Love, Guatemala, Yoga, The Superbowl, Sorrow, and Friendly Farewells - by Aña

I woke up this morning to Rob holding himself over me and covering my face in kisses.  I opened my eyes to find his staring deeply into mine.  He smiled and said "Good morning" and kissed me warmly.  We held each other for several long glorious minutes until he climbed out of bed to begin his morning routine of yoga and I commenced my morning routine which consists of laying in bed coming to terms with the fact that I have to get out of it.  I watched Rob plunge himself into sun salutations and I took some long moments to appreciate having been able to slow down these last few weeks and be able to truly celebrate this love we have cultivated together for four and a half years. 

Not being on the road and getting settled in Xela (Quetzaltenango) Guatemala means we have time to be lazy and also to apply ourselves fully to different practices.  Yoga has become a daily or twice daily ritual again, we take time to read to each other and snuggle up to watch an occaisional movie.  We plot out our uncertain future endeavors as best we can and have begun fermenting the first of many batches of sour kraut.  It feels so good to be settled in again. The truck is locked up in a secure parking lot, we are pretty well moved into a room in a posada (chill cheap accomodation) which we will occupy for one more week until we take up longer term residence in “La Casa de Yoga” (The Yoga House). The Yoga House is a cooperatively run house of 15-17 people in downtown Xela which apart from being a residence has several teachers (residents and non) who offer a variety of yoga classes to all ability levels for Q15 (Quetzales are Guatemalan currency) or less than $2 US. Once we move in we will be able to attend all the classes we want for free, and partake in community living again. We currently plan to spend 3-4months there dedicating ourselves to yoga, getting back into daily vipassana meditation ( www.dhamma.org ), playing guitar and making tasty food items to sell to help offset our living expenses. (Yup I'm learning guitar! Slowly)

Until then we are enjoying our second story room at the posada which aside from being dusty and thinly walled is really charming. It has two big old-timey wooden shuttered windows that overlook a sweet little courtyard loaded with geraniums. The sun pours in through these windows allowing me to sun bathe in our bed for a good hour first thing in the morning (if it's not to cloudy) The wood framing of the walls have been converted into shelves to hold some of the small items we have collected over the last few months. Small handwoven baskets made by the Ramamuri in the copper canyon, colorful prints on handmade paper from an indigenous paper making collective in San Cristobal, eucalyptus boughs I collected on a walk to a natural sauna outside of town, a bees wax candle our friend Julie gave us months before our journey that I couldn't part with and plenty of colorful postcards waiting to be sent. It is quite cozy and for the time being feels like a home.

Getting to this point has been quite extraordinary since last I wrote. We have long since departed our favorite beach on the coast of Mexico, Mazunte seeing many familiar faces among the locals who we remember having seen the 3 and for me 4 times we have visited. The same friendly older man who sells hand made pants, skirts, and blouses made by his family. Rob bought him a beer and we sat relaxing in the shade listening to the waves and talking about life in our respective homes and life in the periphery of human existence. Renting bungalows from the same family we did 4 years ago on our first visit. Noticing how their daughters had grown enough to not find climbing into our hammock with us and getting tickled a fun pastime. After one last plunge from the hot golden sand into those cool blue waters Rob and Ilsa and I piled into our truck which had thankfully been sitting in the shade and headed in the direction of San Cristobal in the state of Chiapas.

We spent that night on a surreal and beautiful beach named Playa Azul (Blue Beach). This our final farewell to the coast was magical in a completely new way. It appeared to have in the past been quite a tourist spot but as we drove further down the beach we found several abandoned palapas and restaurants which had been eaten by pure white dunes. It really added to the mystery to set up camp near these abandoned vestiges of commerce. And the Dunes! The Dunes! Magical. Intimidating. Spectacular! It was my first white sand beach which added to my delight but these dunes dominated the beach in an alien way. We were the only ones around save some fishermen in boats off shore or walking the beach in the distance. The area we wandered was completely undisturbed and we scrambled, slid, climbed and savoured this foreign landscape moving slowly towards a tremendous rock (which looked like a cliff) rising up out of the dunes that had been pushed up against it in steep curves by wind and time. Climbing up the side of this giant rock we realized that our dramatic little beach was on a point sticking out into the ocean which explained why the sun was setting on the wrong side (over land behind us instead of over the ocean in front of us) We watched the sky fade from blazing orange and vivid blues to gentle pinks and hazy purples. From our vantage point we saw ocean on both sides and on the opposite side of the bay from us we saw lights come on welcoming the oncoming darkness in the port town of Las Salinas..

We hiked back to our camp spot and began cooking our dinner when to our dismay the happy sense of isolation we had been enjoying was broken by another truck pulling up next to ours. A couple in their early twenties climbed out each with a can of beer in hand. They asked us “Que pasa?” and sat down to join us as though we had been expecting them. The guy did most of the talking and wanted to know where we were from, what we were doing in and how we liked Mexico and slowly after learning we were from the US began shifting the conversation towards criticism of the US. This is of course one of our favorite topics but from our “guests” limited perspective of television programs from the US and having spent a year working in Houston Texas he had a very predetermined view of Americans being shallow, racist, wealthy, gas guzzling, consumerist, pricks who don't realize how good we have it and don't care about how we affect the world as a whole. (Just like most Americans think of Mexicans as being poor, uneducated, uncivilized, borderhopping job stealers that drink tequila and fall asleep under the shade of their big sombreros) Of course an entire nation of people cannot be defined by such an angry all encompassing view such as this. Both nations are made up of a wide ranging spectrum of people who are born into varying circumstances and throughout their lives are presented with different opportunities and challenges and of course we all have to try our best to make the most of what we have to work with. Some thrive, some starve, some kill, some heal, some struggle through poverty to become rich, and some squander all that they have to fall to the bottom, but we are all human and we all want to be loved and, usually, we all want something to love. This is more or less what we discussed with our new friends, us explaining that most Americans live paycheck to paycheck or are tangled in credit card debt, that colleges in the US have become a capitalist enterprise and many who go to university on loans spend the rest of their life paying it off. We talked about the falling economy and told him that in many of the places we visited in Mexico people seemed better off because they had jobs and food was locally produced and therefor cheaper. He told us more about the Mexican American War (or as it is known in Mexico “The first invasion of the US”) then we ever learned in history class, gave us more insight into the desire to work in America, told us about massive pipelines buried in Mexico's soil that carry oil from the gulf coast to the cute little port town we had admired earlier where ships carried Mexico's native wealth to Japan, Australia, and of course the United States.
After hours of insightful and illuminating conversation we had altered each others perspectives tremendously and we said goodnight to our new friends and wished luck to each of our endeavors.

The next day we drove to San Cristobal arriving in the evening to enjoy a dinner of Falafel Sandwiches which I had been waiting months to enjoy. We then called our couch surfing host Louis who lived on the outskirts of town and after passing the road we needed twice, stopping to ask directions, finding the address to be a vacant lot, calling our host again and finding out that there were six #9's on the street and he was the 2nd not the 1st we drove further up to see a smiling wild grey haired man with a neat beard holding his gate open and waving us in. We were welcomed warmly with big hugs into “tu casa” (your house) and were introduced to the 10 other couchsurfers staying there from various corners of the globe and were informed that we were the first Americans to honor his household. We spent the evening chatting with people who immediately felt like friends, swapping stories, passing the peace pipe and warmly offered cups of beer. Ilsa took a long anticipated hot shower (luke warm is the style on the beach) then turned in having been given a bed in one of the many guest rooms. Rob and I put off showering until the morning and pitched our tent in Louis' expansive yard directly beneath a huge jasmine vine bursting with fragrant moon illuminated flowers. We fell asleep to the sweet perfume of the night and awoke to find that our shoes had been stolen by one of the three dogs that lived there. (This would be a recurring theme throughout our stay as well as a big english sheep dog (think Nana from Peter Pan) squirming under our rain fly to attempt climbing through the screen of our tent only to curl up and fall asleep right outside our door)

The next day we commenced with the easter egg hunt (except for shoes) think like a dog; where in this big yard would I deem suitable for stolen shoe placement . . . . .one out in the open to mock the human . . .. ..and one over here around the corner on the steps to the Clave del Sol (the main house on the property. Louis lived in a smaller house adjacent to it both overlooking the expansive yard.)
After gloriously hot showers and a quick breakfast we headed into one of our favorite cities in Mexico.
The next few days were spent as such enjoying good company as more and more couchsurfers poured in setting a new record for our amiable host of 22 guests. Wandering the abundant colorful markets and streets of San Cristobal, feasting on such vegetarian delights that are rare to non existent in the rest of Mexico. Including Falafel in a fresh baked pita with creamy hummus, vegetable empanadas, chocolate truffles, spinach crepes, and the long sought after . . . . . . . peanut butter. This last ingredient allowing us to make Gado Gado an Indonesian dish that heaps a plate with rice covered in lightly steamed vegetables, caramelized onions, sauted mushrooms, smothered in a slightly spicy coconut peanut sauce garnished with fresh cilantro and green onions. It was a fabulous feast accompanied with plenty of wine, more story swapping (hey remember snow?? Aren't you glad we're not in it!) and lots of laughter after which we rolled our round bellies into bed.

The main event however which Louis reminded us of everyday leading up to it was the Super Bowl Barbeque on Sunday! Imagine these incredibly strange circumstances if you will. First football as Americans know it is in every other country of the world known as “American Football”. Football, Futbol or Soccer as we know it is the most fanatically followed sport for pretty much everywhere else in the world except for those few countries who love Cricket. And lets face it calling a sport football when the foot makes contact with the ball only a handfull of times and only under certain circumstances must seem pretty silly to countries where Soccer is called “football”. Second, we are the only Americans guesting with a smorgasborg of Europeans, Aussies, Canadians and Venezuelans (none of which follow, care about, or understand “football”) at the home of a Mexican (who did live in the US for a few years in Texas thus picking up a fondness for American Football) all of us about to be pitched into Super Bowl Sunday with more enthusiasm for hamburgers and deviled eggs then for the game. Weird.

Enter Sunday Morning. Louis and Fred head out on Fred's motorcycle to gather ingredients for the BBQ. They come back as we are leaving and ask us to stop at the market for ingredients they could not find. We run a few of our own errands get smoothies to drink at the market, and pick up the missing ingredients. Traffic slows our return as does the fact that we are easily side tracked and we get back to find people eating burgers, snacking on chips and salsa with guacamole, and a room completely empty save a few unoccupied chairs in front of the tv which has been muted where a silent football game unfolds to nobody. Rob and I hastily whip up veggie shishkabobs and put them on the grill where they remain uneaten until much later when enough time has passed and enough beer embibed to make everyone hungry again. The Super Bowl continues in it's silent unwatched fashion until evening presses it's chilly embrace upon us and we are all driven inside where for the sake of comfort we find ourselves sitting on chairs neatly ringing the tv which has had it's sound turned back on. We can't help ourselves, years of conditioning pull our eyes to the glowing screen and we find ourselves sucked in. At first I am completely lost and turn to ask a girl from Vera Cruz what this penalty is all about. Immediately I realize how silly that is and am about to forget about it when she starts explaining the finer points of the game and how player x violated such and such and Wait a second! How is it that a 21 year old from Mexico knows more about football than I an American with a Packer fan father!!!???
The Canadian Fred and I do our best to piece the little bits we know about the game together with the help of our friend from Vera Cruz. Before long we are following the game intensely and cheering the Saints on to Victory! I actually had fun. I jumped out of my chair and cheered, I cursed those dirty penalizing Colts. I found the whole situation of enjoying watching the superbowl in Mexico with none of my countrymen save 2 who both thought I was weird cheering with Canadians, Europeans, and Mexicans for New Orleans to kick some ass! Will wonders never cease??!!

Two days later we hugged our friends farewell and were off to Agua Azul and then Guatemala! Louis reminded us that anytime we wanted we were welcome back at “our house” The road to Agua Azul was only 100Kilometers but it felt much longer and was very hazardous, with unmarked topes (large cement speed bumps that will destroy your axles or send you air born if you don't brake completely before hitting them, crazy winding curves with scenic precipices on our right, and of course the occasional quintessential meandering cow. As we drew closer we passed a squadron of police. Literally 200 or so eating at local restaurants, swimming in the river, walking around, it was weird and a bit worrying but they weren't stopping traffic and didn't pay us any mind. We finally arrived in Agua Azul asked around to get our bearings and drove the truck up some crazy steep dirt roads to find the place we had camped at a few years ago. We were the only clients at the campground and the 2 men talking on the porch seemed surprised to see us but told us we could set up camp wherever.

Despite the sky being overcast we changed into our swim suits and went to jump in utilizing a rope swing which Rob had no trouble reaching and getting a running start, but I had to wait for him to climb back out and pick me up and pull me back while I held on to the swing until he let me go and I swung out over the water and let go. After sufficiently cooling down from the long hot drive we decided to search out some lunch. We remembered from previous visits that restaurants and little tiendas selling clothes, swimsuits, and souvenirs crowded the walk down to the main waterfall and continued like the river to the pools beyond. However as we walked down we found ourselves in a ghost town. Everything was empty, closed and blaringly vacant. We continued down further and found only one overpriced restaurant in operation, as well as two other equally baffled tourists from Argentina. We asked the restaurant owner, the tourist office worker and a handful of locals eventually piecing together that a group of people calling themselves the Zapatistas had attacked locals just outside of Agua Azul with guns and machetes killing (1 or 2) and hospitalizing (11-20) just 2 days before we arrived. By now it was late, and it was apparent that a rainstorm was headed our way. Most people we spoke to seemed to think that we would not be in danger and the prospect of rainy dangerous roads to maneuver in the dark, verses the chance of a sunny day to enjoy the water and investigate further tomorrow found us setting up our tents just in time for the rain.

The next day the rain didn't stop and we set up a little kitchen/living room beneath one of the abandoned palapas where after a morning walk in the rain we enjoyed a fabulous lunch of mole tacos (thats mole the savory chocolate sauce, not mole the fuzzy blind critter that digs up your garden) and played rummy. After a few hands a 17 year old boy came up to talk with us as well as a man who had been hired to patrol the area in the wake of the weekends sordid events. We found out that the 17 year old (whose name I forgot) owned the little restaurant we were squating but was fine with us being there and furthermore wanted to learn how to play rummy. His patroling friend stopped by throughout the afternoon to chat with us and get out of the rain. We learned more about the recent events from our new friend than anyone else so far. He told us there were several people in his village who though not hospitalized were injured severely. He told us that women and children as well as men had been hit with bullets, lost limbs or chunks of flesh from machetes, and everyone was fearful that more attacks would come or that tourists would be scared away (which was certainly the case we had seen only a handful) and they would lose their livelihood. It was strange circumstances to find ourselves in indeed. Most who we talked to agreed that this group had not been true Zapatistas and were calling them “zapatistas falsas” (false zapatistas). Noone really knew what they wanted either if they wanted the land to be returned to it's natural state or if they wanted to take it over and reap the benefits of tourism.
Whatever the reason we began to feel more and more uncomfortable especially when we were told that the place we were camping was notorious for robbing it's clients while their tents were unattended. When we went to tell our camping hosts that we were going to camp elsewhere he told us that the 17 year old we had been talking to was a thief and that he would try to rob us. By now we were pretty well sketched out and though our new friend seemed honorable to us we decided to leave. We explained to him that we just didn't feel safe with all we had heard and packed our belongings into the truck. One of the last things he said to us was “We're not bad people, don't be afraid to come back in the future” It was heartbreaking to leave a place we loved so strongly in the past, wanting desperately to support the locals through this difficult time and wanting to talk to more people to get to the heart of this gruesome tale. But fear for personal safety is quite the motivator and Rob gallantly drove Ilsa and me back to the safety of our friends in San Cristobal through rain, thick fog, and darkness on those crazy aforementioned dangerous roads we had come in on.

We arrived late in the evening at Louis' took hot showers and passed out processing the last two days in the form of frightening dreams and feelings of remorse. Early the next morning we bid our host farewell once again and headed towards the border, after a few hours of back and forth with the customs and changing our pesos into quetzales we found ourselves on a beautiful stretch of road winding through mountains alongside a river. We spent the night in Huehuetenango and continued on towards Xela in the morning. We spent the day wandering with Ilsa to investigate different spanish schools with her until we found the right one. All three of us were invited to a cooking class and dinner that night at the school. Rob and I found our posada and settled in a bit before dinner.

While Ilsa studied spanish and enjoyed living with her host family, Rob and I focused on slowing things down and going to yoga classes. At the end of the week the three of us set off on our final adventure together to San Pedro on Lago Atitlan. We spent 4 beautiful days and three nights eating exquisite affordable cuisine, hiking through orchards of avocados and bananas, through sweet little towns with friendly playful children, and up and over the volcanic mountains to spectacular views of the lake which these glorious mountains rise up out of. After these last few days of appreciating eachother and all we had shared which had strengthened our friendship we said our goodbyes and Rob and I drove back to Xela leaving Ilsa to embark on her solo journey. Through Email we learned that she met up with an old friend in Antigua which proved to be pure soul food, spent an afternoon In the markets of Chichicastenango, and finally to Flores in the north from which she joined a tour to the magnificent ruins of Tikal. She is back home safe and sound now and I miss her and am thankful for all she shared with us on our journey together.

That about catches us up. In a few days we will move into the yoga house and begin some of our enterprising ideas. Much Love to you all, Aña