We ended up spending quite a few nights in Antigua, largely because Jon came down with acute food poisoning and had a particularly omnimous looking rash spreading all over his back (jungle bugs from Tikal?). We diagnosed him as better when he was able to eat 2 packets of chile Doritos in a row (doctors smockters). Jon being fit enough to travel, we headed to Lake Atitlan with Naomi and Gemma who had caught up with us once again.
I don’t think I can quite describe just how beautiful the Lake really is - if you really care, you should search for some pictures on the web because this kind of scenery is just beyond my ability to write. The lake is so huge that you’d mistake it for a sea if it wasn’t so still, and the absence of waves means that the reflections of the volcanoes and mountains that surround it are reflected in the water. In the afternoons everything clouds over and the lake goes this bluish gry colour – Jon described it best – like the fur of certain siamese cats. Our boat took us to San Pedro, which is one of the small towns around the lake. It’s an eclectic place; mayan washer women take their clothes down to the lake and scrub them on the rocks, weave and bake bread, but the place itself is defined by tourists. I walked in to one restaraunt and asked, in Spanish, if they were serving and the guy looked at me like I’d just asked him an incredibly difficult riddle - I thought my Spanish might have been a bit dodgy, but it turned out that he couldn’t speak a word, even though he’d been living there for several months. Almost everything in San Pedro is set up for tourists; as soon as we got off the boat we were being offered horses and kayaks. Our first day there we hired out 4 horses - although I think they ended up riding us more than we rode them – they just started breaking in to spontaneous galloping whenever they felt like it, round mountain passes, through canopes and under vines… It was incredible, if vaguely life threatning.
Thinking about it, I really, really loved my time by the lake. You can wonder up in to the main heart of the village and eat lunch for about 25p with “the locals” (God I hate that phrase). I remember sitting on this little cobbled step looking down over the village and towards the volcanoes, feeling the sunshine and trying to conceptualise “being in Guatemala”, when I was approached by the sweetest little girl you’ve ever seen who came over to state in Spanish that her name was Manuella and that her favourite flavour ice cream was strawberry. She demanded that I tell her my corresponding information and the name of my parents – I did as I was told and, seemingly satisfied, she nodded and walked off.
The next day was market day; so we got a chicken bus to Chichi, where all the villagers come down from the surrounding pueblos to trade twice a week. The whole scene is so packed it was like something out of “Where’s Wally”: Mayan women dressed in traditional bright colours; reds, pinks and greens wrapped around their waists over and over again and baskets on their heads; old ladies selling vegetables sitting on the floor with reddish brown skin and wrinkles so deep they look like they’ve been carved in; live chickens and people weaving in and out of the smoke from swinging catholic chains; baskets of flowers being sold on side steps and rich tapestries and throws dangling from hundreds of hangers; men selling nuts and jade, silver and pocket watches being sold from broken glass cabinets… (it was really nice to find a market not dominated by polyester). Your senses are literally overwhelmed as people approach you with dolls, braclets, blankets - everybody haggling.
The day after Jon and I hired another motorbike and headed up in to the mountains. The volcanoes there are covered in deep green vegetation – the patchwork farms and fields of England gone vertical. Jon and I kept climbing round these near vertical roads (the bike gave out several times) winding around the sharpest corners very slowly. The clouds spilled between the peaks of the mountains, looking exactly like smoke – as if there were fires in the valleys below. As we climbed we passed mayan villagers doing what they always do - carrying huge machetes for farming, women in bright red and purple lugging huge bundles of firewood on their heads with kids strapped to their chests. Once we took a wrong turning and headed up the main cobbled high street of a mayan village - the only vehicle on the road Jon and I skirted past dogs, children, chickens and raised eyebrows. Once we got really high we started going through the clouds; the first thing that hits you is the sudden drop in temperature and then your complete lack of vision kicks in.
After 4 hours straight of un-ecological biking, we came home to find Naomi and Gemma. They’d decided to spend the day climbing up “the nose” – a nearby mountain – instead of gallavanting about on unsafe motorbikes through unknown territories. Unfortunately their pleasant mountain walk led to them being held up by three kids - all of which were brandishing machetes. Ouch. They took Gemma’s camera and some of Naomi’s money – when Naomi started crying one of them tried to give her back 5 dollars compensation but the ring leader wouldn’t let him. No one was hurt or anything, and as Jon said, this is no phenomenon of the “third world”; it’s just like what happens in London all the time as a consequence of massive disparities of wealth - that’s not to say it’s justifiable, but it is understandable. Gemma and I went to the local police station to report the offence and try and get a letter to present to insurance. We walked in to this tiny office in the village to be confronted by 3 absolute characters – one fat, one short one lean and all totally incompetent. I’m telling you it was a perfect setting for a comedy – a sort of fawlty towers in a Guatemalan police station. These three policemen proceeded to pretend to know what they were doing by getting an age old type writer out of a dusty cuboard and typing their report on very thin paper, quite clearly mimicing what policemen were supposed to do from their knowledge of movies. This was done whilst simultaneously trying to get Gemma and I to go out dancing with them that evening because Guatemalan women were just a little too *catholic* for their liking. To write the statement, they required Gemma’s father’s name, her age and whether she was married or had a boyfriend. We managed to explain the story to them by acting it out – it’s funny how there is a universal sign for “brandishing machete” (make a fist , hold it sideways and sort of jab it up and down whilst keeping your eyes really wide). One of the policemen made his mate re-type the letter because it would make him look more superior to point out mistakes and, having finally received draft two, Gem and I decided to leave despite the torrential downpour going on outside. I cannot quite emphasise how much rain actually came out of the sky that afternoon – the streets turned in to waterfalls, the roads in to rapids – as Gem and I quasi-waded quasi-swam back all the villagers looked out from their porches with expressions that said more plainly than words, “What the fuck are you doing?“.
So now, after all that, we’ve come back to Antigua ready to get up at 3:30am tomorrow to catch a shuttle bus all the way to Honduras.
