San Lucas Toliman (1), Guatemala January 29 – February 9, 1979

The little village of San Lucas Toliman rambles up the hill of a small bay on Lago de Atitlan, almost directly across the lake from Panajachel.  There are two choices for getting there.  You can try to organize a ride in one of the few lake-worthy boats with reliable motors and an owner who not only agrees to take you where you want to go but also actually starts the motor and leaves the dock before it’s too late to go anywhere.  And then of course there is the weather.  On a sunny still day the lake can look calm, but winds, waves and sudden rain storms can spring up out of nowhere.  The middle of the lake can be a perilous place.  

 

The other option is to catch a bus from Panajachel.  It’s about an hour’s ride – depending... .  I chose the bus.  It was supposed to leave at 7 am, but it left late, as usual.  Because it wasn’t full to over-flowing, the bus was circling around the town while the ‘conductor’ – a sort of bus driver’s assistant who rounds up passengers and takes fares once the bus is underway – called out the bus’ destination – ‘San Lucas, San Lucas, San Lucas Toliman!’  Or, my favourite call: ‘Guatay, Guatay, Guatay-mala!!’  It wasn’t clear to me how potential passengers indicated they wanted the bus to stop – maybe there was a signal, or maybe the driver or conductor just knew the people.  Whatever it was, our conductor didn’t wait for the bus to come to a halt before he leapt off, grabbed the huge bundles and parcels from men, women, children who were running towards the bus, jumped on top of the bus to stow it all as the passengers boarded, and then yelled, whistled and banged on the side of the bus to tell the driver to get moving again, long before anyone had had time to sit down.  Everyone in the bus caught up in the drama – mostly viewed as comedy – big smiles every time we stopped and started, broad grins and laughter as the door at the back of the bus kept falling open.  And of course the windows were rattling and the unoccupied seats were popping out (they need bodies in them to keep them in place).   

 

There were a few of us gringos on the bus.  Our fellow passengers regarded us with a mixture of curiosity, and perhaps wariness. We do things differently, speak many tongues, and bring strange and wonderful things with us, like the small books we write in, cameras, radios and Swiss army knives.   Many of them think of all of us as being Americans, and, given the old movies they might have seen, or the stories they might have heard, likely think of ‘Los Estados Unidos’ as a place where cops and robbers have shoot outs on the street, where young people do nothing but disco dance, and where everybody has – or can make – lots of money.  It’s a golden, unattainable paradise, and we are its representatives, its emissaries.  In previous years – maybe up to 5 or 10 years ago – there were just a few of us; now there are many – gringos on the ‘gringo trail’, traipsing, long-haired, back-packed and sandal-footed, through Central and South America.   We are changing their world – their physical, social and cultural landscape – for better, and for worse.  

                      Above two photos from the road coming down into San Lucas Toliman

 

San Lucas is the smallest and most ‘isolated’ place I’ve been so far.  It’s mostly an Indian village.  There are very few Latinos here, and not as many gringos as elsewhere, maybe a dozen or so who call the place ‘home’ for a good part of the year – mostly Americans, and a few Germans and French – and another 20 to 30 transients, from all parts of the globe, who are here at any given time.  There are only two ‘hotels’, both owned and run by Latinos.  The one up in town is more ‘hotel-like’, with a bit of a reception area and several individual rooms with doors that can be locked.  The other ‘hotel’ – Jorge’s – is down by the lake, and much more rudimentary.  It’s a boxy cinder block structure with a metal roof.  The family lives and sleeps in the central room.  They rent two small rooms on either side of this room to gringos.  Both rooms have three or four beds jammed in there, with barely enough room to walk between them.  They’re communal, like dorm rooms: you share them with whoever’s there.  There’s no running water or electricity – just an outhouse out back and candles (bring your own).  In fact, there’s almost no electricity or running water at any of the homes in town.  And most of them are made of adobe.  A few still have thatched rooves, but most, since the earthquake, are covered with tin.    

Most travelers stay in the hotel in town, which does have running water – and sometimes electricity.  I chose Jorge’s partly because of its location by the lake, and partly because I liked the hand-painted black-lettered sign he’s out front that says:  “Si viene a quitarme el tiempo, no estoy.  Si viene a aydarme, pase adelante.” [“If you’ve come to waste my time, I’m not here.  If you’ve come to help me, come in.”]  He’s a pretty funny guy.  And his wife always has coffee for the asking, and makes a mean breakfast of eggs, beans and rice.  It’s a strikingly beautiful spot – here on the shore of a beautiful high-altitude lake surrounded by hills and volcanic mountains.  And because it’s away from town, Jorge’s place is ‘muy tranquillo’.  There are a couple of hammocks strung between palm trees, and some avocado and papaya trees with fruit ripe enough to pick.  It’s about as close to paradise as I’ve been.  I may be here a while.... 

After I got myself squared away (picked a clean looking empty bed, and plunked my backpack down on it), I headed down to the lake, thinking I might have a swim.  There are some ‘swimming rocks’ not far from Jorge’s, and a well-beaten path to get there.  Amazingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, that’s where I ran into Jonathan again.  I knew he was heading down here when I met him in Mexico, but neither of us knew exactly when we’d be where, so didn’t even try to make plans to meet up.  And there he was, just going for a swim.  

 

Jonathan and I went for several walks together, mostly up into the hills where many campesinos live and work, tending small plantations of coffee, corn and beans.  Given the steepness of some of the slopes, it’s hard work, often under relentless sun.  On one walk we came across a spot where the stubble from the previous season’s corn crop was being burned.  While it’s easy to understand that just burning the stubble is easier than trying to work it back into the soil, fires often deplete the soil, and alter it’s texture, making it more susceptible to erosion.  On these steep slopes, that may be a significant problem.

 

Back in town we spoke with some locals about the agricultural practices on the hillsides.  They told us that fire has always been used to clear crops, and they weren’t aware of problems with soil erosion (hardly surprising).  They also told us that most of the coffee plantations around Lago Atitlan are owned by Latinos who live elsewhere – in Panajachel or Guatemala City.  They pay the campesinos anywhere from 50 cents to a dollar a day to pick the coffee: it depends on how much they pick, and that depends on the trees in the patch that they’re assigned to pick.  They didn’t know how much the campesinos got paid to tend the crops.

 

I thought about this conversation for quite a while, wondering how the campesinos manage to live.  A dollar a day doesn’t go far here.  Guatemala is a more expensive country, from what I’ve experienced, than Mexico.  Furthermore, partly because of the number of gringos here, the prices of foods like bananas (a cent a piece), avocadoes, mangos, papayas, mandarins, bread and cheese are higher than they would probably be if the trade was limited to locals.  It’s uncomfortable to realize that one’s presence in a place may be – indeed likely is – negatively affecting the people who live there.   Because we gringos are able and willing to pay more for things, prices are higher, and sometimes that puts things out of reach of the local people. 

But as usual there is a flip side – or at least another side: the edge of the lake is liberally strewn with little, and very old, wooden boats – shaped like canoes with a very pointy bow and a squared off stern.  No engine, of course.  Here in Santiago they are painted green with a yellow stripe.  The people here use them mostly for fishing; during the day they sit idle, often filled with corn husks to keep them from drying out.  Some of the shrewder hombres rent their boats out to gringos for a dollar a day, more than what they might make working in the coffee fields – all day.  Gringos also buy many art and craft items, sometimes quite expensive items.  So this money goes into the local economy.  Much to consider.  But I have time.