Reflections on Guatemala and into Honduras

*Lago Peten Itza

Tait: Kath and I woke up five days ago and decided that we´d seen enough of Guatemala for the time being. We hopped on five buses and after four days of travel, some Pollo Asado at Dona Juanitas in Chiquimula, and a pitstop at the Copan Ruins (absolutely amazing sculptures...but more to come on that later), we find ourselves on the Caribbean sea of Honduras in the town of Tela. We´ve already managed beers on the beach, a sunrise swim, and deep fried snapper and we haven´t even been here 24 hours.

As always, upon leaving it is easier to reflect on the doing and the moving, the impetus of travel. Guatemala surrounded us for the span of two months and near the end of our time there Kath and I wondered how such a small country could contain the multitudes of sights and sounds that were so different from one another. It was as if within a country the size of Louisianna we saw not only the Mayan, but the mestizos and the first and third world and the ruins and lakes galore and landscapes so varied that an hour asleep on the bus saw a different country out the window. We had toilets that could wash your ass for you and toilets covered in that stuff that comes out of your ass. We had food that would be at home in New York and food that you wouldn´t find anywhere but Guatemala. We had a family, friends. travelled with others and alone, and we found places to see where there was no one but the two of us and places where everyone else had been.

While in Guatemala there were three mountain ranges that turned one into the other. In Xela and Atitlan we were surrounded by Volcanoes. They rose staight into the sky, thrown out of the earth in some bygone tectonic upheaval. They loomed over the landscape, so dangerous that they were docile, giants in disguise, waiting and saving their anger. Coming up from Atitlan the Volcanoes of Antigua and the Lake disappeared behind the pine trees that covered the Cuchamantanes and huge valleys appeared as scars and our bus clung to the twisted roads while the mountains circled above us. The clouds were always around and when they cleared we could look 20 miles across to where an hour previous we had come down the mountainside in the screech of a chicken bus. Turkey vultures rode the thermals across the valleys, mayans patrolled the roadside on horses and men carried bundles of firewood on ropes wrapped around their foreheads, the same way that the ancient Mayans had carried stones to and from the temples. Coming out of the Cuchamatanes we found ourselves in the midst of a mudslide, more like a mountain slide were the whole mountain had moved and as it moved it took us towards the Altaverapaz where the mountains sat like sleeping turtles one next to the other, shells popping from the green expanse: they were mini volcanoes, covered in jungle with the white of their limstone base sometimes showing through and rounded at the top missing the calderas of their bigger brethren to the south west. As we moved towards Tikal the turtles spread apart and eventually disappeared leaving only the open jungle savannah of Peten.

We stayed for five days in Peten and again things had changed. Gone were the Mayans and fresh tortillas of the mountains replaced by the Mestizo and expats of the Peten. We were away from the sludge and the slime of ancient algea in Lago Atitlan, her protestation against the filth of pure sewage the runs into her depths from the 12 towns that line her shore. Instead we were on the shores of Lago Peten Itza. A grand dock stretched into the waters, which reflected like the waters of the Caribbean 20 shades of blue and white. We dined on fish fresh from the lake, indegenous to the lake (Petenta I think) and found ourselves unable to leave except to see Tiakl.

We arrived at daybreak in Tikal and spent half the day walking with our guide. I´d never had a guide before but at this point we were travelling with a Dutch couple and they thought it was a good idea and it certainly was. Tikal is enormous and without the guide I would have had no clue what I was seeing and/ or what it meant. We took us from one temple to the next and as we sat on top of the temples in the cool morning mist howlers monkeys grunted in our direction, spider monkeys swung from tree to tree and dropped their favored nuts down on unsuspecting guests. Ocellated turkeys ran from temple to temple and the coatimundis sniffed around for scraps, using their paws and their noses just like their northern brethren, the raccoon. The trip through the temples lead us eventually the main structures of Tikal where in the midmorning the sunlight began to come through the clouds and lend a bit more mysticism to what was already a mystical place.

*Ocellated turkey, View from teh priests bed chambers, Palace, Temple one over the jungle

We stayed two more days in Guatemala after that, unable to leave to dock of Mon Ami on Lago Peten Itza and then we looked up and had to go. Two days later we were in Copan Ruinas. The ruins here are not as grand as Tikal. There are no great pyramids and the walk throught he jungle and the sacbes doesn´t have the feel of travelling back in time, but what it does have are sculptures grander and more bueatiful than any I have ever seen. There is also a museum there that contains many of the original steleas (think of them like Mayan totems). The coup de grace of the museum though has to be the Templo de Rosalia. At the Met in New York they imported an Egyptian temple and nearly the whole North wing is a room that contains this temple and one whole wall is glass and the light is able to stream in and illuminate this temple and at times it feels as if you are in Egypt, or at elast what I imagine Egypt to feel like sans heat and dust and sand. This temple in the museum is presented in the same way except that the museum is open to the sky and as the sun comes over the temple it is bathed in light. It is painted in its orginal red (a mix of insects and plants, of which our guide - I´m hooked - was able to show us the type of plant used to paint). In the museum are also fertility sculptures and some that just were made for the sake of art and no other discernible reason. There is one disk that tells the tale of the first and second dynasties of Copan and others that record a thousand years of history. We also went through the living quarters of the city that surrounded the Copan center. We saw the tombs of the Maya, which resided below the livings beds and watched macaws fly overhead squawking at our untoward interruption of their rest. The living quarters were inhabited from 1000 BC forward and our guide uncoverd shards of pottery that were inscribed wih symbols. 3000 year old pottery shards...possibly...even if he did bury them himself, it was pretty cool.

*disk with two dynasties, ruins and river, plant used for paint, temple in the museum

And now today we are in tela on the Honduran coast. For the next three weeks we will make our way down they coast towards Moskita. IN the market this morning were mackeral, caracol, shrimp, red snapper, yellow snapper, and all versions of fresh fish. We have discovered baleadas which are fresh grilled flour tortillas filled with beans and cream and cheese. they make pincho here - carne asada on two tortillas with hot sauce. Most of all, they have the beach. We´ve been in it every moment and though that sand can be littered with trash, in the water we can look out towards Punta Sal and Punta Izopo and float in the salty blue of the Caribbean.

* snapper