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yesterday i.

with directions from two reputable sources in my mind, i hopped on the 6am bus out of town, just to get a ride up to the top of the hill. todos santos, where i´m spending a week studying spanish, is in a deep valley in the largest mountain range in guatemala. it´s got some elevation, but i´m not sure what it might be. maybe 7 or 8 thousand feet. here in todos santos, we got a small central part of town, one main street, and lots of outlying groups of houses - tiny little villages unto themselves, called aldeas. from the aldea at the top, la ventosa, i was heading up to a high point called la torre. (there´s a u.n. radio tower up there broadcasting lord only knows back and forth accross guatemala.

at the top i met the guy who runs the tower. he lives in la ventosa and does the one hour walking commute, with his twenty sheep, each day. i gave him some of my sandwich and he invited me in for a coffee. (not the guatemalan special roast that you get at starbucks...just some lovely instant stuff.) it only took about twenty minutes to chop up some kindling, get the fire going, and cook it up in the beat up blackened pot.

he was quite nice, as are they all, and we just chilled and chatted for a while. yes, everyone wants to know about the united states. alot of people from this village have gone north to work and returned with alot of cash, building houses 3 times as big as their neighbor´s. so it´s a hot topic...many are intrigued and mildly to severely stricken with gold fever...others i think can see the downside to this influx of toyota trucks and cell phones. (by the way, how come they can call from this remote village in the middle of guatemala, and i can´t even get a signal in downtown rockridge? does verizon just suck?)

after our cheery coffee in the warmth of his stone hut, i headed on down the ridge to a wee little gorgeous lake out upon the altiplano for another sandwich, and some napping. and then, the harrowing descent down the side of the mountain, headed back towards town. from below all you see are cliffs and forest - there ain´t no obvious routes. but, my trusty advisors had told me it was possible. sometimes there are many paths or none, just aim and figure it out. just the type of adventure i was looking for. well, i made it, with only a few backtrackings necessary. and some sweet bushwacking. i mean continuous bushwacking. a couple times i came to a cliff and had to figure a way around...including one time where i scooted down a nearly vertical wall of moss, digging my fingers into the dirt to try to find invisible handholds in the rock beneath the moss...fully expecting to take a 15 or 20 foot slide onto more moss and broken branches. somehow i avoided the fall, which wouldn´t have been terminal or anything, but it was exciting and i exited with plenty of dirt under my fingernails.

part II - back to mi casa

then i had a sweet stroll down through some of the outlying village streets. people always wave and say hi. a couple of boys walked with me for a while and we talked about, yes, the u.s. alot of their neighbors have gone to work in oakland. they all know oakland even though they´ve never left this valley. the little kids stare at me and giggle. if i talk to them sometimes they scream with embarassment and laughter. then they run away. then they call to me again, run away again...it´s a fun cycle. one woman who was kneeling on her porch, weaving, invited me into the courtyard to chat, while she kept weaving. they´re all so nice and always smiling when we talk, and just interested in hearing about new stuff. they don´t get out much.

i came home to my family where i´m staying, and cleaned off in the chuj. it´s a tiny little hut, like 4 feet high and 4 feet diameter, where they build a fire, heat up some water, then when the fire is down to embers and there´s no smoke, you go in, get warm, pour water on the hot rocks for steam, pour water over yourself, and soap up and clean off. a steambath/shower combo, which is quite nice, but damn, they had to work for an hour or so to get it all going just so i could get clean. but that´s how they do it. the grandfather came home from the fields a bit later, took a chuj, and climbed in under the covers to relax after a hard day´s work. the little kids, like 7 of them, jump in bed all together with the grandparents and they listen to the radio and talk (in their mayan language called mam) on the cell phone to the parents, who are working in the states.

it´s great to be in this tiny town where i really get to feel the traditional culture. i don´t think many places will have this same feeling...