Monday the 24th (catch-up journaling, storyline's a bit convoluted)
No use explaining about the way time evaporates here. Sean says to Terese, Time is like a river. When you die you hold your breath forever. In that instant between life and death is the end of the universe.
Climbing the pyramids of Tikal, we watch howler monkeys and wild ocellated turkeys and bands of parrots. The roaring jungle. It is not quiet here, insects are like rasping saws, or the metallic roar of lawnmowers in synchopated rhythm, some like distant phones, others like roaring furnaces.
There are diminutive paths through the jungle made by leaf cutter ants. Outrageous butterflies, toucans and stunning birds with bright feathers traverse the humid air.
At the Temple of the Jaguar, the steep ascent was scary and the descent was even worse. When I looked down, I thought I was going to faint at the top of the Temple of the Jaguar, and fall all the way down to the ground.
I look out over milpias, cornfields and learn that
la canícula (dog days) is their name for Indian summer after Sirius, the dogstar (they, being Indios, it would be silly to call it Indian summer), and cayucos are dugout canoes. So Cayucos in California is the place of canoes. You can hear the work kayak embedded in the Spanish cayuko as well, from caique, related to coracle, and curragh? Convergent evolution or
coincidence?
I never even mentioned Antigua with its one-story buildings and the numerous ruins of churches. The last big earthquake in 1976 leveled most of the town.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo, the first governor de la ciudad de
Santiago de los Caballeros de Goathemalan, (Antigua), once a Mayan capital,
Quauhtemallan (forested land), was buried here. But the church fell down on him. James of the horsemen of the forested land.
When the crater rim of
Volcán de Agua collapsed, the city
(Ciudad Vieja) was was destroyed by a
lahar. The new city,
Antigua Guatemala (got that?) founded at Pachoy, was the capital of Guatemala. But a huge earthquake in 1773 destroyed it, causing
Volcán de Fuego to erupt. The capital was moved to the ruins of another Mayan city,
Kaminaljuyu, and renamed
Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción. Guatemala City too is plagued by earthquakes, but not like Antigua.
We wandered into the ruins of El Castillo (
Iglesia y Convento de la Compañía de Jesús?), the thick walls were two stories high. There are no tall buildings here. It is the land of earthquakes. Fragments of glazed tile glisten like jewels among the rubble. A Humpty Dumpty kind of town.
I think this is La Iglesia y convento de las Capuchinas
Convento e Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragoza
Santa María de Jesús, on the saddle slope of Volcán de Agua, ten miles from Antigua, is called the cantina where the men cry. Not sure why, but ice is gathered from the volcano, perhaps to chill the chicha?
Santa María de Jesús has been overrun by Mormons and evangelists
proselytizing with dueling electric guitars in the plaza. Bizarre. Hard to say which European religion has done the most damage in Latin America.
We climb the steep slopes. I watch the volcano for signs of smoke.
Volcán de Fuego has been grumbling lately. Last major eruption was in 1974. Smoke rising from the summit. Small earthquakes rock the region. The earth is shaking like a wet dog, the churches are the first casualties.
We don't like Antigua, after Panajachel, we make wild plans to escape. All our wild plans to Tikal fall through, and re-materialize. The men go for the package deal, which includes transport and hotels. They have made a decision. Forget about the fine print.
When we arrive at the jungle hotel we discover we been ripped off for over $100 US. John loses his suitcase, there is no hot water for three hours, and we only have three hours of light by generator, and dinner is a dive. We pass a bad night, banks of mist collecting in the treetops, where fireflies continue the patterns of the Milky Way into the darkness of the trees and mist.
The tail of Scorpio is nearly overhead. We have been stung over and over. There is no light pollution here for miles and the stars are numerous and bright like in the Sierras and we are only 300 feet above sea level.
The jungle is cooler than we expected but even still, it takes something out of us, and it saps most of our energy just to explore the rooms. There is so much to see, and there is still so much unexplored.
The lights dim even as I write, the generator threatens to fail and leave us in total darkness. It is really dark here. Heart of darkness. You can't even see your hand in front of your face and there are animals out there who love human bodies. Aside from the mosquitoes who are illiterate, and bite us, no matter how much bug juice we apply. Dengue fever from the day mosquitoes, and God knows what from the kissing bugs who nest in the thatched roofs.
The archaeologist have removed much of the undergrowth, leaving an incredible landscape of pathways. Strange to see all these houseplants are growing wild. Philodendron, liana, ceiba trees, zapote trees for lintels, and chicle, (a wood harder than iron 70 pounds per cubic foot).
Strange foot-long orange millipedes and hummingbirds bathing in puddles.
Yesterday, a hummingbird caught behind the glass door at Lillian and Raúl's place in Guatemala City was nearly inhaled by one of the dogs. I grabbed it to let it go thinking of its poor heart, as Raúl turned gray and sat down. His heart is acting up and he uses enough nitroglycerin to knock out a horse. It absorbs through the skin he feels a bit better.
I immediately fall in love with my friend Donna's cousin Raúl, but John sees him as part of the ruling class. Perhaps. But Raúl and I get on like a house afire.
Sr. Raúl Moreno shows us his extensive Mayan collection which is larger than most museum collections. I hold a clay pot that is 4000 years old. I play on tiny ocarinas. Raúl and I play a tinny duet on instruments that are thousands of years old. He said that many objects were smashed during the big 1976 quake, and yet nothing on the shelves is protected by glass.
Much of his collection has been extensively photographed and appears in books on Mayan art, and has been loaned to museums. He excavated most of the work himself. They call him Professor Moreno. Sr. Raúl Moreno is an amateur archaeologist who is in love with learning.
Raul shows me a smoking mirror made of magnesite, metal from a meteor, not
obsidian. It is so highly polished, I can see myself. He
sticks a magnet on the back, it's made of interstellar iron, of course.
I can't quite grasp that I'm holding a piece of the fallen stars in my hands.
I am
reminded that in San Juan Chamula, Chiapas, all the saints wore as many
as three mirrors, so that when you worship them, you saw yourself in
their realm. The mirror is at hand.
Later they drive us back to Antigua and we nearly faint from fear with Raúl behind the wheel, his eyesight can't be too good with the diabetes either. I don't know which is more frightening, the guerillas, the Guatemalan Army, or Raúl behind the wheel.
I take very few photos of Indians. I don't like intruding with the camera. Much of what I've seen in Guatemala I'll take back as a memory, rather than a photo. I've done very little writing except to catch up on the events in spurts, and certainly no poetry has stumbled forth waiting to be born. There's so much to absorb.
Huxley was right, this is the most beautiful country in the world, with its remote volcanic lakes, its highlands, and Indians and ruins.
It seems we've moved from one guerilla territory into another. Many more soldiers in the Petén jungle than in Atitlán. They are army. They scare me with their casual pointing of guns. The natives don't seem too alarmed. Or maybe it's a studied calmness. I can barely look at them, and give them a wide berth.
The French girls recount how the army stopped the bus from Atitlán, they made everyone get off the bus and everything was searched. The girls didn't have their passports on them, and were harassed. Moral: don't go anywhere without a passport. It could've been worse. People have been shot for less.
The roadblocks are real, though we've only passed through them, and have never been searched. There are several gates, and roadblocks manned with soldiers who look like they'd be happy for an excuse to test their guns. It makes spontaneous travel a bit pressured. We're careful to stick to the touristed areas.
