Zip Line!

This morning we drove a short distance outside of town to a nature preserve. After a bit of an up hill hike, including swinging bridges and spectacular views of waterfalls, we started down a set of eight zip lines. 

Suited up!

Ready to start climbing.

The first was quite long and very high. As we worked down to the lower lines, some were pretty fast. It was an exhilarating morning, and a bit more tiring than we realized at the time.

In flight.

Staying awake on the bus to Antigua in the afternoon proved difficult. Along the way we stopped for some scenic views, at one of them, helping a group of Guatemalans push their disabled car up a steep hill.

Colorful cemetery.

At the funeraria, ornate caskets are displayed in the garage.

In one village we visited the local cemetery and watched a shaman performing the Mayan ritual prayers that go on for nine days following a death. The ritual includes lots of candles and offerings of foods and drinks that were favored by the dear departed -- in this case, including 7-Up and local, homemade corn liquor (which would be known in the Southern U.S. as “moonshine.”

Shaman supervises offerings to help the departed make the nine day journey through the underworld.

Near Antigua we passed through the village of Pastores, a town with dozens of boot shops. We watched an artisan making boots, and saw every possible variety of boots (mostly cowboy style, but also some fashion and work boots) on display and for sale at very low prices. We had little time to shop, however (not that many of us were in the market for cowboy boots on this trip).

Part of the plaza in Antiqua

Antiqua shops -- it's easy to get lost here, because so many streets look similar.

The old city of Antigua is in some ways a disappointment, but in other ways, delightful. The disappointment comes from reading the history and descriptions of the place, and then seeing the damage brought about by the region’s many earthquakes over the past 200 years, as well as the region’s general poverty.

The church of San Pedro Hermano has suffered much earthquake damage.

Exterior of the university.

The delight is in the remaining architectural gems, and the surprisingly well-appointed interiors of buildings. An example is our hotel, which looks like a rather plain adobe structure outside, but has beautiful courtyards and quaint little rooms with antique furnishings inside.

One of the interior plazas of our hotel -- much more attractive than the exterior.

We had a short walking orientation to the central square, then ate at a restaurant across town that, like the hotel, looked like nothing on the outside, but was beautiful inside.

Our room was small, but quite charming.

Mary enjoys a local drink made with coconut milk.

Everyone is tired tonight after the big morning and the long ride.

Lago de Atitlán

After breakfast at the hotel, we walked a short distance to the lake and boarded a covered boat with a rather loud outboard motor and set out for the village of San Antonio on the opposite side. The air was clear and the water smooth.

View of the volcanoes from the lake shore.

Immediately we noticed that, once again, the local Mayan costumed featured a different color scheme and designs. We were told that the Mayan dialect spoken on this side of the lake differed so much from that on the other side, that without the lingua franca of Spanish, people from opposite sides of the lake would not be able to communicate with one another.

Our guide, Hector, points out the different costumes of the local vendors.

The women selling their crafts in the streets had no trouble communicating, however. They were quite aggressive here, and with a new sales pitch. They would say, “My name is Maria, and I will remember you. You buy when you come back!” Later, completely different women and girls would say, “I remember you. You promised to buy!” It was heartwarming to be remembered by so many people!

Aboard the local taxis.

We walked to the top of the hill and boarded pick up trucks, which serve as the local taxis. We stood in the back and rode through town to the local Catholic church, which was already packed, though mass would not start for some time yet. “Contemporary” Christian music blared through speakers as more and more people streamed in. We left before the service began, and outside our guide discussed the syncretism of Catholicism and Mayan traditions.

Traditional mass, surrounded by living saints

We walked a few blocks through a very crowded market to a large, modern commercial-looking building which was an Evangelical church -- also a very crowded and happening place on Sunday morning. But then our guide took us only a short block down a side street, and into a back alley, where, after some negotiation, a young boy came out of a tiny house swinging a smoking incense pot around all of us.

Our welcoming acolyte.

We were then led through hanging laundry, into the house, filled with candles, where a shaman was chanting prayers to the mummy of a dead ancestor. The mummy was dressed in a suit, covered with money, smoking a cigar, and small amounts of moonshine liquor were occasionally poured down its throat. Across the crowded room, a class coffin contained the image of Jesus taken from a large crucifix. The “body” was wrapped in blankets and decorated with strings of Christmas lights. It was quite a range of religious traditions for one Sunday morning.

At the shaman house there are no living saints, only dead Jesus in a glass casket.

After stopping to see a demonstration of how a young girl braided her long hair into the traditional headdress of the area, we made our way back to the boat through all of the street vendors, and continued on to another village on the east side of the lake.

A Mayan girl demonstrates how her hair is braided into the traditional head dress. She completed it with remarkable speed!

This place was much smaller and quieter, the costumes were again quite different. In the local co-op craft shop, the two young girls and one of the young boys in our group were dressed up in Mayan garb for photos. We had lunch above the shop, and then visited a local home, which was unbelievably small and bare. Poverty here is extreme.

Mayan man in the traditional dress of the area. Note the shorts!

The two young women in our group, Payton and Diana, with the Mayan woman who dressed them in the local costume.

The bus ride back to the hotel from there was only a half hour or so on a narrow, winding mountain road. The rest of the afternoon was free, and dinner was on our own. We ate at a very nice little open-air restaurant right around the corner from the hotel, with good prices, great people watching, and quite nice live music.

On the restaurant balcony after lunch, with lake and volcano.

Sumpango

On Saturday morning we took a brief tour of Guatemala City. It began with a brief stop outside Our Lady of Sorrows church -- a private chapel for a wealthy Spanish family with very eclectic architecture and a cross on the spire that has been tilted by earthquakes.

Our Lady of Sorrows Chapel

We also stopped by a corporate building with a statue of a Mayan playing the infamous ball game. For some inexplicable reason, the company does not allow photographs of the statue, and guards rather angrily push tourists away (bad PR!), but it allowed our guide an opportunity to talk about what is known of the game (which isn’t much).

We also visited the new, modern municipal buildings of the city, and the Cathedral, including monuments to the massacred and disappeared of the civil war of the 1980s. In the national square we saw the very old-looking (but actually only about 70 year old) presidential palace, and also watched a man drive a small heard of goats through the square. Our guide purchased a cup of fresh goat’s milk (really fresh -- we watched the guy milk the goat on the spot!), which he then gave away to a local vendor after he had given us the demonstration.

We drove out of the city, along the way having the opportunity to see the buses (usually similar in style to U.S. school buses, but with bright color schemes) that take people in and out of the city from rural areas. Some of the buses had a boy or young man riding, standing on the ladder in back of the bus, in order to put people’s luggage on top at stops. Occasionally, the luggage boy would finish tying the luggage to the roof, slide down the ladder, and slap the back of the bus, which was the driver’s signal to go. The boy would then run along side the bus and jump into the door as the bus was moving. Other times the bus would start moving and the boy would climb down the ladder and enter via the rear emergency door, even while the bus was at speed! We even saw passengers jump on board buses that didn’t stop, but merely slowed down for them.

As a contrast, we also stopped briefly at a modern shopping mall that included stores with familiar names and merchandise, and a big box store in direct competition with Wal-Mart, across the highway.

We took a travel break at the village of Sumpango, a town known for its annual kite festival every fall, around Dia de los Muertos. There we visited a large market and noted many Mayan women and children (and a few men) in native dress. The women often worked with a baby in a woven sling on their backs.

Women do laundry at the public fountain in Sumpango.

    Later, we stopped at another town where the native costumes were noticeably different, as was the market. This market was much more like a huge, retail distribution center, where families would bring in their vegetables from their small farm plots, and rather than selling directly to others, sold to dealers who collected whole truckloads of just one item -- carrots, onions, etc. -- from the farmers, and took them off to city supermarkets or other outlets. The whole atmosphere here was significantly different, almost industrial.

    After lunch at a rather quaint roadside restaurant, and crossing a divide at 8000 feet elevation, we arrived at the town of Panajachel on the shore of Lake Atitlan. Surrounded by four extinct volcanos, this large lake, with a 100km shoreline, is at about 5000 feet, and enjoys a climate described as “eternal spring.”  Year round, the nights are cool, often in the low 60s, and days are mild, in the mid- to upper 70s. Mornings are generally sunny, but the up-slope clouds begin to develop mid-morning, making afternoons overcast, at least in this, the rainy season. After dinner we explored the shopping area, which was hopping on a Saturday night.

Ciudad Guatemala

Today was another long bus ride from Honduras to Guatemala City. But it wasn't all riding, we had some interesting stops along the way.

Our luggage rides on top of the bus.

The first was back in Copan village, where we saw things come to life in early morning, which was a little different. We also happened to see a couple of interesting, wood-carved marimbas.

Marimbas

We also stopped at a stone carver's shop where they make replicas of the Mayan monuments, all with hand tools the old fashioned way.

Carving stone with hand tools.

A big part of the culture in the rural areas of Guatemala, at least among men of the peasant class, is cock fighting. We visited an arena in a small village and saw where the roosters are kept, then they put "gloves" over the talons of two birds so that they really couldn't hurt one another, and they put on a demo for us in the arena. It was interesting to see how excited the local guys got, just putting on this little show for us. But we don't plan to go back for the real event on Sunday afternoon.

Putting the gloves on.

We also stopped at a paleontology museum of which  Guatemalans are apparently very proud, but it wasn't much to see.

Paleontology museum

Driving through the city was interesting in itself. Our hotel is in the "lively" section of town (according to our guide), and we enjoyed walking around and seeing the activity in the many bars and restaurants, but the area seems to be more alive for tourists and very up-scale Guatemalans, rather than for just plain folks. But we had a good meal and some delicious pastry for dessert.

Typical Guatemalan lunch on the road.

Internet connection here is still pretty slow, and we may have none at all the next couple nights.

Cuatro de Julio

Feliz cuatro de Julio (Happy fourth of July in Spanish). There isn't any celebrating going on down here. It's just another workday in Honduras.

Mary & Mark beside "Altar Q" in front of the main pyramid at Copan.

The hieroglyphic staircase at Copan.

We spent the entire morning visiting the Mayan ruins at Copan, and they are pretty amazing. The local guide who took us through the site was really, really excellent, and we learned a great deal about Mayan culture.
 

Temple at Copan.

Not all of it gelled with the reading we did before we left, but he had more up to date archaeological data than some of the outdated books in Decorah and Luther libraries, and frankly, much of the way he put things made more sense.

Macaws, an endangered bird native to the area, are being protected at the ruins.

We passed on the optional horseback ride in the afternoon and took the hotel shuttle into the village of Copan. There's not much to the town, but we had fun people-watching, nonetheless.

Stela at Copan

Honduras

Today we took a walking tour of our hotel's neighborhood in San Salvador, and visited a couple shops where tortillas and the local staple, pupusa's, were being made.

Pupusaria

We then visited Joya de Ceren, a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the "Pompeii of the Americas." This is an archaeological dig of a Mayan village that was covered with volcanic ash and preserved intact. Quite fascinating!

Just a small portion of Joya de Ceren.

The rest of the day was on the bus. We crossed from El Salvador into Guatemala, and then from Guatemala into Honduras. Our guide, who is Guatemalan, gave us a long history of the Salvadoran civil war in the 1980s. He was clearly unhappy that the Socialists are the majority party now, introducing radical stuff like free public education and universal health care.

A family selling produce from their pickup truck on a city street in San Salvador.

But we noticed that the roads were new, smooth, super-highways in El Salvador, and nicely paved in Honduras, but really terrible with pot holes and trash in the ditches in Guatemala.

Squatters live (and hang out their laundry) in a San Salvador cemetery.
At least the neighbors are quiet.

I'm relaxing with one of the local beers that sell for 75 cents. You get what you pay for. Also, the electrical power seems to go out a lot here. Hope this gets posted.

San Salvador

We are enroute to Central America! Katherine dropped us at the airport. The flight to Dallas was on time, but the flight leaving Dallas was delayed a good 45 minutes for no apparent reason, so we got here after dark and didn't see much. We'll get a city tour tomorrow, then on to Honduras.

A flower in El Salvador