dare2go

Lake Atitlán Impressions


Stall in Solola selling woven fabric

Continuation from < Page 1 < !

• And if that's not enough colour we are in the last weeks of an election campaign. Each and every political party is trying to grab attention with unique bright colour combinations (it looks like "green" or "orange" might win the presidency on the 9th of September). Roads, even outside settlements, are lined with colourful posters on every power pole and tree, long strings with rows of small plastic pennants in party colours criss-cross the streets and narrow laneways (our roof air conditioner has cleaned up a few of them already), almost every decent size rock along the highway is painted with party logos, and so are the concrete gutters, bridge pillars, tree stumps, guardrails, and again a good number of private houses.
But all of that still doesn't seem to be enough, so everywhere you see cars decorated with flags and posters advertising a particular party, and every second one of them has 2 or 4 huge megaphone-style speakers on the roof blaring out loud music and party slogans. We first encountered this form of advertising in Mexico, where almost all trucks, delivering purified water or bottled gas, were carrying large speakers playing their particular jingle over-and-over. Here with the upcoming election it seems to be much more prevalent.

• Another group which is well aware of the power of loud advertising are the "chicken buses"; their driver's assistants are hanging off the ladder at the back yelling out the destinations at every stop, supported by loud horn blasts from the driver [ Link to a small sound snippet - wav file 320 kb ]. To get more passengers is not the only job for these guys: they also try to squeeze you in through the back door (the original emergency exit), climb the roof rack to store luggage, and collect the fares.
Chicken buses are old US-american school buses which serve here almost all short to medium destinations. In the States I was always wondering why they still build these old-fashioned looking buses, but with such high demand for them as used vehicles - why change their look? Some are still in the original yellow, but most are painted in 6-10 different colours, adorned with coloured lights, strips of chrome, and in some cases chrome swans, horses, or other figurines, and of course colourful lettering giving them a fantasy name, like "Golden Moon" (La Luna d'Or) or "Flower of the Landscape" (Flor Del Paisaje), and showing their routes. Inside they pack at least 6 people into each row, and the roof carries everything from cardboard boxes, to market baskets filled with vegetables, to bicycles, to furniture. We watched one driver's assistant arranging large wooden cupboards on a roof rack whilst the bus was travelling at highway speed through the rain.
On the road these things are often frightening: they always drive as fast as possible, overtake anywhere, cut corners like they own the road, pass you and then immediately pull to the side of the road to pick up another passenger, and then take off without watching their mirrors - but don't worry: all their lights are always flashing so you can't say you haven't been warned... Still, in most cases we fear the long distance buses more, because these guys are outdoing all the chicken buses on the road. We are quite often glad to be travelling in our own car instead of handing over our fate and lives to public transport.

• Unfortunately fuel is rather expensive here in Guatemala, so the vast majority of vehicles are Diesel driven, even many of the few privately owned small sedans and pick-up trucks. The quality of the Diesel seems to be very low, and maintenance is probably limited to the essential, so almost every vehicle is blowing huge black clouds of Diesel soot, sometimes so thick that being behind them we lose sight of the road... The altitude doesn't help either, so (to a degree) our truck is joining the locals with its black fumes every time we accelerate up a steep hill or change gears.
It's quite often disgusting to walk along the side of the road and have a bus or truck accelerate next to you, because the thick black cloud makes you choke. But then the locals are building their houses closer and closer to the edge of the road, because that way they gain a little more space. Yasha saw a photo of Panajachel's main street some 30 years ago, and it was almost twice the width of today. That's why today we struggle with the width of our (relatively small) truck camper in these towns: the houses are as close as possible to the edge of the road, leaving hardly any footpath, and then almost every newer building has concrete ledges, balconies, or full room enclosures jutting out into the road on the second floor - all these overhanging structures are lower than the top of our camper roof. So we, like all trucks and buses, have to squeeze slowly through those narrow alleys blowing our Diesel fumes into open shops, restaurants, house doors and windows - that can't be a healthy living environment...

• Despite these living conditions, in relative (or real) poverty for many, and with smelly smoke and ever present noise, people in general seem to be rather happy. Daily we encounter friendly people, always helpful and ready for the next giggle or laugh.
The other day we visited the annual fiesta in Sololá and felt a bit like we were intruding on the amusement of the locals from far and near. Everybody looked like being dressed up in their "Sunday Fines", streaming into town from all directions on the back of tightly packed pick-up trucks. The children were particularly enjoying the outing and all the amusements and sweet stalls it was offering. It was almost unbelievable to see the shiny eyes and laughing faces of the kids on some of the primitive rides, like hand-driven tiny merry-go-rounds or ferris wheels. Yes: hand-driven! The guy, who runs the ride, actually pushes it on by hand and stops it by hand - no motor, no brakes, just well greased bearings and muscles. In most other countries kids would laugh at such rides, not on them... But technology is slowly taking hold of these amusements, too: the merry-go-rounds with large flashy looking plastic cars were much more popular than the ones with oversized cartoon animals going in circles. Some clever ride owners countered this tendency by mounting little plastic steering wheels on the heads Pooh and his animal friends.

• In developing countries, like Guatemala (or other parts of Latin America or Asia for that matter), it's always amusing to witness the battle between age-old tradition and the advancement of new technology. For example, most women here are still dressed in their traditional clothes with richly embroidered blouses. Particularly the older generation of females always keeps their money purse inside their blouse, so every Quetzal 2) they pass on comes straight from their heart (or breasts, whichever way you want to look at it). But you wouldn't believe how many times we have now watched a woman fingering inside her traditional blouse - not to get her purse out, but a shiny new mobile phone... The cell phone coverage here, as in Mexico, seems to be far superior to what we've experienced in the USA or know from Australia.

• I feel so tall here! More so than I ever have in Asia, although people there aren't tall either. Here some older people are almost dwarves, certainly not more than 150 cms of height. Yasha said the other day (with all respect) that some of the bent-over old persons along the roads look like wandering scarecrows.
At markets all the tarps and strings are far too low for me, so with every step I have to look down so I don't trip over something or run into a child, and I have to look up that I don't get caught in a string spanning a tarp from one side of the street to another. Sometimes even doorways are too low for me, and at of one of the ATMs here in Pana I have to duck my head for a concrete beam right in front of its door.
Last week we went shopping for a simple plastic funnel, and finally found one of the right size in a shop near the market. The shop was run by an elderly couple, both probably in their 70s, who were extremely friendly and pleased to find that we actually could communicate with them in our basic Spanish. The guy reached up to maybe my (non-existent) bi-ceps, and the funnels were on the top shelf, just above my eye level. When I got the entire pile down, picked one, and put the rest back onto the shelf, I heard him let out an admiring "wow". I could have probably got a job there stacking the top shelves...

• Finally: is it clever town planning or dark humour that the local fireworks shop is in the same compound as the fire station?

I could go on with a few more anecdotes, but I'll have to leave a little for Yasha's next chapter, which will also cover our Border Crossing #12½ (that's our trip up to the Mexican border to re-new the car permit).
Anyhow: I should be learning Spanish instead of sitting in front of "la computadora" (which btw is "el computador" in Mexico - you figure).
 

2) Quetzal = the local currency


 
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