Final Guatemala Photos

During my last week in Guatemala, I made a madcap dash across the country, trying to pack in as many sights as possible (see the map below). Today I finally uploaded the photos from those adventures. I’ve separated the photos by location and linked to them below.

My first destination was Lago de Atitlan, a massive, dazzlingly beautiful lake two hours east of Quetzaltenango by way of CA-1, the Central American highway. The 50-square mile body of water is rimmed by steep volcanoes and dotted with a dozen small Mayan pueblos and a handful of larger towns. I spent three days at there, boated, kayaked, and hiked an exquisite, mist-shrouded trail to Indian’s Nose, a peak that, while small, nonetheless affords an ideal view of the water and surrounding topography. I could have stayed all week at The Lake, as it's known, but there were simply too many other places to see. From there, I headed south, where an overnight sojourn in Antigua allowed me to stash most of my belongings at a hotel.

The next morning, Wednesday, I felt my time in this beautiful country slipping away. After making frantic arrangements, I caught a bus north, planning as I went. I managed a fumbling conversation with the driver about my intended destination, the Biotopo del Quetzal, and as darkness set in, the bus dropped me--and only me--along the side of the road near this secluded nature preserve nestled in the cloud forests of central Guatemala.

My time at the Biotopo del Quetzal was surreal. After hiking up the highway a bit, I came to the Eco Hospedaje, a modest hostel, and was greeted by a woman who I assume was the co-proprietor. Friendly but reserved, she showed me to a simple room and asked what she could cook me for dinner. The hospedaje was nearly deserted, and the evening was eerily quiet. I ate and returned to my room. The only other guest I saw all night was a colossal spider—a leaden ball, like musket shot, with thick jointed fork tines for legs. As I went to wash my face before bed, the creature greeted me, silently, from atop the shower curtain. A flip-flop was the sturdiest weapon I could find, and after a tense standoff, I first wounded and dispatched him with an adrenaline-charged mix of relief and regret.

Thursday dawned, and I still couldn’t shake the surreality of the place. I met the woman’s husband, who pointed out two rare quetzal birds in the trees, and took two quiet hikes through the lush forest, capturing some beautiful photos and again finding that I had the preserve largely to myself. Shortly after noon, I packed up my things, bid goodbye to the Hospedaje’s owners and flagged down a bus headed northward. Beautiful as the Biotopo had been, I was glad to be on my way.

The bus dropped me in Coban, the capital of the Alta Verapaz region, and I hiked through town until finding a shuttle that was headed east to the small town of Lanquín, my ultimate destination. In Lanquín I stayed at a hip lodge swarming with young international travelers—Germans, Israelis, Brits, Dutch, Kiwis, Australians, and a few Americans. In the morning, a group of us found our way to Semuc Champey, a series of crystal blue pools set into the exterior of a massive limestone tunnel through which the powerful Rio Cahabon rushes. Some guidebooks describe it as the most beautiful place in all of Guatemala.

The stop along the Cahabon also included a two-hour passage deep into the watery caves of Semuc. The group was guided largely by candlelight (and, fortunately, a few headlamps) as we plodded into the caves, which were populated by bats near the entrance and noisy waterfalls deeper in. In some places, the water rose only to our knees, but for long stretches we were forced to rely on one-armed paddling (the other arm held one’s candle up to keep it dry and light the way). And the circumference of the caves varied just as dramatically, opening up at various points to cavernous lofted ceilings and constricting sharply at others, such that we had to squeeze through one by one. I don’t have any photos of this time, as my camera isn’t anywhere near waterproof.

That night, back at the lodge, I was treated to a swarm of bats flying down the Cahabon in a continuous 45-minute stream, hugging the contours of the tree-lined banks like particles in a wind tunnel. I crept to the end of a small peninsula jutting out into the river, into the midst of the bat-stream, impressed with their apparent sonar abilities and trusting that if I moved slowly enough they would avoid a collision. The bats obliged, swooping around and past me. I snapped a few photos, the poor quality of which confirms what the bats already know--when the sun has set, seeing with light waves doesn’t compare to seeing with sound waves.

Early Saturday morning, adventures complete, I set forth for Antigua, Guatemala’s original capital city, with its breezy, touristy feel and amazing colonial architecture. It would be my last night in Guatemala before heading to the airport on Sunday for my flight back home. After a long day on the road, I checked into a hotel and caught a few pictures of the city’s venerable streets in the fading light. Sunday morning, I couldn’t resist a few more photos in the Parque Central before boarding the shuttle to Guatemala City for departure.

* * *

I returned home to Denver with some beautiful fabrics, some delicious locally-made chocolate, and a rich collection of memories from my time Guatemala, but I didn’t bring back any grand revelations or insights. During my month in Central America, I learned some Spanish and experienced a good sampling of Guatemala's places, some unimaginably tranquil, others bustling, a few charmingly mundane. In my (very narrow) experience, people are happy, relaxed, contented in their everyday routines there. This, despite the fact that many live in poverty and the country’s 30-year civil war ended only recently, in 1996.

Like Ben Fountain, who is featured in Malcom Gladwell piece in last week’s New Yorker, I will probably have to visit the country many more times before I have anything especially interesting to say about it. I’m okay with that. Much of the country I still haven’t seen, and I don’t yet speak Spanish all that well. I certainly don’t have Guatemala’s or the region’s fascinating politics figured out—not even close. So I have ample reasons to return. I’m not sure when I’ll go back to Guatemala, but when I left, I felt largely the same as I had when I left Denver—I was leaving a place to which I knew I would one day return. Here’s hoping that day is sooner rather than later.

More Photos

I've posted to Picasa more photos from my time in Guatemala. You can find four new albums sporting pictures of Xela's colorful but ramshackle streets, some of the sights around town, my trip to an emerald green lake, considered sacred by the M'am Maya, known as Laguna Chicabal, and finally my host family and my Spanish teacher.

And, believe it or not, there's much more to come. When I can find the time, I'm going to upload more photos of the beautiful Lago de Atitlan and the other stunningly beautiful locales I visited during my last week in Guatemala.

Check back soon!

Monterrico

I went to Monterrico this weekend with a group of seven students from I.C.A.

Monterrico, a small beach town on Guatemala´s southern coast, about a five-hour drive from Quetzaltenango, is defined by its beautiful black sand beaches, which will roast one´s feet if they are sans flip-flops or shoes. (All of the photos can be seen here http://picasaweb.google.com/zach.zaslow/Monterrico).

Arriving late Saturday morning, we checked into our hotel and took a brief dip in the pool. From the distance of the hotel, the ocean sounds were soothing, reassuring.

By day, we played in the ocean--twirled, upended, and occasionally smashed into the soft sand by the powerful waves breaking close in to the beach. I and two other students swam briefly out past the breakers, careful not to get too far from shore because of the strong undertow.

At night, we lay in hammocks, swam in the pool, and walked south along the beach for miles, watching for sea turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs. The turtles were nowhere to be seen, but imaging their journey through the dark surf made real the vastness of the ocean, which in all my previous (and superficial) experience had seemed only another body of water to play in--something that was, at most, 20 feet deep, like a salty and tempestuous swimming pool, but nothing more.

In the blackness of this hot night, however, the sea stretched forever. Both in its horizontal reach and its evident depth, it was an infinitely encompassing thing, an inky monster from whom eminated the gnashing noises of a perpetually dangerous force, acting contantly, day and night, forever and all time. The turtles are quite large, I understand, and of course millions of years of evolution have finely honed them for precisely the task at hand. Still, my view of the ocean thus fundamentally altered, as we tramped back to the hotel, I felt for the turtles, somewhere out in the invisible deep, and wished them well in their quest to swim safely ashore and spawn another generation.

The next morning, I and one other student arose at 5:30am for a rendezvous with a body of water of an opposite temperament. (The others insisted on sleeping in.) The same guide from the night before took us on a tranquil tour of dense, thickly woven mangroves, a labryinth of branches, grasses, and quiet, placid waters. If I understood him correctly (and, admittedly, it´s quite likely I didn´t), the inland river area we toured is composed of freshwater in the winter and saltwater in the summer, when one body of water or the other rises high enough to meet the other. The salt from the ocean floods the ecosystem, creating a cyclical killing off of much of the flora but generating a hospitable environment for many more types of fish.

In the current freshwater environment, though, we managed to see a few water-going animals, including long, eel-like fishes with four eyes (two that keep watch above the water, and two for reconaissance below the surface) that slithered away, bobbing in and out of the water like tiny dolphins, alerted by the first ripples of our flat-bottomed boat. Our guide maneuvered the boat like a Venician pilot in the shallow water, all the while narrating the changing views with a good natured attitude and helpful clarifying hand gestures.

Emerging from the elaborate maze of early morning mangroves into an area of open water, we were met by a view of four of Guatemala´s volcanos looming above the tall grass. As our guide navigated back toward the dock via a different route, we encountered bird´s nests and water lillies, and I snapped some good photos of the sunrise.

I don´t know if it was the incredible relaxation of the environs or the diversity of experiences we compressed into the time available, but in the end, our two-day weekend constrained by a five-hour bus trek on each end felt more like a week than a day and a half at the beach.

Week One Photos

I´ve posted the photos of the bus ride to Quetzaltenango--also known as Xelaju, or simply Xela ('shay-la)--and of my first week of Spanish-language studies here. The photos can be found here, but I´ve pasted a few below:


On the street in Xela. My school, Escuela de Espanol I.C.A., is just to the left of the red Toyota.



A combination basketball and soccer field, just across the street from the house where I live with my host family.


One of the many colorful so-called "chicken buses" in Guatemala. This one is heading north on 24 Avenida, half a block from where I live. I think the buses are so-named because each one is typically transporting a packed multitude of people, belongings, food, and sometimes chickens.

The joke in Spanish is "¿Cuantos Guatamaltecos caben en un autobús del pollo?" and the answer is "Siempre dos más." (Or, How many Guatemalans fit in a chicken bus? Always two more.)

Arrival

Photos of my brief time in Guatemala City, between arrival at the airport and departure for Quetzaltenango, are now online and can be seen here.

A sampling is below:

From Guatemala City

Departure

Departing Houston International Airport, on the second leg of my flight from Denver to Guatemala, as Continental Flight 443 crossed the coast and was out, winging over the murky, ship-crossed Gulf of Mexico, I felt the full weight of the word departure. Much as I despise all things Texas, including the maddening "design" of the greater Houston area, it is still nevertheless the soil of my native country, and I felt a certain (and surprising) fondness for it as I watched the vast, looping highway interchanges and the familiar suburban sprawlscape slip away.

I have never been outside of the United States. I am jumping into foreign travel with what is probably a naive enthusiasm, spending a month studying Spanish and working on social projects in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.

When we reached cruising altitude out over the Atlantic Ocean, suspended in a vaporous gradient of blues, a steady patter of prim white cumulus clouds--overlaid by a layer of translucent stratus and broken up with increasing frequency by billowing mountains of moisture as we progressed south--offered only the illusion of tangible terrain.

On the airplane, I dreamt a fleeting, restless dream. It was a nightmare of sorts, in which I had to explain an intricate constellation of food allergies, in Spanish, to a friendly but uncomprehending Guatemalan host family. Their perplexity was so persistent as to slowly become ominous. In the dream, the essence of my explanation was, inexplicably, the concept of immunoglobulins. For whatever reason, I could not make clear the broader point without crossing that precise, and impossible, blockade. "EE-muno-HHLOB-uu-lins," I said. "Ee-MU-no-GGHHLOB-yoo-lins." No luck. I woke before the imaginary crisis was resolved.

The topography of Guatemala proved to be foreign but inviting. Seeing the thick forests surrounding Guatemala City, my half-acknowledged uncertainty was exchanged for eagerness to get on the ground and experience such a radically new environment.

I was met at the airport in Guatemala City by a middle-aged woman named Gilda. She runs a beautiful bed and breakfast called Casa de Familia out of her home, twenty minutes south of the city. Cheerful, gracious, and with a motherly attention to detail, Gilda is almost ideally suited to her role as a shepherd of clueless American students. She makes her living in a loose partnership with local language schools, shuttling students to and from the airport, cooking meals while they stay with her, and helping to navigate the chaotic Guatemalan public transport scene.

Gilda's house is a charming yellow two-story structure with roomy spaces, colorful walls, and orange and lime trees in a shaded courtyard bordered by hedges. Tropical plants abound, and the landscape is defined by steep emerald hills and deep, shadowy ravines. It's not as hot here as I had expected, nor as humid. The sun is intense when it is visible, but the breezy air turns pleasantly cool when it slips behind the clouds, which are numerous, ragged, and fast-moving.

I am staying at Casa de Familia tonight, so as to avoid a nighttime trip on CA-1, the Central American highway. Early tomorrow morning, Gilda will drive me to the bus station, my departure point for a six hour bus ride to Quetzaltenango and the Escuela de Espanol I.C.A., where I will study for at least the next week. I won't see her again until late August, when I once again use Casa de Familia as a waypoint between Quetzaltenango and the Guatemala City airport.

So far, none of this is familiar, but somehow it feels right.