Saturday, December 10, 2005

We have a few free days before we fly back to the US, so we decided to head to Chichicastenango to visit the famous bi-weekly market. We wanted to see it for its own sake, and we also wanted to do a little Christmas shopping. The best part is that we're leaving our main packs at the hotel and just bringing our small daypacks. Which makes me wonder what all's in those main packs and why we need to lug it all around. There will definitely be another round of cuts made when we get our stuff home.

Our plan was to catch a chicken bus going toward Guatemala City and transfer at San Lucas Sacatepequez to a bus going to Chichicastenango. The bus station is very close by, but we didn't even have to walk all the way there, because while we were still on our own block, the bus we wanted passed us. There was no mistaking that it was ours, because a guy was leaning out the front door yelling, "Guate, Guate, Guate!" And of course there's no bother about bus stops - they'll pick you and your Quetzales up anywhere you care to get on. So we scrambled onto this bus and it was a good thing we didn't have our huge backpacks with us because it was packed. Or so we thought.

As you might know, "chicken busses" are retired North American school busses, the yellow ones, except they've usually been painted some fabulous new colors and had their windshields plastered with Jesus and Mickey Mouse stickers. They're called chicken busses because you'll likely be sharing the bus with chickens that people are transporting somewhere. I experienced a couple of chicken bus rides the last time I was in Guatemala, but somehow I was lucky enough to be riding half-empty busses. This bus was mostly full. Michael and I each got a seat, but we weren't able to sit together. We each sat down on a seat with one other person in it. That is where anyone who's ridden one of these busses before will laugh. Only two people to a seat?!

After a few blocks, we picked up another surge of people. This is when everyone who was only sharing a seat with one other person had to scoot over so a third person could share the seat. Remember, these are school busses with seats built for children, so you can imagine that it was pretty tight. Then again, Guatemalans are not known for being large people. In fact, the grandmother who squeezed in next to me was so tiny that her shoulder only jammed into me halfway up my ribcage.

So finally we were truly full, and we were off. Although I have no doubt that should other potential passengers have presented themselves, we would have made like a Whitman's Sampler and started a second layer. The old lady next to me fished a coconut out of her bag - the brown kind, but somehow peeled so that all she had was the white inner layer, still in its round coconut shape. You're probably thinking, so? But man there was really something creepy about the way this looked when she first pulled it out. If I'd had any room to do so, I would have recoiled in horror before I realized it was just a coconut. The music was 50 Cent's In Da Club: the Salsa remix.

One thing about traveling is that sometimes you really have very little idea of what you're doing or where you're going, and when that happens you have to depend on kind locals to point you to the bus stop or whatever. Guatemalans overall seem to be happy to help out in this way, but Michael and I really need to figure out their gestures, because the pointing and nodding that follows a question like "San Lucas? Aqui?" is far from conclusive and sometimes we're even more mystified after we've asked then we were before.

Anyway, we struggled off the bus at what turned out to be the right spot, talked to some Mormon missionaries because Michael wants to do a story, and eventually got on another chicken bus to Chichicastenango. Chichi is in the highlands, and as we wound up into the mountains it got colder and colder and people started pulling on sweaters and scarves. And when I say winding, I am not joking around. (Song fragment stuck in my head at that point: The switchbacks will make you crazy, where are the bearded ladies? Let me take you dancing on the wall of death...)

We lucked out after a while and managed to get a seat to ourselves. Though I usually have nothing but deepest scorn for men who ride public transportation with their legs spread, I had to forgive poor Michael for doing it... his legs are just plain too long for those teeny school bus seats. With the length of his legs, it is simply impossible for him to sit with his knees straight in front of him. I mean, I could barely fit in there myself. Given the amount of room we took up, it was unlikely that a third person would attempt to join us in the seats, so we were able to ride in relative comfort.

Not so for the ayudante, or driver's helper, who was constantly running (or squeezing) to and fro collecting fares, enticing potential passengers, or tying things to the roof. Several times after we had been whipping around the curves and switchbacks he suddenly entered through the back door (what had been the emergency exit back when it was a school bus), having apparently been up on the roof. A couple of times he exited the back door only to reappear moments later in the front door while the bus was still in motion. Very impressive.

Despite the cold, the centrifugal forces, and the acrobatics of the ayudante, I managed to fall asleep. But Michael was on his toes and noticed when we arrived in Chichi and got us off the bus in time. Chichicastenango is mainly a Mayan town and there are lots of indigenous ladies in traditional woven clothes. But the ladies here wear knee-length skirts, which seem scandalous after the ankle length cortes of the ladies in Antigua. The vendor kids were on us immediately. We can see this is going to be no joke on the sales pressure scale and it looks like the market will be no joke either. After checking into our hotel, we had a little late lunch/early dinner and watched some guys assembling a market stall out of inordinately long tree-limbs. It looked like tough work. I can't believe they do this twice a week.

HOURS ON THE BUS: 104

 

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View of Chichi from the hotel's roof.

Hospedaje Salvador... that's not even all of it.

Why was our room door so tiny?? Even I had to duck to get in.

We will never get used to seeing wretched animals, no matter how many we come across.