(no subject)
Here are some photos from my and Pollita's recent trip to Guatemala. From top: the old colonial city of Antigua; active lava flows on Volcan Pacaya; a baby pitviper (Cerrophidion godmani) on the slopes of Pacaya; sunset over the black-sand, trash-strewn beach at Monterrico; a view of Lago de Atitlan as we descend out of the mountains toward its shores; the view from atop Temple 5 at Tikal; looking across at Temple 1 from the top of Temple 2 at Tikal.
It was a cool, if very hurried, trip. On the flight to Guatemala City, many of the folks sitting around me couldn't fill out their immigration cards, presumably because they were illiterate; the flight attendants had to do it for them. This was a somewhat sobering introduction to a country still mired in poverty and struggling through the violent legacy of a three-decades-long civil war.
But it's a beautiful country, and the people were almost all friendly. Except for the addled soul who tried to steal Pollita's water bottle in Santa Catarina, and the bus ticket-taker who tried to rip me off on the way to Antigua. And all those schoolkids in Flores and Santa Elena who have nothing better to do than yell crass inanities from their speeding scooters at Westerners walking down the street. These boorish few were more than redeemed by the likes of Manuel, a 60ish fellow who took a paternalistic shine to me on the long bus ride from Puerto Barrios to Guatemala City, during which I grew more and more ill. He bought me lunch (over my strenuous objections), offered up his threadbare jacket to quell my increasingly violent shivering, and shared a cab with me to make sure I caught my next bus all right. He was a top-notch guy, and I wish him and his ailing mother well.
Pollita and I feel we gleaned a thing or two about the Guatemalan national character during our time down there. Such as: those people love to eat chicken, even at ridiculous hours. While we were waiting to board our early-morning flight from Guatemala City to LA, we noticed a lot of people carrying plastic bags containing large cardboard boxes. On these boxes was a picture of a smiling chicken gleefully offering up a plate of his own kind to anyone with the local equivalent of $2.50. These folks were buying huge serves of fried/roasted chicken at 6 in the morning. We counted between 16 and 18 people with said foodstuff. One older fellow opened his box up and delicately wafted the delectable aroma around the airport lounge, perhaps in a sponsored attempt to entice us to buy. So a bunch of people boarded our flight with these chicken boxes, and as we were disembarking in LA, we saw a fair few still carrying the plastic bags, the cardboard now absolutely sodden with grease and condensation. It seemed pretty gross to us at the time. But fair play to the Guatemaltecos--we didn't get any free food on the flight, so they were really planning ahead.
Pollita, Audrey, and I then had three days in San Francisco. We pounded the pavement, ate some high-quality fudge, did a lot of op-shopping, saw the sea lions at Pier 39, finally got some squish pennies for that demanding bastard Seb, mixed with hippies old and young at the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair, and saw Cake (and the last half of Missy Higgins's last song) for free in Golden Gate Park. Pollita has pics, so she can, and should, elaborate. We had a good time. But now Pollita is gone--we've finally given her back to Amy--and we miss her dearly. I guess we'll just have to go back to Oz before too long to see her and all the rest of you bastards...