GUATEMALA 2011 BLOG
Sitting here in Casa Colibri, everything is quiet. Outside the rain hides all but the dark silhouettes of the volcanoes which stand sentry on the far western shore of Lago de Atitlán. The lake itself is a silver grey field with no connection to any distant horizon. All lake. All horizon. Timeless and limitless.
David and I returned half drenched from San Pedro on the other side of the lake. We had a late breakfast with Javier, Josefa and baby Bresner José Augusto. At a table out on a terrace above the lake, I held little José, all four months of him, cuddled up against me as if he had known me for a long time. He is my little namesake. His father Javier is my beloved, much enjoyed and admired Spanish teacher of last summer. Josefa, his mother, we met for the first time. Javier looked skinnier today than last summer and for all of that even brighter, funnier, and quicker than before. Josefa was a tiny doll of a person with huge eyes, beautiful lips. She took care of her infant with the deep serenity of a Madonna or perhaps the serenity is deep like the mysterious lake itself.
It began raining as we finished our late breakfast. They arrived without an umbrella, so we gave them one of our cheapos that we bought on a corner in San Cristóbal at the beginning of our little journey.
The beginning of our journey? How can a journey have a beginning when one has had so many journeys and realizes, finally, that all those beginnings are all part of one big journey? One big journey with an end that feels unimaginable and yet inevitable.
We left them at the terrace restaurant of the Hotel Mikaso. I had a big lump in my throat as we climbed down the stairs to the tiny flooded street. I knew that if I tried to tell David about how deeply moved I was that little José had been named for me, I would just start blubbering. So I decided to keep quiet about it.
Joseph, baby José, Javier and Josefa on the terrace of the Hotel Mikaso in San Pedro where Joseph studied Spanish with Javier last summer.
The two Josés!!
José and his namesake Bresner José Augosto
Josefa and Javier. Josefa in the typical blouses of the women in San Pedro.
David and little José.
We found a tuk tuk on a street rapidly becoming a river in the downpour and asked to go up to the market in the search of the typical blouses of the women in San Pedro, not huipiles, more like blouses with lace and sheer and sparkly stuff, all in delicious colors of deep green, purple tinged with aubergine, robin egg blue. Finally, after fleeing the raw meat smells of the market itself we found three women who not only told us where to go but insisted on leading us down watery streets to the shop itself. We found racks of them. We picked deep green and amazing purple. One for our Martha in our house in San Miguel, and one for Hermine, my daughter.
As the shop keeper wrapped up our blouses I told her about our meeting with Javier and his family and she knew them! It felt really homey there in the shop as she applied extra touches to the packages to make them special and we talked about surprise mutual friends.
Then back into a waiting tuk tuk, a short stop in a farmácia for Sinutabs hoping to quell David’s sniffles, one more stop over in a little shop to replace our umbrella, and then on to our piloto Rodolfo and the boat waiting for us to take us back to Santa Catarina.
Rodolfo was jovial as we met him hiding from the rain in a doorway. On the way over he caught a fish with his bare hands for dinner tonight.
The lake was majestic as we crossed, just the two of us in the front plowing across the soft waters. Of course, the lake has always been majestic. It simply waits with its majestic expanse of blue for you to be quiet enough to perceive it. It’s not always easy to be that quiet.
Back at amazing Casa Colibri, I think everyone is asleep, resting from the adventures of the day. We had great ambitions and plans to keep this blog moving along from day to day, but the days were too full of impressions and activity to even think about it: a whirlwind trip into Chiapas from Mexico City, an exquisite dinner at Ciel y Tierra, posh (chiapateco distilled liquor) in all its variations, trips to three Mayan Highlands villages, 10 hours in a van crossing the border from Mexico into Guatemala, this stupendous house with its once-in-a-lifetime views, boat trips around the lake, crazy ladies trying to sell us stuff at the boat dock and almost falling into the lake, Panajachél, Santiago de Atitlán, San Pedro, San Marcos, San Juan, Jaibalito, not to mention the mind-boggling experience of the Mayan market at Chichicastenango, delicious dinners in Casa Colibri prepared by the chef Ángela, Sheila’s big birthday cocktail party, Lukas dashing around taking care of our every need, and on and on. I think that the others will write more about all of that. Somehow we will try to get you the whole picture.
Please consider this a sort of prologue. I will ask the others simply to write their impressions and along with that we will post many, many photos. And maybe we will find a way to post our theme music that I hear now and which, when I hear it in the future, will always take my heart back to this lake.
Joseph McClain
The group leaving from San Miguel on the way to the airport in Mexico City. From back to front and left to right: Nancy Lockwood, otherwise known as Lockwood, Sheila Sheehan, Nanci Yuronis. Middle row: Cynthia Buzzard, Dar Burleson and hidden behind the guy in the white shirt must be Kathy Tobler, front row: Duke McClain, David Manning. Our first destination was to be San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas.
Main pedestrian street in San Cristóbal de las Casas.
Church on main plaza at night. One block from our hotel, the Diego de Mazariego.
Portales of the convent now housing the Amber Museum. Chiapas is one of the few places in the world where amber is mined and deep red amber from Chiapas is highlyl valued.
Jerald Head and Robin Carrillo joined us in Mexico City. Here Jerald waits in the courtyard of the Diego de Mazariegos for the obligatory early evening cocktail hour!
The hotel courtyard. Chiapas has huge forests and a lot of wood is used in building. In our part of Mexico, the columns in the patio would be of stone or masonry.
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