Coffee Plantations, Guatemala

It’s funny that San Pedro is so sleepy during the day, because it’s downright raucous at night!  We’ve adapted to “vacation time” and have been calling it a night relatively early after active days in the sun.  But it’s clear that somewhere in town, there’s a lot more action.  We can hear a mixture of local Spanish music and U.S./ British music (Black Eyed Peas, Killers, Lady Gaga) booming in the background at the backpacker bars.  Even more noisy is the chorus of barking dogs and yowling cats!  The dogs and cats continue all night, finally ceasing around dawn, at which point roosters take over.  I’m so glad I packed foam ear plugs!  Mohit is fine, since he can sleep through anything.

Today we headed up into the hills above the lake on horseback with our excellent guide, Francisco.  He seemed a bit shy about his English, which he says he started teaching himself a few years ago.  We reassured him that his English is much better than our Spanish!

Our horses were named Muchacha (a female) and Mujiego (a male, though “castrado”, as Francisco pointed out, to keep him calm).  The saddles were carved from wood and covered with rough woven cloth, which left us a bit sore after four and a half hours of riding, but it was well worth it.

First we set off into the hills above the nearby town of San Juan del Lago to see coffee plantations.  Francisco explained that about 70% of the town’s income is derived from the coffee trade.  The farmers pay a tax to use public land to grow coffee plants.  As we headed beyond the outskirts of town, the pavement ended and the path grew steeper.  Dark green coffee plants grew on both sides of the lane in the shade of tall avocado trees.  Most of the plants were heavy with red (Arabica) coffee berries, but a few had yellow (Robusto) berries.  This is the time of year that the coffee is harvested, and men and women were scattered among the bushes picking the berries by hand and filling tall burlap bags.  The full bags sat along the roadside waiting to be picked up by truck or lugged downhill on the backs of men.

Francisco explained that these plantations stopped using chemicals two years ago, and now the coffee is farmed organically.  The beans are laid out in the sun to dry on long sheets of black plastic, and then transported to Guatemala City, where they’re purchased by a large processing company that shells and roasts them for international distribution.  The shells are brought back to the fields, and we saw piles being spread under the coffee plants as fertilizer.

Sunlight filtered through the trees and we could see the hill known as “Indian’s Nose” in the background, and the sparkling lake below us.  It was incredibly beautiful.

The second half of our horseback outing was along the ridge above the lake on the other side of San Pedro, where the vegetation was quite different.  Dry brown grasses were as tall as the horses’ bellies, and the field beyond were planted with corn and cabbage.  As we continued, we entered beneath a canopy of trees and vines, and were thankful for the shade since the thermometer attached to Mohit’s bag read 85 degrees F.  I kept my eyes peeled for butterflies (I’ve been fascinated by butterflies since I was a kid!) and saw small black ones with blue-green stripes, and large butterflies with black and orange oblong wings tipped in yellow.  I also saw tons of bright yellow butterflies similar to the Sulphur Butterflies that are common back home in New England.

We returned to town around 2:30 p.m. and were starving.  We’ve been skipping lunch most days since our breakfasts have been pretty hearty, but we devoured big lunches today!  Tonight, we’ll probably select a light dinner from the stands along the roadside.

San Pedro and Santiago at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

The descent into Panajachel from the ridge above gave us a great view of Lake Atitlan, a huge expanse of blue-green water ringed by volcanoes and hills on all sides.  We drove into town down the main road (Calle Santander) and our microbus let us off a few blocks above the lake.  After a minor detour that had us scrambling along the sandy cliffs above the shore to get from the Santiago docks to the San Pedro docks, we handed over the equivalent of $3.50 for the two of us, threw our bags into the front of the small boat, and started off toward the opposite shore, getting splashed every few minutes as we bumped our way across the windy lake.

San Pedro, our home for the next three nights, is a super laid-back hippie beach town without a beach, since the town sits on a steep hill above the water.  San Pedro is clearly influenced by the range of international tourists here to chill for a few days, weeks, or years, but it’s not crowded at all.  In fact, it’s a bit sleepy.  But we’re enjoying the place.  We’re staying at one of the pricier (and cleaner) hotels in town for a whopping $15/night.  I enjoyed three glasses of wine on our first night here for a total of $5.50, and Mohit’s been ordering liters of Gallo beer for $3 each.  I bought a brightly colored handwoven scarf for 15 quetzales, which is about $2.  We could definitely afford to chill here for quite awhile, and it seems that’s exactly what many ex-pats have done, since the bars and restaurants are staffed by a variety of Americans and Europeans who now call San Pedro home.

Our second day in San Pedro was a beautiful sunny day, the warmest yet.  We enjoyed a late breakfast on a concrete terrace overlooking the lake, and then hopped onto a boat taxi headed to another shore town, Santiago, around noon.  Santiago is less touristy, and once we made our way uphill from the docks and past a few blocks of tourist shops, we found ourselves in a town filled with locals going about their everyday business.  We wandered into a huge empty plaza in front of the church in the center of town.  Kids had just been let out of school for the day, and they clearly enjoy teasing the tourists as an afternoon pasttime.  Six kids circled us, a chorus of requests for a few quetzales with outstretched hands.  Mohit obliged and emptied the small change out of his pocket and we were rewarded with big grins and a photo.

The oldest of the group, an entrepreneurial boy about 10 years old, convinced us to let him be our tour guide to see Maximon, a local Mayan god, the saint of gamblers and drunkards, according to our guide book.  We followed the boy through town, took some photos along a pretty outlook at the edge of town, where local women were washing laundry in the lake below us, and continued along a dusty road leaded out of town to the neighboring village.  We passed small concrete houses with coffee beans growing in the yards, and after walking in the sun for a few kilometers, we came to a private house where the Maximon idol is being kept this year.  Our guide explained that Maximon moves among a handful of the most influential familes’ houses from year to year.  Maximon was in a dark cinderblock room surrounded by lit candles stuck to the floor of the room with melted wax.

The squat wooden statue was of a mustachioed man wearing a leather cowboy hat and layers and layers of silk scarves and men’s ties.  Three men were reciting something in the local Mayan language that our guide, who spoke Spanish and English, said he could not understand. Then men were sipping tequila and periodically offering some to the wooden statue.  We paid 10 quetzales to take a picture, and the money was tucked into the layers of silk worn by Maximon.

We took a water taxi back to San Pedro and spent the afternoon reading and enjoying snacks at a cafe garden in the shade of a palm tree.