The Children's War
I'm still in Antigua, but I'm leaving as soon as I finish this email and heading for Lago de Atitlan. I've been here twelve days, which is by far the longest I've been in one place so far, but I had a good time and progressed quite a bit in my Spanish in the week of lessons I took here.
I wasn't exactly in town the whole time, I did make a couple day trips to Guatemala City. As some of you might recall, when I was a kid, we had a live in babysitter from Guatemala named Dora Cruz. She had a son, Denis, shortly after she started taking care of me, so he was very close in age to me, and was raised very much like my brother until we were about six or seven or so and he returned to Guatemala. They visited once about ten years ago, but after they returned to Guatemala again, we lost contact with them. Well I've been trying, very unsuccesfully, to launch a multimedia campaign to find them. I've written by e-mail and fax to the main newspaper here, but they have not responded. I went to Guatemala City to talk to Channel 3, and they would have done an interview and put me on their special interest news show, except I didn't have any pictures with me. So I figured that the pictures would be old and not that important in finding them, what would be more important would be their names and my story, so I printed up a picture of a random latino kid I found on the Internet and took it back to them another day saying it was Denis. But then they told me the picture wasn't good enough, they wanted pictures of Dora holding me as a baby, and of us as kids together, something that would really tug on the ol heartstrings. Unfortunealy, it will be unlikely that I could get such pictures mailed to me in time. I was able to place a missing person add on TV though, with a picture that looks nothing at all like Denis, so it's a bit of a shot in the dark there. Either way, it's gonna be a pretty hard task, but I'm going to keep writing to the newspaper and just keeping hoping.
So I made the most of my two trips to the capitol since I had taken an hour bus from Antigua to get there. The first time, I headed to the local mall to go watch Lord of the Rings, which was great. The funny thing was, the mall had a Taco Bell! I think in Guatemala, it's kind of trendy to eat American food, but this was going a little far. Taking Latino culture, bastardizing it, and selling it back to them at an inflated price? Some kind of strange cultural mercantilism. I couldn't resist the irony of it all, so I had lunch there. It was exactly the same, even the hot sauce was imported from Irvine, California. But I'm a sucker for irony, especially ironic purchaces, as evinced by much of my wardrobe, so I had to have it. The other day I was in Guate, I decided to check out the central plaza and stumbled upon a street market that was by far the hugest I had ever scene and literally went on for a good fifteen twenty blocks. I thought the capitol wasn't such a bad place as people said, I had no complaints about it.
But overall, I had a very pleasant holiday season here in the georgeous city of Antigua. Christmas Eve was a huge party, which I wasn't really expecting. All the bars, cafes, and dance clubs were packed and there were lots of people partying in the streets, all kinds of parades like the ones where the people where the huge head masks (I blended in real well there), lots of kids shooting off tons of fireworks. At midnight, the central plaza became a battlefield, a children's war, in which kids would light rockets and throw them at each other as well as anyone who was in the general vicinity. I actually got hit by one, which didn't hurt at all, really, but the whole thing seemed pretty dangerous and fun. The fireworks pretty much went on all day and continued on and off at a pretty steady clip until noon on New Year's Day, making the town sound somewhat like Belfast or the Gaza Strip or something. So Christmas Eve, I just hung around the central plaza and in a cafe bar, then headed back to the family I was staying with about 2am, where they were polishing off their second bottle of rum. I joined them for a couple rum and punches and turned in, it was a Christmas Eve unlike any other.
Next day was Christmas of course, and when I woke up I went over and head myself a ceviche and a beer, which is a Christmas tradition and hangover cure, luckily, I didn't have one though (neither a tradition nor a hangover). The ceviche was great and so was the beer, which they put salt, hot sauce, and soy sauce into which actually was a tasty little combo. But I started feeling kind of sad not knowing anyone on Christmas. I didn't think it'd be that big a deal, but I was actually kind of down and just wandered all over town. But then I ran into this English guy Tim, who was a small part in the Zacatecas scene all the way back in Mexico, and it really kind of saved my Christmas to see a familiar face. We had a nice chat over a couple beers.
Most of my time in Antigua, I spent studying Spanish and then maybe going to a bar or cafe in the evening, there's quite a good scene here, it was a nice town. A LOT of travelers, it was kind of funny. Like, in most places, you'd see a traveler and at least give a smile and a nod, if not have a little chat, if not hang out for awhile. But here, there were SO MANY that I think we all felt a little embarassed to be here and it even seemed like we'd all avoid eye contact on the street. It's cool to be one of four or five foreigners in town, but we all felt rather sheepish being one of hundreds.
My New Year's Eve was pretty much like Christmas Eve, little wandering, little drinking, little dancing, nothing too phenomenal, but New Year's Day was great. I was pretty bored on New Year's morning, so I decided to have myself a nice big breakfast. I get into this restaurant bar a little before 1pm and order their "New Year's English Brunch," and sit down with a friendly group of Australian, Kiwi, and English Londoners. I get my food: bacon, toast, baked beans, fried eggs, and an array of three tasty beverages: orange juice, coffee, and a Bloody Mary. I was in a happy place. So I start pounding the hot sauce bottle to get the hot sauce out and on to my eggs. And just by chance, I make a PERFECT smiley face in the yolk of one of them! Holy shit, there it was, a one in a million shot. Two eyes, nose, and great big smile in perfect order and proportion. Now I'm not superstitous, but making a perfect smiley face on January 1st at 1pm has got to be a good sign. I think it's gonna be a good year. I then spent the rest of the day drinking and goofing with the Londoners until about 2am (and we started at 1pm, mind you) going through countless bottles of beer and countless G & T's, just cussing and laughing and being happy drunk off our asses. Great chaps, and they took pictures of me and the eggs with a digital camera which I hope I can send you all very soon.
Next day, I was going to leave Antigua, but I thought I'd check out the volcano after all, because there's a few volcanos around town. The Vulcan Agua is awesome looking. It's the volcano you made for your fourth grade science project where you combined the vinegar and baking soda to make it erupt. I swear, it was the perfect volcano with the sloping sides leading up to a perfect cone on top with a little ring of clouds just below the crater, the one I used to draw when I was a kid, the kind you'd see in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. But the other volcano, Pacaya, is the active one. I thought it'd be a nice hike in the mountains, but when I got to the top it was like I was on another planet. It was all black rock and gravel and desolation, it was amazing. Sulphoric steam poured out from the crater at the top and the wind howled, blowing clouds past like a fog stream and damn near knocking people over at times. Oh, and I could spit like literally fifity feet in this wind, it was awesome. Then, to get down, it was all run and slide down the volcanic gravel at terrifying and beautiful speeds. On the hike I met these two girls from Manhattan, and I thought it was just going to be pleasant traveler chit chat. I've been traveling 3 months now and I'm getting rather burnt out on having the same conversation over and over, where ya from, where ya been, where ya going? So I try and mix it up and just go for broke right from the start and play weird games like trying to see how long I can talk to someone before we find out each others' names. So we didn't find out each other's names until all the way back at the bottom of the volcano, and then they ended up being really cool. One of them was yet another writer and had lots of sound advice for me, and they both had good taste in books, movies, and music, so we made lists for each other and just had a nice time at my favorite cafe over coffee, wine, and beer. Yeah, it's turning out to be quite a great year indeed for the ol' hobo.
Hope you all have good ones too,
-Al
I wasn't exactly in town the whole time, I did make a couple day trips to Guatemala City. As some of you might recall, when I was a kid, we had a live in babysitter from Guatemala named Dora Cruz. She had a son, Denis, shortly after she started taking care of me, so he was very close in age to me, and was raised very much like my brother until we were about six or seven or so and he returned to Guatemala. They visited once about ten years ago, but after they returned to Guatemala again, we lost contact with them. Well I've been trying, very unsuccesfully, to launch a multimedia campaign to find them. I've written by e-mail and fax to the main newspaper here, but they have not responded. I went to Guatemala City to talk to Channel 3, and they would have done an interview and put me on their special interest news show, except I didn't have any pictures with me. So I figured that the pictures would be old and not that important in finding them, what would be more important would be their names and my story, so I printed up a picture of a random latino kid I found on the Internet and took it back to them another day saying it was Denis. But then they told me the picture wasn't good enough, they wanted pictures of Dora holding me as a baby, and of us as kids together, something that would really tug on the ol heartstrings. Unfortunealy, it will be unlikely that I could get such pictures mailed to me in time. I was able to place a missing person add on TV though, with a picture that looks nothing at all like Denis, so it's a bit of a shot in the dark there. Either way, it's gonna be a pretty hard task, but I'm going to keep writing to the newspaper and just keeping hoping.
So I made the most of my two trips to the capitol since I had taken an hour bus from Antigua to get there. The first time, I headed to the local mall to go watch Lord of the Rings, which was great. The funny thing was, the mall had a Taco Bell! I think in Guatemala, it's kind of trendy to eat American food, but this was going a little far. Taking Latino culture, bastardizing it, and selling it back to them at an inflated price? Some kind of strange cultural mercantilism. I couldn't resist the irony of it all, so I had lunch there. It was exactly the same, even the hot sauce was imported from Irvine, California. But I'm a sucker for irony, especially ironic purchaces, as evinced by much of my wardrobe, so I had to have it. The other day I was in Guate, I decided to check out the central plaza and stumbled upon a street market that was by far the hugest I had ever scene and literally went on for a good fifteen twenty blocks. I thought the capitol wasn't such a bad place as people said, I had no complaints about it.
But overall, I had a very pleasant holiday season here in the georgeous city of Antigua. Christmas Eve was a huge party, which I wasn't really expecting. All the bars, cafes, and dance clubs were packed and there were lots of people partying in the streets, all kinds of parades like the ones where the people where the huge head masks (I blended in real well there), lots of kids shooting off tons of fireworks. At midnight, the central plaza became a battlefield, a children's war, in which kids would light rockets and throw them at each other as well as anyone who was in the general vicinity. I actually got hit by one, which didn't hurt at all, really, but the whole thing seemed pretty dangerous and fun. The fireworks pretty much went on all day and continued on and off at a pretty steady clip until noon on New Year's Day, making the town sound somewhat like Belfast or the Gaza Strip or something. So Christmas Eve, I just hung around the central plaza and in a cafe bar, then headed back to the family I was staying with about 2am, where they were polishing off their second bottle of rum. I joined them for a couple rum and punches and turned in, it was a Christmas Eve unlike any other.
Next day was Christmas of course, and when I woke up I went over and head myself a ceviche and a beer, which is a Christmas tradition and hangover cure, luckily, I didn't have one though (neither a tradition nor a hangover). The ceviche was great and so was the beer, which they put salt, hot sauce, and soy sauce into which actually was a tasty little combo. But I started feeling kind of sad not knowing anyone on Christmas. I didn't think it'd be that big a deal, but I was actually kind of down and just wandered all over town. But then I ran into this English guy Tim, who was a small part in the Zacatecas scene all the way back in Mexico, and it really kind of saved my Christmas to see a familiar face. We had a nice chat over a couple beers.
Most of my time in Antigua, I spent studying Spanish and then maybe going to a bar or cafe in the evening, there's quite a good scene here, it was a nice town. A LOT of travelers, it was kind of funny. Like, in most places, you'd see a traveler and at least give a smile and a nod, if not have a little chat, if not hang out for awhile. But here, there were SO MANY that I think we all felt a little embarassed to be here and it even seemed like we'd all avoid eye contact on the street. It's cool to be one of four or five foreigners in town, but we all felt rather sheepish being one of hundreds.
My New Year's Eve was pretty much like Christmas Eve, little wandering, little drinking, little dancing, nothing too phenomenal, but New Year's Day was great. I was pretty bored on New Year's morning, so I decided to have myself a nice big breakfast. I get into this restaurant bar a little before 1pm and order their "New Year's English Brunch," and sit down with a friendly group of Australian, Kiwi, and English Londoners. I get my food: bacon, toast, baked beans, fried eggs, and an array of three tasty beverages: orange juice, coffee, and a Bloody Mary. I was in a happy place. So I start pounding the hot sauce bottle to get the hot sauce out and on to my eggs. And just by chance, I make a PERFECT smiley face in the yolk of one of them! Holy shit, there it was, a one in a million shot. Two eyes, nose, and great big smile in perfect order and proportion. Now I'm not superstitous, but making a perfect smiley face on January 1st at 1pm has got to be a good sign. I think it's gonna be a good year. I then spent the rest of the day drinking and goofing with the Londoners until about 2am (and we started at 1pm, mind you) going through countless bottles of beer and countless G & T's, just cussing and laughing and being happy drunk off our asses. Great chaps, and they took pictures of me and the eggs with a digital camera which I hope I can send you all very soon.
Next day, I was going to leave Antigua, but I thought I'd check out the volcano after all, because there's a few volcanos around town. The Vulcan Agua is awesome looking. It's the volcano you made for your fourth grade science project where you combined the vinegar and baking soda to make it erupt. I swear, it was the perfect volcano with the sloping sides leading up to a perfect cone on top with a little ring of clouds just below the crater, the one I used to draw when I was a kid, the kind you'd see in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. But the other volcano, Pacaya, is the active one. I thought it'd be a nice hike in the mountains, but when I got to the top it was like I was on another planet. It was all black rock and gravel and desolation, it was amazing. Sulphoric steam poured out from the crater at the top and the wind howled, blowing clouds past like a fog stream and damn near knocking people over at times. Oh, and I could spit like literally fifity feet in this wind, it was awesome. Then, to get down, it was all run and slide down the volcanic gravel at terrifying and beautiful speeds. On the hike I met these two girls from Manhattan, and I thought it was just going to be pleasant traveler chit chat. I've been traveling 3 months now and I'm getting rather burnt out on having the same conversation over and over, where ya from, where ya been, where ya going? So I try and mix it up and just go for broke right from the start and play weird games like trying to see how long I can talk to someone before we find out each others' names. So we didn't find out each other's names until all the way back at the bottom of the volcano, and then they ended up being really cool. One of them was yet another writer and had lots of sound advice for me, and they both had good taste in books, movies, and music, so we made lists for each other and just had a nice time at my favorite cafe over coffee, wine, and beer. Yeah, it's turning out to be quite a great year indeed for the ol' hobo.
Hope you all have good ones too,
-Al