This morning I said goodbye to Luis, my ever-reliable tuc-tuc driver, whom it has been a pleasure to see each morning (though sleeping late would have been more of a pleasure). Here’s some tuc-tuc information for you: Luis pays 200 quetzales in rental a day (around $26), plus gas. At 15 quetzales a fare, it takes a while to break even, so every day he starts before dawn and continues till 7:00 PM. His diligence is typically Guatemalan. On Sundays his tuc-tuc is rent-free so he usually works then too. His primary motivation is his ten-year-old son, whom he’s managing to send to a private school.
At noon I also bade farewell to Silvia and my school, and boarded a van for Lago de Atitlán.
In my entire life I don’t think I’ve ever taken such an instantaneous and deep dislike to anyone as I did to the man in the back seat. He was an iconic American in his crisp blue-and-white pin-striped shirt and brand-name yellow rain slicker. The hue of his red tie perfectly matched his cratered face. He was, he said, a “journalist,” host of a radio showed called “Good Morning, Guatemala.” There wasn’t a thing he didn’t know everything about. To the eight of us in the van (including two Guatemalans) he announced, “If anyone has questions about Guatemala, ask me.”
Being locked for two hours in a car with Rush Limbaugh couldn’t have been worse. By the end of the trip there was only one question I wanted to ask him: Have you always been such a wanker, or did it take years of practice? I also wondered why he remained in a country for which he has such contempt.
The bright spot of the drive (aside from stunning, verdant scenery) was talking with the two men with whom I shared a seat, and with whom (I later discovered) I shared an opinion of Mr. Wanker.
We wound through misty valleys and impoverished aldeas. It was a completely different route than the one Lulu and I rode two years ago. I kept my eyes on the scenery and not on what lay ahead, as our driver raced through hairpin turns on the wrong side of the road. We were in Panajachel in just over two hours. Maybe it was lucky we had Wanker with us. He distracted me. As his empty beer cans rolled under my feet, I jotted down his pearls of wisdom:
[Álvaro Colom] has a weak chin. That is a very good indication of his character.
I think I hear a cell phone. It must be one of mine.
Are they Sikhs or Hindus? I just call them “Dot-Heads.”
I’m sure glad I’m not driving. It’s much easier to drink beer when you don’t have one hand on the wheel.
People shouldn’t be allowed to change the name of places. I won’t call Rhodesia “Zimbabwe” until they start calling those dogs “Zimbabwean Ridgebacks.”
He also told us in great detail about what to do if our van was stopped by highway robbers. (”Give them whatever they ask for and don’t speak any Spanish.”) At first I was spooked, but he lost his credibility with “This is better than the other road. Here, you just get robbed. There you get killed.”
In Panajachel, the two nice guys and I got a ride down to the small pier from where the lanchas leave for Jaibalito (my destination) and theirs (San Pedro, one town over). Before jumping in, I casually hurled my duffel into the boat like people do in the movies. When people do it in the movies, however, they remember first to take out their brand-new Canon digital SLR.
The lake was even more beautiful than I remember it.
The boat ride was too short. From Jaibalito’s tiny, one-boat pier I stepped instantly into rural Guatemala: up a narrow path past roosters and lines of laundry and motionless sunbathing dogs (at least I hope they were sunbathing), and smoky backyard cooking fires, and dusty small children holding smaller children. Several hundred meters later the landscape changed from jungle to sprawling tropical garden, and that’s where I found Maria.
It’s so pretty here.
Here’s how we connect to the Internet:
I told Maria about the route we took on the way here. She was surprised. “The driver went on that road? That’s the dangerous way!” (Yup: highway robbers.)
She had told me that many Maya are Christian evangelists, with church services that go on for hours. Sure enough: at 5:00 on the nose the valley went electric, with blaring synthesized keyboards and horns, led by the voice of a man who can’t have been listening to the same music. It sounded a wee bit like a bull being castrated. All this was against a sonic backdrop of crickets, shrieking children, crowing roosters and blasts of wind. It was charming. For the first hour.
7:00… 8:00… 9:00… the mega-voltage ceremony continued. Two three-finger chords, again and again. C-C-C-C, B-B-B-B. C-C-C-C, B-B-B-B, accompanied by our lead vocalist (in the interest of accuracy I hesitate to use the word “singer”). People worship here as hard as they work. Jaibalito is in a small cove that’s hugged on either side by towering cliffs, which makes for lively acoustics. The sound reverberated from left and right, below and above.
The Norwegian hotel owner made for us — his sole patrons of the night — a delicious thousand-course dinner.
Back in our two-bedroom suite, Maria had an interesting ritual: to look behind all the wall hangings. Not a good sign.
She was seeking not only spiders, but scorpions.
Have you ever seen any here before?
Do you really want to know?
How big?
Do you really want to know?
When the amplified praising of the lord ceased at 10:00, I got ready for bed.
Next Central America entry >>
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