Must Be (Semana) Santa

Finally!  Semana Santa is here!  That’s Holy Week in Spanish, and it’s a really big deal down here.  We have the first days off (besides the ones we’ve taken to spend with our visitors) since Christmas, and the restlessness and heightened daily drama with our kids were a sure sign that everyone needed a break.  After our Landmark friends left, we had just a few days until my parents came in the following Sunday.  In those days in between, we walked into town twice for faculty-student soccer games after school.  The first one was for the boys’ team, so only male faculty played on the staff team.  The kids may have been faster, but the teachers won pretty easily, and Aaron scored two of their goals.  Not surprising, if you’ve seen him play soccer or at least seen how he pretty much always wins at everything. (You’d think could get annoying, but it just makes it all the more satisfying if you DO beat him!)  Anyway, this is a little more of a surprise:  I also scored two goals in the girls v. female faculty game a couple days later!  We practiced once, and it was a lot of fun, but our odds didn’t look so good since the people who actually had soccer skills were pretty out-of-shape, and the people who could run had no soccer skills or experience!  It all worked out, though, because it was just on a small cement field, 5 on 5, and it turned out that the girls still need a lot of practice.  And we were a lot bigger than them, and they were in 6^th-8^th grade.  So, maybe not the biggest accomplishment around, but it was really fun and I had never felt like a key player in a game before!  Guess I just have to play at the middle school/middle-aged level more often!

 

My parents came in on Sunday evening, and we took them to Guancascos for dinner since it’s close and it’s got the best view of Gracias.  We went home up the bumpy dirt road, and their car had no problems since we learned from Aaron’s parents’ experience and had them rent a pickup truck.  My mom handled the truck well on the Honduran roads, and didn’t hit  any horses or cows or fruitstands.  They unpacked all sorts of goodies from Trader Joes and things for our kids, and I think we must have the most well-stocked kitchen in Honduras at this point…hopefully it’ll last through June!  We gave the tutorial on the electro-shower and the other nuances of our house, and then they were all settled. 

 

The next morning, we went to school, and my parents lounged around the hammock and carport/porch outside awhile and then walked around and went up into the park to Dona Alejendrina’s comedor for lunch.  Neither of them speak any Spanish, but my mom was proud of the little things she was able to communicate, like “casa pollo” = chicken house, and lots of show-and-tell with pictures of the dogs on her camera, pictures of our wedding, etc.  Dona Alejendrina loves visitors, so I’m sure she enjoyed having my parents there.  She gave them a little coffee demo, stuffed them with tortillas and eggs, and my parents made it home with a couple pounds of newly-acquired coffee and some full bellies just in time to meet us coming home from school.  My mom and I walked over to the little hot springs before dinner, and I was impressed how fast she made it up the longer hills on the way home, especially considering she probably walked about 10 miles that day.  The dry season doesn’t seem to affect the level of the water in the hot springs, I guess because it just comes directly out of the ground.  The river has gotten really low, though, and is just a trickle compared to what it was during the rainy season.  Only a month or month and a half until we can expect to say goodbye to all the dust that seems to just saturate the air and blow everywhere in the wind.

 

The next day, my parents went to La Campa, but didn’t find too much there except the pottery museum and a lot of places closed because of a town meeting going on.  On the way there, though, they stopped some people on the road to confirm that they were headed in the right direction.  Here, though, when you yell out a destination as a question, people assume that you are offering them a ride to that place.  So, when my parents yelled, "La Campa?" out the window, a bunch of people yelled back, "Si!" and climbed into the back of the truck.  So, my parents unintentionally picked up some hitchhikers, and got the full Honduran experience.  They helped us with our after school classes that day, too, which was a welcome change of pace for both the kids and us.  Whenever there are visitors at school helping, the kids who get stuck in my group always kind of groan because they want the new and exciting people.  Oh well…luckily, I don’t take it personally!  Later that night, we made pizza at the neighbor’s house, since one has been asking for me to teach her.  Aaron made his famous banana pudding, and I made some guacamole, too.  The pizza seemed to be a hit, and it was nice for my parents to spend a little time getting to know our neighbors, even if they couldn’t talk too much.  We actually went over there again the next night so that my mom and I could paint “Comedor Melgar”—the name of their new restaurant—on their wall outside.  Now the tourists that walk by on their way up the mountain will know that they can stop there for food.  It got dark a little faster than we had anticipated, but with the help of some headlamps and flashlights, we finished the job and the neighbors fed us some fried chicken, beans, and tortillas.  We watched a little of the Honduras-Mexico soccer game on TV afterward, and I’m pretty sure that the wiry little neighbor man we watched with, Luis, only sits down to watch soccer and to eat.  He had gone up to the top of the mountain and back with a tourist hiker in just 9 hours the day before…and he’s in his 60s at least.

 

At school, my mom was immediately a big hit with the kids with her hula hoop skills and the beautiful mural that she made for them to fill in with bits of colored paper.  

The mural, which is two 9 ft panels, one for each of our classes:

When it’s done, I’ll post pictures…it’s going to look great, though, and it’s huge!  And it’s perfect for the kids to work on when they finish something early and have a few minutes to kill.  My dad was a hit, too, and was first pick for reading groups in my class, even though he was dubbed “Mr. Lazy” when he was resting his head on the ledge outside the classroom and one kid said “he don’t want to do nothing!”  It was nice showing my parents the school, but it was also really nice to leave after school Thursday with them and know that we had a long break ahead!

 

Aaron got us to Copan in just 2 hours driving true Honduran-style, passing trucks and busses and bikes and all sorts of contraptions that they wouldn’t allow on the highway in the States.  Our hotel had a beautiful view of the mountains, and included breakfast the next morning, which I was really excited about.  We did get a little bad news when we arrived, though.  The main ruins site was going to be closed the next day due to protest from some of the indigenous people.  I’m not sure exactly why they were protesting, but I’m guessing that they don’t see a lot of the money that the government makes off of their heritage.  Even though we didn’t go to the main site, we saw some lesser-known ruins of the residential, middle-class part of the Mayan city at Copan, and a knowledgeable guy jumped right on us and became our guide as soon as we pulled up to park there.  

Unfortunately, this is the only picture I took at the ruins or with my parents because my mom has them all on her camera, but they were here!

We spent the morning there and the afternoons at the bird park with the parrots and macaws and such, ate lunch, took a dip in the river there, and then headed back to town for souvenirs and such good smoothies—like liquid fruit without anything else added.  We had a little dinner at a place with a courtyard, and we were the only people being served.  After dinner we walked around the plaza, people-watched  and tried not to let the breathy, loud flute music and desperate CD sales get to us.  Then it was back to the hotel, and my parents left early the next morning.  It was so good to have them here, and my mom recently emailed me to say that she’s going to try to do volunteer adult ESL literacy tutoring a couple of times a week.  For my dad, being at school here was not a huge change from being at school all day back home (he’s a middle school principal), but for my mom, going to school here and helping us with reading groups made an impact on her and she’s realized that helping people learn to read is something she’d like to do.  She’s a natural teacher and so good at communicating with an enjoying all kinds of people, so I hope it works out for her.

 

Since we were staying at this comfortable hotel with a free, huge, scrumptious breakfast (and we found out it was waffle morning, even), we opted for a noon shuttle to Guatemala rather than the early one.  We had a relaxed morning full of food and reading and lazily watching the hotel cat that reminded us of our Hela back home, and then we packed up and met our shuttle, a minibus/van that was not surprisingly packed full of other tourists.  Our plan was to get off at Guatemala City around 4 and then catch a bus to Xela, our first Guatemalan destination.  Well, many unnecessary stops later, including van changes (why not just change the drivers?), 20-30 minute bathroom breaks, food and drink stops, and traffic jams, we finally reached Guatemala City around 7, and after much debate and frustration between the two of us, we both agreed to just go on to Antigua and find a place to spend the night there instead of catching a 5 or 6 hour ride to Xela.  We thought it might be hard to find a place to stay in Antigua since it’s notoriously booked up and crowded all through Semana Santa, but as soon as we walked near the park with our backpacks, we just followed the first guy who yelled, “hotel??” at us.  He took us to a pupuseria (place where they make stuffed tortillas), and a lady took us to a back room with a bed, set us up with a TV for Aaron to watch basketball, and gave us the key to the room.  Not the most luxurious or spacious place (more like a large closet with a bathroom attached, and no windows), but hey, it was cheap, and it was just one night.  We found a place to eat some delicious and artfully served soup (it had been awhile since we had been somewhere where presentation mattered), and strangely enough, mojitos were the cheapest drink on the menu—cheaper than water or coke or tea or anything else, so we had a little happy hour. 

 

We got up early on Monday so that we could get to Xela with enough time to explore the city a little bit in the afternoon.  At the bus station in Antigua, we bought the most delicious sandwiches on fresh crusty bread, with beans and egg, lettuce, avocado, and Aaron’s had chicken.  Yum.  We needed our energy, too, because we had to stand for a good hour or so in the bus aisle since there weren’t enough seats.  The bus attendant brought Aaron a bucket to sit down on, eventually, which was nice of him, and on top of that, he was gracious enough to give up his cushion taped to the floor at the front of the bus for me.  It was actually probably the nicest place I’ve sat on a bus here, because the windows up front are so big that it’s like touring the countryside in a big bumpy bubble with nothing blocking the view, nobody screaming into their cell phone, and out of earshot of the people getting on the bus to sell things or preach about Jesus, the evils of saturated fat, or missing limbs.

 

That was a fast bus ride, and it dropped us off on the highway outside of Xela in about half the time we were expecting—you just never know.  I wish I could have taken a picture of our taxi without being completely rude; it really looked like it had been to the junkyard and back again at least a few times, and the driver had to hold two wires together to start it.  Xela was the first place we’ve ever tried “couch surfing,” but it worked out really well.  If you don’t know what that is, it’s an online network of people that agree to host out-of-town visitors.  It’s kind of a social networking thing, where you can just say you will meet someone for coffee, show them around, let them stay with you, etc.  You contact the people you want to stay with beforehand, and then they respond and let you know if they can host you.  We put our house up on the site, and we’ve gotten a few requests, but they’ve all been for times that we’re gone or we already have visitors.  We’ll see if anything works out before we leave, but I think it’d be fun just to meet some different people while we’re here and have plenty of free time to spend.  Anyway, I’m sure it could have its awkward situations, but it’s free, it’s easy, and you can get a feel for the people on the website just through communication and their profile and seeing what others have said about them, so I’d recommend it if you’re looking for cheap travel. 

 

So the place that the taxi brought us to was this guy’s house on the edge of the city.  His name is Juan, and he’s young (I’d say 20-22), but he owns a café and a language school, so he keeps busy and he’s really used to foreigners.  He drove us downtown, and we walked around a food festival and took advantage of free samples, got some falafal sandwiches, some cold chocolate drinks, and kind of drooled over some of the chocolate blocks for sale, but didn’t buy any because they were too expensive.  I only say this because it is important later.  We walked around the plaza, scoped out the colorful markets, the church, and the people making bouquets out of palms or grasses and all sorts of beautiful flowers.  

These Easter-bouquet ladies were everywhere arranging flowers to sell:

There were people everywhere, but the women in their traditional dress just made the whole scene alive.  Everywhere we went in Guatemala, with the exception of Antigua, the majority of women still wear traditional clothes—a long patterned skirt, a flowered embroidered blouse, ribbons in their hair, and all of it different colors and slightly unique from the others.  The fabric was for sale in all the markets, but it was pretty expensive, so I guess that most women and girls just have one or two sets of clothes.  Not many of the men had traditional dress, but in some other areas we passed through, they had loose pants made of the same kind of fabric the women’s skirts were made of, a decorated linen or cotton shirt, and a wrap going around their waists.

Here's some older girls in traditional skirts watching bumper-cars...interesting contrast, I think:

We walked around Xela a long time, took our time getting back to Juan’s house, and then went out again to find dinner.  Aaron gave into a Wendy’s burger, and I had a salad made with actual non-iceberg lettuce and apples.  Neither was very Guatemalan, but it was so good to have different options outside of our normal food in Honduras.  We thought we were going to meet up with Juan and his girlfriend later, but it turned out they changed plans and wouldn’t be home until much later (the down side of couch surfing, if the host doesn’t give you a key), so we walked around a bit more and then couldn’t resist another dinner at an Indian restaurant.  We tried to keep our second dinner small, but small by our standards when it comes to Indian food is still pretty hefty portions, so we were stuffed.  We waited around in the plaza after dinner, then grabbed a taxi back to Juan’s house (thankfully, not the same taxi we caught before).

Xela looks really colonial, especially around the plaza.  It felt more like Europe than Latin America at times:

 

The next day, we went on a mission to rent bikes and ride out to a nearby town.  After shopping around, we found a great bookstore that rented well-cared-for bikes and even had a good map to use to get to where we wanted to go.  This was fortunate, because without the map showing the back dirt roads, we would have had to take the highway.  The ride was really tough in some spots because with the lack of rain, the dust was about 6 inches deep in a few places, but we made it to a glass blower’s shop, and the then a town called Zunil with a vibrant market where we grabbed some version of street tacos and a bag of sliced mango.

The market in Zunil:

After the market, we rode up a 5 mile hill to some hot springs.  The ride was exhausting, but the mountains covered with little lush gardens and vegetable farms were beautiful.  The uphill was definitely in the right direction, too, because after a soak at the hot springs, we just had to coast down the long hill, wait at the highway intersection for a bus, and then the bus guy pulled our bikes up on top as if they were nothing, and away we went back to Xela.  We thought they might give us trouble about the bike cargo, but it was only 20 cents extra for the two bikes…well worth it. 

A nice pit stop in the highlands:

The volcanic soil must make this area perfect for flowers, vegetables, and developing impressive leg muscles while tending to them:

 

After the ride, when we climbed into the taxi to get back to the house we were staying at, I just happened to feel a plastic bag left in the back seat next to me, and there was something hard inside, kind of like a couple of big blocks.  I was intrigued, because I figured it was probably some souvenir or grocery item left by a tourist.  Aaron figured out that it was chocolate blocks from the very same shop whose chocolate we had sampled at the food festival a couple of days earlier!  It was too bad for whoever left it, but there was no way they were going to find it again, so we didn’t feel too bad taking it and splitting the spoils of the cab ride with our host.  He made us some shrimp for dinner, and that ended our time in Xela.

 

After several bus rides the next morning, some better than others, and most unbelievably packed full of people with various items in tow, we arrived in Panajachel by Lake Atitlan.  Besides good food, the town didn’t have a whole lot to offer, but luckily, that’s not where we stayed while we were at the lake.  We took a short boat ride to Santa Cruz, and got settled into our room at a pretty hotel by the lake.  Our room was more like a little cabin, but it was cute and cozy and you sure couldn’t beat the view.  The town was up on a steep hill, and the few hotels were along the lakefront, but it wasn’t trashy by any means.  Each hotel offered a 3-course reallllly good family-style dinner each night, so we found the least expensive and just went there every night.  The food was delicious, healthy, and there was a ton of it, and it was great just to go and meet other travelers and talk to people that we would otherwise not have met.  We talked with another couple teaching in Honduras, a lady in her 50s in the Peace Corps in Belize, some nice British girls, and it was so interesting hearing all of their stories.  After dinner, we’d walk along the lake a little bit (it was nearly a full moon while we were there), sit out on a dock awhile, and just take in the view of the lake and volcanoes. 

 

We did a lot of walking during the day, too.  There was another little village just about 40 minutes away along the lakeshore, and we went there several times to go to this little café full of old hippies for a cheap internet connection and for Aaron to do a couple phone interviews with schools.  

A mind-bogglingly long snake of a cactus along the path:

Just a friend we met along the lakefront path:

One day while Aaron was interviewing, I went up into town and found a little “art gallery” that a family had set up.  They explained that they were just getting started and didn’t have a lot yet, but the mother was weaving some really beautiful scarves, one of the daughters made jewelry, and the son painted.  I chatted with them for awhile, and then bought a scarf.  It’s amazing to me how unaffected that little town has been by the development of tourism.  I think that by putting the hotels all down below by the lake, they have been able to keep their town separate and relatively unvisited by tourists (well, except especially pesky ones like me).  They speak a combination of 2 different Mayan languages, and most speak Spanish too, so it’d be a really interesting linguistic study to spend some time there. 

The town of Santa Cruz, nestled in the hills:

Little kids doing manual labor, women and girls in traditional dress, and people carrying bundles of sticks for their cookstoves are all really common sights:

Not a bad view from Santa Cruz:

One morning, we rented a kayak for a few hours and went along the shore until the wind kicked up.   It was nice, but it made me miss our boats back home…a big plastic double is just no comparison to paddling in ours.  Anyway, at least we got out while the water was pretty calm, unlike the next couple of people that went out!  I did yoga a couple of times with a group class near the water in the mornings, too, which was a great way to start a relaxing day.  Our last day there, we did an all-day hike up into the hills behind the lake, past a mini-volcano, through lots of steep cornfields, a windy mountain road (which was VERY scary coming back down with the loose gravel and the sharp drop-offs without guard rails winding down to the lake along cliffs), and finally, to a town called Solola.  

The road back from Solola was almost as much an adventure as the path up the mini-volcano:

Solola seemed dead quiet at first, but we soon found out that everyone was in the center of town at market day.  We were the only tourists there, and again, being immersed in the colors and smells and busy atmosphere of the market was an experience in itself.  At one corner of the plaza, we saw a crowd gathered together and wondered what was going on.  Looking over the heads of people (yes, I was actually taller than most of the people of Mayan descent, and I loved it!), we could see some gambling going on in the center.  One guy would throw this big cow bone, and depending on how it landed, people would make money off of their bets.  So, they were literally “throwing bones,” and it kind of reminded us of the game “Pass the Pigs” if you’ve ever played that.  We lingered an hour or so around the market before heading back to Santa Cruz and our 3-course curry dinner with soup (with the most amazing croutons that they make from homemade bread every night) and orange cake.  I’m so glad that we got to stay at the lake more than one or two days…four days was about perfect. 

 

On Saturday of Semana Santa, we caught a bus back to Antigua, where we had unexpectedly spent that first night of our vacation.  This time, since we had planned on being there, we stayed with another couch surfing host.  Her name is Margaret, she’s in her 50s or so, she’s from Connecticut but she’s married to a Guatemalan police officer, and she has 4 cats and a dalmation.  She was such a lovely person to stay with; we went walking with her up to a park overlooking the city, and we even took her dog out for a walk on our own one afternoon.

The park had a great view:

Even Sasha, Margaret's dog, stopped to take in the scenery:

Margaret and Sasha also took us to the good places to see the Easter processions and the carpets that decorated the streets.  The processions had been going on all week, but the ones we saw that night had a lot of kids swinging smoky lanterns around, a lot of smaller floats carried by people in black robes (after Good Friday, everyone wears black), and one big float with a statue of Jesus on it.  These larger floats can weigh thousands of pounds, and in order to carry them, people pay to sign up at different locations throughout the city according to their shoulder height, and then they go to that place at a certain time to get ready for their rotation to begin.  The carpets that people make out in the streets are made of flowers, pine needles, fruits, colored sawdust, or whatever else people want to use.  The processions last for 12 hours or more sometimes, and there is at least one or two every day leading up to Easter.  Suprisingly, Easter Sunday is really not much of a celebration, though.  Good Friday and the crucifixion are really the big points of the week.

A close-up of  carpet made with sawdust and flowers:

The people that make theirs out of sawdust usually use stencils:

This one is pine needles, palm bits, and flowers:

And the actual processions that trample the carpets:

And here's one of the giant floats, carried by a ton of people and followed by people carrying the generator for the lights:

Since things were quiet on Sunday in town, we took a short bus ride out to a macadamia nut farm.  They have a project going there where they give trees to poor farmers so that they can have a good source of income, and they’ve helped a lot of people out through their work.  I didn’t even know that Honduras was a big producer of macadamia nuts, but apparently it’s up there after Hawaii and Australia, and maybe South Africa.  

Cats are cats everywhere...there must be something theraputic about sleeping on a macademia nut-drying table:

We saw how they are grown, shelled, classified, and we got to taste some chocolate and have a facial and neck massage all as part of the free tour.  We ate some blueberry pie and just had a little hammock time in the shade for awhile, and then went back to town and walked down to buy a special treat:  bagels!!  We went with Margaret to bring her husband some pizza for dinner at the police station.  Being in the police force is different there because most of them work an obscene amount of hours and basically live and sleep in the police station.  If they have families, their house with them is just for the rare vacation days or occasional nights off. 

 

Antigua was great, but the next morning was a stressful one.  We both woke up at 3:30 to catch our 4 am shuttles to different places—Aaron to the airport, and me to Copan as the first step in getting back home to Honduras.  Neither of the shuttles was at the house by 4:20, and after wandering the neighborhood in the dark, we found Aaron’s airport bus.  We asked if they could call the agency or someone to try to contact the Copan shuttle, since no one seemed to be able to find the address we were at, and I didn’t want to stand out alone on the streets of a city I didn’t know at 4:30 am.  The driver said he didn’t have any minutes on his phone, but he agreed to at least take me to the agency where I could wait for the shuttle to come back for me.  At the agency, he opened the door and talked to a woman, and then just closed the door and told me to wait outside, and I watched him (and Aaron, and about 15 other tourists) drive away in the minibus.  Great.  So no one had communicated to me if my shuttle was coming, and no one answered the door when I knocked over and over.  I waited out on the dark street for a good half an hour, until 5:00.  Finally, another traveler showed up to wait for the 5:00 shuttle.  I thought all hope for the early shuttle to Copan was lost, and I’d have to wait for the noon, but then it pulled up and picked me up—an hour late, and in a different location.  At least I was on.

 

Our bus went along fine for about an hour, but then in Guatemala City, it broke down.  We all piled out, some people lied down on the sidewalks and went back to sleep, but I just waited in the bus to see what would happen.  Another shuttle came along (the now-empty airport shuttle Aaron had been on), and we transferred our luggage and the weary passed-out people that belonged on the shuttle, and then we made it the rest of the way with no major problems.  From Copan, I took three more buses that day to get to Gracias and a mototaxi up to Villa Verde around 8, for a total of 15 hours of travel.  Having a selective understanding of Spanish helped me out a lot with unwanted male attention, and the only noteworthy occurrence was when, after hearing clucking sounds for awhile, I noticed that there was a chicken under the arm of the little girl sitting right next to me.

 

This week was a little lonely and boring up on the mountain by myself, but the neighbors checked in on me a lot, and I didn’t feel unsafe at all.  One neighbor, an older man, was concerned that I might not be able to fall asleep without Aaron there, so he picked some really tall grasses (in the lemongrass family, he said) that would make a nice, relaxing tea that could double as relief for toothaches, if that was ever a problem.  He also told me some passages to read in Psalms, and that the angels would be with me.  Another neighbor, who is really more of a friend at this point, came up a couple of times with her son just to chat and bring me some tortillas and beans (can’t have dinner without those!).  It’s great to feel so much a part of the community there, and I think we know our neighbors here better than we did in Beverly, and there we lived in the same building as our neighbors, and we worked at the same school as them!  I hope that whatever we are next year, we get to know the people in our neighborhood.

 

Aaron can write his own blog about his trip back to North Carolina for job interviews, but after three lucky interviews, he got a job offer from his top choice school in Durham!!!  It’s called Central Park School, and he’s going to be teaching 4^th grade again!  So now we both have plans to look forward to when we get back—UNC at Chapel Hill SLP program for me, and teaching at a school that’s a great fit for Aaron.  We’re excited that everything has worked out so well so far, and now all we need is a place to live!  I wish I could be closer to my family, but I’m glad we get to be near Aaron’s parents, and we both have good friends in the area from college.  The only change of plans we have to make is our date of return.  We had planned on traveling a little after school gets out in June, but Aaron’s new school has a year-round schedule, so we have to be back in the States by July 6^th for him to start. 

 

That means we only have just over 2 more months…it will go by very fast.  It’ll be hard to say goodbye here, but we’re looking forward to being closer to everyone again.  Even for those who far from NC, you will be a lot closer for us to visit than you were this year!