Friday, April 18, 2008
Report from Panajachel (Guatemala)
(An Internet album of photos I took of Panajachel and Sololá is at album.) The transition by van from San Cristóbal across the border to Lake Atitlán in Guatemala on Monday, April 14 is something of an ordeal, 12 hours instead of the advertised eight. Partly the problem is delays due to construction on the Panamerican Highway, but mostly it is lack of communication between the tour agency that sold me the ticket and the outfit that actually did the transportation, plus logistical mess-ups of the latter--the sort of occasion that makes you want to just forget about it and move on.
Panajachel, where I have been several times, I have always had mixed feelings about, more positive in my old age than earlier. It is located on the north shore of Lake Atitlán, which Aldous Huxley famously called the most beautiful lake in the world, the beauty coming not just from a large body of water 5,000 feet above sea level but from the three stunning volcanoes that loom above it (although depending on where you are, they may appear to be only two), with mountains going off to the side. The effect is to suck you in and lift you up--awesome in the original sense of the word.
Panajachel is something else, something rather bizarre. A mile or so from the lake it is an indígena village, with plaza, church, town hall, and market. In between that village and the lakeshore is 100 percent tourism--puesto after puesto selling artesanía, shops with the higher-end stuff, restaurants, hotels, and transportation services. Since my last visit there are tuks-tuks puttering down Calle Santander, the center of the action--like cocotaxis in Havana but with a full canvas cover and painted red. (If that descrition isn't helpful, they are three-wheeled vehicles that can take two passengers.) This seems to be a very low low season, and the atmosphere is quite relaxed (and the weather marvelously warm).
There is an increasingly tourist infrastructure in some of the other villages around the lake (one of them has long been noted as a hippie and druggie hangout), and now there are boutique hotels with their own landing docks isolated from everything else.
Pana is one of the three best places to shop in Guatemala (the others are Chichicastenango and Antigua), and since I have a camera crisis and the day after my arrival can't take pictures, I pay my respects to the lake and shop. (Apparently I messed up my snazzy new camera trying to insert a new memory card the wrong way, and after visiting two photo shops it appears that a friend of a muchacho in the second one can repair it for an exhorbitant amount, hopefully by late the following day.) Aside from the mangos and avocados I buy in the market and the loaf of banana bread in a bakery called Pana Pan, in short order on the artesanía strip I buy two runners from the same woman, made in Santa Catarina Palopó, one of the dozen or so indígena villages on the lake, and a medium-sized cloth shoulder bag made here.
The night of my arrival I experience an earthquake, lying in bed not to sleep but collapsed from exhaustion, wondering about that sudden vibration, like one of those lounge chairs that gives a massage. Since nothing is jumping off the table, I decide I don't have to do anything. The next day I read in the paper about the 40-second, 5.8-degree earthquake, centered on the Pacific coast but felt in the entire country, without any injuries or damages.
The camera crisis deepens--I entrust my camera to a muchacho in QuickPhoto on Tuesday morning, he says his friend can fix it for Thursday, I plead as earnestly as I can to get it on Wednesday, he leads me to believe that there was a possibility for Wednesday afternoon, I should come by at 4, at which time I'm told to come by at 6, at which time I'm told to wait ten minutes (I go out for ice cream), at which time I'm told it will be Thursday afternoon. So I have no choice but to take the boat ride to Santiago Atitlán Thursday morning without a camera, since Friday, my last day here, is market day in Sololá and I must go there.
Santiago Atitlán is across the lake from Panajachel, and the boat ride normally takes an hour. But this time they're using a much smaller boat than the ones I've been on in the past, one that will hold maybe 20 people, with a roof but otherwise totally open, with an outboard motor. We're much closer to the water and our speed is much greater, so we arrive in 20 minutes. Santiago is the largest of the indígena villages around the lake, really too large to be called a village. The huipiles of the women there are traditionally white with widely spaced lavender stripes and embroidery of birds at the top in between the stripes. The men wear pants the length of pedal pushers, traditionally white with widely spaced purple stripes and embroidery across the bottom, covering both stripes and background. Now one sees many variations on the traditional style, and some clothes that, while still traje típico, don't look anything like it.
Santiago's history is very much entwined with the bloody history of Guatemala's civil war. An American priest who had ministered in Santiago for many years was killed by the army in the early 80s, and his heart is buried in the church, where a chapel is dedicated to him. A historic victory for indígena rights took place in 1990, when the army post in Santiago was forced to leave as a result of an international uproar over the army shooting at a crowd of demonstrators who were protesting the actions of a couple of drunken soldiers trying to kidnap someone, killing 19.
I resist the approaches of two guides but find myself agreeing to go with a third, who has a credential around his neck, agreeing to pay 70 quetzales (down from the original price of 100) for him to take me to see Maximón and to the Catholic church. Maximón, also known as San Simón, is a saint not in the Catholic pantheon but much venerated here and among indígenas in other parts of Guatemala. He is kept in a person's home, changing from home to home every November 1. He has a room all to himself, with fruits, herbs, and papel picado hanging from the ceiling. His head is carved out of wood, and it's impossible to see what his body is made out of. He is wearing a black hat, has a cigar in his mouth, sports a tie around his neck and is so festooned with scarves draped over his shoulders that it's impossible to see his jacket. His pants are vividly embroidered. There's a plate in front of him where one can leave a donation. I ask my guide on the way about my impression that many people here are Evangelical Christians, and he tells me that the majority are, and while seeing Maximón he tells me that both Catholics and Evangelicals come here to pray to him in times of sickness or other hardship.
From there we go to the Catholic church, where a service in which those in attendance are all women is taking place, led by a laywoman. The imagenes lined up by the side walls are all dressed in cloth robes, those on the left being identical and those on the right identical to each other but differerent from those on the left; the clothes are made by different societies, my guide tells me. After paying my guide he agrees to take me to the market for no additional charge; I remember when years ago it consisted of people laying out their goods on the ground in front of the city hall, but now it's a substantial three-level building. Finally, we walk down toward the lake--the walk from the lake to the center of town is lined with puestos selling artesanía--to where there is a small but very well-laid-out museum of the weavings of Santiago, created, it turns out, by an American woman who has lived there 30 years. On the way we pass an Evangelical church, a three-story structure that looks like a hotel or an office building.
Thursday afternoon at 5 I am finally reunited with my camera, and of course I rush down to the lakeside to take pixtures--and of course the day is so cloudy that the volcanos, although visible, look like ghosts. So I take some ghostly pictures and resolve to go out before breakfast on Friday. But at 6 a.m. the volcanos aren't really any more distinct (of course the day after my arrival they were strikingly distinct), so I take more ghostly photos. Later on, after breakfast and shower, I hire a tuk tuk to take me to Sololá for the market instead of taking the bus because there's a mirador on the way where I ask him to stop. Well, I will try again tomorrow morning, but I fear my best photos of the lake are going to be film pictures from one of my previous trips.
In any event, Sololá is an indígena town, state capitol in fact, located on a cliff above Panajachel, about 20 minutes away. Both sexes were a traje típico of many colors on a dark blue or black background; the men wear a short wrap-around skirt of brown and white wool over their pants. I've bought some of my favorite weavings there, in a building at the Friday market, most of which is out of doors, but I've also been robbed twice there over the years, so I take precautions--my wallet stays home, money for the bus goes in a little zipper case, money for the tuk tuk goes in the secret pocket of my travel pants, and money for a weaving or two goes in my waist pouch.
The tuk tuk leaves me on the edge of the market, where there isn't a total crush, a good place to get started taking pictures, which is always a challenge in a situation where people are constantly moving and in close proximity. I slowly move through the market in the direction of the parque central, as the main plaza in a Guatemalan city is always called, and as I am happily shooting away there a señora approaches me with an assortment of weavings over her arm. One of them I am tempted to consider--I want to replace a huipil on the wall of my livingroom that I no longer like--although I had wanted to check out what was in the building, so I am in a state of doubt as a second woman appears with an absolutely knock-your-socks-off weaving in just the color I want (burnt orange) over her arm (a huipil in which the center hole has been filled in with cloth and embroidery and long tassels have been added at the corners). This is so gorgeous that it is absolutely impossible to resist, so we get down to the business of bargaining; I manage to get her down from 500 quetzales to 410 (US$55, $4 more than I have ever paid before), think afterwards that I could probably have gotten her down further if I had started to walk away, but that I wasn't capable of doing.
Having made the purchase, my problem becomes that two or three women insist on following me and plying me with their weavings, refusing to believe my insistence that I'm not going to buy any more. Eventually they give up and leave, I push my way into the building because a friend has asked me to buy a weaving for her new apartment (she covets the huipil over the sideboard in my diningroom, but no way am I going to part with that), and after walking past the meat, always difficult for me, I find the section with the weavings, but nothing my friend would like for her wall. At this point I am beat from all the intensity, leave the building by a different exit, find myself at the edge of the market, see an ice cream place, and treat myself to a vasito de chocochip to give myself energy to stay a little longer, before climbing onto a chicken bus (so-called for their occasional feathery passengers) to go back to Pana.
Tomorrow I move on to Chichicastenango, site of a famous tourist market on Sunday that many years ago I stopped going to because the tourist presence was too overwhelming. This time I'm going because it's on the way to Nebaj, about which more when I get there. I will minimize the problem by arriving Saturday afternoon; I can watch the preparations, which is fun to do, and then arrive at and leave the market before the tourist vans arrive.
Panajachel, where I have been several times, I have always had mixed feelings about, more positive in my old age than earlier. It is located on the north shore of Lake Atitlán, which Aldous Huxley famously called the most beautiful lake in the world, the beauty coming not just from a large body of water 5,000 feet above sea level but from the three stunning volcanoes that loom above it (although depending on where you are, they may appear to be only two), with mountains going off to the side. The effect is to suck you in and lift you up--awesome in the original sense of the word.
Panajachel is something else, something rather bizarre. A mile or so from the lake it is an indígena village, with plaza, church, town hall, and market. In between that village and the lakeshore is 100 percent tourism--puesto after puesto selling artesanía, shops with the higher-end stuff, restaurants, hotels, and transportation services. Since my last visit there are tuks-tuks puttering down Calle Santander, the center of the action--like cocotaxis in Havana but with a full canvas cover and painted red. (If that descrition isn't helpful, they are three-wheeled vehicles that can take two passengers.) This seems to be a very low low season, and the atmosphere is quite relaxed (and the weather marvelously warm).
There is an increasingly tourist infrastructure in some of the other villages around the lake (one of them has long been noted as a hippie and druggie hangout), and now there are boutique hotels with their own landing docks isolated from everything else.
Pana is one of the three best places to shop in Guatemala (the others are Chichicastenango and Antigua), and since I have a camera crisis and the day after my arrival can't take pictures, I pay my respects to the lake and shop. (Apparently I messed up my snazzy new camera trying to insert a new memory card the wrong way, and after visiting two photo shops it appears that a friend of a muchacho in the second one can repair it for an exhorbitant amount, hopefully by late the following day.) Aside from the mangos and avocados I buy in the market and the loaf of banana bread in a bakery called Pana Pan, in short order on the artesanía strip I buy two runners from the same woman, made in Santa Catarina Palopó, one of the dozen or so indígena villages on the lake, and a medium-sized cloth shoulder bag made here.
The night of my arrival I experience an earthquake, lying in bed not to sleep but collapsed from exhaustion, wondering about that sudden vibration, like one of those lounge chairs that gives a massage. Since nothing is jumping off the table, I decide I don't have to do anything. The next day I read in the paper about the 40-second, 5.8-degree earthquake, centered on the Pacific coast but felt in the entire country, without any injuries or damages.
The camera crisis deepens--I entrust my camera to a muchacho in QuickPhoto on Tuesday morning, he says his friend can fix it for Thursday, I plead as earnestly as I can to get it on Wednesday, he leads me to believe that there was a possibility for Wednesday afternoon, I should come by at 4, at which time I'm told to come by at 6, at which time I'm told to wait ten minutes (I go out for ice cream), at which time I'm told it will be Thursday afternoon. So I have no choice but to take the boat ride to Santiago Atitlán Thursday morning without a camera, since Friday, my last day here, is market day in Sololá and I must go there.
Santiago Atitlán is across the lake from Panajachel, and the boat ride normally takes an hour. But this time they're using a much smaller boat than the ones I've been on in the past, one that will hold maybe 20 people, with a roof but otherwise totally open, with an outboard motor. We're much closer to the water and our speed is much greater, so we arrive in 20 minutes. Santiago is the largest of the indígena villages around the lake, really too large to be called a village. The huipiles of the women there are traditionally white with widely spaced lavender stripes and embroidery of birds at the top in between the stripes. The men wear pants the length of pedal pushers, traditionally white with widely spaced purple stripes and embroidery across the bottom, covering both stripes and background. Now one sees many variations on the traditional style, and some clothes that, while still traje típico, don't look anything like it.
Santiago's history is very much entwined with the bloody history of Guatemala's civil war. An American priest who had ministered in Santiago for many years was killed by the army in the early 80s, and his heart is buried in the church, where a chapel is dedicated to him. A historic victory for indígena rights took place in 1990, when the army post in Santiago was forced to leave as a result of an international uproar over the army shooting at a crowd of demonstrators who were protesting the actions of a couple of drunken soldiers trying to kidnap someone, killing 19.
I resist the approaches of two guides but find myself agreeing to go with a third, who has a credential around his neck, agreeing to pay 70 quetzales (down from the original price of 100) for him to take me to see Maximón and to the Catholic church. Maximón, also known as San Simón, is a saint not in the Catholic pantheon but much venerated here and among indígenas in other parts of Guatemala. He is kept in a person's home, changing from home to home every November 1. He has a room all to himself, with fruits, herbs, and papel picado hanging from the ceiling. His head is carved out of wood, and it's impossible to see what his body is made out of. He is wearing a black hat, has a cigar in his mouth, sports a tie around his neck and is so festooned with scarves draped over his shoulders that it's impossible to see his jacket. His pants are vividly embroidered. There's a plate in front of him where one can leave a donation. I ask my guide on the way about my impression that many people here are Evangelical Christians, and he tells me that the majority are, and while seeing Maximón he tells me that both Catholics and Evangelicals come here to pray to him in times of sickness or other hardship.
From there we go to the Catholic church, where a service in which those in attendance are all women is taking place, led by a laywoman. The imagenes lined up by the side walls are all dressed in cloth robes, those on the left being identical and those on the right identical to each other but differerent from those on the left; the clothes are made by different societies, my guide tells me. After paying my guide he agrees to take me to the market for no additional charge; I remember when years ago it consisted of people laying out their goods on the ground in front of the city hall, but now it's a substantial three-level building. Finally, we walk down toward the lake--the walk from the lake to the center of town is lined with puestos selling artesanía--to where there is a small but very well-laid-out museum of the weavings of Santiago, created, it turns out, by an American woman who has lived there 30 years. On the way we pass an Evangelical church, a three-story structure that looks like a hotel or an office building.
Thursday afternoon at 5 I am finally reunited with my camera, and of course I rush down to the lakeside to take pixtures--and of course the day is so cloudy that the volcanos, although visible, look like ghosts. So I take some ghostly pictures and resolve to go out before breakfast on Friday. But at 6 a.m. the volcanos aren't really any more distinct (of course the day after my arrival they were strikingly distinct), so I take more ghostly photos. Later on, after breakfast and shower, I hire a tuk tuk to take me to Sololá for the market instead of taking the bus because there's a mirador on the way where I ask him to stop. Well, I will try again tomorrow morning, but I fear my best photos of the lake are going to be film pictures from one of my previous trips.
In any event, Sololá is an indígena town, state capitol in fact, located on a cliff above Panajachel, about 20 minutes away. Both sexes were a traje típico of many colors on a dark blue or black background; the men wear a short wrap-around skirt of brown and white wool over their pants. I've bought some of my favorite weavings there, in a building at the Friday market, most of which is out of doors, but I've also been robbed twice there over the years, so I take precautions--my wallet stays home, money for the bus goes in a little zipper case, money for the tuk tuk goes in the secret pocket of my travel pants, and money for a weaving or two goes in my waist pouch.
The tuk tuk leaves me on the edge of the market, where there isn't a total crush, a good place to get started taking pictures, which is always a challenge in a situation where people are constantly moving and in close proximity. I slowly move through the market in the direction of the parque central, as the main plaza in a Guatemalan city is always called, and as I am happily shooting away there a señora approaches me with an assortment of weavings over her arm. One of them I am tempted to consider--I want to replace a huipil on the wall of my livingroom that I no longer like--although I had wanted to check out what was in the building, so I am in a state of doubt as a second woman appears with an absolutely knock-your-socks-off weaving in just the color I want (burnt orange) over her arm (a huipil in which the center hole has been filled in with cloth and embroidery and long tassels have been added at the corners). This is so gorgeous that it is absolutely impossible to resist, so we get down to the business of bargaining; I manage to get her down from 500 quetzales to 410 (US$55, $4 more than I have ever paid before), think afterwards that I could probably have gotten her down further if I had started to walk away, but that I wasn't capable of doing.
Having made the purchase, my problem becomes that two or three women insist on following me and plying me with their weavings, refusing to believe my insistence that I'm not going to buy any more. Eventually they give up and leave, I push my way into the building because a friend has asked me to buy a weaving for her new apartment (she covets the huipil over the sideboard in my diningroom, but no way am I going to part with that), and after walking past the meat, always difficult for me, I find the section with the weavings, but nothing my friend would like for her wall. At this point I am beat from all the intensity, leave the building by a different exit, find myself at the edge of the market, see an ice cream place, and treat myself to a vasito de chocochip to give myself energy to stay a little longer, before climbing onto a chicken bus (so-called for their occasional feathery passengers) to go back to Pana.
Tomorrow I move on to Chichicastenango, site of a famous tourist market on Sunday that many years ago I stopped going to because the tourist presence was too overwhelming. This time I'm going because it's on the way to Nebaj, about which more when I get there. I will minimize the problem by arriving Saturday afternoon; I can watch the preparations, which is fun to do, and then arrive at and leave the market before the tourist vans arrive.
# posted by Louise Lander @ 4:25 PM 
