TL #3

Thursday, 2 July ’81 - Oaxaca
Wednesday, 15 July 1981 - Guatemala City

Buenos Dias, to all: Mmm… I feel marvelous. Just finished a nice hoyt shower in a nice clean hotel room. We really splurged today. This cost $9.90, but we haven’t had a private bathroom for a week and the beds have hardly been worthy of existing. The floor might have been better. (to sleep on.)

I’ve only a few moments right now. Robert’s showering now … and then we plan to find some dinner. We’ve done a lot of walking this afternoon and are both tired. So I’ll write what I can and continue when I can again.

We rushed to the post office after unloading our packs at the hotel. Robert got one letter from a friend in Sweden … and I got a birthday card from C, D, L, and R … and we got two letters from Mom. Nothing forwarded from Mexico City and the card you said the office sent is not here either. Both of the letters we did get were sent after our call from Mexico City. We’ll be in town all tomorrow and will check again.

We’re ahead of schedule, but think our next mail checkpoint at Quito is still okay at August 20 and then Lima probably mid-September.

Loved all the news. We were really shook to hear about David Stein. After such a struggle and coming so far, it seems a rotten thing to happen.

Later - same evening - Just discovered that the sheets are plaid! Wow! It’s even great to have sheets. Yesterday, in Atitlan, after we checked in, Robert stretched out on top of the bed … and the pillow went "crinkle, crinkle". We pulled back the bedspread … and the mattress ended and there were 2 "pillows" in plastic covers. We also noticed then that there were no sheets or blankets. There have been many nights we’ve been glad to have our sleeping bags with us.

Not only sheets! … This place has water - both hot and cold, the toilet flushes, and we have towels, soap, and even toilet paper. This is our nicest accommodation so far!

So where did we leave you last? … Way back in Mexico, I think … Oaxaca. Oh, yes, … We left there about 11 PM July 3. My birthday was spent in transit … One of those days best forgotten. I also caught a cold that day and had laryngitis for about 3 days. But we’d celebrated my birthday on the 3rd. A nice day, actually. Visited the ruins of Monte Alban and had an exclusive entrance to one of the tombs … Actually I think it was another trick those guys have to take advantage of the tourists. When Robt and I went searching for the tombs, a guy came out of some bushes and told us they were all closed because of the rain. So we were walking away and he called us back. It seems he had a key and could let us in. well, of course, we weren’t going to pass up the opportunity to go down in …, and, of course, we felt it necessary to tip for such privilege!

We had a super special meal that day … with Sangria! And in the evening we sat around the plaza drinking coffees, bargaining with vendors, watching people. That plaza was surrounded with "sidewalk café’s" just as plazas should be everywhere, we think. It’s such a perfect way to pass the time, watching the people, reading, writing, meeting people, really a good way to begin feeling a part of the scene. I said "bargaining", didn’t I? Oh, boy … when Robert is in the right mood, he really enjoys that. And we ended up with a hand-loomed Mexican carpet … $20! We’ll be sending that home tomorrow. Hope it makes it … there’s lots of goodies coming in this box.

Well, from Oaxaca we ended up having made a wrong decision on transportation. It was 24 hours before we arrived in Villahermosa … Just the place we did not want to have to spend the night (and we got there at 11 PM). We’d heard it is now an oil town, expensive, and difficult to find rooms- but we were lucky and got a bed with one sheet and a sink with water. We later met others who hadn’t been so lucky - they slept on the floor of the bus station. We quickly left there in the morning for Palenque.

Ah! Sunshine again! In fact, because of the humidity, it was quite hot but we drank lots of fresh fruit drinks and bore it through. Our room there was in a small family-run hotel. When I inquired about a basin for washing clothes in, we were directed to the roof and got to use the family "laundry room". This consisted of siphoning water in to barrels, then dipping bucketful’s out of these. Washed in a dug-out piece of wood - first on the tarp ends. … children hung all around. I wondered if our methods of scrubbing met with their appoval.

The ruins at Palenque were quite nice … You climb into, onto, and around them. In a "jungle" setting. Quite a few carvings and frescoes still in good condition. Fascinating cultures … to imagine the civilizations that produced these fantastic structure … !

We’d planned to go into the Yucatan area, see more ruins at Chichen-Itza and Tulum and go swimming and diving at Islas de Mujeres; but we’d felt Mexico was really too expensive, and we decided to skip the Yucatan, Belize, and northern Guatemala. We’d also been told the mosquitoes were pretty bad … and I don’t need that!

So from Palenque. We ventured another chaotic bus trip to San Cristobal de las Casas. That was an 8-hour trip in which very little of the road was paved. Huge potholes! The bus would often have to stop completely and then advance very slowly. As each wheel would drop into a holes, the bus would tilt … and so suddenly I often would grasp my seat (don’t know what good that would do). I was sitting next to the window, and when this occurred when we were at the very edge of the road and the mountainside looked quite steep, I often thought of the small little news articles I’ve seen many times over the years telling very simply that a bus had gone over a cliff in the mountains in Mexico … and a simple statistical number of places also where the road had caved in or landslides had covered it … new routes were being cut.

Even before the bus had left Palenque, we were pushing our luck. When we’d checked the day before for tickets, we’d been told to buy them in the morning just before the bus was to leave. When we came the next morning, it seems there were no more tickets to be sold. The people we who had tickets had bought them the day before. And those tickets had reserved seat numbers. We decided to try our luck and jumped the bus anyway. Grabbed a couple of seats and crossed our finger (or "held our thumbs", as the Swedes say). We watched as people claimed the seats all around us and others had to move out. I don’t understand how we could have been so lucky, but we got to keep our seats. There were people who stood the whole 8 hours. And there were lots of them. Quoting someone, sometime, somewhere along the way concerning bus drivers: "they’ll run over their own grandmothers to pick up another passenger". Oh, the stories I can tell about the buses! Anyway … they continued to pick up people all along the way and crowd them in although there just didn’t ever seem to be anymore room available!

We were in a "van" last week … regular van size … you know, like the Dodge. They use them on local bus runs in Guatemala. And because they’re so low, everyone has to be seated, of course. It was incredible - we counted 30 adults, at least 7 children, and at least one chicken plus eggs and fruit and flowers! All buses seem to have the driver plus an assistant. They’re another story! But I’ll finish this one first. The assistant has to collect the money. Obviously, in such a van he can’t walk through. So this guy is sitting at the far right in the front seat (5 people across). He opened the door - while we’re going about 50 M/H - climbed to the roof of the van, and hanging on there, he collected from the people at at the back. Oh, this van, too … It didn’t seem to be able to start except on compression … so we often watched that charade. And when we were going downhill a ways, the driver just coasted without the engine running at all.

These assistants in Guatemala seem to have lots to do! First they round up passengers. If the bus isn’t full, they hang out the door calling out the destination, fining passengers and escorting them to the bus. Then after the bus has started its route, it’ll stop for anyone who looks the least bit interested in a bus ride - whether there’s more room or not. And the assistant jumps off each time. He often has to take new passengers around back and squeeze them in the back door. And as soon as the passengers are all on, the driver takes off - and not slowly either. The assistant then runs alongside until he can jump in the door. Then he directs the people inside. He looks at certain people and says someone more can squeeze in there - make room. In Guatemala it seems that it isn’t legal to have people standing in the buses. So the seats are extremely wide: one side they hold 2 comfortably and the other side 3 fairly comfortable. The aisle then becomes so narrow, one must walk through sideways and carefully. It all works out that a sixth person can sit in this center section if they’re wide enough to "bridge the gap" … and it seems that most are. They still squeeze in much more than the 6 per row. Many stand (and stoop at the assistant’s instruction when approaching a police checkpoint) between the knees of the "aisle sitters", at the back and at the front. They just never seem to pass up a potential passenger.

Actually all the buses have been much better than we’d expected in both Mexico and Guatemala. Both of us have experienced worse driving in other countries. We’ve only had one breakdown and it set us back an hour. A replacement bus came surprisingly quickly. Considering that we’d originally been an hour late (and all concerned seemed to take that very casually except R&I), we’d expected the replacement to be an hour or two.

Let’s see … where were we? Oh, the bus trip to San Cristobal. That was when we first to see beautiful traditional clothing being worn by the Indians. The women have beautifully embroidered blouses and ribbons and skirts, and wear lots of jewelry. And there were some interesting men’s’ outfits, too. There were a couple of different designs that were basically knee-length shirts, bound at the waist … no pants. San Cristobal, for this reason and because of "magic mushrooms", seems to be a popular place for young people. But it just rained on us … and it was quite cool, too. So we moved right along … to Guatemala.

We’d heard so much about Lake Atitlan that we headed straight there. It’s a beautiful big blue lake surrounded by mountain. The lake is at about 5,000 ft and the highest volcano is about 11,500 ft … and green to the top! Very lush green … lots of coffee plantations.

Guatemala coffee famous the world over! And here … it seems that they export most of it. The coffee here is often made of banana peels! No kidding. It comes surprisingly close to coffee and seems to have some people fooled … but they’re not coffee lovers, obviously.

Almost all the people we were seeing as we approached Lake Atitlan were wearing beautiful traditional clothing. The colors are outrageous: lots of red, of course, plus orange and purple and blue and green and pink, and shiny, glittery gold and silver threads, too. Even the men wear gaily-woven and embroidered pants. The fabrics are all hand woven … and the embroidery on top of this seems to get more abundant and bright in relation to their wealth. (But "wealth" is a mis-leading word. More aptly put as from "poor to less-poor to relatively-comfortable".) Women’s blouses get particularly beautiful. Skirts are tubes of fabric wrapped around and bound around the waist with again-beautifully woven bands or fancily embroidered bands. They all have long hair braided with ribbon or wrapped on their heads with fabric entwined. Then they take a long piece of fabric and twist it into a "wreath" shape. This is placed on top of their heads and used to carry the baskets and bundles balanced there. The men carry their loads on their back supported by a strap from the forehead.

So often the women will come up to us and take down their basket to sell us something. I always what it’s gonna be: fruit or bread, blases or belts or shawls, or …? Oh, yes … the women also have a long "shawl-like" fabric wrapped around their shoulders - over one shoulder and and under the other arm - tied in front and carrying a load on their back, often a baby.

Guatemala is truly a vacation paradise, although we’re hit the rainy season. We understand the best weather is from November thru March, with April and May becoming somewhat rainy. But this year they are hurting. Because of all the inner turmoil here, the number of tourists is way down. And the first ones to stay away are also the money-spenders. We’ve seen a lot of French and German mostly - but they’re traveler’s like us - looking for the cheapest way to get by. We’ve seen almost no weaving going on - and that’s because their sales are down so much, they don’t want to build their "inventories". It’s sad in many cases.

Often people would come up to us and beg us to buy their things. And sadly, it’s the pourest people who have the least desirable things to sell. One girl tried to sell us a piece large enough for a small table. It had a lot of work in it, but we didn’t like it. We just said no, no, no and she kept coming down in price. I think she yelled $2.00 as we walked away. (I say $. - A "quetzal" is exactly equal to a "dollar".)

And we’ve heard that it’s expensive for them to make these clothes. It will cost them much less to buy ready-made "European" clothing. So as tourism droops, the biggest driving force for them to retail the old traditional dress also decreases, and there is sincere concern that this beauty will be lost.

And there truly is trouble in Guatemala. There are large areas of the country that we daren’t venture to … some that we would like to visit. But there is strong guerrilla activity: Every day it seems that the paper tells of more police being killed. And there is the fear of bandits. Traveling by bus, we’re quite safe from the bandits. It seems that they stop cars or will attack people in small groups who are hiking.

Well, it’s not hiking season anyway … too rainy. We crossed Lake Atitlan and got away from Panajachel with all it’s tourist hotels and discos. We went to a small Indian village, San Pedro la Lugna, and took a room at lakeside for $1/person/night. Stayed four nights. Walked around town - walked to adjoining villages - went swimming - wrote postcards. A lazy time. But I have a hard time doing nothing. It’d be great if I had some projects to work on. Robert seems to take idle time easier than i. He plays mental games and daydreams, it seems. But it was raining and I was bored, so it dragged us away earlier than we had planned.

The last evening we were there, we ducked into a little "restaurant" just in time to avoid a true downpour. We sat and watched the rain crash down. We were just across from a courtyard and it had steps down. Those step were a true waterfall!

Before we left lake Atitlan, we went on a shopping trip. Got some wall hangings, shirts, blouses and a dress. Good bargaining. One blouse I got for $12 has lots of beautiful very fine embroidery. The woman said it took 3 months, which we think was an exaggeration , but it did take time. I think that was our most expensive buy. Sad. They are truly so hungry for sales that we can get things for ridiculously low prices. Yet we can afford those few dollars much more than they can. Really it’s sad. But I just want to think how we helped by buying what we did. And I think we’ll come back some day …

When I started this letter, I didn’t think I had much to say. Oh, dear … and now it’s past midnight. I’m 4 days behind in my diary. That will have to wait, I’ll get this mailed tomorrow.

Friday morning we’re heading to Honduras. First stop Copan, to see the ruins there. Then to the Bay Islands. I want sun, and we hope to find some there, plus snorkeling and diving. Maybe we’ll stay there a week or so.

         Adios for now -
                  our love - Surain
                           Yes, I’m still around - love Robert

cont’d -

Still in the Honduran Consulate right now, to get a visa. I had to get one for Guatemala, but so far Robert hasn’t had to. I may also need it for Nicaragua, so hope to check it out today. Believe we both need visas for Panama.

About Columbia - I’ve heard bad things about that place since I was in the Foreign Service. That’s the main influence in my leaving all jewelry at home. Enroute now, we’ve heard more stories, … first hand. We had planned to only pass thru Columbia … one or two days or so … but now we’re planning to fly from Panama to Ecuador. It’s just not worth the risk. It seems almost a sure thing we could count on losing cameras, money, and something of value to us. It’s just not worth it. Thus dashes our desire to cover the entire distance by land or sea. Oh, well. Fell better, Mom?

We put together a big package and will mail it today … to Sumner. It’s okay for you to open the packages unless we let you know otherwise. OK? This box has one item masked not to unwrap (altho it isn’t wrapped very well to begin with). Rug from Mexico - $20. A dress for me ~$9. Some beautiful woven wall hangings just $8.50 for the big. Etc. the blouse mentioned on pg 11, too … a work of art or museum-piece I think.

         Hugs! S & R

[Letter 3]