There are some in the Flickr album.
By the way, I've been meaning to say this: Our connection here sucks, so I have to shrink and kill all of my pictures, which is why they're so crappy on the site. If you see any you'd like to have (for your desktop, etc, mom and dad) let me know which one and I'll email it to you full form.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Puchica
The rain is like clockwork. Starts between 4-5, ends at 8. Every night. The hardest downpour is always around 7.
On Saturday we did something. I can't remember. One part involved going with Ben and crew to the travel agent to pin down the cost for a trip to Tikal. Hugh and I really wanted to go, but couldn't decide till we knew how much. We were kind of expecting $100 american. It turned out to be $300, so we had to back out. $300 is more than a month of living here, and it came down to the realization that if we went to Tikal, we'd be coming home a month earlier that we were hoping. So that went down the drain.
Sunday they wanted to get some video footage of this coffee cooperative in Rethaleleu (I cannot pronounce that) for part of, or a different, I'm not sure, documentary. Ben and Marvin up front, Summer (the biologist from the science museum) and Tony (the filmer) and his equipment in the second row, Hugh and I in the bed of the truck. It was a gorgeous day with blue skies and a warm wind, so we were more than happy to absorb some vitamin D in the back, even if it did mean grinding some of the bones off our butts on the bed-liner. We got to witness up close the change in the foliage from Highland shrubbery and pine trees to lowland tropics. On the way down the mountains, we passed within close view of a really grand and pointy inactive volcano, with a smaller attachment below it, which seemed to be smoking. I kept thinking to myself "what farmer would be burning off farmland in the rainy season? and what farmer would plant anything on the tip of a small mountain? Oddballs." An hour and a lot of miles later, we end up on a thin road in the middle of sugar fields, staring straight at these two mountains. We're facing backwards in the the back, so we don't why but the truck stops, Tony gets out with his camera, and Summer yells back to us "There's a volcano erupting!" and we look up over the cab, and sure enough, the little smoking mound has a plume of thick gray smoke rising out of it. It was just a "burp" as Hugh called it, nothing like orange lava or ruined country side, but pretty wild none the less. So after we packed it up and got back in and headed out once again, we made it through this odd landscape of cobblestone roads and wild impatient flowers to the top of a large hill where the co-op is located. Yes, mom, impatients actually grow somewhere in the wild, not just flower beds! And they were all over the place, little squarish bright pink blossoms all over the ditches beside the road. Adorable. When we got there, there was some commotion over the video camera.. apparently they didn't have any warning for filming (Claudia's job) and they wouldn't allow it on the spot. So. No coffee plantation for us. We observed some stuff around the place, they process pure water and nuts as well as coffee, and have a little hotel up there for eco-tourists. Mostly students from the spanish schools in Xela. We managed to get some interviews with the staff, and heard the story of the co-op.. It used to be owned by a Patrone who basically owned all the people on his land as well as the plants. All their rent and food were taken out of their pay, and he could easily kick a person out of their job, house, life very easily if he wanted to, and apparently made a habit of it. After the coffee industry hit bottom years ago, he couldn't afford to pay his workers for over a year, yet continued to work them. Something happened where he tried to sell the land and skip out but the community took him to court for their owed wages, at which point he filed bankruptcy. So the land got funneled down to the government, which also couldn't or wouldn't pay them, and finally after years, the people were able to win the land they worked as a settlement for the wages they were owed. So this is where it came from. That system, by the way, is how the great majority of coffee plantations (and many other crops) are run. Jairo was telling Hugh that he was once touring a finca where the manager was giving a tour of a certain room, and the woman who worked there came in. The manager introduced her to the group "this is susie, she shell the beans!" and they walked out, and the man locked the door closed behind him. One of the members of the group asked why he locked her inside, and apparently his reply "her son is sick. We don't want her leaving work to go check on him." so there's that.
After we ate lunch there at the hotel we got back in the truck and Ben asked if we'd like to see the ocean, since it was pretty close. Yes was the answer, so 45 minutes later we're standing on a beach with very black sand and very many Guatemalans in speedos. This wasn't a tourist beach, it was definitely a Guatemalteco beach. We got a lot of leers. If it wasn't for being a young woman, it was for being white. I didn't like it there too much. At one point along the road, riding in the back with Hugh and Summer, who is prone to violent carsickness and joined us for a while, a man at a bus stop said in unnatural english "yuuu white bitches." That was about all I wanted of that place.
On the way back, it was gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous cloudy cooling off oh shit. Rolling, violent looking black clouds surrounded over our heads, and out on the flat distance of the sugar fields we could see bolts of lightning and rain miles out in the distance. It spat some angry drops at us, but we somehow, through luck and Marvin's driving abilities (yes, I believe that Marvin is such a good driver, he can avoid thunderstorms on a completely straight road) missed the thunderstorms and came out on the other side of the cloud, all of the noise and light staying towards the west. Unfortunately, and to our great and tragic sadness, we came directly out of the afternoon thunderstorm and instantly into the evening clockwork rainy-season-you-knew-this-was-coming steady downpour. We hit that right as we hit traffic. So Summer and Hugh and I camped out under some ponchos for a good hour as the asses behind us continued to honk, though it was clear, as in all cases, honking was not going help the situation whatsoever. We weren't, at least, the only poor idiots huddling in the back of a truck. We were in Guatemala after all. Eventually Summer deserted us for her warm and still empty seat inside, and Hugh and I huddled in our wetness alone. It would have been a little easier if we hadn't soaked the lower parts of our pants already in the Pacific Ocean. There was hardly a reason to even try to stay dry. Not like some little ponchos in the swimming pool of a truck bed are really going to do much anyway. Finally, and with many hours behind us for one mile, we sped out of that hellhole and back up the mountain, where we traded the evil of rain for the evil of car exhaust. One truck after another after another after a bus was passed, each one killing more and more of my precious remaining brain cells. And then it was dark. And cold. And wet. And windy. Sorry, I tried not to complain much during the ride ("Hey! Wow! Isn't the scenery beautiful at dusk!?") but now I'm thinking back on it and BOY DID THAT SUCK. I will say that was a defining experience in my trip though. There's nothing like being able to see the landscape without glass between you and it, and going through it after the sun went down really was spectacular. The ghosts in Guatemala, when they're not wandering around after an earthquake, stay in the cloud-stuck mountains outside Almolonga. That's a fact. There's no other explanation for those puffed white clouds, just sitting in the air right outside the tips of the trees. No billowing or shrinking or even any of that licking that fog is wont to do. Just suspended as if on wires. Plus it had that reflected glow of gleaming whiteness that was missing in the thick dense farm and forest. The houses didn't even possess the life that the clouds did.
When we got back, damp and shivering, I took what felt like the hottest shower of my life and got in bed. Since then I've had some nasty allergy problems. I know all the exhaust stripped out the back of my throat, and I guess it's either the rain or new sensitivity that's got me now. bah! I'm sitting here with a tissue shoved in my left nostril right now! Anything to prove a point.
Enough for now. Later I will do some more art ranting.
On Saturday we did something. I can't remember. One part involved going with Ben and crew to the travel agent to pin down the cost for a trip to Tikal. Hugh and I really wanted to go, but couldn't decide till we knew how much. We were kind of expecting $100 american. It turned out to be $300, so we had to back out. $300 is more than a month of living here, and it came down to the realization that if we went to Tikal, we'd be coming home a month earlier that we were hoping. So that went down the drain.
Sunday they wanted to get some video footage of this coffee cooperative in Rethaleleu (I cannot pronounce that) for part of, or a different, I'm not sure, documentary. Ben and Marvin up front, Summer (the biologist from the science museum) and Tony (the filmer) and his equipment in the second row, Hugh and I in the bed of the truck. It was a gorgeous day with blue skies and a warm wind, so we were more than happy to absorb some vitamin D in the back, even if it did mean grinding some of the bones off our butts on the bed-liner. We got to witness up close the change in the foliage from Highland shrubbery and pine trees to lowland tropics. On the way down the mountains, we passed within close view of a really grand and pointy inactive volcano, with a smaller attachment below it, which seemed to be smoking. I kept thinking to myself "what farmer would be burning off farmland in the rainy season? and what farmer would plant anything on the tip of a small mountain? Oddballs." An hour and a lot of miles later, we end up on a thin road in the middle of sugar fields, staring straight at these two mountains. We're facing backwards in the the back, so we don't why but the truck stops, Tony gets out with his camera, and Summer yells back to us "There's a volcano erupting!" and we look up over the cab, and sure enough, the little smoking mound has a plume of thick gray smoke rising out of it. It was just a "burp" as Hugh called it, nothing like orange lava or ruined country side, but pretty wild none the less. So after we packed it up and got back in and headed out once again, we made it through this odd landscape of cobblestone roads and wild impatient flowers to the top of a large hill where the co-op is located. Yes, mom, impatients actually grow somewhere in the wild, not just flower beds! And they were all over the place, little squarish bright pink blossoms all over the ditches beside the road. Adorable. When we got there, there was some commotion over the video camera.. apparently they didn't have any warning for filming (Claudia's job) and they wouldn't allow it on the spot. So. No coffee plantation for us. We observed some stuff around the place, they process pure water and nuts as well as coffee, and have a little hotel up there for eco-tourists. Mostly students from the spanish schools in Xela. We managed to get some interviews with the staff, and heard the story of the co-op.. It used to be owned by a Patrone who basically owned all the people on his land as well as the plants. All their rent and food were taken out of their pay, and he could easily kick a person out of their job, house, life very easily if he wanted to, and apparently made a habit of it. After the coffee industry hit bottom years ago, he couldn't afford to pay his workers for over a year, yet continued to work them. Something happened where he tried to sell the land and skip out but the community took him to court for their owed wages, at which point he filed bankruptcy. So the land got funneled down to the government, which also couldn't or wouldn't pay them, and finally after years, the people were able to win the land they worked as a settlement for the wages they were owed. So this is where it came from. That system, by the way, is how the great majority of coffee plantations (and many other crops) are run. Jairo was telling Hugh that he was once touring a finca where the manager was giving a tour of a certain room, and the woman who worked there came in. The manager introduced her to the group "this is susie, she shell the beans!" and they walked out, and the man locked the door closed behind him. One of the members of the group asked why he locked her inside, and apparently his reply "her son is sick. We don't want her leaving work to go check on him." so there's that.
After we ate lunch there at the hotel we got back in the truck and Ben asked if we'd like to see the ocean, since it was pretty close. Yes was the answer, so 45 minutes later we're standing on a beach with very black sand and very many Guatemalans in speedos. This wasn't a tourist beach, it was definitely a Guatemalteco beach. We got a lot of leers. If it wasn't for being a young woman, it was for being white. I didn't like it there too much. At one point along the road, riding in the back with Hugh and Summer, who is prone to violent carsickness and joined us for a while, a man at a bus stop said in unnatural english "yuuu white bitches." That was about all I wanted of that place.
On the way back, it was gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous cloudy cooling off oh shit. Rolling, violent looking black clouds surrounded over our heads, and out on the flat distance of the sugar fields we could see bolts of lightning and rain miles out in the distance. It spat some angry drops at us, but we somehow, through luck and Marvin's driving abilities (yes, I believe that Marvin is such a good driver, he can avoid thunderstorms on a completely straight road) missed the thunderstorms and came out on the other side of the cloud, all of the noise and light staying towards the west. Unfortunately, and to our great and tragic sadness, we came directly out of the afternoon thunderstorm and instantly into the evening clockwork rainy-season-you-knew-this-was-coming steady downpour. We hit that right as we hit traffic. So Summer and Hugh and I camped out under some ponchos for a good hour as the asses behind us continued to honk, though it was clear, as in all cases, honking was not going help the situation whatsoever. We weren't, at least, the only poor idiots huddling in the back of a truck. We were in Guatemala after all. Eventually Summer deserted us for her warm and still empty seat inside, and Hugh and I huddled in our wetness alone. It would have been a little easier if we hadn't soaked the lower parts of our pants already in the Pacific Ocean. There was hardly a reason to even try to stay dry. Not like some little ponchos in the swimming pool of a truck bed are really going to do much anyway. Finally, and with many hours behind us for one mile, we sped out of that hellhole and back up the mountain, where we traded the evil of rain for the evil of car exhaust. One truck after another after another after a bus was passed, each one killing more and more of my precious remaining brain cells. And then it was dark. And cold. And wet. And windy. Sorry, I tried not to complain much during the ride ("Hey! Wow! Isn't the scenery beautiful at dusk!?") but now I'm thinking back on it and BOY DID THAT SUCK. I will say that was a defining experience in my trip though. There's nothing like being able to see the landscape without glass between you and it, and going through it after the sun went down really was spectacular. The ghosts in Guatemala, when they're not wandering around after an earthquake, stay in the cloud-stuck mountains outside Almolonga. That's a fact. There's no other explanation for those puffed white clouds, just sitting in the air right outside the tips of the trees. No billowing or shrinking or even any of that licking that fog is wont to do. Just suspended as if on wires. Plus it had that reflected glow of gleaming whiteness that was missing in the thick dense farm and forest. The houses didn't even possess the life that the clouds did.
When we got back, damp and shivering, I took what felt like the hottest shower of my life and got in bed. Since then I've had some nasty allergy problems. I know all the exhaust stripped out the back of my throat, and I guess it's either the rain or new sensitivity that's got me now. bah! I'm sitting here with a tissue shoved in my left nostril right now! Anything to prove a point.
Enough for now. Later I will do some more art ranting.
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