Layers Upon Layers: Mixed Media Art

Guatemala: Day 4 (part 1)

by Cyndi on January 19th, 2007

Day 4: Friday, 01/05/07

There were earthquake tremors overnight!

I woke up really early again, and this time Mike joined me going down to the lakefront. We met Salvador, one of the grounds-keepers, and Mike practiced his Spanish on him. I think he did pretty well too!

We ate breakfast at the hotel again. Dani and I both had fried plantains with cream and biscuits. Oh my! Mike had some sort of egg dish that I really couldn’t look at. He said it was delicious, and I took his word for it.

A little while later, Nate brought Hugo and Micah, and drove us down to the dock in Santiago Atitlan. The plan was to go across Lake Atitlan to Panajachel for the day. Hugo is Guatemalan, so we let him do all the negotiating for our boat fares. The boat was called “The Titanic”! We weren’t really sure if that was a good omen or not, especially since it was packed tight for the ride over. Most of the passengers were Tzutujil speaking women, so there were absolutely no familiar words being spoken. I want to say the trip across the lake took about 20 to 30 minutes, but I’m really not sure.

The first thing Hugo and Micah wanted to do when we arrived in Panajachel was to take us to a coffee shop run by an ex-pat American that they liked. We wandered through the marketplace, through the warren of streets on the way to the coffee shop, doing a little shopping ourselves as we went. I bought some more cloth, and Mike decided that one of the rope chair hammocks would look mighty good on our porch. But I still got to play bad cop in the negotiating game! Dani and I did our thing, and we soon had a nice chair all wrapped up for Mike. Finally, off to the coffee shop.

We really ended up over-caffeinated that day! The coffee there was delicious, and the family that ran the place was charming. The owner’s two little girls took orders and served. One had a pet turtle that she showed us. While it was vacation time from school, I wonder if the girls were being home-schooled. Didn’t think to ask at the time though. Many Europeans came into the shop while we were sitting around. I bought a pound of coffee on the way out.

When we left the shop, we milled around the market for awhile. Micah was trying to decide whether he should buy a pair of pants, but he never actually got around to making a decision. It was just that type of day, you know? Even though we had just had a coffee break, the boys decided that they were ready for lunch. The restaurants are mostly enclosed on three sides and have a roof, but are open along the street. As you’re sitting there, people wander in and ask you to buy their postcards and trinkets. “No, gracias…no gracias…no gracias.” It became so ingrained that it was hard to stop saying it when we got back to the States! I was nowhere near hungry, but what can you do? I ordered choripan, a sausage sandwich with a very tasty herbal sauce on it.

Mike, Dani, Micah, and Hugo

After lunch, we continued to just walk around the marketplace, and eventually we wandered over to the deep riverbed on the eastern side of the town. It was dry at the moment, and workers were busy digging out rocks of various sizes and screening the dirt into piles. It was amazing how deep it could become during the rainy season.

Sometime in mid-afternoon, we boated back across to Santiago Atitlan, and walked up through the marketplace. I had looked at a lot of embroidery pieces by that time, and had decided that one of the stalls in Santiago had the nicest that I’d seen on either side of the lake. Dani helped me with the negotiations once again.

Our plan was to walk to the hotel and call Nate. Mike wanted to buy ice cream for all the kids to help celebrate Tom’s birthday tomorrow. On our way up through town, though, we came across Deborah, with Julio, David, and some of the older kids. She told us where she thought we could get ice cream. We continued out to the hotel, while Deborah’s group went to get a taxi, and Hugo and Micah wandered off in search of a pan for Susan.

Nate picked us up at the hotel after we’d dropped our loot and freshened up a bit. Then followed a series of misadventures, eventually resulting in a successful mission. The store Deborah pointed out would not sell us a large container. We called Susan out at the house, and she said that the hotel (of course!) made ice cream. As we headed back to the hotel, we got stuck in a traffic jam caused by a car accident…surprisingly the first we’d seen given how people drive. It was blocking the very narrow passageway out of town…the only way out of town! That wasn’t the main problem though. It seemed that the ambulances were having a hard time moving, because everyone for blocks around immediately dropped what they were doing and ran to see the entertainment. No one moved for the ambulances, which simply had to plow slowly through the people to make it up the hill to the hospital.

The hotel was very accommodating about making ice cream for us, especially when the kitchen staff learned it was for tomorrow. See, here it was, 4:00 in the afternoon and dinner preparations were in full swing. Wouldn’t it be just like some rich spoiled guest to come and ask for a large favor in the middle of all that?

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POSTED IN: Guatemala, My Family & Friends