend school, or so that the parents can seek work in the United States and send money home for a better future.

These two little monkeys are Julian and Eduardo. And while letting them sit on my lap while I read them stories may have given me lice, they are what makes my life meaningful.

On a totally tangential note, I find organizational naming practices here hilarious. Organizations, especially governmental organizations, are given long descriptive names so that there is no doubt about their purpose. Then, because the names are so long and hard to say, they're generally converted back to acronyms. The acronyms usually bear no resemblance to the original name, or clue to the organization's function, i.e. Escuela de la Calle, the Street School, becomes EdelaC.

Ameobas Plot Against Ally!

I've been a little sick of late. I'm actually amazed that I'd avoided it so far, considering my fondness for street food and the infirmities of my fellow students. However, I am protected by an abundance of vaccines and a stomach of steel, developed over years of eating dirt. Unfortunately, my super human powers were unable to protect me from myself, as I absentmindedly drank a glass of tap water yesterday. I blame my amazing immunity for getting my gastrointestinal guard down!

My family host family is super sweet, but kind of stressful, every time I get sick. (I had a cold a couple of weeks ago.) They're well-educated, but their understanding of germ theory is sorely lacking. They believe almost all illnesses are related to changes in altitude, temperature, being out in the rain and not eating enough. While they may be wrong about how I got sick, their remedies are amazing. At first I was skeptical, because they have no scientific basis, and limited sapidity. But as it turns out, drinking disgusting mushes made of rice, corn and random herbs can do wonders.

It's a good thing, because taking over the counter medicine here is akin to doing crack at home. A trip to the pharmacy is hilarious. First, you have to play this crazy game of medical charades to explain your infirmity to the pharmacist. None of the packages are labeled. The pills are all mixed together in their blister packs. So you have to go on faith that the pharmacist understands your ailment and is giving you the right drug. They don't include instructions, but I recommend you avoid using heavy machinery after taking any quantity of anything here. It's probably ten times the strength of what you could buy over the counter in the states. If the illness doesn't kill you, the dry mouth from the drugs will.

Election Season in Guatemala

It’s election season here in Guatemala, which is both hopeful and terrifying at the same time. It’s hopeful because the polls have the candidates in a dead heat. It’s the first time a left-leaning candidate has had a fighting chance in over fifty years. It’s terrifying because extreme violence has marked this election. Over fifty candidates, family members, election workers and party activists have been killed and countless more attacked and intimidated since last September. Most of the attacks have allegedly been carried out organized crime, drug cartels and youth gangs in an attempt to intimidate politicians. Unsurprisingly, the left has had far more casualties. This is particularly disturbing given Guatemala’s history of horrific political violence and how fragile and recent the 1996 peace accords are.

The two front runners are Alvaro Colom, of the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), the National Unity of Hope and General Otto Perez Molina, of the Partido Partiotico (PP), the Patriotic Party. Colom has been a businessman and a civil servant. He represented UNE in 2003, losing to conservative Oscar Berger of the Gran Alianza Nacional (GANA), the Grand National Alliance. Colom’s platform centers on fighting poverty through education and healthcare and cracking down on government inefficiency and corruption. Obviously, I’m supporting him.

Perez Molina is a retired General, and was in charge of Army Intelligence during the civil war. As such Perez Molina is popular for his law and order position. His party’s slogan is “Mano Dura”, which translates to “Hard Hand”. He’s promised to increase police forces by 50% and reinstate the death penalty. This makes him especially popular in Guatemala City, which has horrible gang problems and one of the highest murder rates in the Americas. Perez Molina was implicated in the 1998 murder of human rights activist Bishop Juan Gerardi, but like so many other former army officers, he’s never been charged and justice will probably never be served.

Because Guatemala uses a proportional representation system, rather than a first past the post system, which we use in the States, there are a number of parties, which can change and exchange power from one election to the next. Another interesting candidate is Rigoberta Menchu, of Encuentro por Guatelama (EG), Encounter for Guatemala. Menchu won a Nobel Prize for her book, I, Rigoberta Menchu, about the atrocities she and her community suffered during the civil war.

At the same time, the man pictured here, Efrain Rios Montt, of the Frente Republicano Guatemalteco (FRG), the Guatemalan Republican Front, is running for congress. Rios Montt was a general and then military dictator during the civil war, responsible for massacres, murders, disappearances, systematic torture and rape, in what the UN has called a government sponsored genocide. Rios Montt and other military leaders maintain that they were only fighting a counter insurgency against communist guerillas. Spain is currently seeking his extradition, charging him with crimes against humanity. He would be immune from prosecution if elected. Rios Montt attended the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia and had enjoyed considerable support from the United States. Rios Montt is also an evangelical minister, a friend of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Ronald Reagan.

Unfortunately, the general election is going to be our last day in Guatemala, September 9th, so I won’t be able to work as a poll watcher. If necessary, a run-off will be held on November 9th. In the meantime I’ve been volunteering as an election educator, teaching people how to vote. While this may sound silly, it’s hard to vote here. In some areas, you might be turned away and told you can’t vote, even though you’re a registered voter. (Sounds familiar, huh?) Your vote will be disqualified if you don’t use an X, or if your X extends outside of the box. Plus, if you’re illiterate, it may be hard to find your candidate among all of the other contenders. So I help people practice voting. It is awesome work.

Envrionmental Issues

One thing that taking the Tajumulco trip made clear for me is the seriousness of some of Guatemala's enviornmental is the environmental issues.

Deforestation is a major issue on three fronts. First Hurricane Mitch, arguably encouraged by man-made climate change, did substantial damage to the region which has been slow to regrow. Second, the mountain pine beetle, accidentally introduced from Asia, has felled entire swaths of forest. Third, the local families and buisnesses participate in deforestation in two ways:

First, the individuals have been pushed onto more marginal land because of a the centralization of land ownership, further concentrated by the civil war. They have also pushed into cultivating the land more intensively, because they have to feed their families, as well as earning extra income at market for taxes, school fees, and material goods. They clear this land, higher up in the hills, for farming. But most of the nutrients are stored in the trees, rather than in the soil, so the land quickly loses its fertility. Often, they are forced to cultivate the land continuously, which quickens the process.

Both individuals and buisnesses use Western farming methods, like heavy tilling, fertilizers and pesticides. The heavy tilling means that without the trees and continuous weed or crop cover, the soil is eventually eroded, blown away by the high winds and rains, making the land completely barren. Erosion is also encouraged when they the campesinos keep too many heads of cattle, sheep or goats at elevation. The animals graze down the vegetation, as well as trampling new tree growth.

The pesticides used here are often illegal in the States, and have been linked to the deaths of thousands of campesinos and their children. They are generally sprayed aerially, so they fall on the farmers and their families, as well as infiltrating the water supply. Fertilizers create eutrophication, where excess fertilizers run off into the water supply, and an overabundance of nutrients creates algal blooms that stifle other marine life. Additionally, both pesticides and fertilizers are major expenses, which require every growing applications.

The locals also cut trees down, for use or sale as fuel for fires and fodder for livestock. In addition to deforesting the land for fuel and fodder, the locals also harm the trees as pictured above. They slash them with a machete and all the sap runs down into the cut space. Then they scape off the sap and sell it as kindling. This sucks all the water out of the tree, killing it, as well as rendering it useless for firewood.

The deforestation also exacerbates the dearth of drinking water. Trees help sustain the water table, and filter the water underground. However, with increasing population, agricultural industrial pressure, the water is being used and polluted at increasing rates. To get clean water here, you must buy bottled water. This water, as well as tap water, is more expensive than in the States, an unsustainable expense for most of the population.

However, the pollution problem that bothers me most in Guatemala is the trash. I know this is silly, because it's probably the least pressing issue, but the countryside is absolutely marred by litter. It´s common practice to toss all trash in the street. With changing standards of living and consumer preferences, junk food wrappers make up most of the litter.

I know this is super dorky, but I'm so interested in how all of these issues interact. Human health, population pressure, land tenure, war, changing consumer preferences, changing cultivation methods, deforestation, erosion, water issues, pollution big and small are all interlinked, and improving any one of the issues can improve the others.

Not to Brag, but it was Buena Vista Social Club!

Tonight, I got to see Buena Vista Social Club in concert. Although most of the original members of the club have died since the production of the documentary, but the concert was still amazing. One of the best I've ever seen.

The show was here in Xela, at the Hotel Modelo. Thus, tickets were all of Q90, or $12, and only a few hundred people were in attendance. The band warmed up with all the classic Buena Vista tunes.

I had no idea that people that old could rock that hard. Their fingers flying over the frets, wailing on the bongoes or blaring the brass, the band members were in their own world. They struck such an amazing balance between technical talent and just plain jamming, improvising and inventing new solos as they went.

The venue was woefully small and underequipped, and there were a number of technical difficulties. About two hours into the concert the bandleader announced that they were taking a break to fix the problems. Since the announcement was made in quick Cuban Spanish most of the gringoes in the crowd didn't understand and so they left. The band returned, sans technical difficulties and refreshed for another two hours of music.

Then the party really started. We stacked up all the chairs in the ballroom to make space for salsa dancing. Almost everyone in left in the audience could dance, so it became part concert, part party, part high school dance, with people leaving their cliques to ask strangers to dance. My friend Ethan is a competitive swing dancer in the states, so we had a great time doing swing steps in salsa time and style.

The band started playing Cuban folk songs and requests from the audience, including my beloved Ojala Que Llueve Cafe. At the end of the night, exhausted from the dancing, I sat down on the side of the stage to watch. As the show was ending, this fellow, Ruben, came over to give me a hug! Absolutely amazing.