Category Archives: Guatemala

Guatemala

The Mayan Calendar, 2012

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The end of the world, apocalypse, Armagedon… It seems like someone is always predicting global doom. Remember Y2K, or the famous doomsday prophet Nostrodamus?  This fascinates me because there are so many people at the other end of the spectrum looking for ways to extend their lives (or at least look really young into old age), cheat death, or freeze their dead bodies for a return to life at a later date.

The end of the Mayan calendar in December, 2012, is the latest catalyst for apocalyptic forecasting, the idea being that then end of the “long form calendar” of the ancient Mayans predicts the end of the world.  A few of you may have seen the shlocktastic movie, 2012, which is based on the concept and which one reviewer described as “cinematic waterboarding.”

On a recent trip to Guatemala, a country that is home to the world’s largest concentration of Mayan people (more than four million Guatemalans speak a Maya language), I asked a few real Mayans what they thought of the idea. Their responses ranged from bemused to philosophical. Some spoke of a “new age” of greater care for the planet, others said the changes have already happened with environmental degradation and also with our ever-connected world of communications. None thought the planet would implode next year. My general impression is that the Mayans of Guatemala have more immediate concerns like making a living, educating their children, and continuing to recover from a civil war that was truly apocalyptic for Guatemala’s indigenous people.

Robert Sitler’s The Living Maya, Ancient Wisdom in the Era of 2012, provides one of the best explanations of the whole topic.  One of the points he makes is that the Maya aren’t an extinct culture found only in the ancient heiroglyphics and ruins of ancient cities that range through Guatemala, Belize and Mexico.  Instead, Sitler, who is a professor professor at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida and serves as Director of its Latin American Studies Program, looks at the culture and traditions of real, live Mayan people.  I’d put this book at the top of reading list for anyone traveling to Mexico and Central America. And, for anyone really worried about what will happen in 2012, the folks at NASA offer a down-to-earth look at the 2012 topic from an out-of-this-world perspective.

Guatemala

Miguel Asturias Academy: Growing a Crop of Educated and Socially Concerned Citizens

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On our recent trip to Guatemala, we visited Miguel Asturias Academy in Quetzaltenango. A chance to go behind the scenes at a school is a great way to learn about local culture, what people are teaching their children, what they aspire to, and how kids there interact with each other and with their teachers.  I find this school, named after Guatemala’s Nobel laureate, particularly exciting because its leaders seek to improve life for Guatemalan children, not just through literacy, but also by teaching them about leadership, gender equity, and concern for the environment—concepts that aren’t in the typical curriculum in Guatemala, or sometimes even in the U.S.  Growing a crop of well educated, critically thinking, socially conscious citizens is about the only way I can think of for Guatemala to move beyond the conflict and corruption that has dominated civic life.

This isn’t a fancy private school for elite children. Asturias students are from a range of backgrounds from poor and indigenous to middle class. It was founded by Jorge Chojolan, who was, himself, a poor indigenous kid. Click here to see a video about Jorge and the school’s philosophy.

One of the latest accomplishments at Asturias is the new library, which still has many needs, particularly good science books in Spanish.  Librarians Without Borders (I’ve heard of doctors, but never librarians without borders) has helped them create the library, which will eventually be open to the community.  Public libraries—another of the things we take for granted.

Guatemala

Volcano Follies in Guatemala

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Shoe-meltingly hot lava on Volcan Pacaya

One of the most popular activities for visitors to the Guatemalan highlands is hiking up volcanoes.  Some people approach it like collecting merit badges, listing which ones they’ve “done.” That’s a big job because there are 33 volcanoes in Guatemala, three of them very active.

On our last visit to Guatemala, we hiked up Pacaya near Antigua, which is active, to say the least. It always strikes me when I visit developing countries how few safety rules there are.  For example, on Pacaya, there’s nothing stopping you from walking right up to the lava flow, except common sense, which from my own experience, (and judging from the video below) is often in short supply. Standing all too close to the lava flow—which felt like standing in front of a giant hair dryer—our guide suggested that we poke around with our walking sticks (rented from a group of local children who I initially feared wanted to swat us with them) to be sure that the scree underfoot was sturdy enough to stand on.  Oh, and be sure to check the bottoms of your shoes to be sure they’re not melting…  This just would not be allowed in the U.S. where we worry about keeping five- year-olds in car seats and constantly douse ourselves in Purell.

I recently scored my second Guatemalan volcano: Santiaguito, near Quetzaltenango.  Santiaguito is actually a junior version or extension of the much higher Santa Maria volcano, and therefore a shorter trek, which was fine with me.  The big attraction is that it erupts in a giant cloud of ash and steam about as regularly as Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone. We started our trek around 6:30 a.m. in order to be in place to see it erupt around 8:30.  “Poco e poco,” and with several banana bread and water stops, we made it to the designated viewing spot, a kilometer or so from the crater, along with a fellow hiker from Hungary and a group from France.  Who knew scampering up a dusty trail in Guatemala could be such a cosmopolitan experience?

As can happen with travel, all did not go according to schedule.  Santiaguito was a little slow that morning.  We ate sandwiches in the company of a particularly persistent little begging dog and waited. The clouds rolled in, then the eruption began, half obscured, but viewable nonetheless.  The sound, even at that distance, was amazing, like a huge roaring jet engine.  Of course, if we had been closer, the clouds wouldn’t have been such a problem but I’ll trade a better view for a modicum of safety.  Here’s a video from a guy who was a little too close to Santiaguito for comfort. 

Guatemala

Poco a Poco: Biking to San Andres Xecul, Guatemala

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Xela, Guatemala (a.k.a., Quetzaltenango) lies at 8,000 feet in the heart of the country’s

Biking through the farmland near Xela.

highlands and at the center of its Mayan population. Xela (pronounced shay-lah) is a great base from which to explore a huge array of nearby sites and activities. However, at

that altitude, I’m wary of doing anything that requires more exertion than sampling some of the country’s great coffee in a café or watching others exert themselves in a game of fútbol. Still, the possibility of a trip to a rural village that boasts the most colorful church in all of Central America prompted me to get trade my café chair for a bike to ride to San Andrés Xecul.

Traditional Mayan worship meets Catholicism at San Andres Xecul in Guatemala

Fortunately, there were only a few steep patches, and the friendly people in the village (one little boy kept pointing at us and saying “Gringos, Mama!”), a nice sugary Roja from a local tienda, and the Technicolor church made it worth the occasional gasp for oxygen.  Our guide from Altiplano Tours  was merciful: “Poco a poco. It’s not a race.”  Poco a poco, little by little, became the mantra of our trip and as I think about it, that’s a pretty useful phrase for most of life.

Guatemala

Cuanto Cuesta? Getting Psyched to Bargain in Guatemala

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Embroidery for sale in Chichicastenango, Guatemala. Who can resist?

In anticipation of traveling to Guatemala, I’m trying to get myself into bargaining mode. I have to do this because I am the world’s worst haggler.  Offer me something for $5, I’ll pay $8 for it. Put a cute kid in front of me and it’s all over. This drives my spouse, the world’s best and most unemotional bargainer, completely nuts.  It doesn’t matter how inexpensive the item the child is selling, he asks for a lower price.

I, on the other hand, offer an amount which is the selling price plus my “empathy quotient,” based on how much I envision the money meaning to the child’s family and how much I would hate having to go out and haggle with tourists if I were that kid.  Then I add more money simply because I’m a wimp.  Any ten-year-old Guatemalan kid holds great power over me. Then the word spreads that he has a “fish on the line.”  His friends show up. They laugh. They give each other high-fives. It doesn’t matter, I can’t say no. Last time I was there, a little girl asked me to buy some dolls.  I said I didn’t need them.  She said, “Buy them for your friends.”  I told her I didn’t have any friends.  She said, “For your enemies.” I told her I’d take two because she was funny.

So, if you see someone walking around Minnesota in winter wearing an embroidered blouse, sandals and carrying dolls, you’ll know it’s me.

Guatemala

Anticipating Travel: Guatemala

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We’ll soon be off to Quetzaltenango, in the highlands of Guatemala, to visit our son Mike who teaches science at a school there. One of my favorite things about traveling is the anticipation of the trip.  I stretch out the pleasure by planning it for weeks. I read about where I’m going (in this case Francisco Goldman’s Long Night of the White Chickens, David Grann’s fascinating New Yorker article, Murder Foretold: Unraveling the ultimate political conspiracy, and a New York Times article on trekking the highlands). I talk to people who have been there, check Web sites, think about gifts I want to bring back for friends.

I plan partly because I want to do the best things available during my short time there.  But, I also plan as much as possible to avoid disasters. The more exotic and challenging the destination, the more I like to have some idea of what it will be like so I don’t make mistakes–get lost, get robbed, offend people, have them offend me.  A little planning makes me feel more confident and maybe that way I’ll blend in and avoid looking like a naïve tourist just ripe for fleecing.  Since I have short, stick straight blond hair, blending in poses a particular challenge in most of the places I travel lately.  When I went to Haiti, people regularly reached out to touch my very foreign-looking hair. “Madame Blanche!” On the other hand, how often do you get to feel that remarkable?

Ultimately, though I enjoy the planning and anticipation, some of the best parts of travel are those you don’t plan and can’t control.  These are little Zen lessons of being in the moment, as on our last Guatemala trip when I came upon the interesting Mayan women (pictured above) in Santa Catarina, near Lake Atitlan, or the mother and her adorable baby (below) in the square in Antigua.