Day one of three.  We’ve been chicken-busing and swamp-boating and have ended up in San Salvador.  Exhausted.  The following post was arrival day at the beach in Guatemala. The one we had been to 34 years ago! Day two was A Day At The Beach and day three was a Day On The Buses.  But I haven’t written two and three yet.  I will tomorrow.

Monterrico Sunset

We are in Monterrico, a little beach town on Guatemala’s Pacific coast.  It is just like every other seedy, dusty, hot-as-blazes little garbage-strewn dump along the coast from Tijuana to, well, here.  First impressions aren’t good.

But they never are.  It’s 30+C in the shade and there is very little of that. The promise of an onshore breeze has yet to be realized.  I feel like a plump little chicken on a rotisserie.  And yes!  I look like one, too.

The Author at Work

We pass on the Argentinians’ choice of hotel.  It’s inland and we are coming for the beach.  Another couple of gringos on the same bus opted for the first beach-side hotel the driver stopped at but the grinning, single old-codger, the seasoned-by-extensive-travel-looking tourist stayed on, so we did too.  We three got out at El Delfin.  Had to.  End of the line.

Old, seasoned (and Spanish speaking) tourist took one look around Delfin’s scant offerings and headed off to look for something else.  Not a good sign.  But we looked at lucky room #13 and decided that it was not likely to get any better than that and the room had the added advantage of not requiring any hiking in the blistering noon-day sun.

At US$10 per night each, we’d see if it was a bargain.

El Delfin

Our room is part of the south wing of el Delfin consisting of two other such rooms all under the same palm-leaf-and-bamboo palapa-style roof.  Each room is about 200 square feet. The charming concrete-block room walls go up about 7 feet and then the big ‘thatched cover’ sits on the perimeter walls. The roof is a veritable housing project for small wild, darting-in-the-night-type creatures.

But we have a mosquito net.

Mosquito/Things that go bump in the night Net

All rooms share air-space with one another not unlike washroom cubicles.  There is a loose collection of bamboo stalks keeping guests from clambering over for unwanted visits but one can hear any invitations being made.  Worse, one could hear the results of any invitations accepted.  Privacy is not being seen.  Everyone can be heard.

Sally leans over to me.  Her lips are barely moving.  I lean in closer. “I feel as if I should whisper.” She says.

“Why?”

“So no one can hear!” 

“I can’t hear and I am sitting next you!  Anyway, the guys next door speak some eastern European language and everyone else is speaking Spanish.  I think we are safe to swap even top secret information.  Got any?  I’m all out, myself.” 

Delfin’s is not so bad and, to be fair, it is very much like the places we stayed at during our ‘VW van’ travels in the 70’s.  It really is déjà vu for us.  We actually know what we got ourselves into.

Mind you, I did forget for a bit………

Fresh Pescado

But the beers with lime are cold and cheap.  The small pool is cooling.  The ocean crashes on the black sand beach in a relaxing rhythm.  And lunch was a huge whole fish with a good salad and even better fries.  Sal and I could only eat half of what we were served.  But we are obviously settling in.

Shawn and John (from the bus ride in) came over to report that their choice of hotels is not working out.  They’ll move over the next day.  Seems their hotel is under jack-hammer renovations and they checked in during lunch break.  The heavy equipment going all day and into the night, the Latin music cranked up to be heard over the machines and the pounding of the surf combines to make the place somewhat unlivable.  We call ’em wimps and give thanks for the quiet of el Delfin, roof denizens notwithstanding.

More tomorrow

I read last week that Harper stated clearly that the government of Canada would not tinker with the Canada Pension Plan. Seems there is no need. It is well-funded and in good shape.

“Hey, Sal!!  Just reading here that Harper promises not to mess with pensions.  Ya know what that means, don’tcha?”

“Yeah!  Damn it!  Just as we get old enough to collect one, the bastard is gonna mess with them!” 

“You heard me, right?  I read that he said he would not change them!” 

“I heard you.  But one thing you can count on is that whatever the politicians say, the opposite is true.  You know?  Like, whatever the name of the legislation is, the opposite is true.  Clean Water Act means pollution.  Salmon Enhancement Act means extermination. Freedom of Information Act means welded-shut secrecy.   If he says he isn’t gonna change them, that means he will.” 

“I agree.  I wonder how they are going to screw us this time?  They’ve already cut subsidies to the poor.  They cut taxes on the rich.  And they are violating our rights and freedoms, giving away our natural resources and killing our fish to boot.  What more could they possibly do?”

” I dunno.  My guess is that they will roll back the pensions somehow.”

And I just read today…………….

……………(after the earlier ‘purge post’) that Harper just announced in Davos, Switzerland, at the gathering of the super elite that Canada is doing very well indeed but, in the interests of protecting our standing as the best country in the world, they are going to cut back on retirement benefits. 

“But those existing pensioners won’t be affected”, he said.

And I won’t be 65 til next year.  They may be evil but, ya gotta admit, they are good at it.

I hate losing readers.  I really do.

They are so rare and beautiful. (Especially the rarely sighted responder-reader more commonly referred to as the commentator.  They are a delight to see.)

I hate losing readers so much that I purposefully ‘restrain’ myself and keep the blog to ‘fun’ and ‘light’ topics most of the time.  My editor kinda insists on that, anyway, really.  And I don’t wanna lose my editor.  I am sleeping with her.

The best way to lose a readership is to write politically.  Philosophy is a close second.  Man, oh man.  The readers come into the club in dribs and drabs but they leave in clumps and groups when I wax political or philosophical.  Popularity is an ephemeral thing and unpopularity is spelled p-o-l-i-t-i-c-s).

Still, a man’s gotta do…..ya know…………..so here it comes: my most recent cri de coeur………………

……well, since I can’t indulge this feeling often, there is a short list of ‘cris’.

For those of you already ticked off, please come back tomorrow after I have vented my politcal spleen.  Sorry.

But I will keep it to a minimum.

First off we have a huge injustice being perpetrated by industry and government over the Don Staniford case (see: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/02/01/don-staniford-fish-farms_n_1192219.html).  The guy (British) is being sued and deported for essentially exercising ‘free speech’ in Canada and polite ecological activism.  Very wrong.

Good news: many are rallying to his defense and the leaders in this rally are fishing lodges who agree with what he is saying.

Secondly, we have DFO (government Department of Fisheries and Oceans) increasing the allowable catch of herring in the Gulf of Georgia by a factor of 20 times!  This is insane for a myriad of reasons and will devastate the already hugely depleted fish stocks of the gulf.  There is no conceivable justification for this.  It is just plain evil.

Herring fishermen should refuse to take ’em.  Let’s hope.

Thirdly – Robyn Allen, a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, ex CEO of ICBC and a staunchly conservative economist and accountant delivered an  unprompted analysis of the Enbridge pipeline to the National Energy board in which she states unequivocally that the Enbridge pipleline is bad for Canada in every respect and especially economically.  This lady stood up, stepped up and spoke up.  I doubt that she is welcome anymore at the local country club but she is welcome at my house.

Sadly, I have learned over the years that morals, ethics and goodness are trumped by one’s concern over one’s wallet.  The HST was defeated ostensibly because people didn’t like their government lying to them but really it was because the HST was understood as being more costly in the pocketbook. Thus, Robyn Allen’s argument against Enbridge may, in fact, be the most persuasive in this debate.

The NDP (BC’s flaccid opposition party) are leading in the polls.  They have managed to ‘get ahead’ by simply keeping their mouths shut and their heads down.  They haven’t stood up for much of anything in the last few years and are winning the war of popularity just by keeping a low profile.

Inspiring, don’tcha think?

This anything-to-get-elected strategy, at a time when there are so many issues to take a position on, tells me something: political parties are more afraid than courageous, more strategic than moral, more shrewd than honest.  And they are becoming more irrelevant as a result.

People are relying less on their elected reps than ever before (the reps are hiding, anyway) and they are using the ‘net’ to be their own form of an amorphous political voice. Read the Tyee.  The Common Sense Canadian. See the Occupy Movement.

Maybe in 20 years the politicians will be relegated to just the pomp and ceremony of government rather than real power……..sorta like the picked-for-their-looks governors general who simply host parties.

Let’s hope so.

“So?  Happy now, Dave?  Got it off your chest, did ya?  Can we go back to Ravens and dogs and guacamole?” 

Yeah.  Guess so………..sorry………………….

………….oooooooooooooooooops!  Just learned something new…..see postscript – the added-late blog post just after this one.

Wrote a long piece yesterday on ex-pats and the dislocated communities they create.  I opined that there was a higher deviance factor in ex-pat communities and that most of them were ‘ex’ for a reason. I thought I was on a roll.

Sal said it was boring, stupid and probably politically incorrect so it went into the ‘drafts’ folder.  Seems absence (no post) is preferable to showing up boring or stupid.  Or controversial.  Gotta stay funny but not rude, interesting but not provocative, personal but not intimate and I have to minimize the creative use of hyperbole.  This blog is a tightrope.

I have a tough editor.

I think I also have West Nile Virus (which is easier to live with sometimes than a tough editor).  It is here in Guatemala and I have been exhibiting WNV symptoms for awhile.  No big deal.  A few extra aches and pains.  Sometimes hard to differentiate from the old, usual ones, actually.  But it slows ya down a bit and my natural pace is pretty glacial as it is.  Symptoms are much like the flu but with weird cramps in your back, arms and legs.

But, it passes, they say, and I think I am near the completion stage.  Nothing to worry about although Sal’s idea of treatment is long hikes.  I have a tough partner who thinks dwelling on disease is the mark of a sissy.  “Suck it up, man!  And march!”

We are leaving Guatemala for El Salvador Monday morning.  A shuttle bus to Monterico and then a swampboat connection to a chicken bus that takes us across the border into a national park famous for – you guessed it – hikes.

Hikers on the Tourist Trail

What the hell is it with this new-fad-like appeal of hiking?  I remember perfectly well the joy and happiness associated with the discovery of the motorized wheel and it was good enough for me then and it is good enough for me now.

Did you know that there are companies dedicated to ‘taking you hiking’.  What the hell is that about?  I don’t need anyone to walk ahead of me saying ‘its this way‘.  I can see the trail.  The volcano is looming in front of me.  The incline is obvious.  What the hell?!

And while I am at it…….what the extra-hell is the appeal of a mangrove swamp, anyway?  I remember reading books on people lost in mangrove swamps and it was no picnic for them, I can assure you.  But today?  Today the adventure-traveler feels obliged to trek about in the swamps for at least a few hours.  Looking at bugs.  Pulling off leeches.  I don’t get it.

But I will.

Of course we are scheduled in to a swamp somewhere near the border (Master Drill Sgt. Sal) with the obligatory hike amongst the snakes and mosquitoes. Yippee.

I guess what I am saying is this………my wife is now some kind of intrepid hiking-masochist-cum-Amazon and I am now some kind of blobby-white doofus.  How did this happen?  And are more margaritas going to improve or exacerbate the situation?

Well, I can be intrepid, too.  I’ll just have to find out and report back to you.

It is louder than distant thunder but not as loud as thunder directly overhead.  It is like a deep, deep underground explosion.  It is BIG.  And it happens just about every day, sometimes twice.

“Anna (housekeeper), what is that deep rumble we hear all the time?  You know.…” and then I make a deep rumble sound……..and look at her as if she can suddenly understand English with mime and deep David-doing-rumblings accompaniment.  Which she can……..

She looks at me like I have just noticed that the sky is blue……..”el vulcan!”

“So the deep rumbling is a volcano?”

“Si, todos dias” (every day).  And then she makes a gesture like a volcano blowing it’s top.

El Volcan Agua as seen from 'our' house

But that is just it.  It doesn’t.  One of the the three local volcanoes makes this incredible, deep rumbling sound for a few seconds – maybe two or three times – and that seems to be it.  Every day.   But that’s all, folks. No big explosion, no additional smoke or steam, no earth tremors……….. certainly no eruptions……….just these incredibly deep rumbles.

Where does that energy come from?  ‘Well, the centre of the earth, I guess. Duh!‘

But more important – where does it go?  If there is no tremor, no eruption and not even any extra smoke, where is that energy going?  Are there great slabs of magma just jiggling about down there?  And, if so, where does the room for all that jiggling come from?  We got big hollows down there?  Where’s the ‘sloshing’ room?  And why doesn’t all that jiggling add up to something?

I suppose there is some kind of scientific baffle gab about thermal this or that and plate tectonics and gas releasing or something…….but, I am sorry, whatever the explanation is, it is not good enough.  There is some kind of immense power thing going on down there and why it doesn’t show up even more frequently than it does is a complete mystery to me.

And talk about alternative energy!  OMYGAWD!  These volcanoes are a way greater source of energy than any dozen nuclear reactors.  In fact, at one of the local volcanoes the global alternative energy company Ormat put in a steam driven generator for generating electrical power. It’s hooked to the Guatemalan grid and it is producing like mad.

Guide Carlito with Thermal Electric Generating Plant (right side mid-ground) on the slopes of El Volcan Pacaya

I dunno………I’m just stupid, I guess.  It must be cheaper and more efficient to dredge tar sands and pipe that sludge to China than to simply drill a little deeper and tap into the heat of the planet.  Geothermal.  Even though there is no pollution or environmental damage……..I guess I am just some kind of loony doofus who doesn’t get it.

I’ll bet Exxon could explain it to me.

I suppose I could start anywhere on the subject of logic and the lack of it, couldn’t I?   I mean; we don’t even have to go to Central America to find illogical examples when our own little frozen banana republic of BC has such a sorry history of stupid on which to dwell, right?

But I am sorry.  I am on vacation here and I gottta talk dumb from my new warmer climate perspective. No matter where I am, I still gotta be me.

I could easily start with the situating of your town at the base of three active volcanoes?  Or maybe better put: continually rebuilding said town after the aforementioned volcanoes regularly destroy it.  But that is too easy.  I mean, really……….?

No, I think I will start with rocks and how they use them down here.  I am talking about cobbles.  You know? Using sharp, irregular rocks for roadways instead of say, concrete or asphalt?  Or even paving stones?

Antigua is a World Heritage site and it should be.  The history, the setting, the architecture……………it is all bloody marvelous.  Bit too much of an emphasis on the word, bloody, actually, but still marvelous.  Really.  But part of the heritage designation must have included requiring the cobblestone streets to remain authentic and, as charming as they are to look at, they are crazy-making.

First day you think: charming.  Second day: not so charming but still characterful.  Third day: these things have to go!  After that, you just wonder ‘why?’  Why not just drive on a bed of nails while being beaten with a two-by-four.  Same thing.

The truly crazy thing is this: the natural speed-restricting nature of rough-hewn cobblestones laid at various angles and depths along an uneven roadway are occasionally augmented by speed bumps.  Think about that.

Restoration One Rock at a Time

They are ‘charmingly’ labelled ‘tumulos’ here (‘topes’ in Mexico), but a rose by any other name…….still has thorns!

Point: it is impossible to drive more than ten miles an hour without dismantling your vehicle by cobble-induced vibrations and then they add speed bumps!

‘Course they have random police road-checks all over the place, too, so it would be hard to get up much of a head of steam even if the roads were smooth and there was no traffic.

There are a lot of ways to die in Guatemala but speed will never be a contributing factor, at least not anywhere near downtown Antigua.

Of course, there is no logical reason for most road-checks or speed bumps in Latin America but in and around Antigua the arbitrary, willy-nilly sprinkling of speed bumps wherever some loon had some extra bricks and concrete at his disposal is completely maddening.

On the exit off the highway to some little village just north of town there are two that we encountered the other day.  You race along the stretch of highway at 50 mph or so and take the ChichideJesusmadremiamariachitango exit only to discover two speed bumps within the exit lane each capable of sending you and your passengers into a shallow orbit.

There is a front end mechanic just down the road a few yards.  Surprise.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I love a nice climate.  I really like the Mayan people (outside of political rallies) and I am fascinated by the history and the geography of the area.  Hell, I even like the food!  But, c’mon!  Stupid is stupid and speed bumps in Antigua are dumber than the rocks they use to make ’em.

Personally, I’d make another application to see if I couldn’t get Antigua re-designated a world heritage site without the cobbles!

The abuelos depart today!  They are off to Guatemala City to a hotel for the half-night before they depart in the early morning.  They have to catch a 7:00 am flight and with all the madness associated with airports, they are leaving on the hotel shuttle just before 5:00 am.

This seems to be the norm for flights from Central America to Nortamericano, they all arrive or leave at dawn.

Abuelos are fun.  Of course, at a combined age of 172 they are not a constant laugh-riot but I, for one, get a smidge too much pleasure from teasing Sal’s mom.  Sal’s normal deportment is that of a right-proper  lady.  But R’s normal demeanor is that of royalty.  The queen, of course, does the best queen.  Helen Mirren does the second best head-of-the-house-of-Windsor but Sal’s mom could definitely be a contender for the crown.  She’s #3.  She has a very regal bearing.  And I like to ‘play off’  that now and then.

“So, R, feel like burger and a beer at the neighbourhood tavern?  I hear they are showing the ultimate fighting competition on TV.  I can get you entered in the local amateur over-80 class. You’d do good against the old Mayan ladies.  Interested?”

“What!  Dear me!  What are you saying, you silly boy?  I have no idea what all that meant.  Are you being rude?”  And she looks at me crossly maybe shaking an accusatory finger at me. If there was a footman to be had, he’d be fetched and I would be removed from the court.

We’ve been close like that for 40 years.  At least the ‘cross’ look and the accusatory finger part.  Call me crazy.  I think it is fun.

Our son B&K are in Shanghai.  Our daughter E&B are in Hong Kong.  Sal and I will soon be in El Salvador.  The abuelos will be winging it home in a few hours.  And, somehow, this all feels right and normal to me.  Nothing like a little separation to be fully appreciative of the people you are close to.

Which reminds me: both Sally and I have been missing our remote community members a bit lately.  The Discovery Doofuses.  What a motley crew of marginally or full-blown crazies we have become attached to, eh?  We traded an urban bunch o’ coconuts for a disparate group of rural whackos and kooks and miss ’em all as a result.

Honestly, there is no accounting for taste.

Even tho we are only half way through the winter sojourn, it is already feeling a bit like it will be nice to get home.  I’m a bit homesick, I guess.  Which is odd for me.  I rarely ever wanted to go back home once I was on the road but I feel differently now.  I like home now.  We’ll just let the freezing temperatures pass first.

Just a brief side note – we have been here almost a month and the weather has not changed a bit.  Warm and shirt-sleeves in the afternoon.  Ten degrees (F) cooler in the evening.   Biggest variance?  A cloud or two.  Maybe a gentle breeze now and then. No bugs either!  And the countryside is fertile like the Garden of Eden.  If one could be contented with an idylic same ‘ol, same ‘ol, then this is clearly the climate.

Me?  I’d go mad.

Went to the Casa Santo Domingo last night for dinner.  Stunning.  Beyond gorgeous.  The food was mediocre but, really, value was there in spades after the service, ambiance and the setting was factored in.  OMYGAWD!  It was absolutely beautiful.

Entrance to Casa Santo Domingo

CSD was originally a convent, built back in the 1600’s.  The walls are as thick as European castles, at least three feet and, in some places four feet.  Made of stone, of course.  I guess those nuns needed keeping in or the locals needed keeping out.  Whatever – the convent was clearly built to be a silent fortress.  Different levels, spaces, inner courtyards, gardens, rooms, galleries, hallways, fountains and inviting places everywhere.

Of course, now CSD is a restaurant, hotel and bar but the spaces are so historic and generous, so magnificently flowered, landscaped and decorated and so nicely lit with ancient art and sculpture that it is an exceptional hotel, even if compared on a world scale.

An interesting point on the service………the abuelos are a bit more sensitive to the cold and, tho the climate is mild, it gets a smidge chillier in the evening.  Maybe it was 66.5 F last night.  And there was a gentle breeze bringing with it a windchill factor.  It felt like 65.5F.

Sal asked the waitress for the warmest part of the room.  The woman looked a bit taken aback and slowly wandered us down the massive mostly open room wondering ‘how the hell am I to find the warmest part of a colonial ruin?’

I could see her mentally shrug as she seated us roughly in the middle of a room that was at least 75 feet long, 40 feet wide and 25 feet high with  five large arched openings to the outdoors.  In keeping with the ‘ruins’  decor only half the roof was intact.  We all felt for ‘drafts’ and sat the abuelos where we thought would be best for them.  And we carried on.

Brazier

A few minutes later an attendant showed up with what looked like an antique metal wheel on it’s side with a metal bucket welded in the place of the hub.  The bucket was about 16 inches deep and maybe a foot in diameter.  There, in the middle of it, glowing brightly, was a couple of burning coconut husks giving off a remarkable amount of heat.  No smoke.  Somehow, within minutes of our arrival, a little rustic, in-keeping-with-the-ambience ‘private’ heater was employed.

That’s pretty good.

The thing about some fancy restaurants is that they are pretentious.  CSD was not.  It was the ‘real thing’.  But, of course, the food was ridiculous. So it was pretentious in that sense.

This was one of those places where they use three dishes to present a single strawberry with a drizzle of berry sauce on it like it was the Hope diamond.  I have suffered such parsimony-wrapped-in-fancy before and am not amused.  I have a significant girth to maintain and there is no substitute for volume.  These dorks didn’t seem to get it.

The worst we have ever encountered was at La Lumiere in Vancouver.  Sal’s main course there was a single scallop sitting atop a stack of four or five layered dishes.  It was stupid.  And good ol’ Sal just burst out laughing! That was the best commentary and one shared by everyone around us.

After dropping a week’s income for the ‘experience’, we stopped at the White Spot on the way home for a burger.

CSD was not quite that bad.  But, pulleez, don’t serve me a radish on two plates surrounded by rose petals and a curl of something and expect sustenance to be achieved.  Can’t be done.  On every scale they were a ten out of ten.  But not on calories.

Fortunately I have a considerable reserve in store.  I could go a long, long time without suffering from lack of calories.  Decades maybe.  Why?  Because one never knows when one might have to face such a dire situation.

Be prepared, I say.  You never know.  You might end up in a convent some day with nothing more than radishes in berry sauce!  It has happened to us.

Sunday.  Headed up one of the local volcanoes in the Land Rover with R & P.  Didn’t do any hiking, just sightseeing.

We ended up at Santa Maria de Jesus, the fairly large and mountainous village at the top end of the paved road and at the bottom of the higher ‘peak trail’ that starts at the town centre.  Sal and I had been there before with K a couple of weeks back but it was pretty sleepy and dull the first time.  Today was quite different……….shades of Latin American politics coloured the visit!

The big Sunday market was on when we got there and the central plaza was full.  It was cold, windy and there was a threat of rain in the air but the place was still alive and bustling.  I’d guess at about one thousand people if you peeked in every nook and corner.  With a few hundred others on the approach streets coming and going.  These out-of-Antigua village markets are not tourist oriented and most of the stalls were trading domestic goods and foodstuffs.  Trinkets were noticeably absent.

But what was noticeably present was the number of men not interested in the least with market goods.  They were gathered in clutches and groups all over the place and there was a main gathering over in one of the plaza corners.  In that larger group (maybe a hundred men) there was an angry, gravely-voiced guy speaking with a loud and nasty tone into a portable microphone and speaker system.  He was not happy.  And he was spreading his discontent to a rapt crowd of pretty rough looking men.  It was a political gathering of sorts.

I caught a few words that sounded like ‘economics’ and ‘government’ but discretion suggested I concentrate on the fruits and vegetables like a good little tourist and that I should provide no excuse to have his or their focus turned on us few gringos.

The wider spread, smaller groups of men seemed part of the ‘mood’  but they were not paying close attention.  I got the feeling that the speaker and his words were well-known and familiar to everyone in the area.

Also noticeably absent were the police.  Didn’t see one single ‘official’  anywhere in the town.  It was just the village.  And us.

Santa Maria de Jesus Market

We were amongst a very small number of tourists (maybe six others) dispersed about the square and no one was lingering or bantering with the locals.  The vibes just weren’t great.  In fact, the mood was distinctly ominous and threatening although there was no discernible anger directed at us or the other visitors.  Sometimes it is just a feeling but we definitely felt it.

Ironically, it is R&P who seem to provide the most protection.  Your basic abuela and abuelo generate genuine respect wherever they go in the area and the older they are, the better they seem to be regarded.  It is almost as if there was an unwritten code: leave the tourists alone but especially the really old ones. 

Gringas, however, are fair game it seems.

Personally, I didn’t feel much hostility, that is for sure.  But when you are in one of the out-of-the-way villages, that kind of disconnect, that sense of ‘us and them’, that sense of being an unwelcome outsider is quite rare.  Usually we are met with smiles and looks of interest.  To be held at arms length is weird and it is that as much as anything else that created the weird vibe.

I went to the public washroom just off the plaza.  There was a group of ‘hangers about’ milling around the entrance.  I nodded to them as I pushed past to the men’s room and was told that I had to pay 2 quetzales (the common charge for using public washrooms that, in exchange, are usually kept spotless by a couple of women cleaners who will clean up around you as you stand at the urinal).  So, I paid some guy with his hand out and I went in.  This facility was not one of those that was being cleaned by anyone.  Ever.  I got the impression that the 2Q charge was levied because I was too stupid to know better.  I was a gringo, after all.  They ‘got me’  for 30 cents.

When I emerged from the grotto that served as a bathroom, I looked for my bandito.  He was gone but in his place was a smiling, gold-toothed hombre wanting to test his English.  So I stood around with the group for a few minutes while he impressed his friends.  Even though the guys all regarded me with some malignancy, it was not intimidating.  There were five or six of them but I was a head taller and at least twice the size of the average guy.  Amongst Mayans, I am Hulk Hogan.

Hulk Hogan of the Mayan World

We cracked a few jokes, made a little small talk and I left.  Sal and I gathered up her folks and we made for the car and a slow trip back home.  The visit was uneventful but felt like an event nonetheless.  For a short while we ‘felt’ that unwelcome stranger feeling that sometimes crops up when traveling.  It is unusual but all the more remarkable because of that.  In an odd way, it felt more ‘real’ than does Antigua.

Don’t get me wrong – we get ‘real’ in the Antigua market and it is almost always pleasant and welcoming.  But Santa Maria de Jesus had that added feeling that seems to accompany the areas we occasionally visit that have no real interest in tourists.

Judging from the amplified voice in the plaza, they have bigger things on their mind.

Correction:  Anna turned out to be a wonder.  I did her a disservice by suggesting that ‘her ways were weird’ (as are the ways of all foreign cultures) simply because she disappeared for a few days.  Turns out she was ‘gone’ because she was turning the local internet company upside down getting our internet line fixed!  Anna showed up yesterday evening with a ‘lineman’ in tow and he climbed trees and strung us a new cable on the spot!  Anna to the rescue with her trusty and diminutive 5 year old daughter in tow.

Anna would be competent in whatever country she was in.  But she might be hard to find now and then.  Just sayin………

During our ‘down time’ and Anna’s walk-about, Greg had also sent Rhet.  Rhet is a bit of a techie and did a few tests to determine that it was not the house system but that a line was down.  Before he left, he called the cable company and they opined that, with luck, we might get some one to look at it within the week.  Probably not.  We were resigned to no service with that message but, of course, we had not yet factored in the ANNA element.

But Rhet was an interesting fellow, too.  Seems he had recently witnessed some bad deeds being done to tourists and took the unusual action of reporting on them to the police.  Since then he has had a low-grade fear for his life in Antigua so he decided to move to Guatemala City for improved personal safety reasons!

He was reluctantly in town for just a few hours and was keeping a very low profile (grey clothes, hoody, staying in the shadows).  I picked him up in a shadowed doorway and, after he had tried to fix the connection, I drove him back to another out-of-the-way spot…………all the better to avoid being a conspicuous target on the streets!

“Was it really that bad?!”  I don’t think so.  Rhet figure it would ‘blow over’.  He was just being a bit cautious.  Still, he was adamant that we be careful and described several common deceits inflicted on tourists that left them hurt, raped and robbed.  He was pretty condemning of the ‘milieu’ of hangers-on that frequent the central park.

Central park is truly the town’s place for congregating, ambulating and people-watching.  Yesterday there was a mini-concert in the park and I would estimate that about 250-300 people milled about.  Including me, R&P.  But this kind of event, according to Rhet, was an ideal time for the hustlers, hawkers, pick-pockets and worse.  He figured several robberies would take place and a lot of scams would be pitched to maybe-too-innocent tourists.  “Don’t ever accept a date to teach you Salsa dancing.  It is a rape scam!”  He made the park sound pretty unsavoury.

Not to mention ruining my plans for dancing Latin that evening.

“Black Thursday, a few months back, was the worst!” he said.  “A pick-up truck full of knife-wielding thugs stopped near a group of tourists and between 8 and 12 gringos were stabbed and robbed!  It was pretty bad.  Really, you must be careful here, too.  This country is still very dangerous.”

I don’t disbelieve him.  He did have some horrible stories.  But danger and accidents fall into the same category – they are surprises.  In other words, you can’t plan adequately for them.  Despite what Worksafe BC claims, accidents cannot always be prevented.  Nor can crimes.  Life is a crapshoot (and literally so if Montezuma gets involved).

We take reasonable precautions, trust our instincts, stay observant and don’t push the limits.  And in our previous travels we have still been robbed (petty theft), violently confronted (some thug in China) and found ourselves on the wrong side of the tracks on the wrong side of the wrong town not just a few times.  Once I found myself in a packed drug den full of red-eyed, stoned, surly black men after midnight in Belize City.  By accident, of course.  I attribute my safe retreat to my blazing white skin.  I think I temporarily blinded them.

Our friendly neighbourhood security guard

The point is: there is no point.  Life happens.  Some of it is bad.  There is barely a day that passes back home that I don’t start bleeding, burning or hurting myself.  When you play, you get dirty.  That happens everywhere.  That happens in Harlem.  That happens in Antigua.

Abuela going undercover

Having said all that brave stuff, Sally and I have decided to spend the rest of our winter vacation in bed in some safe, huge hotel.  We’re thinking the Holiday Inn, perhaps?  Then we’ll sneak to the airport at the right time disguised as Mayans.  Pray for us!