Estoy en Guatemala!
My first flight’s half-hour delay made my brief connection in El Salvador dicey, but I leapt on board just in time. I’m squirmy on planes — can’t get comfortable — but thanks to Ambien advice from my friend M, the trip was over before I knew it.
It surprised me when people like the flight attendant switched to English when talking to me. How did she know? is my first thought. I’m not accustomed to being conspicuous. I forget that, for one thing, I’m about ten feet taller than everyone else.
I love the moment when, getting off the plane, the air of another world hits me. Here it’s hot and heavy and smells like peat smoke.
I tried to put off speaking Spanish, but had to bite the bullet— lots of bullets — immediately, starting with customs.
Don Toí±o was waiting for me just outside, a welcome sight in an ocean of guys assertively hawking their services. He updated me on everything from recent volcanic eruptions to the education of his children as we made our way toward Antigua. Mind you, this was in Spanish, so please be impressed. He laughed hardly at all at my attempts on his mother-tongue.
The road climbs for a while through visibly foul fumes and a forest of billboards, including those left over from November’s presidential election. The mano dura ad of Otto Pérez Molina, closely tied to the human rights atrocities during the war, was unnerving.
Once over the ridge the air gets a little better and the scenery — a steep, densely vegetated valley that at one turn frames a volcano (can’t remember if it’s Pacaya or Acatenango) — gets prettier. The shoulder is a main thoroughfare for local Maya families. You know you’re in Antigua when you hit the cobblestone.
Sometimes I romanticize places in my memory, but Antigua is every bit as beautiful as I recall — except for the McDonalds, Burger King and Domino’s that have moved in since I was here before. Of course it’s every bit as devastatingly poor, too.
My lodging is a cozy, tile-floored room in a small, U-shaped building with a garden in the center. This is my room and the view from my window.
I paid a brief visit to Maria a block away and then took my anti-jetlag nap for a couple hours, during which I had Big Time nightmares about people torturing people, but at least I wasn’t dreaming of speaking incomprehensible Spanish.
Forced myself awake and walked five blocks into town, practically choking on dense grey chicken-bus air. I’m better than I thought at asking questions in Spanish — Why are there three different lines at this bank? — but not very good at understanding the answers; after nearly two hours of wrong-line-waiting at two wrong banks, I gave up.
Despite being laid out in a grid, this city is easy to get lost in. Antigua maps show street names like 5a Calle Poniente but most roads are unmarked or, at best, labeled with their poetic Spanish names. If there were an Avenida de las Perditas, that’s where you’d find me.
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