Scenes from a road trip

Though I don’t have pictures to share this time, these are some notes I took on a road trip to Panajachel.  I hope the words paint the picture.

Fences made of wire, with the vertical fenceposts made of a branch that then sprouts, becoming a living fence line. 

Corn planted even in the ditches.  Use every corner.  Corn planted up very steep inclines.  Amazing, the work.

Homes.. four to six logs as vertical posts, with bamboo poles as the walls or a sheet of recycled wood or metal, and macas (hammocks) hanging as beds and either corrugated metal or even just palm branches as a roof.  A home like that even built just in the ditch between the field and the road, but grateful for a home.  In another, the dirt floor that the home rests on has been sculpted so that the ‘floor’ is above the surrounding area, allowing water to flow around (not into) the house.  Children picking up a baby’s milk bottle from the dirt and handing it back to her.  A baby’s maca hung from the ceiling – he sleeps in the netting attached inside an oval hoop.  The baby could gently swing and sway … though I wonder when it gets old enough to climb out! 

Hand-made wooden planks, boards.  Hand made! 

Military / army guys at the side of the road with machine guns, staring at cars going by, deciding whom to stop.  (Or were they private security forces protecting a finca or a drug dealer’s house?

A family standing in a field in a circle, holding hands, head bowed.  A private family service?

Trees bushes everywhere.  Pigs roaming, rooting, on side of road.  People on side of road, waiting … for buses, etc.

Mountain/volcano in distance, in grey/purple, with clouds hovering. 

Toyota truck with loads of passengers in back. Everywhere, people loaded into backs of trucks. 

Women, almost all with skirts in the smaller pueblos. A few slacks or pants in cities. 

We drove through one town and there was the most extraordinary line of women in two directions for blocks with brilliant trajes (native dress), lined up with babies in tow.  Apparently this was the day of the month when they could get some financial aid. I deeply regretted not having my camera for that one!

Churches everywhere.  Seems anyone with a Mr Microphone opens a church in their living room. In the busy market there were preachers, well dressed, Bible in hand (though not reading from it), loudly and passionately exhorting people to return to God.

Bicycle with boy, with load of sticks on his back (for firewood). 

Farmacias everywhere.  Pharmacists are not university-trained, though I assume they get some training, and they provide medicines for the community.  They love injections here!  Always an injection for what ails you.

Water – comes in big 5 gallon agua purificada (purified water) which we left on the back porch and filled a pitcher for the house/refrigerator. Or, you can buy a bag of water, maybe 1 ½ cups, and cut off the tip and drink from the corner!  The only problem is that sometimes if the water was stored next to something else with an odor, the water will taste like that thing!  Or, you can freeze the bag to break up for ice later.  Or women with af little tienda (shop) in front of their house, and sell little things… like they’ll buy a big bag with 20 waters, and resell them for a small profit.   

Coca cola signs everywhere …. “Toma Lo Bueno”.  (Drink the Best!)

Gas stations - some look like the US with big overhead canopies and a convenience store inside.

I hate to say it , but there is a lot of trash in the streets of some towns.  Since so many transactions are via small thin plastic bags, you see a lot of those around. There are also a many sugar cane branches in roads in some towns, having fallen off the trucks.

Streets – lots of cobbles streets, or brick.  Tumulos – speed bumps – are common in little towns to slow people down.

Vines that hang on overhead wires  … if you look closely sometimes you’ll see it is a vine with loofahs, like you find in stores to scrub your skin! They grow like weeds here! Just remove the skin and shake out the black seeds, and you have a free loofah!

Stopping by a roadside for a cold coconut.  The lady has already removed the outer husk.  After we tell her we want one through the window, she lops off the bottom (so it is flat-bottomed) and then lops off the top and sticks a straw in! 

Everywhere, women carrying their loads on their heads.  Large laundry-basket sized, or smaller, or sticks, or even just a small bag of water.  Some of them have a hand up to steady the load, but others just carry without an arm up.  One hermana can even carry a load atop her head while she is riding her bicycle!

Fanning with the heat:  woman carry towels or fabric a bit larger than a washrag, and wave it or twirl it in front of themselves or over their babies.  Partly it gives them some air circulation, and partly it is to avoid flies and zancudos (mosquitos). 

Economy: there is an interesting micro-economy (if I’m using that term correctly) it goes something like this:

•    You are making breakfast, and want some tortillas.  So you send your son on his bike to the woman a few houses away, making tortillas over an open fire at a roadside stand.
•    She takes those quetzales and sends her husband to get some eggs for their own breakfast.  He walks down to a little tienda (store, often little more than a living room with a window to sell small items) to get 3 eggs, and returns with them in a little plastic bag.
•    The man with the tienda needs some diesel fuel, so he drives down the road til he sees an older man by the side of the road waving a funnel up and down at the cars.  This means he has diesel, so the man buys a gallon of diesel which will hold him for a few days. 
• The diesel-seller gets thirsty, so goes to a neighborhood tienda to buy a Coca-Cola.

      ...and on it goes.  The tiny transactions, each person buying from the next, is fascinating. A sister makes doughnuts and the young girl next door takes them to neighbors to sell.  

Winter vs summer:  Here, ‘winter’ is the rainy season, which is about from May to October.  It isn’t much colder than any other time, at leat not that I’ve noticed, since it is well into the 90s or 100 and very humid on the coast.  Summer is the dry season – October through April. 

They do sometimes have the orange traffic cones like in the States to indicate street repairs, but if they don’t have orange cones in the campo (countryside), they just get boulders, paint them white, and roll them into the road!  Very ingenious.

There are fruits here that I’ve never heard of before!  Rambutan is like a weird giant strawberry with giant ‘hairs’ …  papause … and more. 

On way to Panajachel, just went by a sign saying we were at "Paso Misterioso”.  Something about water flowing uphill …. A curiosity!  (click the link for something from YouTube about it). 

At the bottom of the mountain coming back from Xela, we saw a bus with his tires literally smoking from the heat generated from braking all the way down.  These buses are pretty dangerous because they aren’t always well maintained and they don’t drive cautiously – they go fast to maintain a schedule but at the risk of safety.