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A Year Away
I randomly just dropped off the face of the earth, or at least the face of Pana, for a week, but I'm BACK now. Woo! Last Monday evening I ran into Pajaro, who because he doesn't work right now (having made a TON working in Italy for the last 8 months) was getting antsy to get on the move. So he said "Natalia, vamos a Huehuetenango." So less than 12 hours later we were packed into a pickup truck to Sololá with our backpacks and were on our way to Huehue, where he has a bunch of family. And by "a bunch," I mean about half of the city. It seemed like everywhere we went someone was calling him over to say hello. Every street we turned onto had a house full of aunts and uncles and cousins of all shapes and forms. But let me get back to the start and do this orderly-like.
Day 1:
After a good 4 hours on several chicken buses, we arrived in Huehue. The first day we didn't feel like getting out to his Uncle Elmer's house, so we "splurged" on a hotel. And by splurge, I mean we got a room with a private bathroom, hot shower and cable TV, which would be a basic, cheap room in the states. It was fun though, since we haven't had any of those things in months. And Pajaro never has hot water in his house. So we went shopping, brought back bread and a pesto-type spread and watched "Finding Nemo" dubbed into Spanish. Only my sister, my mother and my other sister Celi will know how much that thrilled me. "Nadaremos, nadaremos...." (That would be "just keep swimming" in Span.)
The next morning we caught another bus out to the edge of the city to the house/destist's office of Pajaro's uncle Elmer and cousin Luis. Let me break here for just one second to comment on the concept of dentists here in Guatemala. As we all know in the states, dentist's offices are clean and white and shiny with posters up to teach kids how to brush and floss and take care of their teeth in general. There is dental education. Not so here. Here, a dentist's job is mainly pulling teeth and making gold ones for replacement. Some parts of Elmer's office seemed absolutely ancient and totally freaked me out. But then other aspects surprised me, like, how much he could do with limited equipment. A forge and bench grinder are capable a lot.
Back on topic. Pajaro, thinking of food as usual, greeted his uncle and cousin and immediately set out to make everyone lunch. This included all of us taking the bright red VW bug (that surely shouldn't have been on the road at all, it felt like just a skeleton of a car) 10 minutes away to the market of the pueblo of Chiantla. (Chiantla is what Pajaro calls "The most idiot town in Guatemala." Here they tell Chiantla jokes like we tell blonde jokes.)
Lucky for us though, Chiantla was having it's town fair this week, so later on that night after checking out some Mam ruins outside the city (which were cool except that they had been covered in concrete and were not completely original), the two of us, plus cousin Luis and five other cousins piled into the bug to go back to the fair. (Yes, that's right, we had eight people in the bug, and no, we did not make it all the way back up the hill when we were going home. Oops. And did I mention that it has 2 giant Guatemalan flags plastered on it for the GUA independence day on the 14th? It's quite amusing.) So the bunch of us ate fair food and played a ton of Fusbal and video games. It was good times.
Day Two:
Pajaro and I journeyed up to the top of some of the Cuchumatan Mountains right next to Huehue (it took about 20 minutes) to the lookout point, only to find that the blanket of clouds obscured everything and visibility was only about 15 feet. So much for a lookout. So we started walking back down the mountain, taking much longer on foot than in truck like before. Personally, I think we got much better vistas this way, so I didn't mind. We could see right down through the mountains to Huehue and Chiantla and had a nice 2 hour hike before hitching a ride in pickup back into town. (And no worries about hitchhiking here, it's as common a mode of transportation as using the bus.)
Day 3:
Cousin Luis escorted the two of us over to a pretty little lagoon a little ways away from the house. We took a little walk around it and encountered a beehive in a tree trunk which amused me to no end, then a snake which swam away into the reeds, and more crazy looking spiders. *shiver* Also, the house right next to the lagoon had a cage in the backyard with two spider monkeys, don't ask me why, I didn't think you were allowed to keep monkeys as pets, even here. They were totally cool to watch though, their tails functioned just like an extra hand. We weren't allowed to swim in the lagoon, but quite handily, right on the shore, were three swimming pools! With water slide! We definitely took advantage of them.
Day 4:
We were only planning to stay four days here, but here at day four, we are only halfway through the trip. Sadly though, I spent about 2/3 of the day in cousin Luis's bed trying not to throw up everything I ate. This is the first time in almost two months that I've gotten obnoxiously sick from something I ate. (And I was so mad! Those little tacos were so good the night before! ;) It was even worse because I wasn't at home, not even in my Pana home. But Pajaro stuck around and made me licquados (fruit shakes) and took care of me while I ran to the bathroom every 45 minutes or so.... Ick.
Later, though, when I was feeling better, I took the most interesting shower of my trip so far. ;) The shower at Elmer's place was literally the same room as the bathroom, in a cement square with a curtain for a door, a drain in the floor and a barrel of water and bucket. And good luck to ye who dare use it. Pajaro had told me earlier that I could use the shower, but was totally surprised when he saw that I had actually done so. He hadn't thought I could hack it, with the cold water and lack of door etc. I was quite proud of myself.
Day 5:
Pajaro's 21st birthday! Elmer, Luis, the four girl cousins and the two of us packed up a hardcore picnic and hiked up over the mountains (oh man, I almost died, seriously) and down the other side to a series of little pools (really just exaggerated puddles and a creek). Nobody lives over there, so we were quite pleasantly alone in nature. It was too fun.
When we got where we were going, Elmer and Pajaro stripped down to their shorts and jumped in the pools to dig out little lobster looking things, (not crayfish, but something similar). By the end, we had a good 60+ and threw them onto the BBQ we had made along with the tomatoes and meat. I was proud to say that I caught one and a half crayfish, but the guys were CRAZY about them and went on and on looking for them. As for the picnic, it consisted of meat and veggies and salad and avocados with tortillas and on and on and on. These people know how to EAT.
Day 5:
After four days or so in Huehue, Pajaro and I left to head into the mountains just a couple km away from the Mexican border to the mountain pueblo of La Libertad to find more of his family. The route up to the pueblo was just gorgeous, and Pajaro, a big fan of nature, kept pointing different views and plants out to me on the way up. When we got there, once again he had aunts, uncles, cousins and friends on every street corner, but the people he was looking for, his grandparents, were in Huehue for the week and we missed them. We spent some time with an aunt though and he got some family gossip before heading back to Huehue again. Since we were going to leave first thing in the morning, we grabbed some Pollo Campero (Guate's answer back to KFC, and the most fast food I've seen here), and took it back to a hotel to watch more movies in Spanish. This time, "X-Men 3." Woo!
But I was woken up in the middle of the night to Pajaro being sick in the bathroom. So it was his turn to be ill and neither of us got much sleep that night.
Day 6:
At first light I was up and dressed and out the door to find the nearest store with Gatorade for the sick boy back in the room. He was so dehydrated and we didn't have anything in the room since water from the faucet is not a good idea.
Once he was feeling up to traveling, we headed down to the station, on the way looking for turkey, which he wanted for his own personal birthday dinner. I was surprised that he didn't find any in Huehue, until he told me that he wanted a live turkey. Ah. I see. But apparently you can only get one of those on Thursdays and Sundays or something. I figured he would give up, but no. Instead of saying "oh well," we took a different bus over to Quetzaltenango (aka Xela), a whole different city to find him his turkey. Dude, this boy is dedicated.
We got to Xela, actually saw a woman selling live chickens and turkeys from the bus and found the market from there. He bought a turkey for 150q (about 20$) and only then did we think, "oh wait, how exactly are we going to get this bird from here to Pana?" So we ended up searching around the Xela market for twice as long to find a bag or basket. Eventually a girl sold us an old bag for 3q and it conveniently had a hole in it just big enough for Señor Cena (Mr. Dinner, as we so fondly called him until he met his end last night) to stick his head through. And so we three made our way back to Pana, in several buses with our backpacks and our turkey in a bag.
So ends the trip to Huehuetenango, La Libertad and side trip to Xela. It was quite a week for not having really planned on going anywhere in the first place. After spending time in real Guatemalan houses with Pajaro's family and living with them, I am really feeling like I'm getting to know this culture. Even more so than when living in Pana, just because I'm in my own room and generally on my own there. While we were with Elmer and Luis, the Aunt Mary next door and her four daughters lent us a room for those couple of days and living with all of them and their homemade food and crazy bathrooms and scary dentist's office and breaking down car, their markets and group Fusball tournaments.... This is what I came to Guatemala for.
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