News From San Antonio Palópo

From my front door if you turn left, the road takes you into the village of San Antonio Palópo. It's only about 1km and I do it all the time. If you go the other way (turn right) you would have to walk about six kilometers to reach the village of Agua Escondida. Last week I took a walk the other way. I had no intention of walking to the village but there's plenty of foot traffic en route and I have been curious as to what was there. It turns out not much but it is beautiful. The road winds around the mountain and is both narrow and steep. On the left there are corn fields (milpas) so high up on the mountainside that you wonder how the farmers can ever tend to their crops without tumbling off the mountain. As it turns out they tie themselves to trees to stop exactly that from happening. 

When I arrived here the milpas were dark patches of land that were in stark contrast to the lush vegetation surrounding them. The corn was only inches high. Now, three months later and after all the rain we've had, the stalks are so tall that the milpas blend in to the background of trees. It's close to harvest time. On the lake side of the road there are a few estate houses mostly hidden behind large brick walls - not much to look at except a fairly large fenced in coffee plantation. There are hundreds of rows of shiny leafed coffee bushes sporting bright green berries, some already turning a deep red indicating ripeness. It occurred to me that we have a few coffee bushes in the garden that may be ready to pick.

Today I drank coffee made from scratch! I picked the berries the other day from the garden. There's only one bush down there with ripe berries, so I only grabbed about fifty of them for my experiment. Apparently, there are two, sometimes three beans in each berry which come out of their red skins easily - you just need to squish them. What I was left with was yellowish and slimy and needed several washings to clean. Then I laid them in the sun for a couple of days to dry thoroughly. Once dry, the outer husk peels off (who knew) with a little help and the raw, green bean inside is ready to roast. I put mine in the toaster oven for about ten minutes. They start popping (sounds like popcorn) and turn dark brown. That's when you know you've got coffee. They smell delicious. I don't have a coffee grinder so I just pounded them with a stone on my wooden cutting board and Bob's your uncle! Fresh picked, roasted and ground coffee. It was full bodied and not even slightly bitter. How absolutely cool is that? I'm a regular Juan Valdez. Tomorrow I plan to raid the garden for the rest of the ripe berries.

Before I arrived here, I read somewhere on line that Guatemalans on the whole are very reluctant to tell you they don't know the answer to a question. I must say there seems to be some truth to that generalization. I get a lot of misinformation about little things. It throws me off and is just plain annoying.

There's a ferry dock in the village of San Antonio Palópo where all the boats leave from to go to the various villages around the lake. San Lucas apparently has the best open market around. My landlord swears it's on Wednesdays. Bartolo the caretaker of the house says it's on Sundays. Richard, who owns a hotel in town says it's on Thursday and Saturday. OK, I'm confused. I've never been in town when the boats are leaving to ask a boat captain and the office there is closed whenever I'm around. So what gives? I know for a fact it's not Thursday because last week not one ferry crossed the lake on Thursday. My bet is on Sunday. There's always a ton of activity on the lake on Sundays. So far we've been getting our vegetables in town but next Sunday morning I'm going down to the dock to hopefully hop on a boat and find out for myself. I was told it cost either Q5 or Q10 or maybe Q25 (sigh). Yo no sé!

To be fair I have to rule out the language barrier as a factor in all the misinformation I'm getting before I can really complain. And that is what I am finally determined to do. I am learning Spanish. I am embarrassed that it has taken me this long to knuckle down and start studying. Last week I went to visit a new friend in the village and he told me it took him three months to master Spanish. That's a little daunting, but he explained that he studied in earnest for about five hours each day. I don't propose to go at it with quite that amount of zeal but I figure an hour or so each day will go a long way toward helping me understand and be understood. So far I'm finding it quite enjoyable. My pronunciation is pretty good and now that I'm delving into verb conjugation it's all starting to make some sense. Eight years of French doesn't hurt - although sometimes I find myself accidentally using French words in place of Spanish ones. This morning I walked down the hill to go and book a taxi to Panajachel for next week. In Spanish I told our driver that it's important that we be picked up at noon and brought back at five in the afternoon because I have a dentist appointment and I need to go food shopping. It's the first time I have spoken complete sentences in Spanish and he actually understood me. Progress indeed.

 The outside of this medicine bowl depicts a practical method of Shamanism called the "Mahiki - Indigo Bowl". It can help solve problems of any kind. It is best performed twice a week before retiring at night. Imagine placing all your problems - to do with yourself, your family, friends, ancestors, cars, work, animate or inanimate things - into an indigo bowl, which is suspended over the center of the crater of the Kaleakala volcano in Hawaii. Allow whatever you have placed in the bowl to turn to ice blue and finally to white. Then the Divinity will finish the treatment and the situation will change.

On the inside of the bowl is Lake Atitlan in Guatemala (the world's second most beautiful lake) which is surrounded by mountains and three thickly forested volcanoes. Flanked on all sides of the lake are the centuries old Mayan villages which still thrive today. On the south western shore is the village of Santiago Atitlán where the Tzutujil Mayans live. They believe the lake is the Mother and they call her C'Tie. I gave her name a face on the lake bottom. Fluffy clouds drift over the lake between the mountains and late in the morning every day the wind whips up the water and creates whitecaps.

The main colours of the bowl are dark green and blue, indigo and white.
The medicine bowl measures 4" tall x 7 1/4" wide (10cm x 18cm).