Layers Upon Layers: Mixed Media Art

Guatemala: Day 3 (part 1)

by Cyndi on January 17th, 2007

Day 3: Thursday, 01/04/07

I woke up very early and went across the road and down to the waterfront to enjoy the quiet and solitude. Not many people at the hotel seemed to use the waterfront area, which was a shame since it was so beautifully kept. There was a pool and jacuzi, multiple tiers of seating, and a dock with canoes and motor boats.

I wasn’t really alone though, since all the boaters were already out! The mist on the water was so beautiful as the sun began to cover more of the lake.

The path up to the cabins was so lush, even during the dry season. It made me wonder what it all must look like during the rainy season!

We had breakfast at the hotel restaurant this morning. Deborah told me yesterday to order the blue maize pancakes, so I did…and they were unbelievable! The syrup was a thick mixture of (I’m guessing) corn syrup and molasses, with walnuts liberally sprinkled on top. The hotel coffee con leche was also really excellent. Their milk is thick and sweet and served warm in a little tiny pitcher.

After breakfast, Mike and Dani and I walked into Santiago Atitlan to visit the market place. What an experience that is! Dani is definitely my hero. Her Spanish proved to be very good, at least good enough to be up to the task of bargaining. Honestly, the prices were so low that it almost seemed a shame to do the bargaining thing, but that’s just the way things are there. You pretty much know going in that you’re going to end up paying about 50 to 60% of the initial “price”. But only if you work for it :-)

Dani hates to bargain, so she got to play good cop, which suited her just fine. She kept translating for me, while I just scowled and pointed to a booth down the street that had “the same thing for less.” No one is fooling anyone in this game, but the merchants certainly seem to enjoy it. Most of the time I would end up walking away until the merchant would start to chase me and Dani would call me back. It might be a ridiculous waste of time and effort, but it’s just the way things are done. I bought a selection of fabrics, and Dani bought some jewelry, although she pretended it was for me while we bargained!

One of the really interesting aspects of the marketplace in Santiago was that most of the population there is Mayan, not Spanish Guatemalan. The people speak Tzutujil, not necessarily Spanish, so we often ended up bargaining with people who didn’t know even as much Spanish as Dani…but they sure knew the numbers! There are many different Indian languages that you’d run into if you traveled from village to village. In addition, each village around the lake was assigned a color by the Guatemalan government at one time, and Santiago’s color is a beautiful medium purple. Almost all the women dress in tradition style in this color, with a long geometric striped print skirt and an embroidered peasant-style blouse.

We walked back to the hotel to freshen up, and since it was about 11:30, we decided to just go ahead and walk out to the house. We figured it would probably take about an hour, which was fine since we were still stuffed from breakfast. As we left Santiago Atitlan and entered Panabaj, we could see up close the devastation from Hurricane Stan in the fall of 2005. It was really heartbreaking. The people continue to rebuild though, often right on top of where their original house was, and many of them still living in the temporary structures in Little Samaria.

Looking back towards Santiago:

As we passed some of the fields, Mike pointed out all the black plastic garbage bags strewn around all over. He had read about this before our visit: everyone there is used to composting, but now that plastic bags have been introduced, they don’t yet understand that the bags don’t rot well. The thing that I found probably the most distressing, though, was a man asleep in the gutter. I thought that was a mighty risky place to take a nap, but Susan told me later that he was most likely dead-drunk. Non-grain alcohols are commonly drunk by the poor, and they will just drop where they stand, sometimes remaining unconscious for days. Tom said that he had pulled people out of the middle of the road more than once.

Related Stories

The Boater
Scrapbook wrap
Guatemala: Day 4 (part 2)
Co-Creators
Altered book cover frames

POSTED IN: Guatemala, My Family & Friends