The wacko on the third floor

My lovely hospedaje in Panajachel last weekend had one odd resident: a man in his 60s from Canada, a self-published author with all the usual chips on his self-published shoulder about why no academic or mainstream publisher would take his book, why the UBC library wouldn't buy it, why credentials shouldn't matter when you're brilliant, etc. While I was cavorting around Lago Atitlàn, he was watching tv all day in his room, emerging at night to confide his self-published woes as I drank beer on the sofa, or to search the Vancouver Craig`s list for a room to rent when he got home. Whenever that would be. I think the owners of Hospedaje El Viajero were torn between asking him to leave and praying his indecision would tide them over the bajòn or low season.

Today the oddball watching tv in her room was me, at the Posada Tayazal in Flores, Guatemala, way up in the northern jungles. (Click here for a google map.) I did go out for breakfast and the internet this morning, and emerged for an ice cream around 2:00 pm, but otherwise watched Guatemalan tv and weird US movies until supper time. Travelers have to pay even when they feel like doing nothing, and I felt like doing nothing today, in a charming town. (Just for the record, I watched the very fascinating Spanish-produced but English-language political movie Land of the Blind with Donald Sutherland, who I cannot resist, and You Kill Me with Ben Kingsley and Owen Wilson's brother Luke, which I would like to see again. And since, you remember from my last post, the only other gringo in Santa Cruz de Quichè was a young Mormon missionary, you won't be surprised to find out that the BYU network is right there among the evangelical stations.)

I needed to rest, after my strenuous weekend on the group tour to Tikal. There were 21 of us, mostly very young Germans, plus a Canadian, a Scot, a Brit, a Quebeçois, and four Americans, including one St. Olaf grad who knows Micah M, Alex. During my ELCA staff years I assisted with several delegations of middleaged Lutherans visiting Central and Latin America so I know what a task it is to balance everyone's needs and desires. Victor, our host and a teacher at Tecùn Umàn, my Spanish school in Antigua, made a heroic effort.

A blow-by-blow account would bore you to tears, but of the many kilometers we covered between Friday at 4:00 am and Sunday at 2:30 when I left the group, the jungle ruins of the Mayan city of Tikal were the best. (Click here for images that don't begin to convey the grandeur I saw and felt.) Starting at 6:15 am, when the animals are still active and the intense heat and humidity of the Petèn hasn't kicked in yet, we wandered through jungle and had a picnic breakfast among the ruins and climbed temples as our bilingual guide Walter explained the significance of what we were seeing. The ruins at Tikal are used for the kinds of Mayan rituals I witnessed last weekend in Chichicastenango (chickens, incense, and coca cola, you remember) and overheard on Thursday morning at Utatlàn in the Quichè (chanting, and all the remaining buildings and caves there are blackened with smoke from rituals), so the big temples have large and active circular altars at their feet. I think it was the way the temples poke out from the canopy that was so affecting, plus the cumulative effect of learning so much about Mayan culture through visits to Tikal, Monte Alban near Oaxaca (on a mesa rather than in a jungle) and Chichen Itza (not as mysterious and powerful or remote as Tikal).

Also great: the tour, picnic, and hot sulphur baths along the beautiful Rio Dulce, the charming town of Flores, and the time I spent dining and hanging out with my little cadre of minivan companions. Most disappointing: the surprisingly seedy coastal town of Livingston, Guatemala, where the Afro-Caribbean Garifùna population live. Had I gone to any effort to visit it on my own, I would have burst into tears of disappointment upon arrival.

Most dangerous: the high-speed nighttime trip UP the Rio Dulce in two launches with no proper running lights, in which Victor stood in the prow of my lancha shining his flashlight from bank to bank so the captain could find the channel. To get us through that 45-minute journey, I alternated between saying prayers, saying goodbye to all of you, and trying to visualize being safely in bed. Even the most secular of my companions later said, "Yes, I was praying, too." This was the first time that Mexico and Guatemala's laissez-faire, we're-counting-on-you-not-to-fall-off-this-70-meter-tall-ancient-temple approach to tourism was too laissez-faire for me.

When the group left Rio Dulce to drive back to Antigua, I got a first-class bus back to Flores for two nights. Very rich people fly into Flores for the day to visit Tikal (the flights leave at 4:30 am so that they can enjoy the early-morning jungle, too). Everyone else has traveled hundreds of kilometers by bus or car. Most of them are very young. Some of the kids I saw in the Internet café today WERE children. Where are their parents? One was gushing, on Skype, about her inspiring meeting with a young Israeli girl who is hitchhiking around Central America selling her jewelry. Where are HER parents?? Me, I was upstairs watching movies and updating my journal. Now I am listening to a young American man talk to his parents ("Hi, I'm in Guatemala, in Flores... just because I wanted to...I took a van...five hours...it was cool, check it out on the internet when you get a chance...I called the bank and they haven't fixed my credit, so I am out of money until I get to Belize...can you help?")

After two months, I really have run out of energy. Fortunately this day of mindless rest is preparing me for tomorrow's final push in a shuttle across Belize to Chetumal. (Guatemala has a whole alternate transportation for tourists. It's uncomfortably like the Israeli-only system of highways in Palestine.) Then I will switch to a Mexican bus to Tulum, where I will spend one night and do my best to swim in a cenote. (Click here to find out what that is.) And then Wednesday I arrive in Isla Mujeres and dedicate myself to resting up with host Steve Broin before I get the plane to Suriname! Expect my next post to sound like Margaritaville. Meanwhile, I am sure I can watch another movie before I leave at 7:30 am tomorrow morning.