Viajar el mundo: Eh hippies!

09 de Junio

Hola amigos/as

It’s a lovely Saturday afternoon here in San Pedro, and for the first time since we arrived, there are blue skies all around in the afternoon. Not a sight of the downpours of old or thunderstorms of past tardes. Just the other day a massive storm hit, and a bolt of lightning hit the edge of the lake a few hundred metres in front of us, which required us to change underpants.

We have just returned home for the pub, which was a typical Saturday afternoon, not unlike home. Beer, lunch and football on the TV. Except whilst growing prices in Australia usually necessitate a redraw on the home loan for an afternoon out, our huge meals with all the trimmings and two litres of beer came to an awesome 80 quetzals, or $10.80 for both of us. How we love this place.

This morning’s activities involved a trip across the lake to San Marcos, the home of spirituality and healing, and finding oneself amongst the sweet dulcet tones of the innocent birds whilst connecting with ones inner soul whilst discussing the benefits of Kinesiology whilst translating horoscopes written in Sanskrit and how they correlate with the phases of the moon.

Or in English, Tree Huggers.

Yep, its where flower power still reigns, the unwashed gringos reside, and where women’s razor companies would soon be out of business. But at the same time, it is a stunning, peaceful, cobbled, narrow alley town, with lovely hidden café’s and tranquility rarely seen elsewhere in Guatemala. No tuk tuks to ruin the atmosphere. No horse shit to avoid stepping on. No one selling you unique one of a kind wristbands. Just silence while gazing across the lake at the mountains. They also have a cliff dive into the lake. Looks about ten metres or so, but I wasn’t allowed to check for myself.

Try explaining that to your travel insurer. KG

The robber was nice enough to take our photo before stealing our camera

The volcano eruption tournament was very competitive on the weekends

The door took all precautions when hippies were in town

Our family in San Pedro are fantastic. Our Spanish is getting better and allowing for more substantial conversations than “A mi me gusta” (I like) in each sentence. In fact sometimes they were the only sentences. They speak little English but are keen to learn, and even take weekly classes at the local school. Mistakes in Spanish are the source of much fun here. I tried to explain that all these new words I am learning are making my brain hurt, so instead of saying “Mi dolor cerebro” (my head hurts), I came out with a gem of “Mi dolor cebolla “, which is I have a sore onion. They are still taking the piss out of me for it. And for when I said I wanted to eat twins instead of Tortillas are delicious. Not sure how I managed that.

The Padre of the family is Bartolo, who is a school teacher in the morning and tour guide in the afternoon, although business is down at the moment. Likely due to the fact that the old tour van generally doesn’t start every time. Bartolo loves his football, is a huge Barcelona FC fan, and plays weekly in the centre for the local school teacher team. They recently beat the local shopkeeper side in extra time, but still thought the ref was crap.

La Madre, Elsa, is the chef, the homekeeper, the everything. She is lovely and caters for everything we need. She corrects our pronounciation of words where need be, looks after our laundry, makes sure we have good plans for the weekends and reminds her daughter, that unlike most Guatemalan teenagers, that she is to finish school and get a degree and career before she even thinks about boyfriends.

Which is Juanita, the eldest child of two. Cooks a mean pancake breakfast for us a few mornings a week, and is keen on becoming an architect and fluent in English in the future. She is 14, and will be 15 on Friday. In Guatemalan culture, for girls, 15 is the big year, where it is 18 for boys. There is a huge party planned for Friday night that we are invited too. Better get the presents. Any suggestions?

And then there is Bartolito, the youngest at 7. Loves to play and stuff about and is always up an about. It could be because he drinks a fair bit of coffee on a daily basis. He loves a game of football on the roof top terrace, but I have learnt to be wary of him. Every goal he scores is worth two, where mine are only one, and I lose a goal if I hit the post or shoot wide. Not sure they are official rules. Mind you, boat tickets across the lake cost more for foreigners, so I kinda get it. I took a dive once to try and con a free kick, and he called me Italian. Funny kid. We have a deck of UNO cards, and as it’s such a universal game, that its easy to pick up, even for a kid. Initially, we were letting him win, holding back the draw fours and being generally nice, but now he actually beats us fair and square.

Last Saturday night, Elsa invited us to sing. Sure we thought, no worries, in fact I am famous for my karaoke exploits. I used the get asked to belt out a number at closing time at Dublin pubs. Could have been to get the drinkers out, but I’m not so sure.

So we went upstairs to join the crowd, there was the whole extended family, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews. Guitars were abundant, this is going the be a rocking party, so we thought. The lack of beer was a dead giveaway, and when we were handed bibles, it turned out we were now part of the weekly prayer and hymn session. The oraciones were being belted out with gusto. Picture myself and Kylie, words of God in hand, singing to the top of our voices about who is coming to save us, in Spanish!! After Rage, there were then many prayers in a Mayan dialect and Spanish mix, and more tunes, (albeit, there were some quite upbeat ones later in the service, although I’m sure one of them was a rip off of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face), followed by an all in, full on religious chant. The rellos started to throw their hands to the heavens, while pleading for forgiveness from different causes. Tears were flowing and heads were bowed in regret and sorrow. It was quite a sight for us. We didn’t know what to do or what we should ask for, so we joined in and prayed for an end to eggs for dinner. It worked, as ten minutes later the good Lord provided us with a smokin’ Chilli Con Carne. No beer though.

After mass, the locals thanked us for being part of their tradition, and we had a good old Spanglish conversation.