November 8, 2008

10am: I have a vicious hangover and am lacking sleep, sweating profusely and breathing hard, but I'm not in bed. I'm halfway up the Indian's Nose in a corn field standing by the Virgin Mary.

Luke and I are climbing La Nariz de Indio, a beautiful mountain that overlooks the lake and villages. We took an alternate route up the hill to avoid the 40 Q "gringo fee" and it brought us up a steep and treacherous grade to this mysterious cornfield. We hear the Mayans used to use this spot to pray to their gods but were forbidden to do so by the Spanish. They put a cross and a statue here to remind them to cut the shit.

Locals plant corn and coffee all the way up the side of the mountain and carry it down in baskets. They don't use grids or plant their rows in perfect lines like white people do, they work around the landscape. It's beautiful. They harvest at an impossible angle and I can't see how they don't just tumble down the mountain, practice I guess.

After a brief stop at the top of the hill we make our way down to Santa Clara on the other side of the mountain. Gringos are a rare site here and we get looks from all the children. We get lunch at a really good restaurant where we are the only people in the dining room. Service is extremely slow, but it is worth the wait.



After lunch we wait for our ride back to San Pedro, we lounge in the grass at the side of the road. A red ant bites me on my stomach, I wish I had my harmonica. We watch a young boy flying a kite. He's standing in the middle of the road and his kite string is hanging just a few feet from the power lines. A car goes by about every two minutes or so, and when it does it just sort of swerves around the kid. The kid is just having a blast though, he turns around and looks at us and I give him the thumbs up, he laughs and jumps in the air. This whole scene says a lot about the lack of concern for safety here in Guatemala. People seem a lot more laid back about the issue. If you get burned by the stove, you don't touch the hot flame anymore. Kids learn at a young age to watch out for their well-being, if you don't it's your ass. Mom can't watch little Juan out in the road with his kite, she's busy raising six other kids. As a 25 year old bachelor, I don't know what the correct philosophy is for raising children, but I saw more children in Guatemala playing without any parental supervision and they are the happiest kids I've ever seen. Or maybe its that the laid-back lifestyle is bred into the population: I never heard a single baby crying.
We hop in the next "collectivo," a pickup truck piled high with workers and avocados, bound for San Pedro.  We wind down the treacherous mountain road back home.

November 7, 2008

Luke interviewed a fisherman down by the lake and I took some photos of the man in his cowboy had and carved wooden boat.

We walked around San Pedro a bit, found some local boys kicking around an old flat soccer ball.  They wanted us to play with them so we did, the lighting was beautiful and I snapped some shots.



Around sunset we walked up the hill to the soccer field. It's not really in a field like they are in the States, and you can't drive to it. It's more like a niche halfway up the mountain that is just big enough to play soccer on, probably where they used to hold human sacrifices.

view of San Pedro from the road up to the soccer field

Spectators sit on simple concrete steps and watch this spectacle for the gods on the dirt playing field. The game is close, two young teams from San Pedro, but I've got my eyes fixed on the scenery: beautiful blue mountains receding into the setting sun. I am a million miles from the United States.

"Wanna get a beer?" I said to Luke. And the day-lit sobriety melted into the night's inebriation.

November 6, 2008

a local girl who works at a hotel in San Pedro

We settled down in San Pedro, an interesting mix of tourists, cafes, restaurants, traditional Mayans, and drug dealers. We took a walk into the poor part of town, where the people make what money they can harvesting coffee, corn and fish. Narrow and twisty cobblestone streets were lined with crumbling brick and concrete buildings. Like an endless maze, the streets weave over and around the hills, following the lay of the land rather than forcing the land into a grid. Children played soccer and flew kites in the street. Villagers dressed in traditional Mayan textiles. Everyone was eager to say "Hola!"

Luke told me the dangers of taking pictures in Guatemala. People here can be very old fashioned and superstitious. When white tourists first started flocking to San Pedro there was a rumor that a man was stealing the souls of children with his camera. One day when a man was seen taking pictures of a young boy, they killed him. In another part of rural Guatemala, a man was taking pictures inside of a church. This is seen as a "fuck you" to god and he gets pissed and vengeful. The villagers dragged the man outside of the church and beat him to death.

coffee trees on the outskirts of San Pedro

I was aware of these dangers, but I didn't let it get in the way of a good shot. I tried to read people to see their reaction to the camera, I also asked them directly if I could take their picture, I was turned down on many occasions.

We spent the evening drinking beers and playing darts with the tourists. Slovakis, Germans, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and Americans, all in their twenties and beautiful. It reminded me of home a little too much. Luke and I finished up the night scarfing down $1.50 hamburgers, drinking beer and talking about women.

November 5, 2008

I jumped on a plane at 12:35 am, just hours after hearing that Obama had won the presidential election. People were celebrating in the streets of San Francisco, and I was trying to keep security from running my film through the x-ray at the airport.

I was leaving San Francisco International Airport on a redeye for San Salvador and then continuing on to Guatemala City. I was a little scared. I both anticipated and dreaded this night for a week or so prior to the trip. It's frightening to imagine stepping foot on a plane bound for a dangerous foreign country in the middle of the night.

I arrived in Guatemala City at 9:30 am and Luke was there to meet me. I was relieved to see him. Luke was down here working on a story to submit to Adbusters in Canada, and I was to help him with the photography.  In the month since I had seen him his beard had grown scruffy, he was wearing sandals, old jeans and a Vietnam era green Army jacket, he was an american journalist covering life in a foreign country and he had embraced the lifestyle head-on.

"Want a smoke?" he said, pulling the crumpled soft-pack from his shirt pocket.
"No man, I'm good. Let's get out of here."

Luke and I waited by the highway for a bus to San Pedro

We headed up into the mountains on a "chicken bus," a retired United States Blue Bird school bus with luggage racks welded to the roof and a bright, colorful paint job. Immediately I noticed the "every man for himself" lifestyle in Guatemala. The bus driver would haul ass around twisty mountain roads, refusing to use unnecessary braking, drivers on the road would pass on narrow roads even if there was a vehicle coming the other way. If a traffic jam occurred, drivers would pass through any space available, but this would soon tie up traffic into a knot that would take hours to unravel.

"watch out for your possessions, people will steal things if you're not careful," said the luggage man in Spanish. Then he climbed out the backdoor of the moving bus and hauled our bags up onto the roof rack.

Four-and-a-half hours later, we arrived at lake Atitlan. Truly a sacred location. I was struck the same way that I was when I first drove into Yosemite Valley in California. Lush and Jagged mountains and volcanoes surrounding a bright blue lake; white, puffy clouds just caressing the mountaintops. Mayan villagers in traditional dress were carrying bundles of firewood and corn, just like in National Geographic. We jumped off the bus and the luggage man passed us our bags from the roof. I took a piss in a grove of coffee trees, I was content.

a view of Lake Atitlan, San Pedro is the grey spot in the center of the photo