Here’s a little map I drew that shows the lake and where we went.
After breakfast (M ordered The Gringo) we wandered down to the dock to wait for the lancha publica to take us to Panajachel. It arrived so jammed with passengers that it took concerted human repackaging to get us all to fit. I sat next to a Maya woman with sparkling gold teeth and a sparkling pink huipil. We both lifted our butts off the narrow wooden bench to make room for one another, which sent it flying like a seesaw and sent us both into hysterics.
The boat — built for about ten and carrying thirty, plus luggage — was so overburdened that the poor motor choked as though the water were molasses. When we got to the middle of the 1,000-foot-deep lake (no life preservers again, of course) the engine gasped and died. We drifted in graceful circles for a while until the pilot convinced the motor to come back to life … but only briefly; it died again about a mile from shore. With more encouragement, it agreed to get us to our destination.
Adjacent to the dock we encountered yet more evidence of Hurricane Stan.
On Panajachel’s main street we ran into our two friends from Chicago, and then boarded the shuttle for Antigua. I wedged in the front next to the driver, my left leg a constant impediment to the shifting of gears. He asked me if I spoke Spanish. I said no and then proceeded to chatter annoyingly in single-word sentences: “Tree.” “Road.” “Water.” I listened better than I spoke, and learned that he’d been driving since 3:00 a.m. and was very sleepy. Hurtling down a winding Guatemalan mountain highway in the front seat of a frontless van with a tired driver gave me incentive to keep him awake. I snuck continual sidelong glances at him, and yammered in faux-Spanish whenever his eyelids seemed to droop. My cue to go off duty was a loud thwampy sound coming from the back of the van.
We took this opportunity to stretch our legs by the side of the highway, conveniently opposite a roadside tienda that sold us the right to use their paper-less baí±os.
I offered to help with the tire-changing but soon all the guys were front and center, “helping” the driver. It was highly entertaining. Because we were on a slant, they couldn’t jack the car up high enough to get the tire off. Each man passionately advocated his own view as to how it should be done. Nothing worked. Finally the Maya guy from across the street came over and rigged up a system of boards and logs and, when it proved successful, he beamed, pointed to his cranium and said in Spanish, “Maya ingenuity.”
Hours later we made it back to Antigua. Hauling heavy backbacks M and I braved the wilds of La Bodogona, which was packed solid with Christmas Eve shoppers. After a while of trying to figure out where things were, I decided that we’d make do for a couple days with the potato chips, milk and gumdrops that were in our hands.
Naturally, we got lost on the way home again, but we made it back shortly before dark. We greeted our next-door neighbor, Gail, who is not only helpful and fun, but also generous: her sharing of her Internet connection renewed M’s faith in humanity and her overall joie de vivre. And the Real Food she gave us — salad, rosa de jamaica, fresh bread — rounded out our potato chip and gumdrop Christmas Eve dinner.
All week we’ve heard occasional pops from firecrackers and whizzes from fireworks. Tonight the pace picked up as it neared Christmas. Around 9:00 we heard some fuss out on the street, and found another Santa (this one unarmed, I think) beating a hasty retreat from a neighbor’s house where he’d stopped for some Christmas cheer.
At the stroke of midnight all hell broke loose … on our street, and the one beyond and the one beyond that, for miles in every direction. The ground vibrated. The sky filled with color. You could taste the sulphur in the air. Within seconds the night sky was glowing an eerie yellow.
The texture of the sound was amazing: drone of howling dogs, whistle of pyrotechnics and moan of sirens, all overlaid with the stacatto of explosions. For nearly two hours I kept spinning in circles, trying to see and hear everything.
Around 2:00 a.m. we fell asleep to the lullaby of the firecracker.
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