(Mar 8, 2012)
While it’s been over a month since I wrote my last blog entry from Lago Atitlan in Guatemala, I don’t feel like I’ve done all that much in between now and then!
While it’s been over a month since I wrote my last blog entry from Lago Atitlan in Guatemala, I don’t feel like I’ve done all that much in between now and then!
During my stay in Lago Atitlan I visited with the various ICO initiatives around the lake to learn of the many ways they are working to help local communities. ICO is connected with a number of initiatives including a dentistry clinic, 3 children’s education support and scholarship programs, an artisanal cooperative and capacity training, ONIL stove installations, a women’s and children’s centre, and health education workshops. Though I spent much of my time visiting these initiatives, I did have some time to visit the many other little villages around the lake and feel like I got a chance to see pretty much everything. My couchsurfers in Santa Catarina were great and I was certainly living in the lap of luxury in my own basement apartment by the lake. My last few days were spent in San Pedro – the lake’s backpacker hotspot, full of partying and colourful little alleys snaking through funky restaurants and artisan stores. I went out one night with some friends from my hostel and felt like I had been transported back to Canada! Once inside the bars in San Pedro, I could have been anywhere! One of the other little towns I visited, Santiago Atitlan, had a peculiar ritual involving the hiding of a cigar smoking mask in an elaborate shrine to represent the god ‘Maximon’, god of revenge. Due to time restrictions I didn’t have time to go on a hunt for Maximon but instead paid a tuk tuk to take me to him (pictures to be posted soon). The shrine was elaborate and Maximon was flanked by two semi-lucid ‘guards’ that I think just sat there getting into the wine and beer offerings. They seemed to be having a great time sitting and doing nothing but receive quizzical tourists.
After Lago Atitlan I took a series of buses to Antigua (I have so far generally refused to take the direct tourist shuttles, instead enjoying the adventure of hopping from blinged out chicken bus to blinged out chicken bus). I found a wonderful little hostel called Casa Bellona and settled in quickly. I intended to stay in Antigua for 1 week but ended up staying for 3! I met a number of wonderful people staying at the hostel, including an amazing family from New York with whom I remain in contact.There isn’t a whole lot of sightseeing to do in Antigua (well, there are lots of sights but mainly churches, which don’t really interest me), which suited me well! I settled in to finish up and send my ICO reports, work on the NGO database I am creating, meet with local NGOs in Antigua, and apply for a grant with an organization called Omprakash. The grant application and communication actually took up much of my time and I am waiting to hear back whether Omprakash will be a good fit. I am committed to my vision to create a comprehensive NGO database for Latin America that supports NGOs (with a focus on locally started and run community groups and NGOs) to find funding sources, skilled volunteers, and to help them network among each other. Through this I hope to empower local NGOs to grow and develop strong program plans and to help them communicate with each other to limit service redundancy and duplication of inefficiencies. So far the NGOs that I have talked to have been passionate about what I propose to do – I’m just working out the logistics now. It’s a lot of work for one girl on the move and this is one of the reasons I am looking into partnering with Omprakash. My general flow for the day while in Antigua was to get up at 6am, go for a run, work on my database, meetings, and email correspondence with ICO, Omprakash and local organizations, spend an average of 2.5 hours talking to Peter over Skype (!) and then going out to spend time with couchsurfers and new friends at the various funky bars in the city. Being a tourist haven, Antigua is rife with ‘opportunists’ (armed muggers) and I was lucky during my stay not to come across any. This could have been due, in part, to my continued soliciting of police escorts back to my hostel at the end of the night! It's quite something to bump and creak down Antigua's cobblestone streets with one eye on the huge machine guns being held up front. My knuckles are getting sore from knocking on wood… The bulk of my sightseeing in the city generally involved my morning runs through the beautiful and crumbling colonial architecture, walks to the bustling market to buy spinach for my morning smoothies (delicious!), and daily (bi-daily?) trips to the amazing Santa Clara bakery – which happened to be 4 blocks away and I had to pass it any time I went anywhere. I did take two day trips out of the city – one to do a hike of the Pacaya Volcano (much easier than the Santa Maria Hike) to lie and roast marshmallows in the volcanic vents that pockmarked the desolate and scarred landscape near the crater (see pictures to come!); and another to the beautiful site of Iximche, heralded as Guatemala’s first capital, abandoned with the coming of the Spaniards.
A quick change of events (just wait!!) led me to hop onto a bus heading for El Salvador, one week earlier than expected! When asking people the best way to get to El Salvador they all said that shuttles and air conditioned long distance buses were the way to go and no one had attempted or knew how to take the chicken bus route. In hindsight perhaps that wasn’t meant to be a challenge… It took me about 8 hours and $7 (including stop overs in Guatemala City and at the border) to get to San Salvador via 4 small buses compared with the 5 hours and $35 of the shuttles. I spoke with so many locals (practicing my Spanish) and stopping in many of the small towns along the way. The air quickly became heavy and hot as we descended towards the coast and I found myself moving through tropics and desert intermittently.
El Salvador is incredibly different from Guatemala in that the Maya culture that is so prevalent throughout Guatemala is almost non-existent here. The buses are not quite as ‘blinged out’ with chrome rims but all seem to have raised front suspensions (see photos) that make them look like they are just tearing down the highways (they actually drive much slower than those in Guatemala). Similarly with Guatemala, people have continued to go out of their way to help me find buses and navigate the cities. Yesterday I took a turbulent trip into the city centre of San Salvador and was passed from friendly citizen to friendly citizen, all of whom wanted to show me the city. After a white knuckled bus ride through the gang neighbourhoods of San Salvador I arrived at the Military History museum to learn about the recent El Salvadorian civil war and conflicts with its neighbours. I was picked up by the base Lieutenant who gave me a private tour of the grounds and explained his experiences and impressions of the wars. Then, to my shock and amazement, he took out his notebook and proceeded to regale me with the various love poems, interspersed with first-hand accounts from the trenches. What a day! After arriving back to the beautiful apartment of my couchsurfers Raquel and Karen, we all set off to the Spanish Embassy and cultural centre to watch a screening of the wonderful documentary, Oceans. I highly encourage everything to find it as it beautifully portrays the liveliness of the wildlife in the ocean and the torrid relations with man through amazing images and cinematography. There are two versions – one is the Disney version (which I think I watched) and the other is the original French version. I recommend trying to find the French version as it is apparently the best.
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