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A Year Away
Oh man, there is just so much to say. I arrived in Panajachel about 5 days ago and the second I got here there started an absolute DOWNPOUR. I had just gotten into this little tiny place that I thought was a hostel, but was actually just one of a couple extra rooms in a little old lady's house. :) At first I thought it was quaint, but then the rain began and was amplified about 15 times on the tin roof two feet above my head, and a large and creepy spider crawled across my wall and I reallized I was the only person in the entire house besides the little old lady and I somehow managed to convince myself that the rain would never stop and I'd never meet anyone or even be able to see the lake I was there to see. All in all, I was being quite ridiculous, so I forced myself out into the rain to take a run around the city and randomly ended up meeting seven people and a dog. Not bad for being incredibly depressed and walking around in a rainstorm. :)
The next day I immediately changed hostels to one more central that had more people in it so I wouldn't get myself down unnecesarily. I was shopping around, trying to avoid the women balancing things on their heads, (though they still managed to chase me down) when this Guatemalteco on a bike rode up next to me and started a conversation. This is where Aunt Tracy's note that all the guys there want a girl to take them to the states kicked in, but I decided to give him a chance and just talk. His name was Juan and he was totally sweet. He offered to take me out to one of the pueblos the next day. I was going to do that anyways so I agreed. We caught a little boat on the lake and went out to San Marcos where we walked through the trails on the shore listening to the drums and flutes played by the hippies that have set up camp there and found a flat rock on the edge of the lake to chill on. We just talked and swam and talked some more. The water was FABulous. All the Guatemaltecos think the water is cold. I would just LOVE to throw a couple of them into the Puget Sound, or even Grandma's Lake, and see them squirm. Hee hee! During our talk though, I learned the benefit of a made-up boyfriend. I have a whole past relationship with this "Daniel" that couldn't come to Guate with me because he had to work.... It helps to have a story, I have to say.
The next day I caught a boat again from Panajachel (Pana) and went back to San Marcos with a lady I met at the dock who had heard that the walk from San Marcos to the town of San Pedro was really nice. So I asked to join her, then another British lady decided to come too, so we had ourselves a little hike. It was so incredible! There was hardly any path to follow and we ended up walking through gardens, backyards, beaches, climbing over rocks and wading through streams. We saw and talked to a ton of people along the way, workers, women washing clothes and bathing, naked little boys swimming, men in their gardens or packing things into bundles and fishermen in their boats and on the shore. We asked everyone we met how long it would take to get to San Pedro, and EVERY SINGLE PERSON said "one hour". From start to finish, it would always take us an hour. In the end, the last fisherboy we talked to said it wasn't possible to get to San Pedro on the shore, we had to stop in San Juan, another little town and take a tuk-tuk from there. Oh man, we would have just about died from laughter at that if we weren't busy scrambling over a pile of granite boulders. We finally got to San Juan and were like a trio of starved people. We grabbed lunch at the first comedor we could find, and I swear, we ordered chicken and the lady must have went and grabbed one off the street and cooked it right then and there. It was THAT fresh.
So that's how I met Linda, the NYU professor. She was the one who'd heard that the trail was about an hour, and flat. HA. She talked to her source later and he said, "you walked to San Pedro?! You should have gone the other way to Solola! Going to San Pedro is DANGEROUS." Oy vey. We had a fantastic adventure instead. :)
Linda and I hooked up the next day to check out another one of the little pueblos on the lake, Santiago Atitlan. We chose to go on the 25th because it was, like, Santiago Day, or something, and it was a fair! Everyone was in their fancy traditional garb and the church had a little procession of its pasos, the statue things like they had in Seville, just on a much MUCH smaller scale. Linda was like a moth to a flame among all the shopping tents. If she saw bright colors, which she did, about ever 5 or 6 steps, we had to stop and barter for a bit. :)
When we got back to Pana we hung out by the lake to watch the sunset, which, I have to say, watching the sun set behind three volcanos and a lake and watch the lights come on the pueblos and the stars (unfamiliar ones at that) come out overhead has got to be one of the grooviest experiences ever. While we were hanging out there my friend Sergio came and joined us.
Sergio is an extremely interesting character in my mind. We met where he sits selling handmade jewelry with his buddy Gustavo on the main drag of Pana and have talked a ton. He just graduated from something or other in Guatemala City with a degree in Psychology, but with that and his mother having just died a couple months ago, he just wanted to escape everything for a while. So he and Gustavo up and left Guate and started travelling. They didn't intend to stay in Pana, but they liked it and have been there for 20 plus days now. They literally live off what they make every day, which can be anywhere from 300Quetzals (30$) to 0 Quetzals (0$). They eat at the street vendors a lot because it's cheap, and he's only got his one change of clothes. They pay at a hostel for a room for one, so Gustavo does that and Sergio has to sneak in and out when the owner isn't looking. I was with him when he was looking for a little job on the side (a great idea I believe) and a restaurant offered him 60Q. I was like, that's awesome, 60Q is about 8$ and that's what I've been paying each night for my hostel in Pana. But he said, no, it's not 60Q per day. What? Per week? I guess that's ok, if the jewelry keeps selling a bit every day that would help paying the hostel. But no. They were going to pay him 60Q, 8$ remember, per MONTH. That's litterally like earning less than 25 cents a day. I don't understand. My budget has been about 200Q a day, with food and lodging and transportation. That was a real smack in the face as to how different our two worlds are. I earn in ONE HOUR what he could earn in a MONTH. Its not the average job, and I don't think it's an every day thing, but still. Wow.
Ooh, another friend I have in Pana is Veronica. I was writing in my journal at a restaurant a couple days ago when she came in with another little girl with fabrics piled up on her head and arm and of course they tried to sell us all things. I said no and kept writing, but she stayed and watched me. I figured she was just persistent and would keep hasselling me, but when she spoke again she said "You write really fast," she was just interested in my writing and my pretty blue pen. :) She said she liked to draw, so I asked her to draw me a picture. Did I mention that Veronica is 10 years old? She said she was tired of selling stuff for the day and ended up not only drawing me a surprisingly accurate picture of el Lago Atitlan, complete with snails and crabs, but stuck around the rest of the day. She said she would do whatever I did. We went down to the lake for a while, grabbed some ice cream, played cards (ended up teaching her and 3 of her friends Go Fish, or Que Pescas, in Spanish), eating pizza and just hanging out in general. In the middle of all that she did show me the stuff she was selling, and I bought one that she had made herself (which has since been described as a little girls 'first knitting'). I figured when she'd made her sale she would leave, but nope, she stuck around and we hung out for a good 5 or 6 hours. I've seen her every day since. She is one groovy chick.
Ok, if ANYone is even still reading this, I'm terribly impressed. ;)
So I'm out of Panajachel now and in Chichicastenango, for one of it's huge famous markets tomorrow. Excellent. Until later.... --->Natalie
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