Question for my reader

According to the statistics on this blog it’s either being read in a variety of countries and obviously by people who don’t know us or being accessed by various search engines.  I’d really like to know which so if you are a reader who doesn’t know us would you just post a short message.  How did you find out about it ?

Normal blog service will resume as soon as I’ve written something else.

Thanks

Les

Chicken bus to Xela and on to Coban

Sunday 10 February.

 We turn up early for the chicken bus to Xela  and are told that it’s already waiting to go.  With timings here a bit, say fluid and it being a 3 hour trip, we grab it.  Our rucksacks go on the top we get in and off we go.  Not a chicken to be seen.  When the fare is collected,  3 Quetzales each, which is 50p for both of us, we smell a figurative rat.  We know the fare should be 20 -25, max. 40Q.  Turns out there are even grades of chicken bus and we’re not the Directo but the Stoppo.    The seats are of polished plastic and on the seat in front of us is a single old lady who slides alarmingly from side to side at each turn and there are a lot of them.   Then a large young man left his seat and joined her as a sort of human bookend.   We get to our destination in 2.5 hours which is a relief but we do it on four different buses with a huge amount of Guatemalan goodwill for 21 Q (£1.75/$3) each.   At every change we are known to be going to Xela , our bags are unloaded carried to the next bus and on we go.  No time is lost.  On the last one we had to jog to the bus and as our bags were being loaded  H got on at the front and I stood at the back checking they went on;  goodwill goes just so far and leaving your gringo bags unattended in a bus station is too far.    The bag loader was on the roof clipping the bags on and the bus started to pull away so I jumped on the ladder and through the back door followed a minute or so later by bag loader.    It was mostly  a seat each but one leg of the trip was very popular and they do not pass up the chance of a fare.   So two seats become three with the aisle one having one cheek width of seat to perch on and then there all those standing in the narrow aisle.  At stops there is a lot of squeezing past and I got very familiar with a number of Guatemalans.  While the bus is moving the conductor climbs through collecting fares.   You may well be asking why oh  why would you bother.  The very question I asked myself several times but I couldn’t come up with any sort of rational explanation.  

Xela is a dusty and not particularly appealing place but with a very attractive central square.  After a much needed drink and a search for the disturbingly named Adrenalina Tour office we book a walk up a volcano, as you do.  Pick up 6.00 am. so no breakfast.   We’re already at about 7000 feet and unexpectedly see frost as we drive to the start.  It’s just the two of us plus a Mayan guide.   This isn’t a bare mountainside covered in barely cooled magma, it’s heavily forested and the caldera is a sacred lake.  I don’t know whether it’s officially extinct, dormant or just having a lie-in but it was very tranquil and quiet.  Unlike the one across the valley which was literally letting off steam in an eruption.  Impressive deep thumps and clouds of smoke or ash were rising from it and as our guide wasn’t nervous, neither were we.   This walk was described as ‘moderate’ in the leaflet we had but ‘moderate’ clearly has a different meaning here. The usual slope for the first hour was about the inclination of a flight of stairs with planks laid up it.  Then down and then up and up.  At the top we had a great view of the lake and then went down nearly 600 rough cut steps to it.  I found it a tough walk, obviously not helped by altitude.   As there were only two of us we got local transport back and luckily when we got on it was only full.   This was a 12 seater minibus and at one point there were 22 people as far as I could see plus driver and conductor on board.   Another thread  in life’s rich tapestry.  

From what we’ve seen so far Guatemala  isn’t overrun by tourists.  We haven’t seen gaggles of Lonely Planet wielding, slightly bewildered looking groups on corners, just the few tourists here and there.  Many of the local people are obviously desperately poor and many still dress in traditional costume as normal wear rather than for tourist shows or ‘traditional’ dancing.   Women are in traditional garb more than men and the styles do vary from place to place.   Much of the work is manual with virtually no mechanical aids, often not even wheelbarrows.   Roads are mended with hammers and cobbles with cement mixed by hand.   We saw a woman and children under 10 collecting stones in woven plastic bags for building work.   Fields are worked with a type of hoe, a bit like a straight handled spade but with the blade at 90 degrees to the shaft.   Potatoes are harvested by hand.  Much of what we’ve seen is a peasant economy and there are many faces that themselves have obviously seen a lot of hard work.  

Everyone has been very friendly and helpful although English isn’t spoken everywhere but to our delight and surprise, we understand  more Spanish than we thought but either speech is slower here or they are just being kind.  It’s very easy to get a smile and a buenas dias or tardes and sometimes a rather Portuguses bom dia.

Tuesday 12 February.

A luxurious 8.30 pick up in a 20 seater coach with only 8 of us for the trip back to Antigua where we have time for lunch before the 6 hour trip to Coban in a more usual full minibus.  14 seats, 14 people and us in prime position next to the driver.   We were told that it was a 4.5 hour trip so in usual fashion it left 40 minutes late and took 6 hours.   We turn out to be a cosmopolitan bunch with Brits, Finns, Argentinians, Swiss and a couple from the USA, at least on board.  Unusually, we haven’t seen any Japanese, Chinese or Australians although with the strength of the Aussie Dollar I’d expect them to be everywhere.

We have to go via the outskirts of Guatemala City and from what we see haven’t missed much.   As we clear the urban sprawl and get into the country the landscape is convoluted and very brown. It’s looking fantastic as the warm late afternoon sunshine slants across from the west, highlighting all the folds and tucks.   As we climb and dusk falls it starts to get greener but we can see little at this stage.  Fortunately we do have a hotel booked and are dropped at the door at about 8.00pm although everyone else has another 4 hours bus-time as they disappear further up country.

There’s a door opening right onto the pavement in a blank wall on a deserted, dusty street in the dark.  One small sign says Casa Duranta which is close enough for us so we bang on the door.  Inside is a lovely courtyard garden about 50 feet by 50 feet with a restaurant at the far end.  Our room is large, clean and just what we need.   However, there is always something odd.  In many parts of the world the concept of a plug for the handbasin is unknown and we always travel with our own.  Years ago in Costa Rica we went into a large plumbing supply shop to buy one and they didn’t have any.  Anyway this hotel room has a plug on a chain but the chain is too short for the plug to reach the hole.   We also have the famous ‘suicide shower’.  This is the one where the water heating element is in the shower head with all the jolly colourful cables on view.  At least the shower control is on the wall, we have seen them on the shower head along with the electrics.

So a whole day and all I’ve had  since a small breakfast is a packet of peanuts and a bowl of asparagus soup,  apart from the steak with all the trimmings at lunchtime.

Antigua - beautiful city

 

In the central park here in Antigua, imaginatively called Parque Central there is a fountain whose main feature is unusual.   It’s four or perhaps five well  endowed women squeezing their bosoms in a desultory sort of fashion and looking rather bored as a stream of water gushes from each nipple into the fountain.   We saw people posed hilariously and photographed by their friends as if they too were  squeezing the famous boosooms.   Naturally I photographed them too but in a sort of ironic fashion.   What fascinates me is imagining how the fountain got produced.  Imagine the famous fountain designer sucking his pencil (yes, maybe that  is where the idea came from) and thinking “what is appropriate and arresting for the fountain in the central park in Antigua”.   What’s even more interesting is whoever commissioned the fountain being presented with the design and saying “yes, yes, big titted women, squeezing them, gushing into the fountain.  Yes, all in the best possible taste.  People may even pose in the future as if they too are squeezing them”.   It’s just what Antigua needs.   Mind you it made us smile every time we went past them.

Apparently Antigua  is a World Heritage Site although I have no idea what that means in practice.  It is less littered than English towns and every road is cobbled, houses are colourful and it doesn’t seem to have inappropriate development.  It all seems of a piece somehow and very satisfying.

One of the  locals told us to go through any open door because they’ll be things to see or buy.  It’s true, many of the small shop doors open one room back into a courtyard surrounded by other shops, sometimes with a further courtyard behind that.  Streets full of mini-malls.   Despite all the potential purchases  our bags weigh no more than when we left home.   We do pack light and managed this time to come in at just over 9 kilos a bag each or our checked in backpacks.  However, my hand luggage with camera, two lenses, binoculars, laptop, ipod, ebook  plus various chargers was a further 8 kilos !  Something must be done.i

Strolling about after dark it is very noticeable how many more of the indigenous population are about, mostly trying to sell handicrafts.  I did see a woman who I think was the shortest adult I have ever seen who didn’t have dwarfism.   My estimate is that she was under  4 feet tall.   Generally the locals, who are still called Mayans, are short stocky people.   Later, as we sat in the dark on the roof terrace of our hotel drinking a beer and enjoying the warmth of the evening air we listened to what were either firecrackers or gunshots in the streets .  No sirens followed so it was probably firecrackers. 

Why travel rather than look at photographs or watch travelogues was  H’s musing of the evening.    I thought it was the unnoticed aromas, the sounds, the brush of the country’s breeze on my skin, the reality of a proper surround experience, the lack of editing so it’s not all perfect and of course no musical or spoken commentary.   I suppose I was just being a bit poetical but being here is so different and so much more real.   I rarely look at my photographs once they’re made but if I do I can usually remember taking them.  I suppose it is all part of the same reality.  Dunno what that was all about, must have something in that last coffee.

8 Feb we move out.   On to Lago de Atitlan in the Western Highlands, this time by minibus, locally known as a shuttle.   They’re used by tourists and sit below private bus but above chicken bus, statuswise.   It picks up at your hotel, bags go on the roof, we were first on and H noticed on the drivers list that it was a full load and suggested we grabbed the two seats next to the driver.  A good move.  As always on these trips, every time someone else gets on, the average age appears to drop.  There are a few travellers our age but we are definitely in a small minority.  So two and a half hours for £8 ($12) each.   To begin with it’s miles of strip development, lots of exhausts, minor welding, cars, tyres and then we break out into hilly country with greens and browns everywhere but very little water to show.   We learn that derrumbe means landslide or something similar when the road is missing in a number of places.  We inch along over the remains of the landslips and then when we do see a river, the bridge is washed away and we have to ford it.  By the way a chicken bus is apparently called that because it’s the one the locals  get on with everything including chickens.

The driving back in Antigua was good, not fast, cars would stop and let you cross the road.  Different rules apply outside and although we seem to have a competent driver, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this, let’s just say he used the full width of the road and wasn’t driving for economy.    And so we arrive safely in Panajachal on the shores of the stunningly beautiful Lago de Atitlan.  A quick bite to eat and we grab a boat taxi for 20 minutes across the lake to our hotel which is inaccessible by road.

The lake is surrounded by steeply wooded hills and volcanoes and is about 1000 feet deep.  All the Mayan villages are high above the lake, perhaps 300 feet up but the Maya were happy to sell prime lakeside land to the gringos, knowing full well that the lake has periodic rises of level.  We were told it was every  50 years or so.    In the 18 months following Hurricane Stan (what a ridiculous name for a hurricane) in 2010 the lake has risen over 5 metres, inundating hotels and houses around the lake and washing away the paths that used to run along the waterside.   Our hotel, with rooms as a series of thatched huts climbing the hillside and set amongst tropical trees and gardens, each of which has fabulous views towards the rising dawn, has its problems from the rising water.  The reception and restaurant  has an elevated front because the hill is quite steep and it used to have a 70 feet garden between it and the lake.  That’s gone and the water now laps around the supports for the front of the restaurant.  The water is still rising.    It is a glorious setting and the hotel is bit new-agey with yoga classes, astrology readings and the like but is run virtually offgrid using solar panels and water purification.  We like it a great deal  and  spend two days here but feel the need to move on and do something.

We decide to go chicken bus style but things don’t go quite to plan

Leaving on a jet plane - and arriving

Houston, we have a problem.  Well really the problem was having to come through Houston, or any US hub frankly.   The USA is the only country we know that doesn’t do Transit which means going all the way through customs and security just to check back in again.   It’s just primitive.    Still Houston airport wasn’t  as bad as we expected on that side but food was not easy especially for vegetarian options.  Here in Texas they think that vegetarian is what food eats.  

As usual, before we left  there were various housekeeping  phone calls to make , credit cards, deliveries that sort of thing and I was asked another one of  those questions that if you think about,  just don’t make sense.  This one was “are you going anywhere nice”.  To which the answer has to be “no, we always try to find somewhere horrible for our holidays so that home seems even nicer when we get back”.   Another one of my favourites is  “it was in the last place I looked”.  Well yes, how many of us keep looking after we’ve found what we’re looking for.

We’re with United Airlines who charge a hefty sum to confirm an extra legroom emergency exit seat so we splashed out.   It included complimentary soft drinks so when H had an orange juice it said it liked her hair.  Only joking, she had water.

Anyway we are going somewhere to start with that is supposed to be horrible and that’s Guatemala City which is allegedly dirty, polluted, fairly dangerous and with uninspiring architecture.   When we read that one of the major attractions is a scale model of the Eiffel Tower we booked a taxi straight from the airport to another town, Antigua, which has better write-ups.   We normally just have the flight and first night’s hotel booked but this time we had a hotel for the first three nights and that taxi sorted so for us it was wildly over organised.

We arrived just before midnight , 25 hours after we got up to get to Heathrow and understandably just fell into bed.   At 7.30 I looked out of our window to find a volcano right in front of me.  Quite a sight especially as it was unexpected.   This is a low, 2 – 3 storey town so views from the roof terrace are exceptional.  It all looked very fresh and as we walked around, it was clear of litter, monstrous new buildings and loose dogs. 

Antigua is set out on a grid like an US city or an old Saxon one for those of you who’ve looked at Wareham properly and it really is a beautiful old Spanish colonial place.  I’d rate it as more attractive than any city we saw in Costa Rica or Argentina .   This is also the time we tend to suck air through our teeth and say we really should have done a bit more Spanish revision before we came.   This time our revision was restricted to turning our sat-nav to Spanish for the last twenty miles of a trip last week so we know how to say “first left at the roundabout on the A27” but we haven’t had to use it yet.   We do remember nouns so recognised Cake de Zanahorias as Carrot Cake, asked for Cake de Zanahorias only to have the woman on the till say “one carrot cake” back to us.  I don’t know why we bother sometimes.

I have the new camera with me and note that most guides warn against waving expensive looking cameras about.  Got that spot on then.   The new one with telephoto, laptop  and other bits is about 8 kilos.  H had suggested when I was worriting about the weight before getting it that if I lost a stone I’d be carrying no more and the cameras would be more use than a stone of fat.  Harsh but  true.   Now I have to decide between ice cream and a close up lens.

The buildings which are tallest are the churches, many of which were seriously damaged and still remain closed after a devastating earthquake in the 1970’s.  The cathedral is in good shape and is unusually on a north/south orientation rather than the usual east/west.   Lots of Christ pictures as you would expect and it struck me that for some reason they all look like the tall thin fella from Peter, Paul and Mary.

Of course the people are the interesting bit as always and they do seem very friendly and not pushy at all.  We get asked if we want a taxi or a necklace or guide and a simple no, gracias is enough to get rid of them.  We even saw one guide later who jokingly called out ‘best English speaking guide in town’ at us and laughed.  The local locals, that is those who appear to have indigenous blood are often tiny, many well under 5 feet tall.   We had a good chat to a local from Guatemala City and got a few tips of where to go.  He was well travelled and had spent some time in Europe but had never been to England. 

This town is well worth a visit, with a thriving café culture and many restaurants and bakeries.   It’s supposed to be touristy and has lots of language schools but it doesn’t seem anything other than a really attractive Guatemalan town, not at all overrun.  For instance I haven’t seen a rash of Lonely Planets being carried about yet, that’s the sign of a tourist hotspot.  

We have a couple more days here but with our mode of travel one of the first things we have to do is plan our exit strategy whenever we get somewhere.   Really don’t want to get stuck somewhere we want to leave only to find that the next bus is three days away.