La Estación Biológica las Guacamayas

So, as briefly indicated in that last post, I have indeed managed to return to the Guacamayas biological station, if not Paso Caballos.

The station, as seen from the Rio San Pedro

Quite a few things have changed, a lot of the infrastructure has been updated (thatch roofs replaced, electricity restored to the visitors' dorms, new windows put into the guest dining hall, etc), but more noticeably, under the administration of a new NGO, Asociación Balam, the projects and staff of the station have changed as well.

The remodelled, but still largely empty, visitor's center

Jar o' pickled crocobabies!

Three of the old ProPetén workers I knew, I was told, are still on staff, but it sounds like they don't actually work there very often. Instead, the station is now populated by workers from Balam and, more significantly, by people hired out of Paso Caballos - including my old Q'eqchi' translator, Miguel.

The agricultural frontier between the station and Paso Caballos

Yovani taking his own photo of the frontier

When I arrived and walked into the worker's kitchen, Miguel was out back grinding corn. He turned and looked at my face and greeted me, but, as he told me later, he couldn't quite remember where he had seen my face before... because, as he also related to me, a few times, he didn't ever expect to see that face again. I found out that after I left Paso Caballos last time, he had tried to find me, asking WCS for my contact information (they didn't have it, since I didn't work with them last time), even travelling into Flores one day to visit the offices and try to find me, or a phone number where he could reach me. People in the community, he told me, would ask him where I was, and bother him about me. It sounds like when I had said I would come back, people thought I was coming with some kind of big development project... perhaps Miguel himself had thought that, and told them so in those parts of conversation that were in Q'eqchi' and beyond my comprehension. But Miguel, unable to find me, told them all I had gone away to the US, and that I wasn't coming back because there were no funds.

Looking southwest over the Rio San Pedro, from the station's lookout tower (mirador)

Miguel, in el mirador

...and climbing down from it

I apologized profusely for not leaving my phone number, for not calling him, and for not being clear with people that I wasn't working in development, lacking both funding for such things and links to organizations that might be more interested than me in actually doing that sort of thing. We talked about changes in the community since I had left, and he agreed with the assessments I had heard that it had become more closed off, harder to get into... but still insisted that it was worth trying. I have so little time here, though, I told him - only two weeks left, I can't believe it! - that by the time I start to gain an inkling of people's trust, I will go off and disappear again for another year or two. Better to start small, just greet people I already know and not try to work my way into "the community" at large only to let them down. Only next time, when I am back for real and for a long time, will it be worth the wait.

Nixtamal and grinder, outside the staff kitchen

Being back at the station, though, was a surreal experience. As though, despite the physical and social changes which had clearly taken place, I had only been gone a couple of days. I was even given the same dorm room, the same bed, to sleep in. I sat in the same plastic chair outside my door, in a familiar pose with my feet up on the same wood railing, to write my notes in the slow hours of the morning while the station staff went about their work - exactly as I used to do when I was there two years ago.


At night, though, the clash of old and new, familiar and unfamiliar, was at its strongest. On my last visit, the staff and I would sit around a table near the visitor's kitchen - or more importantly near the fridge containing cold beer and coca-cola, located inside that kitchen - drinking and chatting late into the evening under a dim light.

This cheeky 7-legged fellow showed up in my bedroom at night

This time, as darkness fell, I heard Miguel and Yovani (the new Balam station administrator) chatting outside their dormitory, so I invited myself over and sat with them for a quiet, reflective conversation. The air was filled with fireflies, something I don't remember from last time, flickering and bobbing against the barely-visible outlines of trees and nearby buildings. I told them the place was full of memory for me, and shared a few stories from my previous visit to the station which made them both howl, making fun of me and the men in the stories who they both know well. But soon the laughter died down we all fell silent and sat together, each alone with our own thoughts and memories, surrounded by the buzzes, hums, chirps and rustlings of the jungle at night.

Mucho Camino

I have started going out on trips with various NGO workers to communities, accompanying them to see what kinds of projects they are working on and to get to know, at least a tiny bit, the different communities of the Peten. I have gone to Carmelita, Uaxactún, Poptún, and, bizarrely, only through Paso Caballos... apparently things have gotten so tense there, the community so closed and defensive, since I left that it will take a lot more time than I have here on this visit to get back in. All I can do is pass through on my way to the bio station, maybe briefly chat with the few people who knew me well and remember me, and move on before people get suspicious.

In any case, these trips out to different places always involve long journeys. As one NGO worker pointed out, he used to actually live in Uaxactún to do his work there, but now that he is centered in Flores and working in more than one community, he ends up spending more time on the road that actually in the various places. It is an exaggeration, but a small one.

The roads to the south, outside the biosphere reserve, are well-paved and wind upwards through increasing hilliness towards the cooler, higher elevations of the country. I still wear my tank tops there (it is still a comfortable 22ish degrees), but other people layer jackets over long-sleeved shirts, wondering aloud at my Canadian ability to withstand the cold.

Heading north into the reserve is a different story. Unpaved, the roads are nothing more than rock and clayish mud, pitted, puddled and washed out by the current rainy season. Regular cars cannot negotiate these roads, only double-stick four-wheel drive trucks (which make me wish I knew a thing or two about transmissions) and motorcycles able to zip around and between the holes.

Strangely enough, the roads north into the Reserve, with the exception of the road to Uaxactún, are surrounded by what appears to be more intensely used land. Signs of recent forest cutting and burning and dense packs of cattle packed onto thin scrubby pasture dominate, and there are some spots along the road where the land has been so overworked that erosion has carried all soil off the hillsides, leaving bare rocks with patchy coverings of weeds. Men can be seen moving in packs across the fields, spraying pesticides or herbicides from large plastic tubs, perhaps a third of them wearing masks to protect themselves from the chemicals.

The road to Paso Caballos, con lluvia.

The rides provide a great opportunity to chat with the workers, or, sometimes even better, when the car is also carrying other Guatemalans up to the various communities, to listen to the conversations that map place names, associations, memories, and commentary on the landscape as we move. Desires for land are expressed, or appreciation of the beauty of particular houses or fields - an appreciation of an aesthetic so foreign to my own that I am often left wondering what it is about that particular place that called for commentary.

The road heading towards Tikal National Park & Uaxactún

The road into Uaxactún is the most beautiful to me, of course, because to reach the community you have to pass through Tikal National Park, famous for both its incredible ancient Mayan temples and its biodiversity. You enter the park, as if driving right up to the temples, and then take a right turn out into the jungle just before hitting the main Tikal plaza. As we turned out onto this road, my driver commented, "here's where the party starts!" as our truck immediately began bouncing up and down over the ruts and holes, scattering thousands of white, yellow, brown and orange butterflies off the mud in front of us as we went.

At one point in our journey we encountered a pack of 15 or 20 pizotes (or coatis, the internet tells me they are called in English), including a bunch of babies, hanging out in the road and the bushes along its' sides. Daniel stopped the truck and encouraged me to get out take pictures, joking, "if they start to attack you, run!" I hopped out of the truck and moved slowly towards the pizotes, who for the most part ignored me, scattering into the bushes only when I got too close. At one point, I crouched down to get a picture of one peeking out at me from the side of the road, and when I stood up to turn around another that had crept up a few feet behind me bolted away. Amazing!

Pizotes...

...and pizotitos!

Once in Uaxactún, a rough and tumble 23km past Tikal through the forest, I discovered that the community is right in the middle of its own ancient Mayan city, one that is even older than Tikal, but significantly less well-developed for tourism. Daniel took me out to see the astronomical observatory that lies to the south of the village, and explained how the various temples lined up with the lines of the sun at the equinoxes and solstices.

The temple and solar observatory at Uaxactún

Your fearless author with the stela across which the sun falls in perfect line with nearby temples on the equinoxes.

But it was later, as I waited for a couple hours for him as he met with a few people from the community (I was unable to intend the meeting due to a current political conflict with another NGO, lest I be thought a spy), that I walked by myself the km out to the ancient city to the north of the village, and found myself in the jungle amidst huge stone palaces, ball courts, stelae, and temples. Keeping a careful eye out for snakes (remembering a warning from years ago to always have 'mucho ojo' in the bosque) I climbed up the rock structures and wandered around and between them, alone with the remains of an ancient world. As fate would have it, I had of course left my camera in the car... but somehow that only made it more powerful, more present, as I knew I could only be there in the moment and hold onto the experience in the soft focus photographs of my memory.

We left Uaxactún just as the sun was going down, so on our ride back out through the jungle only the ruts and encroaching branches immediately in front of us, illuminated by the headlights, were visible. The rest, as they say, was mystery.

Esperando la camioneta

Yesterday I remembered Yuliya's advice from last time we were here: that Guatemalans, when they don't know what direction to point you in, will just point you in one at random but declare it to be the right one with total confidence, rather than let you know that they don't know either.

While searching for the camioneta (an old Canadian school bus, with most seats lacking either the springs or the cushion, neither of which makes for a comfy ride) up to Paso Caballos yesterday afternoon in the market, I discovered that this applies not just to physical directions but to instructions and helpful advice in general.

Last time I was here I only took the bus on the way out of Paso Caballos, at five in the morning. It leaves once a day, before sunrise, and then rumbles back into the village, so I vaguely remembered, in the late afternoon or early evening. I decided to head over early to the place where the buses all gather, a crowded corner of the `old market' (to me indistinguishable from the contiguous `new market') in Santa Elena, to try to ask what time or from where the bus might leave. Paying my five quetzales to a tuk tuk to avoid the midday heat, I wandered up to a group of men sitting around near the microbuses and inquired as to the bus to Paso Caballos.

Tuk tuks waiting near the bridge to Santa Elena

"A la una," one of them replied straight away.

"¿A la una? ¡Gracias!" As I walked away I pulled out my cellphone to check the time, and ¡puchica! it was already 12:40, and my bag, while packed, was back in my room in Flores.

I kicked into high gear - a tough thing to do when it's 32/90 degrees outside, feeling like 42/108 with the humidity - and caught another tuk tuk back across the bridge. Of course, it wouldn't take me all the way to my apartment because the driver didn't feel like going over the bumpy mudded out roads, currently and indefinitely under reconstruction. I threw another five quetzales at him, then hightailed it back to my place. I grabbed my bag and stuffed in a bunch of random food without time to think about it, then rushed out the door again. At the top of the island, on my way back down to the bridge to catch yet another tuk tuk, I glanced again at the time - 12:55. Well, I thought, at least nothing in Guatemala ever runs on time. I don't want to take my time, but I'll make it.

A road where tuk tuks fear to tread

My tuk tuk driver, right after picking me up, pulled over again to pick up a couple of young guys, maybe 17 or 18 years old, asking (although not really asking) if it was ok if we doubled up. "OK," I responded, "but I'm in a hurry, please!" So the two boys squeezed in next to me, going god knows where (they were trying to decide even as we drove), and luckily the driver then took me straight back to the entrance to the market where I hopped out, payed another five quetzales, and made my way in towards the "terminal."

When I arrived, of course, there was no sign of any large yellow school bus. The drivers approached me one by one, trying to load me into their minibuses:

"Poptún?''

"No, gracias."

"Melchor/Belice?"

"No, gracias."

Finally in response, one of them asked where I was trying to go.

"Paso Caballos."

"Oh, that leaves at 2." The man held up two fingers, unintentionally flashing me a peace sign, and walked away.

Two o'clock, then. At 1pm in the market in Santa Elena, it is hot and filthy, and in my rush I had worked up a fine film of sticky sweat over my whole body, that now attracted the grime and dust like a magnet. I also hadn't grabbed my water bottle in my hurry, so with an hour to kill I wandered out to the edge of the market and bought a bien frio bottle of agua pura, then sat on the stoop and drank it slowly, watching people and tuk tuks and motorcycles and dogs and microbuses and bicycles all tumble by me in a wild tangle of heat and orange-grey dust.

At one thirty, calmer and considerably cooled down by the shade, rest, and water, I headed back in to the terminal and found another concrete step to sit and wait on. I watched the women circulate between the buses, selling aguas, frutas, cakes or donuts. A young boy tried to sell me a donut persistently, clearly attempting to use his cuteness wiles on a gringa like me, asking me, "where are you from? Won't you buy just one?" Men wandered through hawking strange medicines and skin potions, and others dragged huge bags of dried corn up the small ladders on the sides of the buses, dumping their loads on top.

At two o'clock, with no sign of a bus (and more suspiciously, perhaps, not many Q'eqchi' around waiting for it), I got up again, and again began the questioning. Another driver pointed out that because the bus was a big one, maybe it didn't come into the center of the market, but just stayed at the edge, where I had been sitting before. I thanked him, and headed back out, happily greeted as I rounded the corner by the familiar sight a large yellow school bus.

I asked the young boy hanging on the stairs up into the bus where it went, and he started listing off place names, but none of them were familiar. "Where are you going?" he asked me at last, seeing my lack of recognition.

"A Paso Caballos."

"Oh, this bus doesn't go there..."

Upon hearing my destination, other passengers started chiming in with advice. One woman began: "Paso Caballos? That leaves at 3.''

"At 3?''

"Yes. But you're right, it looks just like this one!''

And then another woman chimed in: "Paso Caballos? Oh, that one already left."

"It already left?''

"Yes. It's gone.''

And then finally a man with curly reddish hair and a fine spread of gold teeth, "the thing is, that one never came today.''

"It never even came?''

"No, it doesn't come on Saturdays. But is it just you?''

"Yes.''

"Well, I could take you there on my motorcycle.''

I pondered this for a moment. A lone gringa on a strange man's motorcycle out in the middle of nowhere. It would probably be fine, might even be fun, but seemed a little risky.

"How much?'' I asked. The man answered something that sounded to me like "30 chocos,'' which was not very helpful, and then continued by talking about how poor they are there, but that it would be no problem if I went and got on the bus, and then at the other end he had his motorcycle and he would take me the rest of the way.

Again I pondered this, my sense of adventure and the fact that I had put so much energy into trying to get there all week pushing me towards this strange man with the gold teeth, my sense of safety and the knowledge that I could stay and go to Uaxactún tomorrow with Daniel (a worker for the local NGO Balam) in the comfort of a nice air conditioned four wheel drive truck, and try again for Paso a few days later, finally leading me to my decision.

"No, I think I'll wait for another day,'' I told him.

"Another day, then,'' he repeated.

"Yes, but thank you!''

I walked away, paid another five quetzales for another tuk tuk that also wouldn't take me all the way home, got back to my room and called Daniel to tell him we were on for tomorrow, then changed immediately into my bathing suit, walked back out, and jumped in the lake.

El agua del Petén guarda una risa para mí

"Places gather... [they] keep such unbodylike entities as thoughts and memories. When I revisit my hometown of Topeka, Kansas, I find this place more or less securely holding memories for me. In my presence, it releases these memories, which belong as much to the place as to my brain or body. This kind of keeping is especially pertinent to an intensely gathered landscape such as that of aboriginal Australia --- a landscape that holds ancestral memories of the Dreaming. Yet even when I recall people and things and circumstances in an ordinary place, I have the sense that these various recollecta have been kept securely in place, harbored there, as it were." - Edward Casey, in Senses of Place (Basso & Feld, eds, 1996).

In the long, slow days and nights here, there is a lot of time to read. Reading theory "in the field" is wonderful. I read the above passage yesterday morning lying in a hammock atop my hotel, beneath the thatch roof, and it made sense. But it was not until later in the day, when the Peten Itza lake released a memory it had been holding for me, that the full force of the power of place hit me.

Of course, from the moment I arrived, the memories have come flooding in, but they had all been memories that I already remembered, as it were. Where places are, which restaurants are best for breakfast, the friendliness of a particular hotel worker, and, of course, my favorite people and stories from my first time around. Especially since I learned that my friends that worked in the Estacion Biologica were still there - despite the sale of the station to another organization - I had been replaying my favorite moments, the absolute pinnacle of which was one afternoon when I went swimming in the Río San Pedro with Don Raquel and Antonio.

That afternoon, we rowed out from the station to a nearby tree hanging out over the water, and began climbing up and jumping out of the tree, with Don Raquel announcing our performances as if we were competing in an olympic high dive competition. He had the persona down perfectly, building up the tension as each of us made our way up the trunk and out onto the branch over the deepest water, then rating our performances - including his own, of course - as if there were three international judges giving their professional opinions.

On his third dive, Antonio moved for a more ambitious performance, edging further and further out on the branch as it bent beneath his weight down towards the water. Further still he stepped, into the thinner part of the branch where leaves started to appear, with Don Raquel the whole time announcing the dive of the century from the comfort of the lancha, beside which I was treading water awaiting my next dive, when *CRACK* the tree snapped suddenly, sending a huge branch and Antonio tumbling down into the water. I shrieked and was so overcome with laughter that I couldn't swim, gulping a huge mouthful of the murky black-green water before grabbing hold of the side of the boat so as to keep myself from drowning... death by laughter.

Don Raquel recovered much quicker than me and jumped in to continue announcing that at this year's olympics, dear listeners, there had been a terrible accident! One of the athletes had fallen from the platform, never in the history of the sport had anything like this happened before! I clung to the boat, completely lost to the laughter that shook every fiber of my body.

Given that it was not just one of my favorite days in Guatemala, but in my life - I can only remember laughing that hard a few times in all my days - I thought that I remembered it perfectly. But yesterday, as I went for a late afternoon swim in the lake in which the island of Flores sits, as my body once again met the water of the Petén, the memory held in place was released to me. Not when I was treading water, or floating slowly in place, but only when I rolled over and began swimming in earnest did I suddenly remember that there was a whole second event to the days olympics: a series of races across the river, in which I first beat Don Raquel and then lost to Antonio, taking silver.

I had to stop swimming again, yesterday, to grin at the memory. It has been impossible to write about it right now, without a totally goofy look on my face. Last night I debated whether to allow the Petén to release more memories to me one at the time, or whether to go back and read the diary I kept two years ago, that I brought with me but hadn't opened yet. Eventually my curiosity won out and I opted for the latter, figuring that the Petén would still hold plenty of memories for me yet. As I read through the story of that day again in my old diary, in the context of all the days before and after it, I broke out into laughter again, feeling bien loca cracking up alone in my little hotel room.

It looks like I'll be heading back up for a visit to Paso Caballos and the Estacion this Wednesday for a day or two. I can't wait to see those guys again, to watch the river drift by from a lancha, to discover what memories, what feelings, the Petén still holds for me out in the jungle.

Más que cambio, más que queda lo mismo.

Last time I was here in Guatemala, tucked away in the Q'eqchi' village at the end of the bumpy muddy road out into the jungle, the constant clanging of the evangelical church across from my "home" in the back of the mayor's store played over and over again with the sound of Christ's promise: "yo volveré" - "I'll be back". Even when the music ended, the words echoed in my head, along with my own identical promise to the people of Paso Caballos to return.

Well, I made it. Not to the village yet, which I intend to visit a couple of times but not to live in on this trip, but to the Petén, Guatemala.

My Spanish is rusty, muy rusty. After all, I had only been learning the language for about six months when I first arrived last time, and while I was doing pretty well at the end of my two month stay, those two months have been washed over by two years of re-anglification. (See, I can't make words up like that in Spanish. Or, rather, I make words up, but just when I don't know 'em. My other goal is to be able to be funny in Spanish. Oh, what a beauty that would be!)

It's funny, how incredibly familiar things are, so far I've even stayed in the same hotels as the first time, with the same people working in them... a few things have changed - they are re-cobbling the roads all over flores right now, a few touristy businesses have appeared or disappeared, etc. But mostly it's like I never left, other than the noticeable thickness of my tongue.

Today I'm headed into the offices of a few environmental NGOs that I've been in touch with to start up the whole "research" process that I'm here for. Perhaps because there is less pressure to come away with a full research product like last time, or because I have been here before, I'm much less nervous than last time to start up talking to people. My Spanish might be terrible, but it'll come back. People might not understand what the heck I'm doing here, but hey, do I even know? Obviously, vaguely yes, but I am lacking the kind of clearly defined beginning-and-end research project I had last time. It's rather liberating.

On that note, I should write up the notes I have from my first few days here, then start "work." And then, of course, take a nice hammock siesta.


***
NOTE: For those of you new to this blog, the posts below are from my first trip to Guatemala, two years ago, for my Master's research. At the time, terrified of taking my life, aka laptop, down to Central America with me, I only used slow dollar-an-hour internet cafes for email, and wrote up the blog stories upon return to the US. This time, I took the risk, and have discovered that the only place in town with real coffee is also the one with free wifi. I have declared this to be my office. Perfecto.