plash

The guidebooks are fairly clear on this subject: in Guatemala, you should avoid going places at night. (In fact, there are those who think you would be wise to avoid the place in the daytime, too. The ever-cheerful US State Department has a page on Guatemala, which informs you that you may encounter incidents “including, but not limited to, assault, theft, armed robbery, carjacking, rape, kidnapping, and murder.” You just can’t beat a recommendation like that!) It’s apparently worse at night, as the bad people of Guatemala emerge, vampire-like, to prey on tourists foolish enough to venture forth without the protective power of the sun’s rays.

 

 

These dire warnings weighed heavy on our minds during our first day in Guatemala. We didn’t even make it to Flores until 7:30 or so, and the light was nearly gone by the time we found a guidebook-approved hotel. Thankfully, the quality time I had spent with “Speak Spanish with Michel Thomas!” over the past month paid off. Ole’ Michel had had a great deal to say about hotels and the procurement thereof, so we were able to fumble our way through.

 

 

(A quick sidebar: “Speak Spanish with Michel Thomas!” is reasonably effective, and vastly more entertaining than you’d expect. The 8-CD set set consists of Michel Thomas, an old French guy, and two youngish students: an American female and a British male. Over the course of the CDs, the idea goes, you learn along with the two students as Michel teaches them Spanish, and indeed the students seem to know almost nothing at the beginning of the course. The woman is fairly bright and learns quickly, but the real entertainment value comes from the British guy, who is none too bright. He gibbers and stutters his way through the course, and every so often he can be heard working his jaw ineffectively while searching for a phrase, bits of spittle popping between his lips. Michel Thomas, for his part, gives off a strong cranky old man vibe, and frequently gets frustrated with the poor Brit. You can almost hear the American woman in the background, by turns sympathetic and gloating.)

 

 

Knowing a bit of Spanish in Guatemala - even the little I’d picked up from Michel and his hapless charges - made things easier, but only to a point. To get by, you have to be able to not just speak, but to understand, and here was my problem. Often I’d figure out how to ask a particular question, and would be delighted when I was understood. Then would come the response, a torrent of Spanish which would roll right over me and leave precious few traces of meaning behind. Sometimes a confused and pitiable look or a ”Lo siento, no comprendo!” would bring relief, but just as often it would result in a giggle and another flood of futile Spanish. Guatemalans, it seems, are greatly amused by the non-Spanish speaking gringos. I found this attitude somewhat unhelpful.

 

 

Back to Flores: as darkness fell on that first night, we found ourselves in a budget hotel room. In Guatemala, in 2008, this meant that we paid about $12, which is nothing if not reasonable. For that kind of money, you get:

• a private (but pretty run down) bathroom with a shower and hot water that comes in fits and starts
• a reasonable, if not amazing, level of cleanliness
• two beds, with thin sheets that appeared to have been recently laundered (but no guarantees!)
• in this hotel, an odd rectangular hole in the wall shared with a public sitting room, through which an ambitious person could get into our hotel room and rob us blind (see picture below)
• a non-functional ceiling fan, and a semi-functional oscillating floor fan - utterly indispensable in the humid thickness of the Petén region
• no toilet paper

This last was a condition we found in many places in Guatemala: it wasn’t hard to find places to relieve oneself, but they were not often stocked with TP. In many places, the presence of one’s own toilet paper made the difference between a nicely wiped rear, and a rear that would go entirely unwiped.

 

 

By the time we got ourselves unpacked, it was fully dark. We were ensconced in our hotel room, safe against all intruders (aside, that is, from the alarming hole in the wall). This was exactly where we were supposed to be.

Except that we were hungry. Also, we’d been in Guatemala for 7 hours and hadn’t seen any of it yet. And so we ventured out into the mean streets of Flores. As we closed the door behind us, I could practically see the authors of guidebook sternly shaking their collective finger.

 

 

Wandering around Flores that night, we were not assaulted, stolen from, carjacked, raped, kidnapped, murdered, or even much noticed. We had adventures with the local ATM machine, which appeared to be as flustered by us as we were by it. We dodged tuk-tuks and drank soda made with real sugar as we walked the cobbled streets. We ate at a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant where we didn’t understand a word the waiter said. We pointed randomly at the menu, and when he kept asking us questions about our order, we kept repeating bits of his Spanish back to him until he went away and finally came back with food, which was delicious. We washed it down with several bottles of sweating cold beer (Gallo - la mejor cerveza! - utterly ubiquitous in Guatemala). We sat there for a long time that night, toasting our vacation and ourselves and marveling at our audacity in coming here, as the heavy summer night settled onto the town.

We saw our first Mayan ruins at just after 5 AM. We’d booked a “sunrise tour”, which required being outside our hotel and ready to go at 3:30 AM (in case it’s been a while since you’ve been up at 3:30 AM, here’s the skinny: it’s incredibly, mind-poundingly early) followed by an hour squeezed into a minibus with too many people of too many ethnicities. I’ve never been a very capable sleeper in the best of times, and even at 3:30 in the morning, sleeping during the ride proved impossible as the driver slalomed around the vast Guatemalan potholes.

The bus pulled into Tikal around 4:45 AM. Although the sun was on its way up, the jungle was still swathed in inky blackness, and as we hiked the trails I navigated by following the faint shadow of the person in front of me. There wasn’t much to see, but the sounds were incredible: birds, unnamed and unknown animals crashing through the trees nearby, and above all the howler monkeys in the canopy overhead. In the middle of the night, the roar of the howler monkey was almost spectral. It was a deeply creepy noise to have surrounding us. “Bloody things sound like the devil,” said an English guy on the trail ahead of me.

A little after 5 AM, we saw the temple:
 

 

It’s hard to describe how suddenly these things appear. The jungle is tall and thick, and it’s difficult to see even the tallest temples until you’re practically on top of them. Although we could see where we were going, it was still very dark, and the temples were mainly huge silhouettes against the slate sky.

After having walked for a half hour or so, we climbed Temple IV, the largest structure of Tikal, at over 230 feet tall. There’s plenty of seating at the top, and everyone on the tour (several dozen of us) got a chance to sit and see the stunning sunrise.

… or would have, had there been one. The sun, it seems, doesn’t often put on much of a show at Tikal. There’s usually too much mist in the jungle to see much of anything until the midmorning heat has burned it off. Instead, we got to see the mist gradually lighten over the jungle below us.
 

 

Eventually, we ended up ditching the tour (which was a terrible disappointment our guide guide, a friendly man named Luis) and wandering around Tikal on our own. It’s an amazing place, with six huge temple structures, dozens or hundreds of smaller buildings, and many more yet to be excavated, all meshed in by the jungle.

 

 

Our guidebook spoke of warriors and battles, kings and queens, victories and betrayals, and even human sacrifices - all had taken place on the ground on which we now casually walked. Hundreds of thousands of people had been born, lived, and had died here, centuries earlier. Their descendants are still very much part of Guatemala, but they themselves are long gone. Now, the only remnants of this once powerful culture are the remains of the massive structures they built to honor themselves and their gods.

 

Today, my sister and I are off to Guatemala for some serious vacationing, so my normally relentless writing pace is going to slow down for a brief period. Neither one of us speaks much (read: any) Spanish, so this ought to be fun! There’ll be pictures when I get back, though. That is, assuming my camera doesn’t get stolen on the first day.

Although in many ways she’s a failure as a cat (she’d probably run from a mouse if ever she were to see one), she does have really cool eyes.

Earlier this week, I caught a ride to camp with Charlie and Kristen. The three of us are part of a fairly exclusive club: we’re not just former camp counselors (of which there are many) but former camp counselors who continued working summers long past the usual expiration date. Most camp staff only last a summer or two before an internships or a relationships or any of a million other things prevent their return. Others dedicate their entire college careers: three summers, maybe four, and then maybe some volunteering after that. But for some of us, even that’s not enough. We’re the ones who perhaps found the post-college world just a bit more bleak than expected, and each extra summer was a way to put off adulthood just a little bit longer.

 

 

Still, even for those of us who put it off longer than most, the our camp years eventually do end - and once they do, it’s startling just how quickly you’re forgotten. Charlie and Kristen were both on staff last summer, so both of them knew quite a few people who had stuck around. Me, on the other hand: even though my own final summer was just three years ago, there are only a handful of people left who ever worked with me. With that in mind, I had decided that while Charlie and Kristen visited with people, I’d spend my time wandering around and taking pictures. I’d walk the trails I’d walked so many times before, cool my feet in the river, and try to reclaim some of the peace I’d once experienced in these woods.

 

 

But here’s the interesting part about going to camp with the intention of being antisocial: it’s trickier than you’d think. Even if nobody knows you, even if you’ve been out of the loop for years, there are still people excited to introduce themselves and share with you the things that make this place special to them. “Have you ever worked here?” they ask excitedly, and I fight the temptation to detail the summers I spent here, the things I did, the traditions I helped establish. I used to be important, I want to tell them. But that’s not the way this place works. Just as I believe we all leave our mark in some way, I also believe that in the end, most of us don’t get to claim it. And so I smile, and let them tell me about the things I used to know.

 

 

I went late to the campfire that night. Instead, I spent my time taking pictures in the twilight, leaving the shutter open for a long time to let the light make its imprint even in the dark. I got there in time to hear the prayer. “Dear God,” shouted the person leading the campfire, echoed by dozens of others. “Thank you for this most amazing day.” I listened to the sounds of children and adults thanking God for the beauty of the day and of their lives, and joined in.

 

So, now that we’ve all had… oh, let’s call it an extended hiatus, I’ve decided to potentially resume posting stuff now and then. “Potentially” because plans like these don’t always pan out, do they? But let’s give it a whirl, shall we? There’s interesting stuff coming up: photos, publications, and a trip to Guatemala. And you can’t let a 5-letter domain name sit inactive forever…

You may notice, if you’ve been here before, that plash looks completely different and that all the previous posts are mysteriously unavailable. This is because I decided to shelve my own blogging software in favor of Wordpress, which is infinitely more capable (although, I’d like to think, a tiny bit less awesome). A goodly number of them may find their way over here eventually.

Although if they never do, at least you’ve got a new site to look at while I’m busy not updating it.