The bus ride from Xela was the best yet. Through out the dangerous school bus´s path we came upon small indigenous villages some of them that sold all of the main brands of Guatemala, Tigo (cellular stuff), Claro (cellular stuff again), Gallo (beer) and Alka-Selzer. A voluntary fantasy appeared of me living in one of these places, riding around in a mule (mules handle the topography better than horses) sharing the highway with beat up automobiles as we turn steep narrow roads, a foot away from a fall down the mountain.
San Pedro la Laguna, a small frenetic and busy town of about 6,000 bordering the lake of Atitlan was to be our longest stay anywhere as tourists. We fell in love with it instantly. The whistles and Oomph, Oomph Oomphs did not spring up much, but the people, especially the children, were all super friendly. Jessica was still bummed out that no one wanted to party in Xela, so our goal was to find dancing. The attempt was made to master the Salsa at a place called Chile. Mind you, these hips are powerful fucking forces on the dance floor. But the series of steps to learning Salsa is so simple that it renders them useless. At first there was a determination to master the dance with Jessica, who is an extremely talented and long time trained dancer, but either Jessica´s ADD kicked in or she had no patience for learning with shabby me. To the bar where a girl from Wasilla Alaska was bartending. Back in Lawrence, a relationship was recently had with a girl from Wasilla and gosh darn it, it´s always fun to get a general consensus attitude about the same place from multiple sources. The night went on in lively conversation with a group of four friends, guys from Scotland. The opportunity was had to translate from Spanish to English and back between the Brit (living in Scotland), Joe and French girl who knew no english. By the time the speaking grew to second nature my person was probably too drunk to carry on with her. While her spanish was already atrocious. Intresting how presciently bad pronunciation of Spanish becomes from the mouths of Europeans and Asians.
The walk home was somewhat of a success although we had planned for a taxi to be there since almost all of the bars were located on the doc right behind us. The success was that Jessica and myself were civil to each other and found our hotel like a team. (less than 6 football fields between hotel Peneleu and Chile and it took more than an hour to get home).
In the morning we were on our way to a
hipper hotel. Hipper, according to an unnamed travel book that has a household name. Also withheld from this post is the name of the hotel. Though it would be fairly easy to figure it out. It is owned by some Israelis who like to have the proverbial good time. Most of the guests there were also Israeli. All of the guests, we noticed were extremely good looking twenty somethings; it should be qualified that they resemble conventionally beautiful people. Healthy beautiful people, some to the point where they bordered on boring looking. The would-be concierge, Tomas a slightly older guy from Belgium appeared to Jessica as a Luke Perry (Beverly Hills 90210 fame) look alike. He certainly dressed like it. Further down you´ll see my visual reference for the guy. From the very beginning, Jessica astutely felt an atmosphere of cliqueishness. It was not that the guests were being intentionally exclusive. All of them were very nice and invited us to sit with them. But they couldn´t help but speaking their womb comforting tongue of hebrew. Almost none of them spoke any Spanish and when you tried to speak it to the ones who did, they looked annoyed and told you to speak english.
Overall, we were made to feel at home there amid the staw bale and palm tree thatched canopy and the middle eastern style seating in the back. Everything on the menu, especially the Israeli stuff was scrumptous. Never had Taboule like that before. And the Bango Lassie with ice cream...and cookies, which Tomas made hints about several times.
Inspite of a hang-over, a strong attempt was made to observe the social dynamic in the hotel. All of the people working in the kitchen were Guatemaltecas. Mayan girls, mostly in their traditional dresses---aesthetic note: one of the best things about the places so far inhabited by my person in Guatemala is the shortage of obnoxious women´s clothing and women´s clothing stores. For the most part, the women are either dressed in the mildy conservative traditional and colorful Mayan dresses or are very non descript, almost tom boyish. This is my preference. Granted there are a lot of hot girls who dress up. At the very least my longtime purveyorship of pornography has desynsitized me into accepting that some hot women like to dress up like some semi distant relation to the western circus clown. Ahh, digression.
The girls in the kitchen were giggly. When they flirt they are confident enough not to be coy. (big sigh of contentment). After making a little conversation with them it became obvious that a rapport was established between myself and a girl named Anita. The rest of the group teased her, asked if Jessica was mi novia and when the accurate response was given (only when she needs to protect her self), they pulled Anita´s hand up. A streak of determination led me to the counter across from the hotel kitchen many times. Unfortunately the hangover set the body back another day.
The attempt was made more than once to fraternize with our friendly Israeli neighbors in room 3, but they were truly boring, bordering on vaccuous. Questions were asked from me about the Hebrew language and they didn´t have any knowledge or intrest. At one point, Simon, the one who made me feel best, said that Hebrew was the oldest language in the world. That is clearly not true. He could have meant that it´s the oldest language of the Jewish people since the topic started by my seeking further elaboration on the impressive fact that Hebrew was a once dead and recently revived language concurring with the establishment of the Israeli state. Still a bad taste in my mouth settled in. Other times my curiosity about their culture reached out but all they could do was wave their dicks around in praise of everything Israeli.
One morning for breakfast while the eyes an conscious mind were reading the
Prensa Libre, Simon came to sit with me. He asked if there was any news about Israel. While it makes sense to want to know what`s going on in one´s country, he explained that he only looked at the paper for news about Israel. By the end of that day it was clear to me how bankrupt the whole scene was. Understandably, there is a lot of the natural pre-nation state world to explore in Guatemala, the horses, the boats in the lake, the mountains and the ruins. But how is it possible for one to be either completely without curiosity or able to ignore the curiosity within about the living breathing culture he or she must navigate amidst. The ethnocentricsm was disconcerting and it made me think of numerous examples of the european explorers and conquerors. Coming to a land and trying to make their posts resemble back home.
Jessica is a vegiterian, which means she has to take her protein powder with her in Guatemala. Otherwise she sleeps. We slept more than anything else those last two nights in San Pedro Laguna. The hangover was my first day´s excuse, and through out that night Jessica expressed a slightly inebriated feeling of pre-enlightenment. We had a good conversation as it seemed that she had finished a lot of reflection. The eyes and ears had never witnessed her like that before. The final day, only the desire to read poetry and flirt with Anita lasted longer than the chance to go out. In the morning Jessica and myself agreed to spend time in the afternoon walking around the labrynth of San Pedro, which has an absence of streeet signs, trying to find bus tickets to our next, separate, destinations. Because of the magic stuff they put in the ice cream drink, it took a lot of funny effort in the midday. Jessica brought in a couple puppies to cuddle with us. At one point, balls of fury laughter blasted out of our room due to the dog licking my left ear. Still insanely stoned, we finally made it out to a host of taxis and persons on the street. It seemed impossible. The only place that was open to sell tickets was an actual travel agency. We found out after going in two circles, that other place was across the street from that agency. A crotchetyold man --crotchety for jovial Guatemala any way-- said that he could sell tickets , but we´d have to come back at 7 at night to buy them. `por que no esta abierto hasta siete de las noche`, I asked. He would only answer in repeating: ``Esta abierto en siete de la noche. Venga entonces¨ (it´s open at 7:00 PM. Come back then.)
Still stoned and immersed in the confusing beauty of the narrow cobble stone streets, we decided to take care of things later. The desire to not speak any Spanish was strong. Our taxi driver back to the hotel wanted to make conversation. He was humored and the humor was worth it. Of course he wanted to know if Jessica was my girlfriend. ``Solamente cuando necesita protegerse`` which means, only when she needs to protect herself. At this he started laughing the ýou guys are alright´ laugh.
After making him laugh a little more in total self deprication, the request was made to obtain a story of the worst client. He replied that the worst are the Israelis. Although not the answer to my question it was quite revealing. ¨Todos de ellos?¨ came the question from my mouth.
¨Si¨, he responded, going on at length about how snobbish they are and how they always complain about the prices of things.
Jessica and myself went to our room and cuddled with the puppies. More sleep was obtained and dream was had in which appeared the belief that my former step father, who killed himself 4 and a half years ago, was alive and writing a vampire novel. Garry Schulkind had also fit a racist stereotype (Jewish American). The dream was surely triggered by the atmosphere.
After waking up, all that was wanted of me was a nice long read. Jessica talked me into hanging out in the dining room area where Tomas was to schmooze. The night seemed to go on for ever, and the only interesting thing to come out of Tomas´s mouth was when he was responding to Jessica´s zany thoughts-- only because the things he said set the scene for more of her zany comments. There was another waiter guy, 40 something, curly haired, obviously gay, very theatrical, confrontational in a fun way, wearing a Harley Davidson T-shirt and a leather vest. He set the shores of the scene wider lensed--at least we had a lot to laugh about. Actually the guy reminded me of Axon, the police chief in the 1973 Alejandro Jodorowski film, ¨The Holy Mountain¨. He´s the one
that performs the public castrations of pubescent boys, collects their scrodums in jars and then introduces them to the holy book that is all about wourshiping him. After telling him what my occupation was back home, Tomas went out of his way to say that it sounds boring. This didn´t bother me at all, but it was interesting how much he had to repeat himself as if he did not want to hear a contrary POV. Our police chief waiter pointed out to Tomas the present excitement of Tomas´s employment at the hotel. It was then that my famous person association was gained. Tomas from the eyebrows up looked like a mid sixties Paul Newman. For what it´s worth.
We laid out the story of our misadventure for the day. Tomas had confirmed that it was the cookies in the lassi that made us feel the way we did. They both laid out suggestions for getting out of San Pedro Laguna. For Jessica a ride with a professional streamlined bus might be difficult to obtain the next day. My best bet was a boat to Panachjel, then a bus to Xela. Another option was a chicken bus. ¨Chicken bus¨, Jessica exclaimed. The image was strong¨riding on the back of a wagon truck surrounded by chickens. She wanted to ride it. Both Tomas and the chief made it sound like it was not a fun time.
The next day, Anita´s phone number was obtained, and she was promised a visit in two weeks from then. She and the town were too beatiful not to come back to, even if it required walking back to the hotel and sharing excellent food with the arrogant Israelis. In the end we found a chicken bus that would take us both to our separate destinations. It was no different than the school bus we took to San Pedro. Er, the bus by itself was no different.
