Copán Ruinas

I arrived in Copan in torrential rain. As is usual the streets themselves had turned to rivers, and the preferred hotel was full, so it was back to living in a dormitory in a backpackers hostel. The next day the sky had cleared somewhat and I walked with an American family to the ruins which were just over 1km away from the edge of town. We shared the costs of hiring a guide, which made it quite affordable. It was however, the most expensive site that I have visited. The entrance ticket alone to the whole site and museum around US$40 and the guide cost another US$10, although I think this was down to the negotiating and Spanish skills of the father. The deal had been done without consulting me.

Every time I visit Mayan ruins, there is a feeling of peace, mostly caused by the consciousness of the passing eons as the jungle has entwined itself around many of the structures, and the natural rock on the sculptures and pyramids is complemented by the lush green vegetation. However, when this was a living city, it would have been bery different; instead of grass around the structures, the whole would have been paved with stucco, and plastered with the same, and been predominantly blood red with details picked out in ochre, green and blue. The environmental impact of covering over the fertile valley with this impermeable layer, coupled with the vast amounts of firewood needed to anhydrate the limestone has been touted as a reason for this city state's collapse, as the farmers were driven up on to the hillsides, where the soils were poorer and became even worse with the soil erosion. On top of this, the loss of the trees probably altered the rainfall patterns making it even harder to eke out a living. Even so, the magnificence if the sculptures and the decoration if the buildings is beautiful and moving.

Macaws, emblems of Copán very colourful with the most awful raucous cry, a complete contrast to the plumage. They are fed here , but are free to fly around.

The statue of the vision serpent, manifest dirung festivals and sacrifices most visibly as smoke from the burnt offerings. However, they would carry in their mouths the apparition of the ancestors who were bid to appear

The tranquil North Plaza

Sacrificial stone over which the human offering would be splayed with his back arched, whilst the priest king would cut out his heart or decapitate him with an obsidian blade. Note the gulley for the blood to run off and be collected before being mingled with copal incense and burned.

A "tree" as alluded to in the "Forest of Kings". The Mayans believed that trees were the links between the underworld and the gods and spirits in the sky, and the stelae were seen as equally important spiritual bridges between the 2 worlds

A beautiful Macaw's head adorning the building at the top of the eastern side of the ball court

The famous hieroglyphic staircase, now protected giving details of the provenance of the dynasty of the ruling family. 18 Rabbit commissioned many such monuments to legitimise his rule. The large figures on the treads comprise the long line of kings from the beginning of the the dynasty. The glyphs apparently talk about rituals too, but our guise although claiming to be able to read them, didn't deign to enlighten us. (He also claimed to be a descendant of the last Mayan king, but with only an oral record for the last millenium, my guess he's about as related as the average greek waiter is to Aristotle) 18 Rabbit met with an unfortunate end, as the client ruler he installed in Quirigua eventually turned on him, captured his patron and sacrificed him, subjugating Cop'an for a time.

Detail from a bench. Note the figure in the foot of the bench bearing the weight.

A picturesque strangler fig, with completely hollow trunk

Detail of a bat with cojones. Bats were symbols of power, terror and death

An intricate stone carving of a pelican with a fish in its beak

Figures dotted around the patricians' meeting place


A king's eye view of the ball court with heiroglyphic staircase on the right.

The mighty Ceiba tree which now occupies the king's seat

Xela to Antigua again

Being a native Cancerian, I become very attached to people and places and so it was with Xela, I had enjoyed my time there at the school enormously and the family that I had been billeted with in the homestay very simpatico. Martha our surrogate mother took pains to talk to us frequently and correct our Spanish. It was a valuable part of the experience, but even the knowledge that I might be able to land myself a weekly gig playing at a local café and that I had finally found the best venue to dance salsa were not sufficient in themselvs to delay the onward journey.

So I commanded a magic carpet a.k.a. chicken bus, to take me to Antigua, and on a grim and rainy afternoon I said goodbye to Xela as we were whisked away. We just made it in time to Chimaltenango for the last connecting bus, and while we were waiting we were greeted by this sight of a bored little boy amusing himself squashing his nose and making funny faces in the adjacent us.


Once again I was back in the cosmopolitan melee of Antigua, and during supper at Rainbow Cafe was entertained by a passionate political conversation with 2 girls from New York. It cheers me up that there are so many engaged and thinking Americans, curious about the world and travelling; not just the ignorant bigots that Fox news would have us believe populate the USA.

I spent the night at Umma Gumma hostel, and the next day was invited to breakfast by a friendly group who had prepared far too much to consume themselves. Again very bright, alive young people. The one guy Sam in the middle of a medical degree, but taking time to learn foreign languages so that he could eventually work for Médécins sans Frontières, and had just got engaged to his Columbian girlfriend via Skype, a Canadian girl who had lost all her money and travel documents (but who was very cheerful and hospitable nevertheless) and an American girl who was finishing a proficiency exam in Spanish prior to setting up a language school for infants in Washington D.C.

But the real gift of Antigua this time, is that in the early morning I was finally able to see the mountains and volcanoes that surrounded the city; all had been obscured by the swirling cloud for weeks.

The main street below from the roof terrace

Volcan Agua with a lenticular cloud forming at the tip

Volcan Fuego

Fot the sake of completeness the rest of the 360 degree survey, looking behind he hostel.

Tajamulco

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity of a 2nd shot at climbing Tajamulco, having passed up the trip the previous weekend. However, the rain returned and in the hope it wasn't another tropical storm, I set off with an American couple and our guide, Saul who had walked with me to the top of Santa Maria.

Unfortunately when we arrived at the start of the walk, this was the sight that greeted us; drifting fog and cloud, and a tropical storm was esconced over the Yucatan trailing this clag for hundreds of miles. Anyway, we were now committed and we just prayed that there would be a break in the weather for us. It had been 2 chicken bus rides and a 3 hour trip time to get this far and the lack of visibility was made up for the by the electric performance of a patent medicine vendor. In the more affluent world, we are continually bombarded by advertising on television and on billboards, but here the advertising is done in person, whether by people proclaiming their wares from the marketstalls or to captive audiences on the bus. The strategy is to terrify the audience and then offer salvation in a bottle. This particular gentleman started his patter by extolling the virtues of the oesophagus, and pointing to members of the hapless audience, quiz those of us who hadn't managed to evade his beady eye on various dubious healthcare points. "What is the oesophagus for? "
"It connects the mouth to the ....?"" Stomach! Very bright, belleza!!"
" What happens if you don't care for the oesophagus, sores on the mouth and....?" ( at this point a laminate folder of terrible mouth and throat sores is produced and the various ailments are described in suitably reverent and hushed tones..."Ulcers!! Belleza muy listo es!!"
" And if you don't treat these ulcers what happens?" " You don't know?!!!!" " What!!?" "You get cancer, that's what!!!!"
" But if you take a teaspoonful of these salts in half a glass of water every morning with your breakfast your oesophagal tract will be cleaned and you won't get ulcers and you won't get cancer, and if you have it already, this will clear it up."

Bottles of this stuff are then handed out to everybody to inspect and hold this magic medicine in their own hands.
"Normally this costs 100 Quetzales, but for you and today only as an introduction I'm prepared to accept not 50, not 20 but 10 Quetzales, and look it's made in Guatemala City where all the big businesses are, so that shows that the manufacturers are serious!"
On inspection, there was not a single ingredient listed on the label, but a Guatemala city address, a fancy name and the directions for use which I've already described. But the charisma and the attire (Cowboy hat and boots and a cellphone brandished like a six shooter of yore) and the swagger of this man were totally engaging and watchable. When the show was over, he collected money from those who believed and the bottles back from those that didn't, waited for his spot and got off, waiting to board some bus to terrify another hapless group on the return journey.

The depressing weather that greeted us at the foot of Tajamulco

An indignant turkey marking his territory at the last line of dwellings

A nascent magic mushroom on the day of the start

The next day.... my how you've grown!

Mike and Elana during a rest stop.

The weather deteriorated as we started our ascent and Mike and Elana were struggling with altitude sickness, so the race was on to pitch our base camp before the storm hit, as we needed to make frequent stops for them to recover. (Mind you, I didn't complain) Thunderclaps were getting more frequent and ever closer. Saul our guide was patient and brilliant. When we got to our camp, the edge of the tree line at 4000mt he immediately strung a line between 2 pine trees, over which he threw a giant plastic tarpaulin which we secured to make a sloping roof. Being the tallest in the group it fell to me to secure the lines, and as the rain started to pelt down, Elana was brilliant at helping to pitch and organise the tents as she was a veteran of many a camping trip with her Dad when she was younger. (Apparently he had his kids pitch tents against the clock) Meanwhile I was given the machete to dig a ditch around our roof, so that the draining water didn't enter the tents. Totally the wrong tool, but I was proud of my effort at altiude, striking sparks against buried stones, cutting through roots; I'm just gutted that I didn't think of taking a photo of it, quite a feat of civil engineering in adverse conditions. If you want to read Mike and Elana's version of the adventure, you can read it on their blog here: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/mikeandelana/1/tpod.html
Both of them were suffering from headaches and nausea by the end of it, so it was left to just Saul and me to admire the view of the afterglow of the sunset. The west was completely overcast, but the view to the east was magical, with the illuminated clouds contrasting with the volcanoes of Xela.

A stroke of good luck, the cloud cleared to the east at sunset giving this superb view of Santiaguito erupting (yet again!) at the foot of Santa Maria

Saul the guide with the peak of Tajamulco in the background, It was absolutely freezing cold by this time, and I was wearing 2 t-shirts a sweatshirt, a fleece and an overcoat!

Dawn breaking at the summit 4220mt, the following morning at about 0500, the tripod frame to the left of the photo was the remnants of a radio relay antenna used by the guerillas during the civil war which ended only in 1996 which cost some 200 000 lives in 34 years.

Daybreak.

The peak of Tacana in the mystical morning light

Tacana still wearing her veil as we start the descent.

A clear window showing the volcanoes of Antigua on the left of the horizon Agua, then the double peaked Acatenangoand then Fuego, on the right the volcano of Xela, Santa Maria, the cone.

The cloud beginning to spill pver the ridge on the way down.

Looking back at the summit.

The locals take horses up the mountain to log firewood, with the tragic result that without the tree roots to bind the soil to the mountainside, it gets washed away causing the erosion of these deep gullies in the side of the mountain.

Saul at the head of a gully

The unusual luxury of having a seat all to myself in a chicken bus, Normally we were crammed 3 to each seat, sometimes more.

A flock of chicken buses

Xela

Tropical Storm Agatha wreaked havoc with the roads in Xela and the surrounding area. Roads wind through the hills through steep cuttings cut into the clay and mud, resulting in terrible mudslides in heavy rain. Lack of contour ditches and drainage compound the problem, leaving home on the sides of hills perched precariously on mud precipices, and deep gulleys where the soil has been eroded away catastrophically..

Sitting in a classroom has never been my forte, so I persuaded my teacher Jorge to accompany me to the Mam-Ximon or San Simon shrine in Zunil.

I had wound up staying on in Xela as roads were obtructed by mudslides and it would have been impossible to get anywhere for at least another week, so seeing as Jorge was both intelligent and engaging, I thought why not continue to improve my Spanish? An interesting week was spent reading out aloud various texts and poems from Khalil Ghibran, a Mayan poet whose name I forget, (must ask Jorge)and anecdotes from Jesuit priest's journey to India and his meditations on his insights there ("El tambor de la vida" por Carlos Gonzales Vallés).. So we left the others at their tables and went to the plethora of old US school buses on the northern side if the Parque Central and jumped on. I spent quite a lot of time travelling on these chicken buses, so called because very often they carry the peasants home from and to market with their livestock and huge bundles of merchandise. However, the route was truncated this time as the roads were still impassable after Tropical Storm Agatha.

The road through Almolonga as people were digging their homes and businesses out of the mud that had engulfed the main street.

It was still possible to see the level the mud flow had reached; almost as high as the window in this case. In Zona 2 in Xela the flood waters were around 2mt in depth, and people had to get around in boats, in Zona 1, some people had nailed boards in front of their front doors to prevent the waters coming in.

A so-called "chicken bus". On my ride to Xela from Chichicastenango, I was reminded of my Exec Air days when I used to fly day old chicks, as the interior was filled with cheep cheeps from chicks in the luggage racks above our heads.

The walk to Zunil from Almolonga. Buses were not yet running on this road so we elected to walk. At least the fields on the side of this hill were terraced. The majority are not, causing the terrible mudslides and soil erosion.

The town of Zunil in the river valley

The Mayan altars next to the shrine of San Simon, on which burnt offerings are made, mainly of copal incense and candles in front of an image of San Simon and an image of the grim reaper (San Pedro?) The Mayan cross is woven out of leaves.

The shrine with an effigy of San Simon, who is adored as if he is a real being, to his left is a crucifix on a table as a Mayan nod to Catholicism, but the Catholics have never canonised him as a saint and refuse to recognise him. He was said to have been a shaman who lived before the conquest and apparently he was a great healer. After his death the people continued to venerate him, but gave him a christian veneer to avoid the wrath of the inquisition and to be allowed to continue to worship him.

Jorge lights a cigarette before offering it to San Simon. These cigarettes were on sale for that purpose. You could also buy him a drink. People who had had their prayers granted returned bearing gifts for their icon, his suit, his fake gold watch, his cowboy boots as well as numerous chickens and goats outside. All of this done with great sincerity. As Guatemala is more than 60% indigenous Mayan, thse beliefs are strong and permeate the highest echelons of society.

At the other end of town, the Catholic church

The muslin drapes typical of Mayan catholic churches. At Chichicastnago, they had burnt offering altars inside and out.

The facade of the Zunil church

Dinner at Utatlan Spanish school, on my last Friday night there. I played guitar for them both the Friday nights I was there. The tall blonde girl on the left, Helen, was a great salsa partner, she was the girlfriend of the coordinator there and a medical student from Swededn.

A view from the other end of the table showing Jocelyn with the red hair and black jacket at the back, 2nd from the left. She and her partner own and manage the school. She also teaches linguistics at the local university. I had a great time at the school, which was very friendly and welcoming.