We headed back to Guatemala just before Thanksgiving to begin another “vacation” aboard Mañana. The debate we have each year is whether this is a vacation (Tom) or simply a change of venue to stay in a second home which happens to float (Andrea). The difference is that I am looking for bars, beaches, and restaurants because I am on vacation while Andrea is looking to “nest”, fix meals aboard, read, and relax. Actually both sides of this debate sound good.
As usual it was a long trip back to the boat involving 12 hours of planes and airports, an overnight stay in Guatemala City, 6 hours on a bus, and a boat ride down the river to the marina. Getting there may be half the fun, but it still takes a long time. The boat survived the summer nicely with only minor rain leaks and minimal mold. We bought new batteries (again), did some routine maintenance, cleaned the hulls and accomplished this all while enjoying very pleasant temperatures. If the weather were like this all the time I would live here. We even got a chance to haul Andrea up the mast for a bird’s eye view of the country (and to get the mast cleaned).
Mario’s Marina in the Rio Dulce River has turned out to be a pleasant and secure safe place to leave the boat. The restaurant has a great staff, very good food, and beers and Cuba Libres that cost about $1 each. We dinghy to town occasionally, and we find ourselves looking for breakfast or lunch at riverfront restaurants with large decks almost daily.
We got a pleasant surprise at the battery store (actually a small, riverfront tienda) when our credit cards were declined. Seems we had failed to notify the bank that we would be spending large $$ in a foreign country. Chiqui, the tienda owner, told us we could take the batteries with us and return the following day to pay for them. We had access to the ATM, but the owner of the tienda said “no problem” he could wait for us to return when the credit card got straightened out. In the meantime we were free to take the batteries with us. That’s a lot of trust and, needless to say, we shop with Chiqui regularly now.
Lest you think this is all paradise we will also mention that our friends on Salida (they were the ones who got boarded last year when we entered the river and were struck by lightening on our crossing from Roatan) managed to get robbed while staying in a local hotel while their boat was getting bottom painted. They lost jewelry, cash, phones and computers in less than 15 minutes away from their room. We hope this is the trifecta of “bad news in threes” for them and that the rest of their sail will be worry free.
We took an overland trip to the town of Flores and then on to the Mayan temples at Tikal last week. The trip got off to an inauspicious start when we waited almost 2 hours for the “first class” bus to Flores which was a little late. Flores is a small resort town located on an island in the middle of a large lake. We arrived well after dark and scrambled to find dinner and a hotel for the night. The following morning we were wakened by one of the noisiest mornings I can recall. About 4 AM a tour guide knocked loudly on the front door of the hotel (think very small hotel) because his passengers were late (not us). His knocking set off all the hotel alarms. Then at 5 AM the birds started. Thousands of birds wanted to announce the dawn. At 6 AM we heard shotgun blasts and sirens. Andrea woke me to tell me there was a gunfight and that apparently the police were coming. It turned out to be “recorded” shotgun blasts to scare the birds. The blasts were about 5 minutes apart for nearly an hour and each blast immediately set off someone’s car alarm (hence the sirens). By 7 AM when the tuk-tuk cabs started with their two stroke motors there was little hope of getting back to sleep.
We were amused by the signs in our room which we could read very easily in Spanish but which became cryptic when we tried to decipher the English translation. For your information the signs in the pictures below ask you to throw toilet paper in the waste basket and to get towels at the reception desk if you want to go to the beach… I think.
Flores was preparing for Christmas while we were there. In a fantastic feat of advertising the town Christmas tree was topped not with an angel or a star, but with a lighted chicken, which is the logo for the largest beer company in Guatemala. This would be very much like putting a Budweiser sign on the top of the tree at Rockefeller Center this Christmas. But, hey, I guess it paid for the tree.
Flores is the jumping off point for Tikal which is deep in the Guatemalan jungle. We lingered over coffee and breakfast at Cool Beans and then strolled around town just long enough to miss the last shuttle from Flores to Tikal. With the prospect of an expensive private cab looking at us Andrea decided that a local “collectivo” was the answer. The collectivo’s are mini vans packed with little people. When you see them unload it looks a lot like the clown car at the circus. But they are cheap. We walked to the town of St Elena, found the crowded main market place, and negotiated for a place on the next collectivo to Tikal. Hah! Every time I thought the van was full another little person would peer in the door and decide there was plenty of room. We were in a Toyota van with 34 people crowded together. Because they were short, three people were able to stand in the mini van. We might have gotten more people in but there were only 5 people in the front seat. This was apparently because the driver needed extra room to text on his cell phone while he drove. While I was contemplating how difficult it would be to get out of the van quickly in case of an accident (and how difficult it was to breathe) we pulled over at a gas station. One of the passengers wanted to buy some gas to take home. He gave the driver’s assistant some quetzales and the assistant proceeded to fill a 5 gallon water jug with gas, stuff a rag in it, and tie it to the top of the van. I was no longer worried about getting out after the accident. This is where I would die. Remarkably the rest of the trip to Tikal was uneventful. After a few miles some passengers got off the van and the remaining 28 people spread out with the “extra” space.
Tikal is magnificent (for ruins). Huge temples rise from out of the jungle on the site of a Mayan village that once had over 100,000 people, but which had disappeared suddenly some 1500 years ago. This is the source of the Mayan calendar which comes to an abrupt end this month, and TIkal is expected to be packed for the equinox, but right now the crowds were small. Tikal is also a marvel of engineering on a par with the Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Incan ruins at Machu Pichu in Peru. Under every mound they find another temple, home, condo, apartment, etc. The excavations look like they could continue forever, but funds are limited and everything they uncover begins to erode quickly when exposed to the weather. If they stop working the jungle quickly reclaims everything. We entered the park in the late PM, checked into the very rustic Jaguar Inn and then hiked to the largest of the temples for the sunset views. At dusk the animals started to come out and we followed the tamest ones as we toured the ruins. At dark we headed for the safety of the Inn. We had been warned that this would be a noisy night because of all the wildlife and because of the monkeys on the tin roof of our bungalow, but the animals were disappointingly quiet. After our night in Flores we truly appreciated the peacefulness of sleeping in the jungle.
The following morning we spent several hours exploring the ruins and climbing the temples before heading back to Flores in our own private collectivo. We spent one more night in Flores enjoying happy hours and street tacos and then caught an AM bus to the Rio Dulce and home. To get an idea of the transportation problems here I will point out that it took us three nights and four days to visit the ruins which were less than 100 miles from the boat. This is sort of like needing a four day trip from Santa Cruz to visit the Golden Gate Bridge.
When we got back to Mario’s they were busy planning the Burning of the Devil. December 7 is a day of infamy in Guatemala also, although they have little memory of Pearl Harbor. Instead they use that day to burn effigy’s of the devil as part of a cleansing and cleaning process. Throughout Guatemala they burn paper devils (and explode large amounts of fireworks) to burn their troubles and excess baggage. They also take the opportunity to burn their household trash. At Mario’s our host, Marco, had purchased a paper devil for the cruisers to burn (as if we had any troubles to worry about).
We also scheduled a trip to the Caribbean town of Livingston for a Garifuna festival that coincided with the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe (Dec 12). The Feast of the Virgin is a huge holiday in all of Latin America. The Garifuna are a black population. In Guatemala Livingston is one of the only Garifuna settlements. Freed slaves and migrant laborers populated the mainland coast of Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala bringing with them their African dances and traditions. Today there is some conflict between the Spanish culture and the Garifunas as the Spanish have begun to dominate the businesses and the language in Livingston. This time 20 of us piled into a 20 foot open boat (a panga) and cruised 30 miles down river to the mouth of the Rio Dulce. Accommodations at the “best” hotel were modest, but we enjoyed a fantastic Garifuna fish stew with shrimp, crab, and a whole fish in a coconut broth. We also took a l-o-o-o-ng hike to the local waterfalls known as the Seven Altars for the seven pools of water in the stream. When we entered a bar near the falls we were greeted by “Hector” who was very excited that we were from Santa Cruz. He had lived in CA in the 80’s, and on the wall he had a nicely framed diploma from Watsonville High School Adult Education program for completing an English course. I had also taken the Adult Education course for beginning Spanish several years ago. Hector’s English was decidedly better than my Spanish.
The Garifuna Festival was less than advertised and consisted largely of a lot of noise and some dancing reminiscent of the scene in “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They” which featured depression era marathon dancing when everyone started running around in a large circle (think roller derby). We did spend the evening in town and got an opportunity to share our table at one bar with what can best be described as a “street band”. Two drums, marimbas and a coke bottle were the prominent instruments. My comment was that we had found the only four black guys in the world with no sense of rythmn.
The return trip up river to Mario’s was highlighted by the arrival of three small canoes with children selling souvenirs, jewelry, and crafts. These kids were out in the river flagging down the tourist boats and then hanging on to the pangas while they showed their goods. These were VERY young kids and in the US none would have been out of sight of their parents. The oldest girl was certainly under 10 and the youngest kids were no more than 2 or 3 years old, yet they were in the middle of a large river in leaky canoes.
We leave for Roatan, Honduras tomorrow (weather permitting). We have spent too much time here tied to a dock, but “the living is easy”. We arrived at Thanksgiving and we are getting out just before Christmas, and we are the ones moving quickly. With all of the amenities this is a very easy place to get stuck.
Merry Christmas to all. We hope you enjoy the holidays 2012.
Tom and Andrea
