Can you wait?

Huh, it really is amazing how addicted I am to having internet. Not having wi-fi where I'm staying is truly making me twitch. So maybe it's a good thing....right? Not exactly cold turkey, since I have internet where I've been working this week. But it's not the same. So, dear readers, I'm writing this note to see if you can find it in your hearts to forgive me for my lack of posts of late and to kindly ask if you can wait a few more days for the continuing adventures? I will be on a flight to Chicago on Saturday afternoon and swear that I will dedicate a good part of my first few days back posting stories and other amusing items before I forget the details. It's just not in the cards at the moment, I'm afraid. I've got to sign off now so I don't miss my taxi. Until next week, then, my friends....

Bus from Antigua

So just a quick note, as I'm only taking a break from reading news articles about murder and mayhem. Thought I would relate to you, dear readers, my interesting trip to Antigua Tuesday night...

A friend of mine was heading back to England early Wednesday morning and had moved from the hotel in zone 1 in the capital where I was also staying (but am not staying anymore as I explained in the previous post) to Antigua. I wanted to hang out with her on her last night in Guatemala, so I had planned to hitch a ride with some friends to Antigua that afternoon. Unfortunately, as plans often fall apart or change rapidly, things got complicated. My original ride fell through, I didn't get out of the office until late due to a lack of keys to the house where I'm staying, and my back-up plan for bumming a lift also didn't work out. So, after changing my mind at least three times about taking a bus up to Antigua just for the night, I gathered my courage and hopped in a taxi to the nearest spot where I could swing myself on to an Antigua bound bus. Why a taxi, you ask? Ah, well, because it was rush hour and the urban buses are packed to the gills with people. So picture me, the only gringa on the bus, bouncing along on the way to Antigua with no way of telling my friend I was running late and no real plans as to where I was going to stay. Ok, I had plans but they, too, fell through oddly enough due to another set of misplaced keys.

I get to Antigua, find my friend, and have a nice quiet evening drinking a few local beers and eating what I think has to be the best bean soup in Antigua. Yum. I managed to snag a bed at the hostel where my friend was staying for half price with the argument that I wasn't staying for breakfast (which is included in the price of a bed). So no true economic hardship, really, besides the rush hour taxi. A bus to or from Antigua to Guatemala City runs about Q8 (that's $1 more or less). My friend left early that morning for the airport in a shuttle and I rose bright eyed and bushy-tailed (sort of) at 6:15 so I could catch an early bus back to the city. To my surprise there was a slightly bewildered German guy at the door of the hostel who, according to the night watchman, had missed the shuttle to the airport and had no idea how he was going to catch his 10 am flight. The poor guy didn't speak much Spanish and the guard spoke no English. The guard was trying to tell the German guy that he should take the bus to the city and then grab a taxi to the airport, but neither one of them was understanding the other. So, being the good Samaritan that I am, I basically told the German I would take him to the airport and dragged him off with me to the bus station. All this time getting to know how things work around here finally paid off. Got the German guy on a bus, got him off at the right stop in the city, caught a cab quickly and made it to the airport in time for him to catch his flight despite some really horrific traffic. And he even paid for the taxi (which I didn't refuse). That was my random act of kindness for the day. After that I headed back to the house for a shower and a change of clothes and made it to the office to do some coding by 11 am. Not bad, right?

Wi-Fi

Wow, it's really amazing how much I was taking for granted having wi-fi access. I'll have to apologize to everyone reading this blog...I've moved from my hotel in zone 1 to be closer to the office where I've been doing most of my work recently and there is no internet access where I'm staying now. So while it is not meant to be an excuse, there is a reason as to why you haven't read anything recently. My goal tomorrow will be to write something on Word so I can post it when I do have internet access (we'll see how that works out). Not much to tell, otherwise. Went to Xela this past weekend with a friend and had a relaxing two days just hanging out with friends. Nothing too terribly adventurous (well, except maybe the harrowing bus ride which may be the subject of my next post). Now I'm back in the city working on coding newspaper articles. I guess I didn't post about this, but I'm working on this great project with an NGO (that's "non-governmental organization" for those not versed in political jargon) here that fits in very nicely with my dissertation project. We're coding news articles on crime just like I am doing for my dissertation, but instead of focusing on the six months before elections we're looking at the recent security crisis here in Guatemala. I wrote about the security problem in a past post (the increase of murders of bus drivers, etc.). For this project we are interested in seeing how the different newspapers covered the murders and what kind of political discourse was published, who was quoted, who said what when, etc. It's pretty interesting (although also quite depressing). Ok, back to work...

Volcanoes (ok, volcano)

I mentioned in the last post that I forgot to tell the story of climbing the Agua volcano. So here, faithful readers, is that story. Of course, I suppose the photo at the left gives away the ending (that we eventually made it to the summit). But the fun (or pain, depending on how you look at it) is not in the destination but in the journey.

I decided to join my friends in their conquest of the Agua volcano at the last minute. I'm well aware that I'm not the fastest of hikers and was worried I would slow down their ascent. I finally got over my hesitation, however, due to the fact that I was not sure if I would ever again have the opportunity to climb a volcano with such genuinely kind people who didn't seem to care that I wasn't really all that good at climbing mountains (or volcanoes). To protect the innocent, of course, I won't be naming names, but these people are friends of friends (and now friends of mine), one who lives in Guatemala City and the other who is traveling in Guatemala but who hails from the Basque Country in Spain. I made a last minute decision to join them and we grabbed a cab to Antigua Friday night (not so bad if split three ways and much safer than a bus after dark). The Agua volcano is the most prominent of the volcanoes that can be seen from Antigua. While it is not the largest in the area (this proud designation belongs to the Acatenango that sits at 14,000 ft), the Agua volcano rises 12,325 ft and is often pictured in postcards of Antigua. You can see it looming in the background in the photo on the right, which I took during Holy Week (hence the massive crowd). Many tour groups will take a two days to climb the volcano: one day to subir (climb up) and one day to bajar (climb down) so that you can spend the night at the summit and see the sun rise. As we lacked warm clothes, we decided to do the whole thing in one day. Of course, since we were in Antigua staying with friends, we started out a little later than expected due to a bit of a late night out socializing.

So here is the rundown of our hike. It was, for all intents and purposes, an adventure. We couldn't get find a bus out to the village were the trail begins, so we acted on our Basque friend's claim that the village was only 4 km from Antigua and just started to walk towards the volcano. It could only be about a 30-45 minute walk, right? What's that for three adventurers ready to climb a mountain? 30 minutes later with no bus or town in sight, we come across an old man walking down the same road who informs us that the village is, in fact, still an hour march away up a steep road. What! An hour more and we haven't even reached the volcano yet? With that information at our disposal (and some covert dirty looks at our friendly Basque), we set our intentions on hitching a ride in a pickup. Not too much longer after that we were happily bumping along in the back of a pickup full of vegetables ready for the market in town. Thank goodness for pickup trucks! Shortly after that (the road was really steep, I'm not sure what we would have done if no trucks had driven by) we were breaking our fast (eating breakfast for those of you who aren't paying attention) in the local market: black beans, eggs, cheese, sour cream, freshly made tortillas, and ridiculously sweet coffee...my favorite. Then on to the volcano, oh brave adventurers!

So all the guidebooks suggest using a guide while climbing this volcano, mostly for reasons of safety. We, however, ignored this suggestion and carried on by ourselves. I will add here that we saw nothing to suggest that we were in any danger while climbing or descending the volcano (although I did see a man in a ski mask, all he did was say good morning and climbed down past us...not sure what was going on there). The nice part about a guide would have been that he or she could have pointed out the shorter route up the volcano. We only figured out that we had been climbing the long way 'round when we were about two hours into the hike and sitting at the first of many crosses on the path trying to catch our breath. Out of the woods comes this lovely indigenous family that we met several times later on the journey (and would end up walking with for at least the last hour or so of the descent). The looked at us, pointed at the truck path we had been climbing at and laughed bit, saying something along the lines of "Wow, you climbed up that? That adds at least an hour on to the climb. Didn't you ask were the sendero was?" Well, we had asked, but must have been steered wrong.

It took us about 4 1/2 to 5 hours to climb the mountain, mostly because I was lagging quite a bit. The thinness of the air really got to me, to tell the truth. I couldn't ever quite catch my breath. Truly, I thought I was going to die at least a few times. But my friends were patient and we dragged my ass up that damned volcano. And I will admit it was worth it. The view alone was worth it. It was the first mountain of any kind I'd climbed (I'd gone up Chicabal and Pacaya, but not the whole way on foot). And I'm proud that I made it, even though my friends made it look easy and I struggled the whole way. For what it's worth, they are experienced mountain climbers. I don't even want to discuss how painful it was going down. My legs shook the whole way and my big toe on the left foot turned black and blue. But there were some fun parts to the climb down. At the summit there is a perfectly formed crater (the volcano is inactive) that the locals have turned in to a soccer field, as well as a run-down church and a small shelter for camping. We hung out for a bit at the top and then started back down again. The descent is a lot faster than the climb, and we decided to stray from the path a bit a climb/slide down the sandy stretches between the winding parts of the path. My friend from the city took one path that looked to steep for me (my fear of heights kicked in big time) so I dragged the Basque along with me on a different, less terrifying patch of sand. Turns out this was a good call, as my other friend apparently ended up hanging from a tree over a small cliff which then led to a small drop from said tree and quite a bit of rolling down the side of the volcano. I'm really glad I only heard about it and that I didn't witness it. We had some fun sand-skiing but there was not rolling or dropping involved. We caught up with my other friend after an hour or so, and finally made it down the mountain in about 3 - 3 1/2 hours, sliding and running most of the way.

After the grueling eight hour plus hike up and down, we caught a bus back into Antigua and despite our intentions of catching the next bus back to Guatemala City, decided to stay the night (it was almost dark and we were dead tired). However, instead of resting as we probably should have we danced the night away with our Antigua compatriots and bunked down on the floor of our friend's apartment for only a few hours before trying to catch the early bus back to the city. I swear I must have had a limp for a little while after that weekend, and my legs cramped up during the night for a week afterwards. My whole body rebelled. But, thank goodness, we as humans have very little memory of pain but quite a capacity to remember beautiful vistas and good company. As they say in Spanish, vale la pena. Loosely (well, actually, literally) translated, that means it is worth the pain. And so it was.

Semana Santa

I'm finally back in the capital after a long and lovely vacation during Holy Week. What an incredible experience being in Antigua during Semana Santa! But first I'll talk about the beginning of the trip. A friend I met here in the hotel in Guatemala City and I hitched a ride with some of my friends from the capital to Panajachel, on Lake Atitlan (I've written about the lake in an earlier post) and hung out there for a few days. We chilled with my friends for a night and then headed to the village of Santa Cruz where there is an incredibly fun backpackers hostel just at the edge of the lake. It's a very tranquil kind of place run by an English woman and her American husband that serves fabulous family style meals at dinner where everyone who wants sits down at the table and shares the meal and some good conversation. There's not all that much in Santa Cruz and the last boat from Panajachel is at 7:30 at night, so most people staying at the hostel tend to stay in at night and socialize with the other backpackers. It was a bit of a shock, really, to be thrown in among all the travelers after so many weeks in zone 1 in Guatemala City (where there are hardly any foreign travelers that stay for more than a few days). There are more foreigners in some of the ritzier zones, like zone 10 where the fancy hotels and international business are, but here I hardly ever talk to or interact with other gringos (here, anyone not Guatemala or Central American is often called a gringo, even if they're not for the US).

After a few lovely days on the lake I headed in to Antigua for the rest of the week. Antigua is the place to be for Holy Week...it is world famous for it's religious processions and elaborate carpets that decorate streets. It gets particularly exciting from Holy Thursday through Saturday. I arrived on Tuesday night, just in time for a party thrown by some friends I met when I was in Antigua a few weeks earlier to climb the Agua volcano with some other friends form Guatemala City (good grief it's getting confusing talking about people without posting their names....maybe I should use aliases....no, that could get even more confusing...hell). It was crazy crowded at all the bars, and we ended up staying out well past 1:00 am, the official hour when all establishments must stop serving alcohol and kick out the customers (it's called the ley seca, the dry law). The rest of the week I spent sipping coffee in cafe's and watching processions during the day and sipping beer and chatting with friends and watching processions at night. The processions run throughout the day and night and are in full swing by midnight Friday morning. I'm posting a few of my photos here so you can get an idea of what they're like.

I've posted a bit about processions earlier, as they occur throughout Lent. But the big ones are during Holy Week. The huge wooden carvings of Christ and the Virgin Mary aren't exactly what we call floats, but I'm not sure of the English word for them. I read on a flyer that they can weigh up to 3 tons, and may of them date back to colonial times. This first photo (and the two that follow) is of a parade on Holy Thursday...you can kind of make out the huge platform and sculpture being carried by penitents dressed in purple. It's like a huge barge swaying down the street shrouded in incense smoke. The whole city smells like incense during Holy week, and if you are up at the edge of town here you can follow where the parades are by following the cloud of smoke. It can get so heavy at times your food tastes like incense.

The processions really are incredible. Not only are there the huge platforms carried by penitents, but also Roman Soldiers, Pharisees, and other assorted Biblical figures. There are even chariots drawn by horses in some processions! Oh, and brass bands playing funeral marches. It's like nothing I've ever seen before (or will likely see anywhere else). The next photo is of the same parade, but more detailed. The man in front dictates the speed of the platform (I wish I could remember what those things are called) and is in charge of getting the timing of the steps correct. With some many people carrying that heavy, heavy platform, it must be hard to get the timing right. The band that follows behind helps, sort of like a drummer on a ship with oars, I suppose. But the band is not always playing, and the man in front pushes on the poles and basically shoves the platform back and forth so that the rest can follow the rhythm. You barely see some children under the float walking next to their fathers (I'm assuming). There's also a Roman soldier in the bottom right corner.

The procession in the picture is just about to walk over one of the many carpets made by the faithful during the night. Families stay up all night making carpets out of sawdust, flowers, and pine needles for the processions to pass over. The city is very efficient about clean up afterwards, which surprised me. Usually the processions consist of some kind of thematic portion, like Roman soldiers proclaiming Jesus' sentence or people acting out sections of the Passion. There are lots and lots of penitents in robes (purple robes until the afternoon of Good Friday, then black until Easter Sunday). There is the big float carried by men depicting some aspect of Christ or some part of the Bible concerning his life followed by a brass band and then a float with some aspect of the Virgin Mary carried by women dressed in black with either black or white veils (not sure the significance of one or the other color). The Virgin is also followed by a brass band that also plays either a funeral march or the Ave Maria. Then, finally, men with brooms follow along behind to sweep up the debris from the carpets which get picked up by a front end loader and plunked down in a dump truck. I really was amazed at the efficiency.

This last photo I love because of the expression on the face of the man in the middle. Some of the penitents were laughing and joking, smiling, wearing sunglasses, and talking to friends in the crowd. Others were quite serious, although whether this was due to the sheer weight of the platform or from religious dedication I'm not sure.

On a final note, I want to apologize to everyone who has been checking in to see new posts and has been disappointed to find nothing new this last week. I didn't take my computer with me on this last trip. But I promise I'll update things more regularly now that I'm back in the capital. Thank goodness for wireless! I have a feeling I'll need to go back and see which of my many adventures I have posted and which I've passed over. I'm getting forgetful in my old age! Anyway, until later, dear readers....

Huelga de Dolores

Just a quick note I will expand upon later. I'm heading off on my Semana Santa (Holy Week) vacation (everything closes down here for Holy Week, absolutely everything) and don't want to leave you all hanging for too long. So here is a brief jot about the Huelga de Dolores, a 111 year old tradition at the University of San Carlos, one of the oldest public universities in Latin America. Starting with the huge party for the declaration of the huelga (which means strike, as in a strike put on by workers against an employer) and ending with the desfile de bufo (the buffoon parade) on the viernes de dolores (Painful Friday? probably more like Friday of Sorrows) the last Friday before Palm Sunday, the whole thing lasts about a week. I have no idea what goes on between these two events, but I did get to go to the declaration party, which was wicked fun, and spent most of yesterday afternoon watching the parade. I'll post some pictures from the parade when I get back from my mini-vacation.

So here's what I know about the tradition of the Huelga de Todos los Dolores. It started 111 years ago, as I mentioned earlier, by the students at USAC (Universidad de San Carlos) as a way to protest against the government without the fear of reprisal. The students wear hoods (capuches) to hide their identity and are called encapuchados (the hooded ones). The also wear masks and costumes. At some points in Guatemala history, these hooded students were the only ones who could safely protest, as no one knows who they are (supposedly). Each department (facultad) elects a rey feo (ugly king) as does the Honorable Committee for the Strike of All the Sorrows. Once the buffoon parade reaches the presidential palace in the historic center of the city, each king makes crude jokes and curses out the president. The students carry signs and push floats with lewd representations of politicians and scathing criticisms of the political situation. Let's just say I learned a few new curse words listening the the rey feo skewer the president. I will say, all in all, it's very entertaining.

There is also a darker side to the huelga, in that in many years past it has been associated with vandalism. Some say it's the students, others say that it's criminals taking advantage of a day where everyone goes around in masks and hoods (probably a bit of both), but there has been a seedier tradition of extortion, where encapuchados tell store owners they have to donate to the huelga or their store will be looted/vandalized. This does not stop hundreds of people filling the central park to see the parade...they even erect grandstands for people to sit and watch the rey feo insult the president. I think it's really too bad we don't have a tradition like this in the States. Apparently Guatemala is the only place in the world that does this.