You know those consumer warnings on packaging — “Remove cap before use” and that sort of thing? Those are there because of people like me. My map of Guatemala should have come with a disclaimer: “Not for use near open flame.”
While sitting at my desk drinking tea, I lit a blue candle (I hear it represents clarity of thought) that I bought from the Hermano Pedro people. I was marking my route on the map, and had gotten the pen as far as Guatemala City when I saw the flames. Just like Virginia City in Bonanza.
Next time you decide to set a map on fire, make sure it’s not lightly coated with plastic. I can attest that it doesn’t feel great when it’s seared onto four of your fingers.
Anyhow “¦
Got up early and moseyed around the hotel with my camera while I waited for the shuttle. Here are pix, including one of the swimming pool.
Hotel el Recreo is overpriced. My “cheap” room was over twice the cost of the equivalent at Las Marías, and the instant I lay upon the crumbling foam last night, my backbone greeted the plywood in far too familiar a manner. However, a hot water shower this morning was welcome and I enjoyed the hammock out front till the shuttle drove up.
Once again I was the last person to be picked up. This time the van was crammed only with local Maya — nary a tourist — and the only seat was in the very back of the van next to an old man (“old” in Guatemala meaning he probably had only ten years on me) who was a bit daft and experiencing intestinal problems. We careened around sharp corners, stopping frequently to take on people who were standing by the side of the road.
The ride made me realize how uptight I am. No one gets close to me without my express, written consent. Touch me and I leap. It’s different here. Perhaps out of necessity, people are entirely comfortable being smooshed into total strangers, skin on skin. One guy sat on another’s lap. Four people jammed onto the rear seat with me, one with her head casually tucked under my arm. I rode like that, compressed to half my normal width, for an hour and a half till we reached Cobí¡n.
I managed to suppress mounting anxiety about the day’s logistics: how would I find my way from Cobí¡n to Antigua? But I had no trouble finding the next van. I’ve learned that if you sit up front with the driver, you’re forced to speak more Spanish, so that’s what I did. Today, Hector was our driver for the next six hours.
I’m so glad I have kids. Otherwise I’d have nothing to talk about to break the ice. Probably twenty times now, a driver has initiated this conversation: do you have nií±os, where is your esposo, how old are your nií±os, why don’t you have an esposo? This time, tired of that last question when Hector asked, I shrugged: “I don’t know.” But Hector persisted: “Porqué no se … Why don’t you know?” From then on I pretended to sleep, and then dozed for real, despite the radio blaring Mexican rap interspersed at regular intervals with the station’s inexplicable tagline, “Ohhhhh-so-SEX-eeeee.”
Midway to Antigua we pulled over at a fast-food place, and lo and behold there was my old friend Cesí¡r (the driver two days ago), stopped with his van full of people headed in the opposite direction. We sat and chatted for a while. He taught me the word for “bats”: murciélagos. Hector snapped our picture. I look like a quarterback. Or John Lithgow.
In heavy traffic in Guatemala City, vendors weave between the cars selling sunglasses, tomatoes, roses, air fresheners and Shriner-colored feather-dusters. We passed a big building with a sign identifying it as La Universidad Infantíl. Hector recommended I check out to the Guatemalan crooner Ricardo Arjona. And Yo-Nenny: we drove by a storefront with the sign “Papanicolau Ultrasound” — Greeks in Guatemala!
That’s it for now. Tomorrow’s my last full day in Guatemala. I’m not thrilled about that.
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That’s unbelievable, you do resemble John Lithgow in that picture!