Magical Lago De Atitlan

We interrupt the planned Antigua story to bring you this Lago De Atitlan special report. Antigua will be blogged later this week.


The Picture Version
You have to come and see it. Here is why:

Girl in Jaibalito. It seems women hide their mouths when smiling and girls seem to pick that up. I don't know the reason for hiding the mouth, although most women have very few teeth left:


 
The fact that we stopped in Jaibalito (total 1500 people) to take photos and were giving candy to the kids made it through the village amazingly fast. These kids sought us out:

 
This one too but by then we were out of candy:

 
The cloud cover uses the volcano for support:

It is unclear why clouds seek out volcano tops but most volcanoes we've seen were hiding behind a cloud or two.
 
Following mom everywhere:

 
Waiting for the boat to come:

 
Evening approaching between the two volcanoes:

 
Corn fields overlooking the lake:
 
 
Two men talking, view reflected in store's window:

 
Old man wearing original clothing. Most men today dress in western clothing:

 
Sitting on the front doorstep, talking to the neighbors:

 
Selling fruit:

 
Morning fishing in the lake:
 
 

The Wordy Version
80,000 years ago, the ground erupted and threw volcanic material all the way from Florida to Panama. The hole that was left soon became Lake Atitlan. This is a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains with two or three large volcanoes dominating the scenes. Around the lake are Mayan villages, each with its own character, people and clothing. Each village has fields growing on the nearby mountains. The fields are rectangular for some definition of rectangular where there are four "straight" lines that meet at "right" angles.



Puzzle of the day: Can you tell how many fields there are in the above picture? Post you answer as a reply to this blog. First prize - your name to be mentioned in the next blog.

The Wordier Version

We are staying in San Pedro, the village named after the volcano on the side of which it is built. When we wake up in the morning and open the window what we see are corn fields, some other buildings and a huge volcano looming over the town.

On the other side of the lake, across from San Pedro, is a mountain range that's called Cabeza Indigena (Indian Head or Indian Nose). To see why - check out the following photo:



We've visited a number of villages around the lake:

* Panajachel is the main 'city', hosting many of the tourist shops.

* Jaibalito  is one of the smallest and least toured. The kids (and adults) were really fascinated to see us.

* San Marcos is home to the holistic and alternative medicine crowd. Here you can get anything from Swedish massage to reiki treatment to a yoga class to internet, all in a wholesome environment.

* San Pedro is known for a few things: Its cheap prices, its tourist hangouts at night and its local growing of coffee and marijuana. It's simply impossible to walk down the street (on the tourist levels down by the docks) without smelling it wafting out of windows.

San Pedro Stories

We started our stay climbing up into the village. The center of town and where most locals actually live is above the lower levels that are more devoted to tourist. The men are mostly dressed in modern clothes, but the women dress traditionally. Most people don't mind having their photo taken, and with the digital camera I can turn it around and show them the picture immediately. They seem to really love this, and we saw a lot of happy faces.

Children have learned the trick though. They walk around you saying "photo, photo" and once you shoot them, they ask for money. To avoid that, we bought a number of caramelos (candies) and negotiated pictures for candies. Apparently taking candies from camera-toting-strangers is ok in these parts.

Of the Buying of Threads

We found a town at the top that sells lustrinas - embroidery threads. Since mom (HI MOM!) asked for a few if I find them, we went into the store and asked for the price. Each costs 1.30 Quetzals (roughly 20 cents). I then told them to give me 4 from each color they had (about 50) and everything stopped while they digested what I just said. I had to show them again saying "cuatro", "cuatro", "cuatro" to get them to start taking out the threads.

The mother and two children manning the store started working on my order, checking in the "back" for missing threads and getting everything on the table. Then we weeded out the duplicates and agreed that this was indeed it.

Here is the happy family with the catch-of-the-day:



Next we got to the Math.
 
Since the elders of San Pedro do not remember such a big order since the days the Spanish came to Guatemala, this took a bit of time. It was apparent that education levels differed greatly between the generations. The two kids started counting threads and eventually decided on 181. The kid then tried to multiply on the calculator he had, except he did not know what the decimal point was for and he kept getting wrong numbers (Q523, Q235, etc.)

The mother was more pragmatic. Multiplication is for gringos. She divided the threads into 20-thread groups then counted money instead of threads. For example:

Q1.30, Q2.60, Q3.90, etc.

Each 20 thread group was 26 and then she and the kids added them up.

After I added 20 more threads we got to 201 threads at which point she decided to check the multiplication option. Translating from the speaking to the math goes like this:

Doscientos Uno (two hundred and one) has two digits. "2" and "1".

So the math is: 21 x 1.30, right?

We finally got this straightened out and paid the bill.

Evolution of the Restaurant Concept

In the evening, we ate at D'Noz, a local place targeted at tourist. It has movies or live performances at night. We got in early enough to grab a place, order dinner and enjoy it while a duo from Mexico played all the typical guitar-totting favorites like pink floyd, the eagles, eric clapton, etc.

The place was packed with happy tourists, busy employees and playful dogs running around getting attention from everyone.

Then we noticed an interesting phenomenon. Once in a while, a local girl or woman in traditional clothes and with a basket on her head would come in. The girl was selling Pitaya (a local fruit) and the woman was carrying a huge chocolate cake cut up into gigantic pieces. They would proceed from table to table and ask if anyone wants pitaya or chocolate cake.

During the show, the woman came in and after her regular circle around the room went to one of the singers and bothered him in the middle of a song. He eventually stopped and a announced to everyone that there's chocolate cake if anyone is interested.

Enough for today. Next time: Antigua and the market in Chichicastenango.