Guatemala, Day 1
Day 1: Tuesday, 01/02/07
We arrived in Guatemala on Tuesday, January 2, 2007. It has got to be one of the most beautiful countries in the world…lush green even during the dry season, mountains and volcanoes everywhere, deep azure waters, perfect temperatures…and men with guns outside of every store in the city.
It is beautiful, but most of the people are extremely poor. Robbery is a way of life. Food is abundant and cheap though, thank goodness, so although the people tend to be thin and wiry from hard work, they are not thin with starvation like you see in many countries.
Large colorful buses are a common way to move long distance, but taxis are much more common for shorter distances. Everyone just piles into (or onto if there are already bags of coffee in there) the back of a pickup truck, and for a few quetzales*, you can travel from town to the next town in no time. Literally no time, because everyone drives like a complete maniac! If you don’t, someone else will blow by you, perhaps scraping along your vehicle or even running you off the road. Center lines are really just suggestions! There is no shoulder to the road, and certainly no sidewalks, so in addition to watching out for other drivers, you also want to avoid hitting the people and animals milling about the street!
(*while we were in Guatemala, a quetzale was worth approximately $ 0.1333 USD)
Many people walk, rather than ride, and they are pretty casual about it too. While it is (sort of) the driver’s responsibility not to hit the pedestrians, it’s very common for men or women to be wacked on the head by the mirror of a truck speeding by.
Tuk-tuks have also made an appearance in Guatemala, imported from Asia. The small three-wheeled vehicles are well-suited to narrow Guatemalan streets. Since no-parking zones are also just a suggestion, streets are often way too tight for cars and trucks. That doesn’t necessarily stop them from literally scraping their way through, however!
We were driven out to Santiago Atitlan by the orphanage directors that our son works for, Tom and Susan Stukenberg. Tom Stukenberg is a wizard behind the wheel, totally comfortable after many years living in Guatemala with the break-neck speeds and lack of any safety features! We zoomed up a divided highway heading for the Atitlan region which not only had no shoulders on the outsides, but also had nothing but a very deep ditch in the middle. I wish I’d gotten a picture of that, but we were already starting to lose the light.
The drive might well have terrified me, but we couldn’t see much. I’m pretty sure that we went flying up and down some mountain roads with nothing but a sheer drop to our right. So I did what any sane person would do…ignored it and looked at how pretty the place was! We passed a village known for its pink sand. They make the red bricks and tiles that are so ubiquitous throughout the region. We also passed some caves carved into the mountains where calcium is mined for making the corn kernels swell before grinding. Tom and Susan told a story about a wealthy benefactor who bought a very powerful replacement motor, very quiet, for the local corn grinder. Within a week he was back to using his old less powerful clanky one, because his customers came to the conclusion that he wasn’t open when they didn’t hear the familiar pounding of his equipment!
There is no flat land anywhere that we visited. Perhaps Guatemala does have some flat land, but certainly not in the volcanoes region around Lake Atitlan. The lake itself is probably a huge ancient caldera, formed when a volcano collapsed into itself and an enormous magma pool erupted. It is surrounded by a ring of volcanoes, some of which are still active. There was a full moon that night. We appreciated it, since the darkness in an area with no street lights is pretty much complete! From time to time we could see the lights of a small village along the shore of the lake…way, way, way down. It was breath-takingly beautiful.
When we arrived at the Posada de Santiago, it was too dark and we were too tired to care what our cabin looked like. We’d save that for tomorrow!
Related Stories
POSTED IN: Guatemala, My Family & Friends
0 opinions for Guatemala, Day 1
No one has left a comment yet. You know what this means, right? You could be first!
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: