Guatemala City

Got in to Guatemala City yesterday morning. A friend of a friend was gracious and kind enough come and pick me up in Antigua and drive me to my hotel in Zone 1, the centro histórico according to the guidebooks.

I had a couple of rough days at the end of last week, mostly due to the paucity (10 pt. word, yay!) of fun people at the hostel, but I met a very nice gal from New York (Long Island to be exact) on Saturday and we hung out on Sunday, which was wicked fun. I took the day off from work and we wandered around Antigua enjoying the sights and the food. The photo on the right is from the cathedral, which was ruined during an earthquake in the 17th Century. They still use the front of the cathedral for mass, but the rest is in ruins. There's lots of ruined churches all over the town, many of which are still in use. The least damaged parts are restored (somewhat) and the rest of the church is left open to the sky, so to speak. I'm including another photo of a ruined church: this one is used in part as a mercado de artesanias (artisan's market).

I spent most of yesterday wandering around the area around my hotel and just getting settled. After a nice breakfast this morning I set off to the national library, not sure what to expect. For future use to anyone of you thinking of doing research in a Latin American library, the work hemeroteca apparently means newspaper archive, a fact that I did not know. And here I was worried there might not be an archive. But there it was, and there were a ton of people there. Apparently people will come in just to read today's newspaper without having to buy it at a news stand. Or at least that's what I think that group of men were doing. It was today's paper, I know that. But there were also a bunch of school kids dressed in their school uniforms presumably working on a school project and other people doing who knows what. I overheard one woman say she was looking in the newspapers for an mention of her friend who had been murdered last year. I will admit it was a lot easier to get things at the National Library here in Guatemala than it was (at least the first time) at the Library of Congress in Argentina. The man at the desk thought I was from France because I gave him my Notre Dame id (didn't want to give him my passport...didn't have my passport with me) and he was thinking of the Notre Dame Cathedral. I ended up spending five hours at the library, pawing through one month worth of newspapers. That is, I took notes on crime reports in one newspaper during five randomly selected days (there's a website that will randomly selected things for you: random.org) out of the month. I have a lot of work ahead of me if that took five hours. I have three sets of four months to look at in two newspapers...so if five hours is average per month, then it will take at least 120 hours. So five hours a day at 120 hours means 24 days. Gah! 24 days in the library! That's outrageous! I'll have to figure out some way to cut that back. Oh, and if my math is bad, please tell me. I don't want to embarrass myself. Well, that's all for now, I suppose. Chau! (PS: please don't correct my spelling of "chau." I know it's spelled ciao in Italian, but as far as I know in Latin America they spell it chau.)

Update on Interesting News Story

This just in....an update on the news story about the men stuck in the Guatemala City Airport. A Bhutanese reporter in the U.S. heard about the story and offered to help. So armed with a cell phone, a reporter from Prensa Libre got permission from the police to talk to the three stranded men. The men remained silent despite the involvement of translators from Nepal, China, India, and Bangladesh. For an unknown reason they talked to the Bhutanese reporter even though it turns out that they are from Nepal. They are (rightly so) terrified, but the reporter got some of the story. The three men worked at a Nepalese hotel and were approached by a man who said he could get them to Canada. They flew to Singapore on their own and were met by a man who was to accompany them to Canada. Upon arriving in Guatemala, however, the man disappeared with their passports, money, and baggage. Apparently the claimed that they were from Bhutan because Canada has a refugee program for people from Bhutan. A short note at the bottom of the article reports that the newspaper had bought airline tickets to bring the Bhutanese reporter to Guatemala and that the man who arranged everything was fired by the airport.

Dramatis Personae

Now that we've come to the end of the travel part of my trip (at least in blog time...in real time I've been Kristian-less for almost two weeks!), things may not be as exciting. I've been chilling in Antigua for the last few weeks, spending much of my time at my computer snagging wi-fi for the price of a café con leche (which, of course, I have no problem with, since it includes the actual consumption of a café con leche). I've discovered (was shown) that some of the archives I need to look at are online, which means I can get some work done without actually being in Guatemala City. So to catch you up, dear readers, I thought I would give you a brief outline of the interesting people I've met while bumming around Antigua. I feel a little funny writing about people who are, for all intents and purposes, strangers, so I've decided to leave off their names (to protect the innocent?).

At the first place I stayed at after Kristian left I met a very nice woman and her daughter who were here from Boulder to learn Spanish. I had some nice chats with them and caught lunch with them one day at this fantastic restaurant, Gringo y Chapín, that serves $3 menu of the day meals that are superb. I highly recommend it to anyone who finds his or herself in Antigua. In fact, I'll be heading over there today for lunch. It was the first time I tried rosa de jamaica (hybiscus juice). Yum! The hotel I was staying at was owned by a guy from Tennessee, and there were a bunch of good ole boy Southerners staying there who were in town doing work for a medical group that comes down once a year to do complicated surgical procedures in the countryside.

I moved from that hotel to a cheaper place last weekend and am now staying in a hostel. It costs about $8 for a dormitory bed, hot showers and free breakfast. Not bad, although not the most glamorous place I've ever been. The first few days there I ended up chatting with this Canadian guy from British Columbia who was riding his motorcycle from BC to Argentina. He had hooked up with a group of younger guys (he was about 50-ish, they were in their 20s) that were riding their motorcycles from California to Panama. He was an interesting man...made his fortune by setting up the first (or one of the first?) pay-to-play online poker sites on the web. From what I understood, he spends his time going on motorcycle treks and traveling around to poker tournaments. What a life, right? I seem to be running in to Canadians a lot...a few days after that I met a Canadian guy while watching In Bruges at a cafe and ended up having a few meals with him and acting as a translator for him one afternoon. I met another interesting guy after admiring his dog (a border collie) at a cafe (I spend a lot of time at cafes). He and his brother drove their truck down from San Francisco along the Pacific Coast to catch some good surfing. They were in Antigua because one of the brothers contracted a bad case of the runs, got wicked dehydrated, and had to go to the hospital. Since there are few good hospitals in Guatemala, they ended up here. After that I made friends with a couple of US Army guys who were staying in the hostel. Real interesting guys with some real interesting stories (which I will not repeat here but will describe in person upon request). They were taking a short vacation in between deployments to Iraq. Finally, to bring you up to date as to the people I've been socializing with here (yes, I know that they are all foreigners, but I haven't settled in yet...you'll hear about locals later, I'm sure), I met an American in the park yesterday who was doing a survey for a local business and then ran in to her again at a restaurant/bar where I was planning to have dinner. She introduced me to her friends and I ended up meeting her and another of her friends at the local gym early this morning to go for a run.

Right now I'm sitting in the common area of the hostel at one of the few places you can plug in a computer. The free wi-fi is certainly a bonus. The weather is unseasonably cool here at the moment (downright chilly at night). The locals are all in jackets while us tourists are giving in and wearing sweatshirts in the mornings and evenings. Out in the sun I'd say it's in the low 70s, but in the shade it is definitely in the low 60s. Sounds lovely, I know, especially for those of you who can look out the window and still see snow. The only down side to the cool weather is that at night it can get cold (I have to keep reminding myself we are in the mountains) especially since we only get one blanket from the hostel. Last night I wore a fleece shirt and my sweatshirt to bed and seriously considered adding my towel on top of the blanket for extra warmth. But right now I'm in jeans and a light long sleeve shirt and am only slightly cool in the shade. Tough life, right? Until later, then...

Monterico and back to Antigua

Quick note first off...I didn't realize this would happen, but when I updated the first Monterico post it ended up being posted under the date I started writing it, not the date I finished. So if you missed it, it's stored under Feb. 25th, before the post about the people living in the airport.

Ok, now that that's said (don't you just love when you can say the same word twice in a row and still have it be grammatically correct....oh, lord, I'm such a nerd!), I'll attempt to finish off the long saga that is the first week of my trip here in Guatemala. Weird that now I'm starting in on the third week, and haven't even caught up yet. But here goes.

I believe that I left you, dear readers, at the Hotel Brisas del Mar just off the beach in Monterico. In case you didn't notice in the picture included in the previous (hidden) post, the beach is black volcanic sand, the waves are big, and (ok, so you can't really tell this from a picture) the riptide is fierce. Once we settled in to the hotel....which consisted of me trying to get rid of the pushy tour guides while Kristian dashed off to the pool for some serious temperature regulation....we headed out to the beach to see the people from the turtle sanctuary release some baby turtles in to the ocean. People had some pretty mixed feelings about the process. To raise money for the turtle sanctuary, the guides sold tickets to sponsor a baby turtle in a "race" to see which would make it to the ocean first. Some people were saying it was bad for the turtles because it made them exhausted being kept at the hatchery before the races, while others said that they didn't get enough of a challenge before getting to the water because they are released so close to the surf. Of course there was a third camp that was just enthralled by seeing baby turtles (they were really cute) and happy that they could donate some money to a good cause. Unlike the turtle sanctuary that I volunteered with in Costa Rica, which had patrols on the beaches to hide turtle nests from poachers, this hatchery basically used donation money to buy turtle eggs from poachers. An interesting quandary, that. It is, of course, good that the turtle eggs are not being eaten, but by buying from the poachers the hatchery is supporting the system of poaching. Just goes to show that no action is without it's consequences.

After watching the turtles get washed away by the tide, we headed to what looked like the most happening spot on the beach, Johnny's Place, for dinner. It was there that we were introduced to the Monterico mosquito. I suggest anyone heading down there to bring ample bug spray. I don't care how bad the mosquitoes are at home or how much you think you'll be able to deal with them. Just give in and spray yourself with some big bad chemicals. Those suckers (heh heh) are nasty. And while it is kind of fun for the first few minutes so sleep under a mosquito net, it's not really all that nice when it's ridiculously hot outside and you're not quite sure how the mosquito net should be arraigned (or when the net has holes in it). So bug spray is comes highly recommended. Bug spray and sunscreen.

I mentioned briefly in the previous post on Monterico that the tour guides hounded us a bit. Not only that, but the badmouthed each other in a rather backhanded way. One of the guides spoke immaculate English, while the others had very little English. One in particular warned us against the one who spoke English, telling me that this guy was notorious for taking people's money and not showing up for the tour he offered of the mangrove swamps (which begins at 5:30 am so we can catch the sunrise and so it isn't too hot). He said that for matters of security we shouldn't got with this particular guy. But when we talked to the guy who spoke English, he said we didn't have to pay until after the tour. Since he spoke such good English and I was the only one of the three of us (our Idaho firefighter friend was still with us) that spoke Spanish, we decided to go on the tour with him. I will add that the tour was great and that we never felt unsafe. Plus we go the lowdown about why the other guides didn't like him. Apparently he spoke English so well because he spent much of his youth in Las Angeles. When he was young his mother was killed by gangs and he lived on the streets in LA. He said that he started to get caught up with the gangs, but instead of staying there he moved back to Monterico to get away from the influence of the gangs. Or at least that's the story he told us. The town, of course, knew where he had been, and as this guy explained, once you have any connection to gangs everyone assumes you still have connections, that you're still a gangster. So the other tour guides warn people away. But, like I said, we had no problems with him and enjoyed our tour.

The tour was in a small boat, a skiff really, that he poled along the shallow rivers that ran through the mangrove swamp. We saw all sorts of interesting flora and fauna...ducks that sounded like frogs, birds that sounded like monkeys, egrets and herons, fish with four eyes (two above and two below the water), and giant ant nests. We almost got to see some Jesus lizards (you know, the ones that can walk on water) but apparently poachers had stolen the nest sometime during the night. Watching the sun rise over the water was pretty incredible, and we got to watch the local fishermen catch catfish and shrimp. To catch catfish, the fishermen lay out a big net in a circle and then use a big stick to thump the water to scare the fish in to the net.

After our tour of the mangrove swamps we spent the rest of the say just hanging out in hammocks and walking on the beach. It was pretty hot, and Kristian was still feeling crappy. Poor thing. We had a bit of a scare when the shuttle we thought we were supposed to take back to Antigua told us we weren't on their list, but it just turns out that we were supposed to be on a different shuttle. Which, funnily enough, was not the shuttle our firefighter friend was on but that was occupied by some of her friends from a Spanish school in Antigua that had come down to the beach for the day. Unfortunately the shuttle ride ended with me begging the van driver to stop so Kristian could leap out in a mad dash to the nearest bathroom, but otherwise it was uneventful. After having dinner with the gal we had hung out with in Monterico (we ran in to her on the street soon after Kristian recovered), we turned in early in anticipation of the 4:00 am shuttle ride to the airport. I accompanied Kristian to the airport that morning and then caught a taxi back to Antigua. And I've been here ever since, sending emails, making phone calls, and generally being lazy (and slightly bored).

I'll see what I can do about filling you all in on the last week in the next post. Nothing as terribly exciting as the previous jaunts around Guatemala with Kristian, but it hasn't been a completely uneventful week. Stay tuned...

Photos on Flickr

If anyone is interested, I've uploaded the best of my photos from my jaunt around Guatemala with Kristian on to flickr. You can check them out here. Enjoy!

Curious News Headlines

I know that by putting up this post I'm interrupting the flow of my narrative, but I haven't uploaded the photos from the rest of the trip on to my computer and I want to include some in the next installment of the "Kristian and Krystin Vacation Story." So I thought I would write about some of the interesting news stories I've read in the Guatemalan newspapers recently. It's rather appropriate, given that I'm down here studying, in part, the media. I'll keep posting interesting news stories from down here when they come up.

In today's Prensa Libre, one of the headlines read: "Migrants from Bhutan Remain Locked in the Airport." Ok, so it's not the best translation, but I couldn't think of a better way to translate "encerrados." It's a word usually used to talk about people who have been put in jail; it implies being shut in, locked up, enclosed, captured. The beginning of the article reads, "Like in the Tom Hanks movie The Terminal, three migrants from Bhutan, Asia, reside in La Aurora International Airport since last week after having lost their documents." Apparently no one can talk to them because they speak an obscure dialect so they are communicating with hand signs. Their stuck in a particular terminal in the airport without food and clean water and are sleeping on the floor and begging from travelers for money to get something to eat and drink. The authorities took one of the men to the hospital at one point last week because he was coughing blood and was severely dehydrated, but once he was stabilized he was sent back to the airport. A representative from the Human Rights Commission notes in the article that the airport is not the place to keep people indefinitely. The airport claims it is an ongoing Immigration investigation, while the director of Immigration claims that since these men haven't actually entered Guatemala (since they don't have passports), it's a problem for the airport. If that isn't bad enough, there is actually another case of people being held in the airport here as well: four Chinese women have been stuck in La Aurora airport for 23 days. These women tried to enter Guatemala with false documents, but unlike the unfortunate Bhutanese (is that how you refer to people from Bhutan?), the Chinese women are being taken care of by the airline that brought them to Guatemala. TACA, the airline that ran the flight the Chinese women took to Guatemala, is apparently paying for food and water for these ladies and is letting them shower in the men's bathroom in the hangers and set them up in a VIP area.

Ok, seriously, is that not a little bit insane? It is certainly an interesting case of institutional ineptitude. I wonder if something like this would happen in the States. I seriously doubt it...the Department of Homeland Security wouldn't let immigrants with no passports live in an airport terminal (or whatever agency is in charge of that sort of thing). I'm sure that there is some reason why these people aren't just sent back to their home countries, most likely that either they can't afford the ticket (!) or that they are seeking refugee status or something? But the article doesn't say anything about that. I'm dumbfounded, truly.

Monterico

Ok, well, I'm going to post this half-done and get the rest out later...

There's really not much to tell about our trip to San Pedro La Laguna. It's considered the party town of the lake and is full of backpackers and low to mid-range hostels and hotels. If you follow the hill up from the dock you'll end up in the actual town, which seemed to be filled with signs declaring Jesus as Savior and other Christian slogans. We also saw a ton of quite large Protestant churches. We wandered around for a while, had lunch at the edge of the lake and took a relaxing boat trip back to Panajachel in time to check out of the hotel and catch the shuttle back to Antigua. Although I will add that Kristian got quite a sunburn that morning; it's easy to forget that we are at altitude here and that much closer to the sun. The trip back to Antigua was much less harrowing than the ride to Lake Atitlan (well at least for me...poor Kristian was starting to get sick about then).

I'm going to gloss over a good bit of the next few days, just to save you, faithful readers, the gory details of a case of traveler's diarrhea. I'll just say that we had to get the shuttle driver to stop rather quickly at a street corner while Kristian jumped out of the back of the van and fled to the hotel, leaving me somewhat stunned at her ability to disappear. The rest of the evening consisted of a miserable Kristian turning green at various intervals and dashing for the bathroom. I bowed out of some of this and had a quiet dinner with our German friend that we had met on the way to Panajachel.

The next morning we were supposed to catch a 8:00 am shuttle to Monterico, on the Pacific Coast, but we had to beg off due to Kristian's paralyzing stomach issues and postponed our departure until later that afternoon. Oddly enough, later that morning we ran in to Kristian's aunt and her aunt's sister (who lives in Antigua and teaches yoga classes here) in the Plaza Mayor. And, incidentally, the hotel we stayed in that night was really terrible. The travel agent who booked all of our shuttles earlier in the week had recommended it to us, but it turned out to be a nightmare. For starters, the sink didn't work unless you used the valve under the sink
to regulate the flow of water from the faucet. It was unbearably noisy (we could hear the nightclub next door all night through the wall) and not really all that clean. I don't recommend it to anyone.

On the ride to Monterico we met up with a nice girl from Idaho (but originally from Vermont) who we ended up spending the next two days with. She's a firefighter out in Idaho and is therefore unemployed four months out of the year (I guess there aren't any forest fires there during the snowy months). Once off the shuttle in Monterico we were accosted by a bunch of kids telling us that they had the best information on the best hotels in town, which was a little overwhelming. Within the first few minutes we had three "official" tour guides/turtle hatchery employees accost us as well. And it was wicked hot, especially compared to the places in the highlands we had been earlier that week. Think New Orleans in the early summer. We ended up in a hotel called "Las Brisas del Mar," a rather nice little hotel equipped with mosquito nets, a fan, and (supposedly) hot water just off the beach.

Will fill in more later....