Eleanor's News

So, a year and a half ago I punctured my eardrum with a q-tip. Stupid!! I got surgery to close the hole on Thursday and check out these ghastly photos: Be warned! Don’t put anything in your ear except for your elbow!

Recovering, day of.

Stitches; I had the lil’ ear flapped forward so they could operate. Poor ear.

Petey pulled this horrible looking thing out of my ear!

In the ER Saturday morning for dehydration. Totally out of it here.

Another ER shot

Awake and getting better!

Look at this piece of trash that I mistook for a Quetzal!

From the Panajachel side, Atitlan was awesome. Eoin and I decided to go over
to the far side – San Pedro – for our last few days together in Guatemala. He
had stayed at the Corazon Maya Spanish School for a day or two before coming to
meet me in Guatemala City since it was so cheap ($2 per night!) and in such
a lovely area.


We left Pana by crowded boat and took the hour ride over to San Pedro. The town
is very hilly and the climb up the main roads is pretty annoying. However, San
Pedro is a cute little place, and it’s a bit less touristy than Pana, which was
nice for a change.


The walk to Corazon Maya took about 20 sweaty minutes, but once there, the walk
seemed totally worth it. Leafy green-ness edges the path down to each
little house that comes complete with a gas table-top cooker, a humble toilet/shower room,
a steep little staircase, and a comfy bed. The surroundings are beautiful! A
cloud-shrouded volcano provides the backdrop, and the owners have a patch of
land behind the school where they grow their own coffee, onions, and corn. To
complete the eco-friendly vibe (or maybe it’s just the way they do things here)
the “laundry facilities” are handed right down from Mayan days – there’s a stone
for scrubbing, a piece of glycerin soap for suds, and a trough
with clean rain water for rinsing. I really took to this method and even
volunteered to clean Eoin’s stuff. He’s better at ringing clothes out anyway, so
we were a good team.



After leaving our clothes out to dry, we slipped into our bathing suits and walked down through the crops of corn and onion to
the shore of Atitlan. (a note about corn: apparently, the Maya believed that god
made them from corn separate from other kinds of people. Corn was their most
important crop and continues to be a Central American staple.)



The water was really clear and refreshing and the setting
lovely. The evening we went down for the first time, Mayan families were
washing clothes and even scrubbing themselves down in the lake water. The clothes
would then be left to dry on the rocks along the shore. It was a scene right out
of ancient times!


After a dip, we lounged on the warm rocks along the shore to dry off. While we
were resting, my mosquito bite wounds were attacked by tiny flies. I hope I don’t
end up with a leg full of maggots or something.

Livingston, a town on the tiny amount of Caribbean coast of Guatemala, sounded like a really cool place to visit. It’s the homeland of the Garifuna, a group of people who are descended from West African slaves mixed with the Native Carib of the area.

They’re famous for their laid-back island culture which apparently has a unique
form of music that they’ve become known for. I was really looking forward to seeing this culture alive in its heartland, but when it came right down to it, Livingston totally sucked.

We took a long boat ride up the Rio Dulce river to get to the Livingston port.
Immediately, I noticed the tatty, dumpy look of the place. I know it’s
supposed to be laid-back, but it seriously looks like a hurricane hit the whole town and nobody bothered to clean up. The buildings are mostly in shambles and the few that stand upright with any degree of integrity need a good scrub-down and
a few coats of paint.



To add to the atmosphere, filthy chickens and dogs roam
the streets and the heat is pretty opressive.


The “beaches” are apparently contaminated and if that
doesn’t put you off swimming, there’s garbage floating in the water. (To be fair,you can take a boat to decent beaches, but it costs $60 which is a bit steepwhen you consider that a full-on dinner costs $5.)


As for culture, I was totally disappointed in the Garifuna.
Maybe all the good ones left, but the few we did meet were smelly homeless hustlers. One old Garifuna man who sat down next to us in the shade told us that he’s been trying to figure out why tourists come to Livingston!

Where’s all the fun music? The island life?



The road from Livingston (actually Puerto Barrios, a boat-ride away) to
Guatemala city was at least a pleasant ride. We got set up in a great
air-conditioned bus with comfy seats (one per person instead
of the Guatemalan fill-to-capacity standard!) for a dollar or two more than
it would have cost for the usual cramped, stuffy ride. Since the trip would be close to 6 hours, we sprung for the fancy bus.

We stayed the night in Guate (Guatemala City, as the locals call it) at a hostel in the rough part of town. I think the idea of a “bad area” is worse
than the reality of it most of the time. Of course, there are those terrible incidents that really do happen, but for the most part, the locals are scared of
violence as the tourists are, so there’s a good deal of comradery.

The next leg of the trip would be to Panajachel (“Pana”) on the shore of the
famous Lago Atitlan, a beautiful turquoise lake surrounded by volcanos. We took a cheapo bus and paid our price – the damn thing broke down twice on the way and the second time we were all left stranded until another ride arrived.

Some guyspulled up in a minibus a few minutes later and a couple of us climbed in for a ride to Pana.

Pana is a total tourist shopping center. The markets are alive day and night
and it’s difficult to “just look.” Once you approach a stall, the bidding
begins. It’s really awkward! The sellers tell you a high price, then ask
what you’ll pay for the item. Once the low-ball is thrown, you’re hard pressed to
get out of there without buying. And walking away is almost worse! Once you do that, the price comes way down. Plus, there are wandering women and childrenwho crowd around if you hesitate for a second and it’s a total guilt-trip to turn them down.

Eoin and I sat down to eat some Tacos and were immediately descended upon by three cute little girls. It feels rotten to turn them away but it’s really annoying to be harassed. I made a major mistake by showing fleeting interest in a beautiful embroidered tablecloth on my way down to meet Eoin at the lake shore. The woman selling followed us about 300 ftbefore I finally said “no, gracias” enough to make her believe me.

Something great about Guatemala: the food! I’ve been loving the dense soft
corn tortillas, the strangley flattened-but-delicious meat, and the pure and simple guacamole. Also great are the “licuados” (fruit smoothies) made with yoghurt or milk. Treats!

I’m sitting in my bed at the Dona Goya hostel right now, enjoying one of the pleasures of the modern world: WI FI!!! Oh boy! I definitely want to take this chance to write a bit about our trip today to one of the marvels of the ancient world – Tikal.

We left at 10:00 – sort of a late start since most people try to make it to the ruins before sunrise. We like our sleep, and after the days of traveling and feeling a bit sick, I think we deserved it! The minibus (not again!) that took us the hour it was supposed to take to get to Tikal itself ended up taking 2, so we got in around lunchtime. We got a couple of nasty burgers and went on through to the ruins a bit after noon.

The first sight of the Temple of the Jaguar actually did make me exclaim, so it really is a pretty impressive thing to see. The whole complex is laid out over a couple of miles, but the main attraction is the site where the Temple of the Jaguar (the big one) and some other smaller temples are. We warmed up with some pics around there and moved on throughout, getting a little braver as we went.




These temples are really old. I had no idea that their start date range is from 200-500 AD. I think having been to Macchu Pichu I expected that these ruins would be of a similar vintage (13th century) but I was wrong. Many of them are too tall to climb, but several temples have steep wooden staircases set up. My legs were totally aching about half way up any of them. The view wasn’t worth the climb on a few occasions, but one vista (look, I’m learning Spanish!) of a temple top peeking through the green jungle was really beautiful.



One of the crowning achievements of our Tikal photoshoot was this photo (now that I look at it it’s really only OK) taken with a vulture soaring above one of the temples. It took a heck of a long time to get the right shot. We tried hollering, clapping, etc. to try to get the bird to take off since some of his friends had made the leap too quickly for us to get the photo. So here it is in all its glory:

We didn’t see any monkeys (spider monkeys are natives) but we did get a pretty cool surprise seeing the long tail of a coati (a central american raccoon) rising up out of some undergrowth. We snuck closer and got a good look at the little guy before he scuttled off.

After another crowded minibus ride back to the hostel we jumped in the Flores Lake to cool off. We had seen a Pizza Hut (!!) on our way back into town, so naturally, we got a ride out there for dinner. Yum!