Sunday at the lake
This morning I awoke to my last day where there are tourists before I head on to the highlands. It is Sunday, but because I am in a lake town that is not particularly devout (based on appearances) I didn't plan to go to church. Instead, lying in bed I read a few entries from Devotional Classics, namely John Calvin, Blaise Pascal, and Thomas a Kempis. Lightweights, I know.
Eventually I wandered down to the lake for a stroll, and in doing so I passed a group of people under a tree, singing. I kept walking, and when I got to the end of the easily walkable shoreline I turned back and when I came upon this group again they were all standing up and reading Scripture in unison. I went ahead and stuck around for the sermon on the beginning of Jesus' ministry from the book of Mark, which in Spanish is of course San Marcos, which happens to be the name of the place I'm headed tomorrow. I followed along in my ESV pocket Bible as the pastor spoke from his Spanish version. Maybe it just struck me this way as a naive, enamored outsider, but it seems to me that despite all the theological training and meeting facilities and conferences and books and padded seats at 72 degrees that we tend to enjoy as normal parts of our church experiences, the congregation of the Pentecostal Church of God in Panajachel had a lot less cultural baggage to sort through today to get to the heart of the gospel than would have a church I consider normal back home. He spoke of Jesus, the son of a carpenter whose name wouldn't have meant anything to anyone in the city, who is therefore introduced by Mark as the Son of God. He spoke of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness and when the pastor pointed up at the steep hillsides surrounding the lake to make his point, I think the people got it in a way that might normally escape us. And I skimmed ahead to the passage they'll cover next week: Jesus making 'fishers of men'. Wow.
This afternoon I spoke on the phone with my contact in Sipacapa, who didn't immediately seem to understand who I was, but after repeating my name a few times, saying I am the son of Pablo and Susana, he got it. But it had me worried for a moment, since a lot is riding on this guy. As it turns out, he will be driving to San Marcos first thing Tuesday morning and will give me a ride to Sipacapa in his car, thus relieving me of the stress of wondering if there is any sort of mass transit system in those parts.
So that's it from here. Tomorrow at 7am I catch a ride to Quetzaltenango, where I hope to then find a bus out to San Marcos wherein my stuff will not be stolen and I will not have to deal with the smell of chickens. But if chicken buses are the only option, then by golly, chicken bus it will be.
Guatemala, day two.
Last night, after writing up my little ditty about the day, I ate dinner, enjoyed a nice phone call with a certain young lady I happen to think quite highly of, and then went ahead and got a solid ten hours of sleep - which not even the pulsing beats from the dance club next door was able to stop.
This morning after discovering that ¨huevos fritos¨ is precisely the kind of egg I find disgusting, I set out around town with my camera and a photocopied map of the city. I visited Capuchinas, a convent in ruins which was an old family favorite whenever we were in Antigua. May the record show that mannequins of nuns - both dead and alive - have the exact same effect on me now as they did then. Basically, they freak me out. No need for them on this planet. At all. Period. Yes, I am a 26-year-old grown man, and I am freaked out by mannequins.
The one other place I wanted to be sure to visit in Antigua for old time´s sake was Doña Luisa´s bakery. It is just a fantastic little place with a courtyard filled with more Europeans than you could ask for. And they also make amazing bread. I remembered the raisin bread being really good, but lo and behold, ¨raisin¨is not in my Spanish vocabulary, or at least it wasn´t this morning, so I settled for two croissants. Can´t go wrong with croissants, right? Wrong. Who makes meat-stuffed croissants, seriously?? Doña Luisa, apparently.
With the time remaining before my shuttle to Lake Atitlan, I wandered into a couple of churches. In one of them there was a sign about obtaining ¨indulgencias¨ but only one per day. In the other, a wedding was taking place and the priest was really letting them have it about the significance of the commitment before he´d pronounce them man and wife. It was a strange scene: priest raising his voice and waiving his arms; couple standing quietly; kids smacking each other and laughing a few rows back; tourists taking photos of statues lining the sides.
I booked my ride to the lake on a shuttle (minivan) through a guy I met at the hotel named Oscar whose company, appropriately enough, is called Oscarito´s Travel. The van was supposed to arrive at the hotel at 12.30pm and Oscar showed up a few minutes beforehand, saying the van was on its way. We waited at the front of the hotel for it to arrive, and so we chatted. And chatted. And chatted. For an hour. He asked about Nike and Reebok and Trek bikes and Toyotas and told me about his travel company and told me about the underground tunnels that were built for the nuns but that are not open to the public today because of both a lack of oxygen and an abundance of bats. He also asked if I was into astronomy, and when I said ¨not really¨ he let me know that according to YouTube an asteroid ten times the size of the earth is going to hit us. Basically, we talked for a really long time. Finally I did get on that shuttle and sat in the back between a couple of middle-aged women, who talked for a while with the elderly woman sitting ahead of us who for the past four years has lived with her husband on their sailboat which is currently docked at a marina on the Rio Dulce, which is quite nice because they have a pool there and they can drink martinis. The nature of conversation by my fellow travelers would have been markedly different had I chosen to ride the chicken bus.
So here I am at Lake Atitlan in the town of Panajachel, which is a hub for both short-term tourists and long-term hippies. The hippies, from North America and Europe, are mostly left over from the 60s and 70s after which being a hippie became a lot less socially acceptable than it still is here. Plus, there are less beautiful places to settle. Aldous Huxley, a famous writer dude, narrowed it down to Lake Como in northern Italy and this place for distinction of being the most beautiful lake in the world. He went with Como, apparently, because Atitlan was too overwhelming for him with its volcanos and flowers and vibrant indigenous cultures. Having visited Como a few years ago myself, I can objectively report that Atitlan takes the cake, volcanos and all.
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