Newmaya

I swear to you, this is the view out our rooftop. No Photoshopping involved:

That was the last of them. We put the last crew of family members on the plane and headed back to the fragmented reality of our home – intermittent internet service, static-filled linea fija, useless Vonage without an IP address, dead hard drives, bad power adapters, beeping APCs and the general mayhem of when machines talk to one another and decide to go on strike against their cruel tormentors that give them no rest. Why this onslaught of technological rebellion? What was the universe telling us that we just weren’t listening to? I thought of the visit we paid to Maximón in Santiago, Atitlan this weekend and wondered if I could take my technology troubles to him like the couple in this video who asked the shaman to intercede on their behalf and talk to the Maximón about being evicted from their home:

We were led to him by two Tuk Tuk drivers who zipped us to the other side of the island, passing Parque de Paz, the devastation of Hurricane Stan, and onward to a private home with thatched roofs, dirt floors, and a family eating their lunch by the large pot boiling over the wooden fire. A thick plume of incense billowed from the entrance to a dark cabin where three people kneeled before the austere wooden figure of Maximón clad in silk ties covering his entire wooden body and smoking a large cigar that the two attendants – a cigar man who was a glorified ashtray holder and a liquor bearer –both watched as the shaman issued his plea in the Tz’utujil language. Our Tuk Tuk drivers translated as I sat in the corner and took the video (I had paid Q10 for one photo, but there was no set price for video, so they looked confused when I pulled out my camera).

The family was in trouble, I was informed, they were getting evicted and only the Maximón, the Maya god who has the powers that only the believer can entrust to him in the area the believer needs the most help in. The plea continued, the incense filled the entire room, the couples’ child shrieked and then a bottle of Pepsi was passed around for all to drink.The cigar holder man and the alcohol holder both drank and smoked. I could buy Maximón a drink, the Tuk Tuk friend told me. It would be my offering to him. Or we could sit next to him on either side of the chair and that was permitted while the shaman spoke. We could see things from the Maximón’s perspective. I sat quietly in the room and took pictures. “Does Maximón sleep?” I asked our guides. They looked annoyed. “Of course he sleeps. Every night we take him upstairs and at 5 AM he is brought down to hear people’s problems.” For how long, I wondered? “Until, next year when the Maximón is moved back to the city.” So he’s a traveling god? “Yes, he goes to where people need him.” That makes a lot of sense I told my Tuk Tuk friend. I thought perhaps my technology problems weren’t even worth mentioning to him, he probably had so many other things to worry about.

My friend Esteban Tweeted me today shortly after the 6.0 magnitude earthquake reported to have taken place offshore Guatemala at 9:40 AM on January 18. He writes: “Was it a temblor or a terremoto?” When I sent him the USGS link that presents the “Earthquake Details,” he tweeted again: “Glad u ok. My parents said it was a bit strong but definitely just a “temblor” where they were. They think “terremoto” and they think 1976.”

It’s an important distinction that is lost somewhere in translation, but more importantly remembered in time,  February 4, 1976 to be exact, when Guatemala had it’s last big earthquake which many remember as “El Terremoto”. To put it in context: the Guatemala Earthquake we had today was 64 miles deep, the Haiti Earthquake was 5 miles deep, causing more damage and affecting a wider area, BuzzyBloggers informs us. “The most massive earthquake that struck Guatemala was in 1976 – a 7.5 magnitude earthquake that shook Guatemala at 3:00 AM, 5 km deep.”

So I call mi abuelita who lived through that earthquake and always talks about it using those same terms.  The first thing she asks me is: ¿Como sintieron el temblor? Hubo temblor o terremoto en Guate? “Did you feel the tremor? Was there a tremor or earthquake in Guate?” I tell her it was classified as an earthquake by the USGS, but that doesn’t matter. “Where there damages?” No, I tell her, none that were reported. ¡Ah, pues fue temblor! I ask her how she makes the distinction and here is what she told me:

‘Temblor’ es cuando tiembla la tierra, ‘terremoto’ es cuando causa mucho daños, como Haití. ‘Temblor’ viene derivado de que tiembla la tierra, pero terremoto causa muchos daños. “A ‘tremor’ is when the earth quakes, an ‘earthquake’ is when it causes much damage, such as Haiti. A ‘tremor’ is derived from the earth trembling, but earthquakes cause damage.” I tell her there is a technical difference. The Spokeseman Review and the USGS inform us that a “tremor is normally associated with movement of magma along with actual earth movement. Whereas earthquake is normally just earth movement.” Only scientists can really tell that technical difference, but in case you’re interested I found the USGS frequently asked questions to be really informative.

Guatemala is buzzing with life or perhaps death lately, especially with the UN investigation of the murder of the attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg and his self-hatched political suicide. I have written about it for Hablaguate and Americas Quarterly and it still reads like a CSI episode or a film noir plot.

The investigation consisted of four parts:

(1) Who ordered and paid for the crime?
(2) What about the video?
(3) Kahlil and Marjorie Musa?
(4) Corruption charges

The results were part #1 and # 2 (so stick around for the continuing saga), but the murder of the Musas and the corruption charges put out by Rosenberg’s video are still to be clarified. Much like the Japanese crime movie Rashomon one gets the sense that the more you know the less you really understand, with more questions than answers surfacing with each detail. What I do get very clearly from the explanation of Rosenberg’s murder is a real sense of how tragicomedy happens offstage through the life of the balding, tormented and disillusioned figure of Rosenberg who was an embodiment of both the best and the worst of Guatemala. Having worked as an honorable attorney inside Guatemala’s upper echelon, Rosenberg experienced an emotional downfall not unlike Hamlet who lost faith in his mother (country that is) and could not quite overcome that fall from grace. In many ways the social drama he constructs around his murder drives home the point that the Guatemalan judicial system (in a country where 6,451 people were violently murdered in 2009 with only 230 convictions and a 96.9 percent impunity rate)  is broken exactly because his murder could not be solved  without the help of entities such as the FBI and United Nations. Perhaps the last relational act Rosenberg gave us was giving us this view into a snake that eats itself and you are forced to watch it hoping for something to change.

We dropped off abuela at 6 am and got to see the sun rise:

Then we headed over to Cafe Condesa for Sunday morning breakfast. We were the first customers there and were two hours early for the infamous Sunday buffet. I haven’t seen the streets of La Antigua this empty in a while:

Today was a hard day of getting lost in Guatemala City looking for the bus station in Zone 1. I knew the old address but 21st street, 11th avenue was horribly painful to get to. But I digress, it’s the sunsets that really matter.

New clothes don’t make me happy. Fast, new shiny cars don’t make me happy. Meat doesn’t make me happy. But getting my recyclables picked up makes me immensely happy and such was my happiness today at the end of the day when these guys arrived:

For weeks I’ve been asking different people about recycling centers, pickup services, anything to stop the madness of the trash we’ve beem generating in our house for the past two months. Everyone’s says “Oh yeah, La Antigua recycles.” or “Have you tried that place in Ciudad Vieja?” “The capital has a few places, go there.” All so vague and unhelpful that it made me question whether  it was sheer urban legend.

So we go to these places and all they take is tin and glass (but that’s ten percent of the trash we generate) or they only take it on certain days, oh, wait, you have to go to the capital. I looked in the yellow pages, I Tweeted, I asked other “greensters,” but nothing satiated my need for convenience, conservation and practicality.  So I spent a few hours on Facebook looking for Facebook groups with the keyword “Guatemala” in them and poured through 500 pages until I found these folks:

http://www.guatemalagreen.com/how-works.html

We called and spoke to Pedro Morales  Tel: 5104 8447 (there’s also an English speaker – Becky Harris (English Speaking)  Tel: 5778 4009) and scheduled a regular pick-up from our home on Tuesdays. We neede  to improve our sorting/storing methodology, per their requirements, but an hour of sorting, washing out and rearranging everything did the trick. We got some neighbors in on it and they brought their recyclables over. I will be checking our their facility next week and making a longer video, so stay tuned. Update: One of the junta members of our residencial is presenting the recycling idea to about 50 homeowners, most of them Guatemalan, who are interested in learning about this recycling program. In preparation for the meeting I created an English and Spanish information flyer.

The other “first” for me was getting my first bank account with my hot off the press (ok two months later) DPI. From my little cubicle with the BI rep who took almost 90 minutes to set me up with a checking account, I sat and watched the endless lines of people trying to pay their electric bills, credit cards bill, deposit money, everything they had not done during the almost five days of banks being closed:

We promised mi mama a leisurely Saturday around La Antigua away from the madding crowds of the Puerto San Jose beaches and the onslaught of traffic generated by the one million Guatemalans headed back to Guatemala City this weekend after a long holiday break. “No se, you pick something, I don’t care what it is, I’m just bored,” she told us and, thus, gave us our mandate to entertain. Sidenote: Only my mother could be bored in her own country, find absolutely nothing interesting about a city in ruinas (“Somebody should really fix those walls or at least the streets because it’s hard on the cars and it’s hard on your back when you walk.”). So we took her to Finca Filadelfia (“¿Porque el monte, mija? I came from el monte!”) and  San Felipe de Jesus, the home of the “Entombed Christ” with a lovely Gothic cathedral that made me reminisce about Gaudi and non-colonial architecture. San Felipe also happens to have one of the most animated mercados and creative vendors which included this woman selling shoes from the top of her car. “Tell them this is how we sell shoes in Guatemala,” she told me:

The food court inside the mercado was a much welcomed change of scenery from my recent dreaded visits to Miraflores during the holiday crunch.

Not a single complaint came out of mi mama while we were in el mercado, except the usual “¡Que caro! ¡Como si el mundo fuera solo en dólares!” “How expensive, as if the world was only in dollars!” She’s not quite used to La Antigua prices, so that’s a running complaint. In any case, I knew she was relatively content with the surroundings. Finca Filadelfia was another story. To be fair, mi mama is Americanized and fully acculturated (not assimilated) to American standards and way of life since she’s been there for more than thirty years after leaving Guatemala como una coyota of sorts. The last time she visited Guatemala was seven years ago and even that’s too soon. She promised it’ll be twice as long next time. The worst punishment that can be imposed on her is the lack of a hot shower, flushing toilets or clean tap water. Following that is not having a car, a YMCA or highways with clear big fonts that she can read and space out to while listening to Lola Beltran or JuanGa (Juan Gabriel to most). My mother likes “medium” everything and wants things to be highly customized to her tastes. So, like me, she’s from Guatemala, but she’s not really FROM here anymore, nor does she have the desire to have that distinction erased. In any case, she’s conflicted to say the least about most things Guatemalan, but Finca Filadelfia was very clearly a trampa or “rip off” to her. So I will tell it from her perspective and then I will present the other side from Maestro Rudy who balances out her view.

Things la Finca did wrong by mi mama’s standards:

(1) No à la carte menu on weekends. Because it was the weekend, the restaurant did not offer an à la carte menu, so it was either the Full Buffet for Q140 or the Meat Full Buffet for Q220. Mi mama was in disbelief, “You’re not serving from the menu?” “No seño.” Her next question was a reasonable one: “Do you offer a soup and salad option for people like me who are only mildly hungry?” The immediate answer was “No, señora, disculpe.”  She was obviously dumbfounded by the response and then continued to look for other options. “I would be happy to pay just for a soup that is part of the full buffet and you can charge what is reasonable, but I cannot pay for an entire buffet that I know is not what I need,” she told the waiter. Again, “No, señora, eso no se puede.” So, she scratched her head: “Then I will take from my son-in-law’s soup which he doesn’t like because it’s not vegetarian. Is that ok?” At that point, the waiter needed back-up, so a waitress came up and added an extra “No” to my mom’s problem solving to get what she needed at a restaurant where she was ready to pay for what she wanted.

She was having a hard time, so I intervened and said, “Please, do speak to your manager and tell them that she is willing to pay for the soup at a price they think is fair. We have ordered one buffet and drinks and would really be very satisfied if another option was possible. Before you say no again, please do go ask. Thank you.” After much tribulation with the manager– I saw them debating from the lovely table on the lawn overlooking the valley where the coffee finca began– the waiters returned and said, “Claro que si.” So my mother enjoyed a beef stew while Brad ate his veggie treats from the buffet. I drank my papaya milk shake, while the waiter hovered the entire time watching. “He thinks we’re going to eat Brad’s buffet,” mi mama laughed and the waiter finally left at the end of our meal.

Rudy’s counterpoint: Most Guatemalans visit La Finca Filadelfia specifically for the buffet on weekends and usually come with their families for the entire day so they are meeting their clientele’s needs by providing a full-buffet (with vegetables even!) and a meat buffet and not serving an à la carte menu.

(2) No option for self-guided tours. Since the official tours end at 4 PM, those of us who arrived after the last bus left, were left walking around in very few public places, much of the finca is private access and there are no informational signs to give you a sense of the historical or provide you with a context. What I have encountered from visiting different landmarks, tourist sites or places such that are mildly historical or educational, is some option for self-guided tours to enjoy the grounds, some “whuffie” as it were to create some good feeling to take with you of this place.

Brad’s counterpoint: The place is a private finca and spa, it’s not a national treasure or protected park or anything like that. They have a lot of overhead and they’re objective is to make money.

(4) Priced in dollars and intended for American tourists. Mi mama was frustrated to say the least when she saw all the prices in USD (when asked what the Quetzal prices were for all paseos or tours, none of the folks at the information booth could actually cite the prices even though on that particular day I only saw a few Americans or foreigners out of the hundreds of Guatemalans walking around aimlessly after the last scheduled tour). Take a look:

The two-hour tour by mule for $35, Brad and I agreed was reasonable (my mother having ridden mules most of her life for free to cart sugar cane, bananas or get around thought it was another trampa).  The Paseo Corto for Q25, which the folks at the information couldn’t describe what exactly it included, seemed the only thing intended for Guatemalans. Everything else was insanely expensive for what it was and knowing now that the average Guatemalan makes Q56 for a work day (thank goodness for the Q4 raise this week), the prices are most definitely priced to price out Guatemalans.

Rudy’s counterpoint: Which looks smaller for a canopy tour, $50 or Q412.50? In the past week the Quetzal has also varied and the USD has not, so it’s a more astute business practice to print in USD and to also make things look cheaper. It gives the customer the impression they are getting more for less.

I could go on and on (mi mama certainly did), but the conclusion from this peanut gallery is: Great place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there. Nor could we afford it for that matter. But the view was nice. Pues, como dice mi mama, “Hay que ver y no tocar.”

As promised, here is the Old Year’s last few hours in La Antigua.

The Festival Calle del Arco in La Antigua, as Prense Libre informs us, was created by a group of Antigueños in 1999, neighbors who were working on a peatonal project to increase street traffic. “Little did they imagine that 10 years after the activity would become the most anticipated celebration of that place, to dismiss the Old Year and receive the new one.” Since 2006 when I attended it last, it seems to have grown by the thousands with increased street vendors, fireworks, and more clubs. There’s also more music and performances as can be seen from the lineup which starts at 7 PM on the night of Dec. 31. While my mother feared for her safety amid the yelling of excited, and tipsy, young Guatemalans elbow to elbow with expats, tourists, Antigueños and random rifraff in for the possibilities, I was very surprised that a party this large did not get out of hand or violent the way something of this size, some 35,000, gets in the U.S. The last time this number of people got together last in the Castro district for Halloween there were a few shot, or stabbed and just general mayhem that made the authorities shut down the decades long celebration.  For now, the worst threat is getting hit by a firework shooting off the torito during the “Baile del Torito,” one of the many masked dances that make the Festival del Arco a visual treat for me. While I was filming, the person next to me did in fact get hit by one of the bombas coming off the angry torito circling around in its own sea of fire.

At midnight I ate 12 grapes and made 12 wishes with my mom and my husband next to me under the Arc in Antigua. Two years ago in this same street my husband and I were engaged and we made a promise to return to live if only for a brief moment in our lives. This year my mother lost her husband of 17 years and my husband lost his grandfather and I lost my dear friend Ellen to Cancer. I thought of loss and of gratitude and how the lights from all the fireworks pushed back all the darkness. I thought of beginnings and how beginnings are a state of mind, an innocence that we bring everyday to the way we live and what we experience. It was one of my wishes, to always look at life with fresh eyes and to always be humble and grateful when doing so.

¡Feliz Año Nuevo y un Happy New Year to all from Guatemala!

Sometimes the sacred just has a way of stopping you in your mundane tracks on your way to pick up tortillas and chocobanano.

Sometimes art happens just as you’re sitting there waiting for a light to change.

In case you haven’t gotten your holiday lights yet, why not consider some musical lights?

Unexpectedly, while we were giving Safari restaurant a second try in Puerto Barrios, we witnessed the “Baile del Vendo”. The Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes informs us that during the period of the conquest of Guatemala, the Spaniards would watch the wildlife that crossed the road and delighted by the wild diversity of quadrupedal locomotion, heading towards the Mayans asked the names of animals, they responded that they were called “deer”. The picture of the oral tradition, the basis of this “dance” continues in this way:

The Spanish came back to ask why not kill the deer to eat them, they answered that they had no weapons to do so, others pointed to the Spanish, who lived on a hill a hunter, this was allowed to hunt with a blowgun. Then the natives were in search of the old hunter and asked permission to Tzuultaq’a, God of the hill. The Spanish then got guns to hunt the deer and then they realized that these animals were rabid, so they prepared a dance.

All accompanied the old hunter, the deer were also accompanied by the tiger, monkey, lion, and others. When the old hunter’s hunting ends, he is charged by the monkeys, lion, tiger and the dog to no longer continue to hunt over the riverbank. The companions of the old hunter dancing with joy because this was not hurt when faced rabid deer. With gun in hand the hunter tells the Spanish: “I bring the deer already dead then cut up, to finish eating the old hunter dancing with joy.

Each “are” (by the vernacular genre) played on the marimba, for each couple looking for the hunter.”

It’s true that if I learn it for myself there’s a better chance I’ll believe in it. And so it goes with car permits and immigration renewals in Guatemala during the holiday season. We knew our 90 day permits for both our passports and the car would expire on December 26, so we mentally prepared for anything from Chiquimula onward. Fortunately for us, the roads resembled something out of “Omega Man:” empty, quiet and breathable because even the camionetas aren’t running as many routes- we didn’t see one single Pullman or Ruta Orientales headed to Puerto Barrios that entire day.

A quick trip to Tapachula at 6 AM could’ve done the trick for both our visas and our car permit (as recommended by Maestro Rudy), it would’ve been geographically inconvenient. But let me back up. Why in the world would we be headed to Tapachula, Belize or El Salvador to renew anything? In a nutshell Brad and I both have tourist visas that expire every 90 days (there’s a $114 penalty and mandatory 5-day expulsion if you violate that deadline, according to El Salvadorean aduana); the same applies for our car permit which has a penalty of Guatemalan import taxes being assessed on the total value of the car (something like $3K) if we overstay the 90 days. So simple enough, just get out of the country in time. Pero fijese, no es tan facíl.

Lessons learned:

• You can renew your car permit at any aduana or border crossing because those permits don’t require you to leave the Central American nations formed by the Sistema para la Integración Centroamericana or System for the Central American Integration. This means we don’t need to drive our car to Mexico, Costa Rica or Belize, but we only learned by this a trial and error process which consisted of us crossing the border at El Salvador about 20 Km before Esquipulas. Be sure to take at least two copies of your old permit, car title, registration, US driver’s license and Q40 to pay the permit. There will be much back and forth at the border, but within an hour we had our permit and we didn’t have to be out of the country for three days as my previous calls to La Mesilla aduana informed me. “We all have the same laws, seño, but each of us interprets them differently,” the La Mesilla customs agente informed me. It always helps to know people at SAT and in this case both my cousins knew people at SAT so they guided us through the process as rows upon rows of trailers parked along the El Salvador border.
• You can only renew 90-day tourist visas in Mexico, Costa Rica or Belize because those are considered outside the group of Central American nations. So while we could renew the car permit in El Salvador, we could not renew our passports.
• You must be out of the country at least 72 hours so that your tourist visa is renewed, except sometimes it just depends on the “kindness” of aduana agents and you pleeing that you have nowhere to stay in the other country so you have to return the same day. I am horrible at pleeing, so I asked the aduana guy in Puerto Barrios how I can ever repay him for his kindness and the inconvenience to him?
• Make sure you go at least 48 hours in advance to renew your visitor visa because you will be charged a multa or fine of Q80 if you arrive on the day your visa expires because it takes one day to process and while technically you may be in the system, you are officially not legal until the day after. Go figure.
• Stay more than an hour in Belize or you will incur a $30 exit tax per person.
• Make sure to buy a roundtrip ticket to Punta Gorda, Belize, because you have to show that at Belize customs.
• While there is a place to leave your car at the Muelle Municipal in Puerto Barrios for Q20, who knows if your car will be there when you get back. What we did was book a couple nights at MarBrissa, left our belongings and our car on the hotel premises and got a taxi for Q25 to the Muelle. MarBrissa is located at 20 Avenida 25 Calle Col Virginia, Puerto Barrios, GuatemalaPhone: +502 (0) 9 480 940. You can get a very nice room with AC, kitchenette, cable TV, free Wi-FI, pool and gym access and free breakfast for Q450, around $50. Lesson learned early on in my travels in Central America is to not skimp on hotels, especially if you’re carrying cameras and gear, because it’s just not worth it. Today we met a German student who was travelling in Belize with some friends and all of them got their expensive cameras and iPhones stolen from their hotel rooms because the windows would not lock. What’s also nice about MarBrissa is they are totally cool about you leaving your car there overnight and paying Q20 per night. It’s an insanely safe location even though it’s less than 3 Km from a large prison. The good thing is the prison now has new cement walls, not just wire mesh like it did for many years.
• There are ONLY private ferries to Punta Gorda. A private ferry costs Q3,000 if you insist on taking your car over.
• Livingston is not Belize.
• While it may seem logical to have a ferry or water taxi that takes you from Livingston and then to Punta Gorda, only private expensive charters will do that. Most people jump off from Puerto Barrio (PB) to Livingston (30 Minutes) and then back to PB, and then hop over to Punta Gorda (1 hour) and back. Prices range from Q175 to Q250 per person and on holidays (as it was for us) it can be triple the price because of additional Belizean charges added on to lancha water taxi services. We paid a total of Q400 each way for both of us, $97.56 round trip, with Mar y Sol the company which conveniently sells you tickets from the Immigration Services office located one block from the launch off point at the Mulle Municipal in Puerto Barrios. They depart at 1 pm everday and return the same day at 4 PM. Here’s us on the lancha which only had one life preserver and I was the only one to jump for it and request we not leave without more (to no avail):
• How do you get to PG from PB? Here’s some decent recommendations: LonelyPlanet, Requena’s (on the Belize side), Belizean ferries, Transportes El Chato, BelizeFirst.
• In Belize people speak English so drop your “holas” and “buenas tardes.” Bust out with your patois instead.
• Don’t forget to pay your Q80 at the Immigration office in Puerto Barrios. It would suck to have to take the lancha back because you forgot to pay your dues, it’s worse than forgetting the milk.
• Don’t argue with the Guatemalan Immigration officer unless you’re prepared for a long catfight. I think I won because I tired him out.
• Punta Gorda is a border town unlike anything I have ever experienced. It was sleepy, quiet and everyone seemed to be on quaaludes. Brad wasn’t too impressed with the shopping experience.
• Don’t be surprised if you see a boat sink while waiting for your boat in Belize.
• The most awesome thing about taking the afternoon ferry is that you get to see this sunset:

Fireworks are a must for Christmas in Chiquimula, Guatemala! Director: Kara Andrade. Music: “Keep It Hott (BradElectro Remix) by The Middle Agent, feat. Garth Culti-Vader & Tech N9NE. Available on Tarantic Records from iTunes.

My uncle Nefta’s eyes are big black globes around which his face orbits in thick folds of skin sunken in by the sun, lack of food and a grin that has filled his entire face since I was a child. At times it is a seven-year-old child gazing into the banana fincas of Media Luna and other times it’s the emptiness of confusion that makes me wonder if somehow he knows that he has schizophrenia. I stare at his eyes hard across mi tia’s dining room table in Chiquimula trying to understand what he feels as he is speaking to his son (in Pennsylvania) and his daughter (in LA) over two separate Skype video chats on Christmas eve. He touches the screen carefully and looks over at me and then back at his son waiting on the screen waiting for him to say something. “Marlon, why does your image move so quickly on this thing? Are you ok?” He chuckles and gets closer to the camera.

I sit next to him and press his arm to reassure him. For the next hour he talks to his eldest son who he hasn’t talked to since his son was a teenager, meets his son’s wife, asks him about his work, his life in Pennsylvania, almost makes logical conversation and then goes off on tangents regarding electricity and how it affects his head and liver.

“¿Mama, coma esta su higado?” he asked my grandmother when we picked him up from the Media Luna finca. Media Luna is where he worked as a 12-year-old boy picking bananas and playing the father role for the family before he even finished fourth grade. It’s the last finca once you enter the Hopy 1 and Hopy 2 finca on the way to Honduras from Puerto Barrios. Its unpaved road for 20 kilometers and home to dozens of water buffalo brought in from Asia to haul huge loads of bananas. They still graze along the muddy stretch filled with gaping potholes filled with water and deep enough to swallow your entire car tire. It’s here that my uncle Santos whom I’ve never met lives with his extensive family consisting of 16 children living in two cinder block homes surrounded by a moat that is a public health hazard I try to block out of my mind that rolls off the water-borne diseases: encephalitis, malaria, cholera, Hep A, the list continues.

When we drive into town we are the event which brings everyone out onto the street, faces curious to see who the visitors are with the Tule on the Honda with California plates, asking for this man that many call poporopo or popcorn. I know mi tio is near so I get out of the car anxious to meet Santos and track him down. Santos leads us to two stores and then finally he and I go by foot ready to cross fields. Before we enter our first field someone yells “Aye Santos!” at us and we turn around. A smile crossed Santos face and he says “Nefta, your family is looking for you.” I try to distinguish him from the two men sitting under a white awning, small and thin with long white hair covering his head, eyebrows and beard and a Dr. Seuss hat trick consisting of three hats stacked on top of one another. “Tio,” I say as I walk towards him, “it’s such a pleasure to see you.” He called me by my mother’s name and then I tell him it’s me and I resort to an old tone of voice I had with him when I was a child and would do my homework at his dinner table and confuse me with her. Things have changed, but they haven’t.

At my aunt’s house he complains of chest pains when he gets up from his video chat with his children. I ask him where it hurts.

“It’s right here,” he says pointing to his heart, “it’s like my ribs are breaking, my lungs are bursting and my heart is cracked. It might be the wires from the telephone poles because they impact not just our heads.” I give him a hug and tell him that’s what he’s supposed to feel. As he walks out towards the pila I see a few tears in his eyes that he wipes away with his shirt. Brad walks up to the dining room and asks if he’s been on a Skype call that entire time. Yes, I tell him, that’s right. “That’s a good use of saldo. Are you ready for cuetes?” It’s almost midnight and all of Chiquimula is about to explode in fireworks.

Honestly, I’ve never seen so much blood in my life– covering my hands, my arms and all over the family we helped pull out of a car crash today. Kara was driving the dangerous stormy oil-slicked road that leads to Puerto Barrios. I was riding shotgun and fully engrossed in my iPhone activities when the car that had just passed us suddenly disappeared. It barely registered in my mind when she said matter-of-factly: “that car just went off the road.” Two seconds later we pulled over and ran towards the giant hole the car made in the brush on the side of the road.

I looked down into a 20′ deep ditch next to the highway and after a few seconds focused on a black Jeep on it’s side, smashed into the ground. It was nearly swallowed whole by the ditch– buried up to the wheels in mud and leaves. It’s not surprising because they were going about 70mph, trying to pass a whole row of cars in front of us, when the driver saw the huge semi roaring his way and freaked out, breaked too hard and slid clean off the road. The car looked so bad I was expecting the worst as I ran down and skidded into the driver’s door.

Another man got there as soon as I did and we tried to open the two exposed doors. They were completely stuck but the passenger window, however, was shattered and since it was safety glass I was able to pull it off in one piece. This cut up my hand but I didn’t realize that until later.

The next thing I know, me and the other guy are pulling screaming, bleeding people out of this dark little hole in the ground. Kara was behind us, sending each new victim into triage via a couple other guys who took turns carrying them back up the hill to the highway. First, the two kids– one had a gusher of a cut on the top of his head but I think he was more freaked out than anything. Next came the wife, who had a huge gash across her forehead and I could clearly see her skull as I pulled her out. We could tell she was going into shock because she was zoned out, totally quiet and unresponsive. Grandma had difficulty moving so I cradled her like baby and passed her back. Dad was last and was trying to stand on an obviously broken leg– definitely going into shock. This didn’t stop the other woman in the car from screaming at him and telling him it was his fault when they were both back up the hill.

After all the heavy-lifting I ran and got the first aid kit from the trunk of our car. Mostly I just handed out gauze pads and surgical tape to the women who were bandaging everybody up. Everyone needed to go to the emergency room but when would an ambulance come? Quien sabe– who knows. I found an emergency blanket in the kit– when I folded it out it looked like a giant piece of tin foil– and wrapped the mom up with it. Everyone tripped out on that little piece of gringo technology. Go USA!

On our way back the following afternoon we stopped at the accident site. A man came out and told us everyone was doing well, except Granny who suffered a broken back. I hate to say it, but she may never walk again. Dad was actually arrested before they took him to the hospital, probably for reckless driving or endangering his kids or something. Anyway, to top it off, the wheels were stolen off the car in the middle of the night, before it was towed out.

We joke about how unsafe Central American drivers are and the crazy risks we see locals take on the roads everyday. But then when something like this happens you kind of go, damn, maybe all our over-the-top safety and prevention culture in North America ain’t so silly after all.

Puerto Barrios is cold, wet, and dirty. It is, as Brad so aptly put it, “the armpit of the armpit of Latin America.” Barrios, named after President Justo Rufino Barrios in 1884 (you’ll see a nice statue of Rufino at Parque Tecun Uman) , is known for three things: boozers, prostitutes and Hotel Del Norte.

Del Norte, without the blue of the Caribbean reflecting from the high noon sun, is a cross between the spooky emptiness of the hotel from “The Shining” and a New Orleans swamp house with the yellow wooden roof rotting from all the rain, the crooked floors making the hotel look like it’s leaning and sinking into the sea and all the comforts of indoor camping. There’s no hot water in the rooms facing the water and the doors to our room are a fancy version of a porch door with a padlock similar to what you would see on a gym door.  We give up the one television set upstairs because the receptionist has quoted us three different prices for it and every time it keeps getting higher. I tell her to take it, on principle of course. She shrugs. Before we get towels the housekeeper is seen carrying the TV set down the creaking stairs that feel like climbing the steps of Tikal. Nevertheless, the character surpasses all these minor inconveniences because mi abuelita reminds me that when she was younger El Sindicato met at this hotel and the hotel wined and dined them for free. That’s how long a free meal can last.

During rainy season, which began last week mi mama informs me, things are just more depressing. She tells me this as we are driving over pot holes that could swallow our entire two front tires on 4a calle as we head to El Safari seafood restaurant which she cannot stop raving about. She orders the tapado seafood soup, made with coconut milk and about two cups of salt mixed in with seafood and crab legs. I order a shot of vodka and the grilled fish to warm up.

It’s a different Barrios for abuela and she doesn’t recognize the streets – some of which still lead to her brothers’ houses – the new mercado, and the cold which makes her shiver as she listens for the boats in the distance not too far from the pier at El Safari. Allí estan, los vas a ver. They’re there, you’ll see them.

Tomorrow we find out if we can cross over with our to Punta Gorda by ferry. At this point, I’m wondering if any ferries are crossing because el mar esta bravo from all the rains. Either way we’re headed to Entre Rios and then la Finca Inca to find mi tio Neftalie and take him back to Chiquimula with us in time for Christmas. It’s a two hour trek into what used to be United Fruit Company land and now it’s a dense jungle of banana leaves and people co-habitating near the Motawa River.

PS: Another way to get to Puerto Barrios besides bus, mule and car:

Try the railroad to Puerto Barrios.