Watch This Space

We were on a bit of a dry spell there in terms of events with any reader appeal in Guatemala. But the last week was full to bursting with newsworthy tidbits, often involving pyrotechnic derring-do and ridiculous risks to life and limb. So clear your calendar for some exciting posts to come as soon as the editorial staff gets time to get this edge-of-your-seat stuff ready for publication. Or, at least, as ready for publication as we bother to get anything.

In the meantime, trip out to this picture the staff photographer took of the lights on the balcony above ours.

King of All Media

It was a little while in coming, but the media titans of Guatemala finally realized that my dashing good looks were being wasted on radio interviews. So I finally got my big break, interviewed for a television piece about how if you want a visa to go see Tia Marta in California for Christmas, you need to schedule an appointment now. (Or more accurately, two weeks ago.) It was short and to the point, and I managed to not sound like any more of an idiot in Spanish than I probably would have in English. I don't know what happened to my collar, it was straight when I looked in the mirror and checked my teeth for spinach just before the interview.

The night they said they were going to air the interview, they didn't, and I was a bit worried that they realized how boring talking about visas is. But they claimed that they wanted to maximize the audience for it so they showed it morning, noon and evening newscasts over the last day. Somehow, they managed to squeeze in three minutes of me into the other 57 minutes where they exclusively discuss murders, disappearances, grisly fires at illegal child-labor fireworks factories, and sports.

Stopgap

Sorry we didn't do anything exciting this weekend other than dig ourselves out from under the mountain of Thanksgiving dishes. The photo department has been on a self-assessed hot streak though, so you can cruise over to Flickr for your Guatemala fix today.

Turkey Day

We hosted a whopping 26 people for Thanksgiving dinner in our apartment yesterday. It was a lot of work and the kitchen is still a disaster, but the event was definitely worthwhile.

Despite the fact that The Lovely Katherine was intensely uninterested in touching the turkeys, and that the only time I have ever been in the kitchen during turkey preparation was to grab another root beer from the fridge while Grandma did all the work, we cooked two delicious turkeys. I managed to carve them satisfactorily, although every source of instruction on the topic gives detailed direction on carving the breast and then assumes you know what to do with the rest, so all the dark meat was chopped into bitty pieces. Thanks to our twin-oven, twin-turkey plan, we had the perfect opportunity to do Grandma's two kinds of stuffing, sweet and sage. The sage dressing turned out to be "my" dressing because Katherine was unwilling to deal with sauteed turkey liver. I'm not sure I would have been such a fan of sage dressing had I realized as a child that it involved sauteed giblets. But now I know and it was no less delicious; even though there was no sage to be had in Guatemala, our slight variation was not too far off from the original. We even had leftover gravy.

A good time was had by all. We hope to never do it again.

Photo Department Wins International Acclaim; Cheif Correspondent Quits in a Huff

The snowball is beginning to roll downhill on the Holla photo department's inevitable domination of the world market for tourist photos of Guatemala. The staff photographer's photo of a guy who sells pony rides in Antigua has been chosen for inclusion in the web-based promotional materials for the Friends of World Heritage. The photo is reproduced in extra-tiny eye-strain-o-vision on a flyer about how to be a socially conscious traveller or some such, and also included in a handy .pdf version, in case you want to carry it with you on your travels. (If you want to see the photo in visible size, you'll have to check it out on Flickr or you can see it real big, too.)

This organization, Friends of World Heritage, contacted me after finding my picture on Flickr, with a message that said something to the effect of: "We like your picture and we reckon you're amateur enough to give your work away for free, and we don't really want to be paying actual pro photographers for their work." I looked at their website, which looks professional enough, and it's got an actual UNESCO logo on it, so it must be a legit and worthwhile organization. So I told them that they could use my picture for free as long as I was attributed as the photographer. Which they did, on a separate page (way at the bottom), that nobody would ever look at unless some browser malfunction took them there by accident. (Some Holla readers may recognize another name on the list, as well -- pure coincidence.)

Anyway, since the Holla's prose has never been published anywhere outside of this shabby forum, the photo department has had to receive several lectures reminding them that we are all one team and that they best not let it go to their heads, as 99% of the photo departments' masterpieces languish in obscurity on Flickr.

Of Glorious Workers' Paradise

There are not very many Guatemalan institutions that one would feel good putting a lot of faith in. Without veering into actual verboten editorializing about any particular government or political party or subcompartment of the bureaucracy, I think even those in the employ of the State Department could say that it is a matter of public record that Guatemala's public sector has some serious problems with corruption and inefficiency.

Which is what makes the Instute for Workers' Recreation such a surprise. The Instituto de Recreación de los Trabajadores de la Empresa Privada (IRTRA) is basically a public version of Six Flags. A payroll tax funds a small amusement park, water park, and complex of hotels and restaurants in Retalhuleu, a few hours toward the Mexican border from the capital. We figured that Veterans' Day would be a perfect time for a visit as we'd have the day off and the Guatemalans wouldn't so there would be no lines for the Guate version of Space Mountain. Many in our traveling party had heard that the parks were nice, but I was still shocked.

The hotel was of a quality that is seldom seen in Guatemala, the grounds of the parks were meticulously maintained, everything was clean, and the staff were all friendly and professional. There were no ferris wheels rotated by hand like the ones seen at small town fairs here -- all the rides appeared to involve actual safety equipment and one could ride them with only the fear they were designed to produce, not the fear that they were going to fall apart because they hadn't been oiled in years. At one point when we were trying to walk back to our hotel from the theme park, an employee ran out and yelled to us that we were going the wrong way -- we all agreed that it was perhaps the first pro-active, informative, and conscientious action we'd seen by a Guatemalan public employee in... well, perhaps ever.

We payed nearly extortionate rates at the hotel since we were not paid into the IRTRA tax system, and rates at the amusement park and water park that were high for Guatemala but certainly far less than we would pay for similar attractions in the U.S. The Guatemalans who pay the IRTRA tax get into the parks for free and pay next to nothing for the hotels.

Let's put aside for a moment whether or not building amusement parks is an appropriate public-sector activity or maybe something better left to private enterprise. If they want to tax everyone so that some people can ride a roller coaster until they puke, I guess it's only different from our National Park system in degree. More important was the demonstration that the Guatemalan public sector can actually put together an enormously succesful operation when they want to. If they put the guy who runs IRTRA in charge of the Public Ministry here, who knows what they could accomplish?

Except they didn't end it with "Stairway to Heaven"

Maybe your office has an annual uncomfortable christmas party, and a summer barbeque, but we have both of those, times two, plus one with a DJ and a sit-down dinner: The Marine Ball.

One may suppose that after some time as a diplomat, one grows accustomed to gala evenings of tuxedos (known locally as "smokings") and ballgowns. After enough National Day celebrations and balls and such, perhaps they stop feeling silly. Maybe there is, after all, a point where one can stop referring to such things from the only frame of reference your average young Foreign Service Officer can, i.e. "It's like the Prom. Except with an open bar."

Suspecting that my slight cynical streak may have taken root early, one of my colleagues asked me not too long ago if I had attended the prom in high school. I told her that I had indeed gone to the prom, stinking of irony, because it seemed like such a corny, funny thing to do. She replied: "That's so sad." I suppose she was right, and fourteen years later, we went totally irony-free to the Marine Corps Birthday Ball. I didn't manage to rent a smoking, but I did manage to wear a tie that didn't have any cartoon characters on it. The Lovely Katherine even went out with the girls and got her hair did. Maybe we're older and have learned to appreciate the rare moments that pass by without keeping them at arm's length. Or maybe it's just easier to get enthusiastic about a dance with an open bar.

The event itself is celebrated at every U.S. Embassy around the world (and probably other places that Marines gather) to honor the anniversary of the founding of the Marine Corps. It features a speech by the oldest Marine veteran in the country, the symbolic cutting of a birthday cake with one of those Marine swords, a DJ playing salsa and hip-hop, and (did I mention the open bar?) a couple Guatemalan bartenders who stare at customers blankly when you order complicated drinks like "whiskey en las rocas." It was a fabulous time. With luck, we still have plenty of time before we slide from sneering past enthusiastic and all the way into world-weariness.

Under the Sea

It has once again been some time since I last sent word of events in Central America. This time around, though, it was not pure sloth that prevented your coresspondent from writing, but the presence of family members in Guatemala, and then a week of what I would consider well-deserved vacation in Honduras.

Appetites whetted by this blog, your correspondent's parents came to see Guatemala firsthand, and within a couple days they were cavalierly hailing unmarked cabs off the street and chatting up the locals like long-time residents. Perhaps someday they will publish a report of their adventures here.

After they had a week of soaking in the local color, we decamped for Roatan, Honduras and Anthony's Key Resort, an entirely foreign experience for your correspondent. While accustomed to traversing washed-out dirt roads to visit remote hamlets and sleep in scorpion-infested flophouses, the experience of an all-inclusive resort was uncharted territory. My spirit of adventure undimmed, I bravely agreed to give it a try. Anthony's Key is primarily a scuba diving destination, and the "all-inclusive" tag means not just three squares a day, but three trips out to dive on the reef surrounding Roatan. The meals were all served by waiters who universally refered to the guests as "my friend" and the drinks served by bartenders who referred to the guests as "buddy." There isn't really a beach to speak of, so visitors who choose not to dive would be limited to sipping fruity cocktails by the swimming pool. I can't imagine why one would choose a tropical resort without a beach if diving weren't the goal, but there were some individuals who were fixtures at the pool, plowing through trashy paperbacks or cartons of cigarettes, demonstrating that people like to do all sorts of weird stuff on vacation. For your correspondent, other than a quick horesback ride along the beach, and a quick kayak trip around the little island, I spent the week doing two things: scuba diving and scratching bug bites.

Your correspondent learned to scuba dive three years ago in Vietnam, under the tuteledge of a French instructor, which had the advantage of being able to close one's eyes and imagine being taught to dive by Jacques Cousteau. I'm sure he was a good teacher, but not all his lessons found a permanent home in this pupil. Upon arrival at Anthoy's Key, your correspondent asked for a refresher lesson in diving, to which the dive shop replied that I ought to give it a try and see how it went first. This doesn't seem particularly safe, but we were in shallow enough water that it wasn't really life-threatening when I went under for the first and made it immediately clear that I had no recollection of what any of the tubes or buttons on the scuba gear were for. The divemaster now convinced, I took my refresher lesson and was ready for the week of diving ahead.

As a dive-centric resort, there were a whole fleet of boats equipped for dive trips. Each guest was assigned to a boat from which they would dive for the entirety of the week. So, not unlike joining an organized tour and rolling the dice with whatever other tourists sign up for the same tour, we spent a week diving with, and getting to know, an odd assortment of fellow travelers. Among them were a Catalonian couple who had wetsuits that looked thick enough for use in the North Sea, perhaps to compensate for the fact that each of them appeared to have about 0.5% body fat; a gregarious Georgian (as in Atlanta, not Tbilisi) who had been to Anthony's Key just a month ago and was already back and shared a seemingly endless supply of veteran pointers (e.g. "A lot of people don't realize that the guy at the pool bar brings his own boombox to play music at the pool, and if your camera says your batteries are too low for the camera, they can still power the boombox, so it's a good idea to give him your batteries instead of throwing them away"); a middle aged Sicilian from Detroit who seemed to always have what looked like a matchstick hanging out of his mouth who was probably not a mobster, but could play one on TV in a pinch; and a 57-year-old guy and his 10-year-old daughter from Vicksburg, Mississippi, which young girl was apparently missing school to go on a dive vacation, and seemed a bit young and reckless to be diving, but was mostly harmless, and which older guy was relentless in videotaping every second of his daughter's every dive, and was not shy about bumping fellow divers out of the way to get that Scorcese-esque camera angle he needed of her. They were all fine people, although we certainly spent more time chatting with some rather than others. But there is something a little odd about spending a substantial amount of money to go on a relaxing vacation and for an integral part of that vacation to involve long stretches on a small boat with randomly assigned strangers, not knowing for sure whether they're going to be tolerable or not until about halfway through the week. Maybe we were lucky, or maybe people are always going to be generally pleasant when they're on vacation; one way or another, we lived.

The diving was fantastic, as it would have to be to support a week of hanging out in one place with nothing else of note to do. For nature enthusiasts, diving is like going hiking, except that the wildlife doesn't scurry off and hide when it smells you five hundred yards away. As such we saw at close range sea turtles, moray eels, giant crabs, one seahorse, and an almost infinite variety of technicolor fish. The Holla regrets that we were unable to send the staff photographer along to snap colorful pictures of Blue Flathead Parrotfish and Juvenile Spotted Drums, although having seen the behavior of many underwater photographers, you're not missing that much. Your correspondent was trapped on one merciful brief water taxi ride with a fellow guest who insisted on showing off all the pictures of fish he had captured underwater, and while the staff photographer is certain that he could have given underwater shots a little more compositional interest than this gentleman, he still suspects that most such photos will more often than not just look like a bunch of fish. (Although the staff photographer would like to encourage you to click on the picture above of the fish that lived in the shallows near our bungalow to see a larger version of it.) Even so, we particularly regret not having visual record of the shark dive, when we went 80 feet down with a bucket full of chum, and spent ten minutes swimming within a few feet of 20 circling reef sharks bigger than we were. Your correspondent was still focused enough on not screwing up the whole breathing underwater thing to feel even a tinge of fear from the sharks, who, honestly, weren't going to put the effort into biting off anyone's leg when there was a whole bucket of already-dead fish waiting for them.

That may have been the most compelling story of the trip, but maybe the most amazing view was on the final day of the trip when we dove near the pointy end of the island, where the piscine superhighway passed by. One could look left and right along the reef and see thousnands if not tens of thousands of fish stretching as far as the eye could see in each direction, eventualy merging with the deep blue of the water.

Oneupsmanship

So from what your correspondent can gather, there was much fuss this summer in the U.S. about the clever/fun/campy title of the movie Snakes on a Plane. Well, I think the Guatemalans have won another small cultural victory. Now playing at a theater near us: Serpientes a Bordo. No, you're not missing any subtlety of translation -- it means "Snakes On Board."

Good Job, Chris

I may have mentioned before that one of the remnants of the pampered diplomat lifestyle is our enjoyment of both American and Guatemalan holidays. It couldn't be otherwise, as the Embassy is part of the Federal government, and thus American holidays are not optional, but would grind to a halt without its Guatemalan staff, who require their own little holidays, too. Well, we got another three day weekend this past weekend -- and those of you who live outside of Boston or DC may be surprised to know it was one of the American ones. Apparently government people, not just mailmen/letter carriers and bankers, still get Columbus Day off.

It may be a sign that we're exhausting the three-day weekend options around here that we didn't have a big plan set. We've got some things scheduled for a few months out, but this one was a blank space. It dawned on us that there were several volcanoes around Lake Atitlan that we had yet to climb. So we headed up to Santiago Atitlan, and started asking around about a guide to take us up Volcan San Pedro. The guide services seemed a bit more expensive than we had anticipated, given that being a guide for a Guatemalan volcano ascent basically has only one requirement: Machete ownership -- and not for chopping underbrush, but for scaring off brigands and thieves.

We dind't get everything firmly set the night before. We scurried from the restaurant to our room under umbrella and continued our plot to find a guide by the docks at sunrise the next morning. We contemplated the eight-hour climb as the sound of pounding rain beat on the roof of our bungalow. And then we realized that we hadn't planned our next volcano ascent for October because it's still as likely as not to rain cats and dogs on any given day. As we sipped beers by the sunny poolside and gazed up at the peak of San Pedro enveloped in cloud cover, we saluted our ability to come to our senses, better late than never.

We did manage to avoid a complete weekend of sloth by doing some canoeing. We've taken many opportunities to go kayaking on various Guatemalan bodies of water, but there were no kayaks to be had. So we did a spin around the inlet in a canoe, which had a kind of old-school charm. Which is very important in feeling more in touch the locals, who also use canoes, of sorts, such as the one pictured above. They didn't say it out loud, but you could tell by the look in their eyes, as we paddled by their wood-plank canoes and fishing nets floated with old milk jugs, that we were each celebrating Columbus's contributions to the Americas in our own way, and that they really felt the connection, too.

Banana Republic Indeed

So Chiquita apparently exports just a few bananas from Guatemala. If you don't have your glasses on, click the picture to see it a little bigger. This was docked in Puerto Barrios as we were shooting across the bay to Livingston. When we came back, there was an equally large boat called the "S.S. Dole" at the next pier over.

Time Waits for No Man

At the major crossroads in Guatemala City, where the main highway that takes you to Mexico or to El Salvador crosses the road that would get you pointed toward the main square or even the Caribbean, there is a monument known as the Obelisk. It's runty and more than a little disappointing, and in a few short weeks will be completely overwhelmed by the Gallo Beer Astroturf Christmas Tree. Also, as at major crossroads around the world, there's a big clock. Not surprisingly, when the rest of Guatemala gave up on its futile daliance with Daylight Savings Time, the clock failed to adjust accordingly. (Daylight Savings Time was last attempted five years ago, and when they implemented it this year, every gringo had a story about having to specify whether a meeting would happen at the "2:00, old time" or "2:00, new time," none of which matters, since all meetings start at the "hora chapin" aka "Guatemalan time" aka "20 minutes late," or "whenever we show up." Also common were tales of less sophisticated locals saying something to the effect of "I don't care what time they say it is, I'm still going to lunch at 12:30.")

Anyway, I can't say I changed every clock in our house right away. But then again, most of my clocks were correct at some point recently. The end of daylight savings time changed the giant display clock at the Obelisco from being 19 minutes fast to being 1:19 fast. Your correspondent cannot claim in this public space that this holds any significant insights into the Guatemalan national psyche, and if it did, whether it would mean that someone knows they're all 20 minutes late and is giving them a hand, or that someone just hasn't noticed or bothered to fix the inaccuracy.

Of sleepless cats, spectacles, and America's Most Wanted

It seems like weeks ago that we went to the Rio Dulce for one of those crazy made-up Guatemalan holiday weekends. And in fact, it was. Affairs of State have kept me away from reporting promptly. But go we did.

We were slightly worried about the traffic, as in a pre-election push, the Government of Guatemala has announced that they are widening the major highway heading to the Caribbean to an unheard of three lanes. Luckily, the project was on a predictably inactive.

We arrived without major incident in Puerto Barrios and zipped by ferry over to Livingston, Garifuna capital of Guatemala. We found a place that looked like a good place for some caribbean-style seafood. It turns out that the "Happy Fish" was out of fish, among many other things, but they did have plenty of warm beer, as well as whole crabs and under-ripe platanos for their tapado, and a 70-year-old guy who tried to get the Lovely Katherine to dance with him. After a bit of wandering and soaking in the sights, we hopped the boat for the trip upriver to our weekend destination, the Finca Tatin.

Tatin is a small lodge on a tributary of the Rio Dulce. It's run by a few gringo expats of exactly the type you would expect to drop out and go run a jungle lodge in the middle of nowhere, Guatemala. They had family-style dinners and a fridge full of cold beer for guests, which one could grab and will on the honor system. They also had a sign full of suggestions of things you might want to do to fill your days at Finca Tatin, such as "go for a hike," "swim off the dock," or "do nothing." Good to keep the list complete.

The laid-back attitude extended to the finances. The management apparently doesn't worry about filling up the lodge, telling your reporter, "If we cared about money, you think we'd be down here?" However, on the occasional holiday weekend, it does fill up, as it did on this weekend. The Lovely Katherine and I got the "Alacrán (Scorpion) Lodge," which hadn't been used in a while. You would think these two factors might add up to a lot of vicious scorpions, but rather, the room was occupied by a very friendly cat. The cat seemed delighted to have guests in the room with him, and was eager to cuddle. Very cute. At first. After a few beers from the honor fridge, we returned to our room, tucked in under the mosquito netting, and were promptly landed upon by a cat jumping off the rafters on top of the mosquito net, and onto our heads. We gently removed him from the bed (and from the room). Then we successively less gently removed him from the bed about five thousand more times that night, but he never got the lesson; he just kept kneading at our legs with his claws, through the mosquito net. The laid-back attitude was called into question the next morning, when the staff was surprisingly responsive (if not quick) in our requests that they cat-proof our room. We managed to recover with some time in a hammock the next day.

The first order of each day there was kayaking along the river. The canyon walls are carved from limestone and are impresively steep for a while, plied by fishermen in dugout canoes, and occasionally grafittied by other passers-by. The canyon then opens out into the flatlands, resulting in a big lake ringed with mangrove swamps and tiny tributaries and lagunas to explore. It was gorgeous, but I didn't bring my the staff photographer. I did bring him along the second day, when we paddled back to Livingston, and he got us in trouble by delaying to take pictures of rusted out boats and seabirds near the town. The karmic debt was swiftly repaid as at some point in the day's paddling, I lost my glasses to the briny deep, and looked like a tool wearing my prescription sunglasses the rest of the day, whether inside or several hours past sunset. A hopefully brief recount of adventures in replacing the spectacles will have to wait for the next entry.

In any case, we arrived back in Livingston, one pair of glasses lighter. We walked the length of the town, which somehow seemed much longer than it possibly could be, to arrive at what we had heard was a far superior restaurant, one that unlike the Happy Fish, actually had fish. This spot was a few blocks away from tourist-trap central, on Livingston's beach, such as it is. It's actually across the street from the beach, but the owner carried a table out to the beach for us, perhaps because she didn't want to use the electricity to run her fan. It was a great spot for watching the boats come in and go out again, and the pelicans skimming across the water, and chatting with the local characters. First and foremost among them was the owner of the dining establishment in question. The menu featured local dishes, mexican dishes, and Indian curries; because she was born in Mexico and married in India, she guaranteed at some length that all her food was 100% authentic (and to be honest, for Guatemala, it was pretty darn good). She listed for us, and apologized for not having copies handy, the 19 different guidebooks to Guatemala and/or Central America that mention her restaurant. Best of all, when she discovered that I work at the Embassy she brought out two framed articles describing how she had once had a local gentleman come to her restaurant looking for work, and how she had recognized something fishy and strung him along long enough to realize that she knew him from America's Most Wanted. So she had called the Embassy, which had dispatched a law enforcement agent to come get him; but she warned that he was super-dangerous, so the Embassy apparently sent 10 guys to get him. (Or was it 10 battallions? Or ten bombers and an Iowa-class Battleship? Memory fails me.) She sent her regards to the law enforcement staff at the Embassy, and assured us that she was cooking up some more traps to ensnare the swarms of felons that apparently come drifting through Livingston, stealing innocent kayakers' glasses and such.

Her lengthy tales delayed our departure a bit, and we didn't get to see the Guatemala Dinosaur Museum on the way back. But perhaps it's better to leave some things to be explored and faithfully reported on future holiday weekends.

The Spirit of Equestrian on ESPN

...is brought to you by Rolex. This is, so far, the only ad during Monday Night Football that isn't just a promo for ESPN. Does that say something about the audience that watches American football in Guatemala, or does it just say something about the incompetence of the ESPN Latin America advertising department?

Third Place Is Just the Second Loser

By dint of not getting fired for 18 consecutive months, I've earned a major promotion. You should no longer address me as "Third Secretary and Vice-Consul." That's right, your humble servant is now a "Second Secretary and Vice-Consul." I'm a little hazy on the hierarchy, but I think next is "Ambassador Plenipotentiary" or maybe "Senator for Life."

More thorough updates on recent adventures coming soon.

There is Water Underground

The editorial staff would first like to apologize for another extended break in the publication schedule. We know there is a lot of detritus on the internet you could be wasting your time with, and appreciate your dedication in coming back here from time to time.

Our most recent expedition in Guatemala took us to the Cuevas de Candelaria, which is Spanish for "Caves of Candelaria." The area north of Cobán is pure limestone, and it makes for some amazing landscapes. As reported earlier, there are some amazing cave formations in the region. Our deep inside sources reported that Candelaria, another ninety minutes past Cobán, was the best. Even though we're just barely past the halfway point in our two years in Guatemala, your correspondent is already counting up the three-day weekends we have left and prioritizing which unexplored corners of the region merit a valuable long weekend away. We decided the caves would be worth it, even though the agenda for Labor Day weekend wound up being: Saturday - drive; Sunday - see caves; Monday - drive back. Because your correspondent and his wife both have fully acclimated to the insane driving style of Guatemala, we arrived early and managed to have alittle extra time for relaxation on Saturday.

We stayed at a eco-tourism facility in what might as well be signposted "Middle of Nowhere, Guatemala." Instead, the actual sign read, "Candelaria Ecological and Touristic Complex -- Right 100 meters." There was no road to the right, only cow pasture and jungle. It turns out that the most accurate sign might have read, "Candelaria Ecological and Touristic Complex -- Park Your Car in the Rancher's Driveway, and Start Walking Into the Jungle Here." The walk surely seemed longer than it was, because we were prepared for the Middle of Nowhere, carrying food and wine to last for the long weekend, along with your standard clothes, toiletries, and Boggle. Of course, we arrived at the front gate to find that no outside food or drink would be allowed on the premises. In perhaps not our finest diplomatic hour, we stuffed the wine and other provisions in our packs, choosing to violate their rules rather than walk all the way back to the car. This turned out to be wise, because the food was unsurprisingly expensive and of modest quality, and more crucially, they wouldn't serve you at all outside of the appointed breakfast, lunch and dinner hours. And they had apparently purloined all their silverware (at least they stole it from state sponsors of terrorism).

In any case, we had a fine time relaxing in the gardens surrounding the surprisingly nice accomodations, although to avoid being reprimanded for drinking contraband wine we had to spend a little more time inside than might have been ideal. The clean air was fantastic, and the peace and quite interrupted only by bird calls and the rattling dice preceding each time I crushed Katherine at Boggle. (To be fair, she crushed me at card games, but those are a lot quieter, other than my whimpering.)

So all that is prelude to the actual caves. Unlike the caves in Lanquin, there was no electric lighting and no boardwalks interupting the beauty of the caverns. There were a number of natural "windows," letting in light filtered through the foliage outside. While impressive, your correspondent wasn't sure they were that much cooler than the caves at Lanquin -- but in the afternoon we hiked in to another "ecological and touristic complex" where they offered tours tubing through about a mile-long stretch of river running through the caves. For reasons that I though were obvious, I did not bring the camera on the river-tubing portion of the trip. Apparently not everyone feels this way about taking their camera near water, since our pre-teen local guides asked us why we didn't have a camera along. So, again, you'll have to excuse this writer's lack of flair for capturing the breathtaking, uh, awesomeness of the sights deep inside an underground river where the light would slip in through a small opening far above. You would think that after having a week to think about it, I could do better than that.

Return to Pacaya

Among the very small disappointments regarding our apartment (yes, this is the apartment that is too big for us to clean ourselves, and basically has two entire rooms dedicated to storage of a few scattered items) is the view. We have a lovely view of the hills to the east, but we have only obstructed views of the three volcanoes visible from Guatemala City. However, from our balcony one can see the top of Pacaya, and of late that has included a plume of smoke rising off its peak and even a red glow faintly visible some nights. Having climbed Pacaya and other volcanoes before and having been denied any views of bubbling hot lava, your correspondent knew that the time was right for another trip -- and unlike our recently wed friends Paul and Lisa, we would not be defeated by a pile of dirt.

The climb up Pacaya is actually quite easy, but that doesn't stop enterprising local horse owners from offering rides up the top by trotting up to you on the trail and asking, "Taxi?" It's only an hour or ninety minutes of hiking to the bottom of the recent lava flow, where cows graze near a river of black rock that is a month old but still steaming in places. Another half hour gets you up to where you can see the rocks cracking and tumbling due to the lava flowing underneath. Here and there bright red spots of oozing lava would spill out of the rock, and quickly cool and turn grey. In the center of the river of rock, one could still spot a stream of constantly flowing lava running down the mountain. The staff photographer found it difficult to capture how amazing the sight was, since without the sound of rocks creaking under the stress of heat and pressure, and the motion of the lava breaking through the stones, the volcano looks a lot like a bunch of rocks. Your correspondent's attempt to translate the experience may not be much more artful, but that makes it no less true: Seeing hot lava is awesome.


For many a lava-loving tourist, this was the end of the road, but being the superbly fit and adventurous souls that we are, we continued up the sandy cone to the summit, where views were often completely obscured by the steam pouring out of various cracks in the mountaintop. But the crazy colors and rock formations resulting from sulphur deposits were also noted as "awesome."

The trip back down was much more crowded, as large groups of climbers were gathered near the lava flows. Many American tourists clambered out on the still-cooling lava, often just a few feet away from fresh flows, apparently unaware that in a Guatemalan National Park, unlike Yellowstone, there may not be a sign saying "CAUTION: DO NOT TOUCH BURNING LAVA," or even a fence to protect people from their own curiosity. The Americans were not unique in their foolishness. The majority of the crowd was Guatemalan, and they were doing the same stuff. But your correspondant, who moonlights as an ever-vigilant Vice Consul and Third Secretary, couldn't help but distinguish the two: none of the Guatemalans were going to require Embassy emergency assistance when their five-year-old fell in a stream of burning lava.

A lot of the Guatemalans seemed to be making a day of the short hike, which was a pleasure to see. There really aren't very many safe outdoor spaces in this country, so it appeared that many families were enjoying the safety of the crowds to get outdoors for a day. On the way down, we passed people carrying all manner of things up the mountain. In addition to a couple women wearing flip-flops and carrying babes-in-arms, we saw people hauling up picnic items like plastic grocery bags full of supplies, two-liter bottles of pepsi, and a boom-box blasting out some unidentified soft-rock tune from the '80s in the vein of Jefferson Starship. Those were topped by vendors carrying up baskets of tortillas, pre-made platters with chicken and rice, and one entrepreneur carrying fifty or so bags of cotton candy for sale. Just when we thought we had seen it all, we saw two women carrying between them a platter of souvenir plates reading "Volcan Pacaya" and each bearing what was presumably an actual rock from the mountain. I didn't have the heart to tell them that there were already plenty of rocks on top of the mountain, but I assume they already knew that because they had clearly been up before to carry these very rocks down in order to glue them to the little plates. Even if the letigiousness that would lead to more warning signage isn't present yet, the Guatemalans are surprisigly ahead of us in presenting National Park visitors with convenient consumer opportunities.

Helpless

Yesterday was Guatemala City's Saint Day holiday. I don't know who the patron saint is. There didn't seem to be much revelry in the streets -- it was a pretty relaxed holiday. The important factor in yesterday's observance is that it was on a Tuesday, which is the one day a week that Sylvia comes by. She didn't come this week. This place is a disaster. I have totally forgotten how to operate a broom, let alone the dishwasher. The kitchen floor has a noticeable level of grime. The laundry is piling up -- I had no choice but to wear my 8th most favorite pair of underwear today, which I had totally forgotten existed after going to a steady seven-day rotation. My world is falling apart around me. Why does everything have to be so difficult? Why does fate mock me so?

Your job may suck...

But at least you don't have to carry a table around on your head.

My Day in Court

Your correspondent's current daytime assignment is supporting American citizens who run into trouble here in the Land of Eternal Spring. Mostly, that means replacing passports for long-term residents or those who are pickpocketed or careless. Sometimes it involves more serious trouble, like those who wind up in jail, or worse.

I was recently sent in the role of moral support for an American who was testifying in a murder trial. He had been here once before, but the Guatemalan court wouldn't let him testify because his passport only had one last name on it. Now he was back to suffer through more legalistic wrangling and questioning in what was clearly not his primary language. Because I was there in an official capacity, I probably shouldn't comment on any more details of the case, or present any opinions on the fairness or efficiency of the Guatemalan legal system that could be in variance with the official opinion of the United States. Ahem.

Stating the pure objective facts, it was interesting to see the less-than-imposing courtroom they used, which was your basic plaster-and-flourescent-light office space, with a panel of theree judges, and two lawyers each for the prosecution and the defense each sitting at what looked like 1970's-era standard issue government desks. The lawyers sat on opposite sides of the judges, facing their opponents. The really stylish touch was the sign behind each team of lawyers -- one reading "defensa" and the other reading "Ministerio Publico" (the Guatemalan version of the attorney general's office) -- printed by dot-matrix printer on 8 1/2" x 11" inkjet paper, held to the wall with strapping tape with the glue leeching a yellow cast into the paper, and each bearing it's own Powerpoint-style clip art of a group of men in suits (presumably lawyers). On the Clip-art for the Defense, some long-gone grafitti artist had darkened in the glasses of one of the lawyers, giving their team a certain bad-ass flair.

The event was extremely well documented, with a photographer and reporter there from every newspaper and TV station. They took a few pictures of the accused, and a lot more of the young witness, striking a blow for accurate reporting by thrusting their cameras within a couple feet of the subject's face, in case any of his pores or blackheads becomes a critical detail in the trial. Then they sat around, generally bored, while the judges debated points of procedure, and the prosecution asked a series of background questions. They sprung back into action in unison when the judges announced the decision on allowing the young man to testify even though his passport only had three of the required four names on it (they decided to provisionally allow him to testify for now, but if they could not provide further documentation of his identity soon, the testimony would be disregarded). And when the prosecution asked particularly pivotal questions, the cameras would start snapping, as if the picture of the witness responding to an important question would be substantially different than the hundred other pictures of him they already had.

Several of the key witnesses "could not be located," so the prosecution was given another date in two weeks to get them to turn up, so there was no resolution on this day. So the report will have to end there, possibly to be continued, but given the circumstances, probably not.