December 18, 2008 Antigua, Guatemala
We are back in Antigua tonight after spending the past 5 days away around Lake Atitlan...about 2.5 hrs. west of here. ( so nice to return to a place we know..even though we were here for only two nights before). Tomorrow we leave here to go to Guatemala City and fly north to Flores..our gateway to seeing the Mayan temples at Tikal...
In the past 5 days we have been surrounded by people of Mayan decent...I felt soooo tall. We felt like we lived pretty large the past days...we stayed in Chichi at the Mayan Inn...a beautiful old lodge(we had a bedroom with a fireplace, a sitting room, and a large bathroom and we had Manuel assigned to us to wait on us in the dining room...and to build our fire. We both wanted Manuel to continue with us the rest of the trim. Plus Manuel dressed in the Mayan style..beautiful handwoven knee pants, shirt, sash, and a hat.. Chichi is the big market town for the area and Sunday was market day with vendor after vendor selling eveything from pig`s feet and turkeys to beautiful handwoven skirts, blouses, sashes...This little town was packed..
Sunday afternoon we took a van to Panajachel..on Lake Atitlan. Although we had been told by many to skip that town, we found it quite ok, especially since we were using it as the launching site for our trip across the Lake the next day to Santiago.
In all of these towns there are markets whether it is market day or not...the streets are lined with vendor stalls..and persuasive sellers. The kids can be the most persuasive...."buy ..from me...it is a present for your mother, your grandmother, your friend...or your enemy(a new phrase)...I can buy notebook for school if you buy this from me". Then in Panajachel a teenage girl used a new line on us "this is just business to business"...we both got a laugh out of that...and she made a sale.
On Monday we took the boat across Lake Atitlan to Santiago...the Lake is a volcano crater and is 12 miles across and about 60 miles around...beautiful with 2 volcanos rising above it..and 6-7 villages on the edge of the Lake. This is a corn, coffee, and avocado growing area. I don´t see how the farmers work these fields on the steep slope of these volcano mountains. Almost every other person you see has a load on their back...wood, coffee, corn, etc. ..and these are heavy loads! The women carry all matter of things on their head...balancing a dishpan of all kinds of stuff and most often they will have a small child on their back held there by colorful shawl. The tool of life is the machete...every man seems to carry one.
We stayed in Santiago for three days...took a boat across the Lake to another village one day, had a horseback ride another day to a mirador (lookout point) that if it had been clear we were told we would see the Pacific.
The religion in the Atitlan area is a mix of Mayan and Catholic (Protestant religions are now a greater part of the population than Catholic we were told). The Catholic church in Santiago is built over an old Mayan sacred site . And inside the church along the walls are statues of l8 people..we could not recognize them...they were dressed in a variety of clothing from pink and blud beauty shop smocks to housedresses to velvet robes and all had Hermes scarves around their neck. We were told that the clothing is changed every week. Then there is a kind of sacred guy called Masiman...this is a 5 ft statue..that is moved from house to house, has a cigar in his mouth, and a hat and is dressed in an unusual style with a scarf around his neck. Someone has to take you to see him..only the local people know where he is. There was too much mystery here for us to understand!
Behind this summary I have given of the past 5 days there are many stories....I will have to tell you those in person...
These people are beautiful and sweet and the hardship of their life, including the wars they have suffered over the past several years, really cannot be told.
We are looking forward to Tikal...and looking forward to seeing you very soon...
karen