Ending in Antigua

After leaving the heat in Livingston, I made my way down the eastern border of Guatemala towards Antigua. It was a good place to end my time and to ready myself for the transition back to life in the States. I had been in Antigua before, but had not ever really had the time to enjoy it or take in the more touristy spots. There are so many incredible ruins of old churches, monasteries, schools, etc., and I spent a couple days taking in the most spectacular of them. Tina joined me a day after I arrived. 

The day before she met up with me, though, I headed over to a huge artisan's market where you can buy textiles, woodwork, coffee, jewelry, and all kinds of other souvenirs. They have a back garden, where I saw this:

It was an altar to San Simon or Maximon (the 'x' in Mayan languages makes a 'sh' sound), a mix between a Mayan deity and a traditional Catholic saint, and another example of religious syncretism. He can only be seen in a few communities in Guatemala, and I was surprised to see 

him in Antigua. The Catholic Church does not recognize him as a saint partly because of his questionable origins, but partly because you can pray to him for both good and bad to happen, so while you can pray for health or success, you can also pray that your enemy will break his leg or lose his job, etc. In the communities that have a San Simon, he travels from house to house every couple of years, staying as long as ten years in one family's home. People offer money, candles, cigars, and liquor to San Simon, all of which his host family keeps to live off of. It's not such a problem for families that have him for just a year or two, but for the families that have him for up to ten years, alcoholism and difficulty reentering the workforce are common.

When Tina joined me the next day, we headed out for two of the more popular ruin sites, the San Jeronimo school and the church of San Francisco. The school was built in 1739 and has incredible gardens, and beautiful masonry and crumbling walls. It is often used for outdoor concerts, and there were signs posted at the entrance with fees for family and wedding photos, all of which is understandable. See for yourself.

After the school, we headed over to the church of San Francisco. It is one of the oldest and most extensive set of ruins in the city. Built in 1579, it once included a school, a hospital, music rooms, a printing press, and a monastery. Its nave had beautiful mouldings and sculptures, but they were destroyed by earthquakes and never restored. Central America's first saint, Hermano Pedro de Betancourt, canonized in 2002 by John Paul II and credited with powers of "miraculous intervention", is buried here. The ruins are spectacular, but they are also interspersed by large lawns and sitting areas where people can picnic and relax.

Before we entered, we saw this large cross to the side of the sanctuary that includes many elements of the Passion:

Then we entered the ruins.

That night was our last official night in Guatemala before spending the next day in Guatemala City waiting for our flight, so we treated ourselves to a nice dinner.

The next day, before leaving for the City, I went to visit the ruins of a convent called Las Capuchinas (Tina had seen them during an earlier visit to Antigua). The Capuchin nuns are still a bit of a mystery, and their ruins are some of the least understood in Antigua. They came from Spain and formed the fourth convent in the city in 1726. It was an incredibly rigorous order, its number limited to 25 women who slept on wooden beds with straw pillows with almost no contact with the outside world - food was passed to them using a turntable and they spoke to outsiders through a grille. The ruins are quite extensive and very beautiful.

Above is the nave. Below is the central courtyard.

Down some stairs, there was this model of a dead nun laid out. The combination of the dark stairs and the unprefaced dead nun was a bit creepy.

This is an older version of something we saw all over the country, especially in the smaller villages where running water in the home is rare. It is a public or common area for doing laundry.

Above is the view looking into one of the nun's cells. Below is the courtyard that held all the cells. There were 18 cells surrounding this court, though the convent held 25 nuns at a time, so I'm not sure where the other seven women lived. Below the picture of the courtyard is a picture of one of the cells reconstructed as they think the nuns lived.

Visitors, Bats, Pools, and Ruins

I left Guatemala last Wednesday, and while it's great to be home, I am still adjusting. The two things I miss most so far about living there is the ability to walk everywhere (I can count the number of times I rode in a car over the last 5 months), and seeing people out and around all over the city. Because few people have cars, most people walk like I did, and they also spend much more time in public spaces like parks or even Internet cafes. The lifestyle here in the States is so much more isolated, and I miss the constant interaction and the feeling of community. At the same time, though, I was ready to come back -so ready that it sometimes feels like it was all a dream when I think about Guatemala. Over the next few weeks, as I think and talk about it more, hopefully that will normalize.

It has been a long time since I wrote, so I have a lot to catch up on. I left Xela on May 24. My mom came to visit on the 22nd, and we spent a couple days in Xela before heading to Lake Atitlan (I have pictures of the lake on my post about Semana Santa). I carried my camera with me, but unfortunately forgot to remember to take any pictures, which we are both disappointed about. We had a great time, and I really enjoyed showing her the city I had been living in for all that time, and relaxing together at the lake. It was a quick trip, and she left the following Tuesday, the 26th.

After she left, I went back to Antigua for a couple days. That Wednesday, I hiked up Volcan Pacaya, the "most gloriously active volcano in Central America." You'll remember that Santiaguito is said to be the most active volcano in Central America, and it is by frequency, but it doesn't spout lava, so it's not as "glorious" as Pacaya, which does (who comes up with this?). It was indeed glorious, though, and here are some pictures.

A view halfway to Pacaya. The mountain in the center used to be a volcano, but its crater has filled with water, giving it the name Agua. Two peaks over is a volcano, Fuego (Fire), too active to climb.

Our guide, approaching Pacaya. I have never seen such a desolate landscape, but it was also, in a raw, wild way, beautiful.
From Pacaya to the surrounding landscape. The transition from completely burned out mountainside to lush greenery is pretty abrupt.

Our first glimpse of lava peeking out!

We saw two of these rivers of lava. The sound is unlike anything I'd heard before. The closest analogy I can think of is a bit of a nerdy one from Lord of the Rings: it sounded like that whooshing you hear when Frodo puts on the ring and becomes invisible.

As we entered the park, there were people outside our van selling bags of marshmallows. I couldn't figure out why (now it's so obvious!) until we got to the top and the group who had bought them pulled them out to roast in the lava. They had also thought ahead enough to pick up some long sturdy roasting sticks along the way. They were generous in sharing, and I got to roast some marshmallows in a river of lava. My pictures are pretty unflattering, but we were all gross from the long hike and the unbearable heat blowing off of the lava.

The day after the Pacaya day, my friend Chelsea arrived to join me for a week of traveling. Our first stop was Coban, about 80 miles north of Guatemala City. Getting there was quite an adventure in itself. We took a chicken bus from Antigua to Guatemala City, and then caught a microbus (a 15-seater van) from there to Coban. It was clearly unusual for non-Guatemalans to take such a bus, and we created quite a stir among the exclusively adult male passengers. They were all very nice, but clearly interested. We were told that the ride would take 3 and a half hours. It ended up taking more than 6. We got caught behind an accident and then a landslide, all while the bus was overfull and hot. The craziest part didn't happen until later when we started picking up more and more passengers. At one point, I looked around to count how many people were in the bus, and at its fullest, the bus was carrying 34 grown men and Chelsea and me! The ayudante, or helper, on the bus, the man who collects money and calls out destinations, opened the trunk and four men climbed in and stood, holding onto the back seat. I had been in some full buses during my time in Guatemala, but I had never seen that happen.

We finally made it to Coban, and after spending one night there, we headed off to Lanquin, about 40 kilometers further away. We stayed at a beautiful hostel, which was really more a collection of thatch roof huts:

Our room was up this ladder.

We arrived there later than we had planned, so we decided to stay an extra day. That afternoon we settled in and tubed down the river that ran by the hostel's grounds. The next day, we headed off to Semuc Champey, whose main attraction is a natural 300m long limestone bridge, on top of which there are several natural pools of different sizes. We went as a group through the hostel, and before going to the pools, we were herded to different activities (of which I unfortunately have no pictures because we left our bags at the front desk). Chelsea and I kept saying it felt like camp. We swung on a swing and jumped into the river, we tubed down that river to a bridge that we could jump off of, but the coolest part was going into the caves. We were each given a candle, and we were led through a network of caves by candlelight (on Pentecost Sunday, no less). Much of the caves were underwater, so we waded or swam through a lot of it. It was something we would never be able to do here in the States because of pretty non-existent safety precautions, but it was incredible.

Once we had finished with that, we headed off to the pools. They were too beautiful to describe, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

When we left Semuc, we headed out for some nearby caves, the Lanquin Caves, where you can see bats fly out at nightfall. We got there before they turned off the internal lights, so we were able to explore, but when it got late enough, we headed back for the entrance to wait for the bats.

After waiting a little while, the bats did not disappoint. These pictures are taken with the flash on, so keep in mind that we couldn't see them this well unless someone else's camera's flash went off. We mostly heard them calling and could feel the breeze from their wings flapping when they flew close enough. It was unbelievable.

The next day, we left bright and early for Tikal, the site of some of the most amazing Mayan ruins. We took a shuttle through our hostel in Lanquin, and we all ended up staying together in the same hostel in Flores, the city closest to Tikal. It was fun to travel in a larger group. We had wanted to stay the night in hammocks at the actual park, but we arrived in Flores to late to get there.

The park itself is huge, with ruins worn away to varying degrees, from mostly intact temples to little more than a pile of rubble grown over with earth and grass. I will refer you to this map of the park so you can follow along with our progress through it (http://www.tikalpark.com/map_pensilvanya.htm). The only area that was fully cleared of the jungle is the Great Plaza; the rest is connected by dirt paths winding through the jungle.

We came in on the Maler Causeway, approaching Temple I from behind.

Before entering the Great Plaza, though, we started by exploring the Central Acropolis. There are no gates or signs saying do not touch, so we were able to climb and explore all of it much more freely than we would in any comparable park in the States. While that made it more fun for us, I wonder what the long term effects in terms of its preservation that will have.

Above is Temple I from the Central Acropolis.

We made our way into the Great Plaza, and headed for Temple II. You can't climb Temple I, so we decided to get a better view from the temple opposite it. This view of Temple I is the image most associated with Tikal.

While we were there, a group of indigenous Maya were having a traditional ceremony. There were men and women in traditional dress praying, chanting, and offering live bird sacrifices. They were walking in a circle around a fire, each holding a bird by its feet with its head toward the smoke (needless to say, the birds were less than cooperative or appreciative). After a while, they took them away, wrapped them in newspaper, broke their necks, and threw them into the fire. It was fascinating to watch a traditional ritual in the middle of these ancient ruins.

From the Great Plaza, we headed down to Temple V.


The view from Temple V. Temple I is in the center, Temple II peeking out on the left, and the Central Acropolis in front.

The next few pictures are of various ruins on the way from Temple V to Temple IV, including the Lost World and The Plaza of Seven Temples.

Temple IV is too cloaked in the jungle to get a good picture of it, but it had some of the most incredible views of the rest of the park. In the next shot, Temple I is on the far left, with Temple II just in front of it. Temple III is the big on in the middle. You can't seen Temple V; it's behind that mound of taller trees. The Plaza of the Lost World is on the far right (click on the picture to get a bigger view).

A close up of, from left to right, Temples I, II, and III.

As you can see from the rest of the pictures, we had a cloudy day, which was good on two counts. One, we weren't being baked by the sun, and two, the gloom brought out all the different shades of green in the jungle canopy. Sitting on top of these temples, it feels like you are above an ocean of green.

Walking through the park, we saw a bunch of these animals, called jungle racoons (or so we were told). They were really bold, coming up so close without paying us any attention.

We also saw spider monkeys, heard howler monkeys, and heard several birds that made sounds unlike anything I'd ever heard before.

Chelsea left the next day, flying out of Flores, and I headed out with a friend, Tina, from Xela we ran into at the hostel in Lanquin and had studied at my language school after I left. It turned out we had the same travel itinerary, and even the same flight out of Guatemala City, totally by coincidence. Our first stop was Rio Dulce, the Sweet River, on the eastern coast of the country. We stayed the night in a hostel right on the river.

The next morning, we took a boat down the river to Livingston. We had had perfect weather up until then, but it poured the whole way down. The river was beautiful, but it was made a bit more difficult to enjoy by the rain pelting us.

Livingston is a tourist draw because it has the only significant black population in Guatemala, which lends it a completely different cultural atmosphere from the rest of the country. The people there speak a hybrid language called Garifuna made of Arawak (an African language), Carib, French, Spanish, and English, though most are bi- or tri-lingual, speaking Spanish, English, or both. Their music and dance are famous, and we hoped to see and hear it. Unfortunately, we were unable to find any, and there really isn't much else in the town to do. I was starting to feel sick from the anti-malarials I had taken, and it was unbelievably hot and muggy, so I decided to take off a day sooner than planned. I headed back to Antigua, but I'll save that for another post.