Saturday, April 30, 2005
Report from Guatemala
Here I am in Antigua (La Antigua Guatemala to be correct), a place I come to (this is the 18th time) out of nostalgia, winding up the first stage of a three-stage trip--two weeks each in Guatemala and Cuba followed by a week in Mexico City.
The nostalgia is because when I first came here, in 1989, Antigua was not the San Miguel de Allende of Central America, as it is now, with delicatessens selling products such as cheddar cheese and Chinese cooking wine, not usually found in these parts, cafés featuring bagels (I refuse to eat a bagel outside of New York), and restaurants of multiple nationalities. I have to admit to enjoying my afternoon green tea and brownie at the Café Condesa, but the cost is high, with ever more traffic clogging the cobblestone streets, making it increasingly hard to appreciate the lovely pastel-colored houses with tile roofs. The only regulation of traffic seems to be the closing of Quinta Avenida (5th Avenue), the main drag, on the weekends. The number of travel agencies and tour operators has to exceed what's in San Miguel, and in every other block one can find a cute little hotel.
Despite all of the above, Antigua remains a place where one can happily just be, without feeling the need for an agenda. For my purposes, it remains a place to happily photograph (when the cars don't get in the way of course), for the ample population of indígenas in their colorful traje típico who come in to sell their crops at the market or their artesanía at the artesanía market or on the street, or to wash clothes in the tanque público, for the colonial chimneys rising above the tile roofs of the pastel-colored houses, for the ruins of convents and churches, flowers against crumbling stone. Normally it is also a place to photograph volcanos, three of which loom over the city, but the weather has been almost continually cloudy (sunny of course at the same time, and hot except early morning and evening) and the volcanos have pretty much disappeared.
Antigua is a city of colonial ruins, having been almost destroyed by an earthquake in 1773, as a result of which the capital was moved from here to what is now Guatemala City. The marketing of the ruins has progressed over the time I have been coming here. When I first came the admission was 25 or 50 centavos. Then at some point a national distinction appeared, and it was 1 quetzal (the currency, also the national bird) for natives and 10 quetzales for foreigners. Now there is a multitiered system--30 quetzales for foreign tourists, 15 for foreign students with credential, 10 for Central American tourists (students get no discount), and 2 for Guatemalans (again students get no discount). Luckily, at three ruins attached to churches everyone gets in for 3 quetzales. (Due to the decline of the US dollar, this trip I get only 7.5 quetzales to the dollar, whereas the exchange rate had been 8 to 1 for many years. Luckily my hotel here sets its prices in dollars, so there I don't lose out.)
The single cultural event of my stay is a concert of two youth orquestras combined, out of doors, a platform having been constructed in front of the Cathedral and plastic chairs placed on the street facing it. The massed strings do all right, but sometimes a percussionist is a little off.
At the beginning of my stay I take off for Lake Atitlán, leaving Thursday and returning Sunday. The base of most people's stay at the lake is Panajachel, a somewhat bizarre combination of indígena village built a couple of kilometers inland and tourist strip between it and the lake, with puestos selling artesanía lining the street. The same cloudiness that's in Antigua is here, apparently a common phenomenon just before the rainy season, and the three volcanos that loom above the lake and are responsible for its breathtaking beauty have been swallowed up in the mist. Luckily I have been here several times before and have taken a collection of photos of the lake with its volcanos, and luckily they reappear the morning of my last day, too faint to photograph but clear enough to remind me of their impressiveness.
I come on a Thursday because I want to go on Friday to the market in Sololá, an indígena town on a bluff above the lake. The market is an enormously intense affair, partly for the ruthless crush of people, partly for the uniformity of the traje típico of the indígena women, and some of the men--at the beginning I feel like I'm going into a trance. For the first time I notice hand-kissing, first a man kissing a woman's hand, then a woman kissing a woman's hand, then a man kissing a man's hand. I have debated long and hard as to whether to bring my camera, having been robbed twice over the years in this market, but I decide I'd like to do portraits with the long lens, like I have done at the market in Antigua, not realizing that it won't be possible because here the plastic coverings on the puestos make it impossible to get a view from a distance. In any event, I shoot a lot in the parque central (as Guatemalans call their central plazas) and at some selling spots that are uncovered.
The market is mostly out of doors, but selling also takes place inside a building, in a corner of which weavings are sold--I have a lovely silk rebozo hanging in front of my stairway from there. Of course I can't remember where the building is, and I have a terrible time finding out by asking; finally a man who overhears me asking another man says "Two blocks that way," which it isn't, but I turn a corner and there it is. Then there is the problem of finding where they sell weavings, which I originally walk by to get away from the meat, but a woman rescues me and I end up buying an orange huipil (blouse) with elaborate designs, which may get draped over a trunk for lack of free wall space. When I walk out of the building by another entrance, I realize I am right by the church.
On Saturday my agenda is a boat trip to three of the dozen or so indígena villages on the edge of the lake; our captain, the volcanos being invisible, is wearing a compass on a cord around his neck. The tourists are quite varied, Germans, French, Italians, and one other American; I chat with a German couple who are traveling for a year in their camper. At San Pedro La Laguna things are very modernized, with cybercafés even, the women wear a normal blouse with their corte (wrap-around skirt), and there is a sizeable gringo population, a tradition started by hippies in the 70s who came to hang out and smoke pot. The Protestant inroads in Guatemala are visible here in Christian slogans painted on walls and several pastel-colored Evangelical churches.
Santiago Atitlán, our next stop, is at once more traditional, with its uniform traje típico, including the striped and embroidered shorts that the men wear, but more tourist-oriented, with artesanía stores lining the route from the dock to the center of town. We end up at San Antonio Palopó, where I came once for the annual fiesta; the tiny village is much more shut down now than then, but it has opened several shops of weavings and ceramics to sell to the tourists, almost everything blue, like the women's huipiles.
I have a ticket for tomorrow, Monday, from Guatemala City to Havana, reserved by email correspondence with a travel agency here (not having it in hand caused me some problems in the Mexico City airport), on a not-exactly-world-class line called Tikal Jets, which has to be better than Cubana, the alternative, which I refuse to fly. There are many agencies in Antigua offering transport by van to the Guatemala City airport (I also went that way to and from Panajachel); I have to take a 5:00 a.m. shuttle, as they're called, for my 9:30 flight because the next one leaves at 7:30--the rush-hour traffic is too impossible in between.
The nostalgia is because when I first came here, in 1989, Antigua was not the San Miguel de Allende of Central America, as it is now, with delicatessens selling products such as cheddar cheese and Chinese cooking wine, not usually found in these parts, cafés featuring bagels (I refuse to eat a bagel outside of New York), and restaurants of multiple nationalities. I have to admit to enjoying my afternoon green tea and brownie at the Café Condesa, but the cost is high, with ever more traffic clogging the cobblestone streets, making it increasingly hard to appreciate the lovely pastel-colored houses with tile roofs. The only regulation of traffic seems to be the closing of Quinta Avenida (5th Avenue), the main drag, on the weekends. The number of travel agencies and tour operators has to exceed what's in San Miguel, and in every other block one can find a cute little hotel.
Despite all of the above, Antigua remains a place where one can happily just be, without feeling the need for an agenda. For my purposes, it remains a place to happily photograph (when the cars don't get in the way of course), for the ample population of indígenas in their colorful traje típico who come in to sell their crops at the market or their artesanía at the artesanía market or on the street, or to wash clothes in the tanque público, for the colonial chimneys rising above the tile roofs of the pastel-colored houses, for the ruins of convents and churches, flowers against crumbling stone. Normally it is also a place to photograph volcanos, three of which loom over the city, but the weather has been almost continually cloudy (sunny of course at the same time, and hot except early morning and evening) and the volcanos have pretty much disappeared.
Antigua is a city of colonial ruins, having been almost destroyed by an earthquake in 1773, as a result of which the capital was moved from here to what is now Guatemala City. The marketing of the ruins has progressed over the time I have been coming here. When I first came the admission was 25 or 50 centavos. Then at some point a national distinction appeared, and it was 1 quetzal (the currency, also the national bird) for natives and 10 quetzales for foreigners. Now there is a multitiered system--30 quetzales for foreign tourists, 15 for foreign students with credential, 10 for Central American tourists (students get no discount), and 2 for Guatemalans (again students get no discount). Luckily, at three ruins attached to churches everyone gets in for 3 quetzales. (Due to the decline of the US dollar, this trip I get only 7.5 quetzales to the dollar, whereas the exchange rate had been 8 to 1 for many years. Luckily my hotel here sets its prices in dollars, so there I don't lose out.)
The single cultural event of my stay is a concert of two youth orquestras combined, out of doors, a platform having been constructed in front of the Cathedral and plastic chairs placed on the street facing it. The massed strings do all right, but sometimes a percussionist is a little off.
At the beginning of my stay I take off for Lake Atitlán, leaving Thursday and returning Sunday. The base of most people's stay at the lake is Panajachel, a somewhat bizarre combination of indígena village built a couple of kilometers inland and tourist strip between it and the lake, with puestos selling artesanía lining the street. The same cloudiness that's in Antigua is here, apparently a common phenomenon just before the rainy season, and the three volcanos that loom above the lake and are responsible for its breathtaking beauty have been swallowed up in the mist. Luckily I have been here several times before and have taken a collection of photos of the lake with its volcanos, and luckily they reappear the morning of my last day, too faint to photograph but clear enough to remind me of their impressiveness.
I come on a Thursday because I want to go on Friday to the market in Sololá, an indígena town on a bluff above the lake. The market is an enormously intense affair, partly for the ruthless crush of people, partly for the uniformity of the traje típico of the indígena women, and some of the men--at the beginning I feel like I'm going into a trance. For the first time I notice hand-kissing, first a man kissing a woman's hand, then a woman kissing a woman's hand, then a man kissing a man's hand. I have debated long and hard as to whether to bring my camera, having been robbed twice over the years in this market, but I decide I'd like to do portraits with the long lens, like I have done at the market in Antigua, not realizing that it won't be possible because here the plastic coverings on the puestos make it impossible to get a view from a distance. In any event, I shoot a lot in the parque central (as Guatemalans call their central plazas) and at some selling spots that are uncovered.
The market is mostly out of doors, but selling also takes place inside a building, in a corner of which weavings are sold--I have a lovely silk rebozo hanging in front of my stairway from there. Of course I can't remember where the building is, and I have a terrible time finding out by asking; finally a man who overhears me asking another man says "Two blocks that way," which it isn't, but I turn a corner and there it is. Then there is the problem of finding where they sell weavings, which I originally walk by to get away from the meat, but a woman rescues me and I end up buying an orange huipil (blouse) with elaborate designs, which may get draped over a trunk for lack of free wall space. When I walk out of the building by another entrance, I realize I am right by the church.
On Saturday my agenda is a boat trip to three of the dozen or so indígena villages on the edge of the lake; our captain, the volcanos being invisible, is wearing a compass on a cord around his neck. The tourists are quite varied, Germans, French, Italians, and one other American; I chat with a German couple who are traveling for a year in their camper. At San Pedro La Laguna things are very modernized, with cybercafés even, the women wear a normal blouse with their corte (wrap-around skirt), and there is a sizeable gringo population, a tradition started by hippies in the 70s who came to hang out and smoke pot. The Protestant inroads in Guatemala are visible here in Christian slogans painted on walls and several pastel-colored Evangelical churches.
Santiago Atitlán, our next stop, is at once more traditional, with its uniform traje típico, including the striped and embroidered shorts that the men wear, but more tourist-oriented, with artesanía stores lining the route from the dock to the center of town. We end up at San Antonio Palopó, where I came once for the annual fiesta; the tiny village is much more shut down now than then, but it has opened several shops of weavings and ceramics to sell to the tourists, almost everything blue, like the women's huipiles.
I have a ticket for tomorrow, Monday, from Guatemala City to Havana, reserved by email correspondence with a travel agency here (not having it in hand caused me some problems in the Mexico City airport), on a not-exactly-world-class line called Tikal Jets, which has to be better than Cubana, the alternative, which I refuse to fly. There are many agencies in Antigua offering transport by van to the Guatemala City airport (I also went that way to and from Panajachel); I have to take a 5:00 a.m. shuttle, as they're called, for my 9:30 flight because the next one leaves at 7:30--the rush-hour traffic is too impossible in between.
