Most mornings, lake Atitlan is mirror still, but every afternoon the wind picks up and the surface is as choppy as the sea. We make the mistake of sitting at the front of the lancha for the vertebrae crashing crossing from the main town of Panajachel to Santa Cruz. There’s an elderly Norwegian guy on board holding court with a young Norwegian couple (of Scandinavians, Norwegians are more in evidence then any other in Guatemala). He’s loudly declaring well worn anecdotes about himself in Guatemala, ‘I was here dodging bullets during the revolution.’ He’s a character of his own creation, elderly, pompous, reactionary, a latter day Colonel Blimp. Jo says something about his possible sexual proclivities and opportunities.
We pick up where we left off in January at Santa Cruz. The gardener, Lucas, welcomes us back as returning old friends. We climb the hill (Jo climbs it every day – sometimes twice) for the mid week fruit and veg’ market. We trek to San Marcos past the village of Jaibalito outside of which roost hundreds of red headed vultures (they roost?), the ground beneath their roost littered with their feathers and putrid droppings. We return by boat and a few days later, for a change, we ride the boat to San Marcos and trek back.
Yesterday Jo and I had a great chat about our years together. We reflected on many aspects of our relationship: excitement, amusement, frustration, challenge, never boring, often unpredictable, sometimes enraging. Yes it was one of those sweeping conversations that make you feel that everything’s good.
Got this message from Jo this morning,
‘I wouldn’t be putting up with you if you didn’t enrich my life ❤️.’
The many jacaranda trees are now in peak bloom. The jacaranda is a beautiful tree with purple, fragrant trumpet shaped flowers. Plantations, or avenues of them are very attractive. I love their mild sweet honey scent (not everybody does), particularly discernible when the flowers fall and accumulate beneath the trees. Strangely, if you pick a flower and put it to your nose it’s often odourless.
I’m sitting on the terrace, birdwatching in the late afternoon sunshine. Jo sees more birds (particularly hummingbirds) than I do, whilst doing her early morning exercises, but there’s lots of activity at this time of day, Tannagers, Clay Coloured Thrushes, Cinnamon Bellied Saltators, Hummingbirds, Woodcreepers, a Great Kiskadee and a Lesson’s Motmot. At sunset, amongst the trumpet, rasp and cackle of the long tailed grackle bird, a busy afternoon scavenger with a particular liking for the spaghetti I’ve discarded on the waste tip, I can hear a symbol, then tinkling bells, a single sonorous piano note, then another, gentle congas – it’s very familiar. The resident of the house next to us, is on his terrace, playing Santana’s 1970 album, Abraxas which he plays in its entirety (as one should). This is simply wonderful.
We’ve booked a day trip to the town of Chichicastenango, famous for its vast open air Mayan craft market and its bizarrely colourful cemetery. We’re standing at the appointed street corner waiting for our bus where we’re having a friendly chat with a Californian Jewish couple. An older unshaven guy on a motorbike pulls up and starts verbally abusing the Jew about events in Gaza. The Jew tries initially to engage with this offensive idiot but quickly decides its best to ignore him.The idiot runs out of breath and speeds off. Later, on the bus I say to the American that I think that was an appalling anti-Semitic assault, not dissimilar to what’s happening a lot in London these days. The guy is not a Zionist or an Israeli – he’s an American Jew (who happens not to agree with many of the actions of the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu). I tell him I think the incident is shocking and I just wanted to express my empathy. With what I think is resilient Jewish stoicism, he thanks me and says it’s ok. But it’s not ok and such racist attacks should be called out for what they are.
Guatemalan textiles are known for their intricate and colourful hand stitched embroidery and, in the Mayan market of Chichicastenango, I hope to buy a scarf to replace the one that Jo left on a bus way back in January. And perhaps a cowboy hat too. But scarves, there are almost none – the common head and neck covering in Guatemala is the tzute, a colourful square of cotton material used as a head-cloth, neck-cloth, ceremonial wrapping or scarf to carry a baby. We do eventually find a short tasselled, multicoloured scarf that will do. The right hat proves similarly challenging. Jo is quick to find a biting simile for each hat I try on. ‘You look like a Vietnamese peasant’ or ‘a Kerry farmer’ or in her final acerbic assessment, ‘Very camp, Quentin Crisp’. Oh dear!
We are back in the old colonial town of Antigua for the last few days of our trip, where we check into a small family Airbnb on the northern edge of town where I immediately succumb, bedridden, to another violent but mercifully swift gastrobug whilst Jo sets off for the early morning start of her 15 mile, 4,000 metre ascent of Acatenango volcano. Our experiences of this day and night could not be more at odds. She, in pursuit of volcanic eruptions in the mountains and me having eruptions of my own in the bathroom. I have nothing else to report.
The following afternoon Jo returns to the hotel, ashen, but exuberant, covered in a thin layer of volcanic ash. Having spoken to about a dozen people, mostly youngsters, about their experiences of the ascent, she was concerned about the difficulty of the challenge. Typical reports were in the nature of, ‘It was the most difficult climb I’ve ever done in my whole life.’ and ‘I couldn’t walk afterwards for three days.’ or ‘I was so exhausted when I got to the top I went straight to sleep and saw nothing.’ But Jo smashed it with ease, even, after the six hour ascent of Acatenango, doing an additional four hour round trip walk to the slopes of Volcan Fuego. She thinks the yoof, especially the girls, are feeble. Tonight she’ll sleep for a marathon nine hours straight – unheard of for her. The only downside of the expedition was that the visibility was terrible and she saw little of Fuego’s frequent eruptions, but she’s psychologically exhilarated and physically animated and these feelings will last for some time.
It’s Palm Sunday – the Sunday before Easter and the beginning of the Semana Santa (Holy Week) celebrations. In the early morning the locals are out in their hundreds laying intricate carpets of flowers, vegetables and coloured sawdust. Later, a vast procession of thousands of celebrants will trample these floral creations. Huge floats depicting the Passion of Christ or Marian images, some weighing several tons, are carried by hundreds of people swaying and marching slowly in step over the meticulously laid floral displays. They’re accompanied by brass and percussion bands. It’s a weird yet intoxicating festival, assaulting all the senses. The weird bit, for me, is the veneration of the macabre and cruel torture and crucifixion of the young Jew, Jesus. But it’s impossible not to be swept up by the fervour of the faithful in the heat, the incense and dust. It’s also an dazzlingly colourful affair, dominated by purple, the colour of the robes and middle eastern keffiyehs of the men, and the background colour of the flowering jacaranda trees. There are maroon Roman legionnaires, and many women in brightly coloured Mayan costumes or dressed and veiled entirely in black. It’s a coming together of all generations who will suffer into the evening for their exultation.
We spend the last few days in Antigua at the family Airbnb where I was sick. But once again I’ve recovered swiftly and, on Thursday night, we enjoy dinner at the XQNO bistro whose catchy strapline is Por Que No? (Why not?). We eat there again on Friday night and yet again on Saturday. It’s a tiny place on the corner of 2a Avenida Sur and 9 Calle Oriente, with only nine covers downstairs, and a few more up the steep ladder steps on the first floor. Every flat surface is adorned with the graffiti signatures of previous guests. The menu is small and the chefs work at the little kitchen behind the bar. On each of these occasions, we sit at the bar and drink a bottle of their two red wines. There’s a single bar stool next to us at which, every evening, we befriend a solitary diner – a taciturn young American guy, a German woman and a precious gay New Yorker. Jo loves the rare steak.
We would remain at the family Airbnb for the last day but the roads are closed for the Easter processions and on Sunday evening we must get to the northern outskirts of town to catch our bus to Guatemala tomorrow morning, so the final day we book into what will, unfortunately, be the scruffiest residence we’ve boarded at in Central America. Last painted in the 1960s, the toilets don’t flush, our bedroom door latch is broken, unlockable and opened with a piece of string. But the hosts are disarmingly pleasant. When we’re not following processions and visiting churches we spend our days in the spacious garden by the swimming pool of the Yes Please hostel (£5 for a day pass) where the happy hour (2pm to 5pm) casa gin and tonics are terrific, and we know that this is likely to be the last warm sunshine for some weeks to come. The rain in the UK has been relentless over the winter and shows no signs of letting up. Tonight we’ll move to an airport hotel in Guatemala City ready for a morning flight to Houston Texas and a connecting flight to London and home.
