Lago Atitlan

Bitchy preamble: I’ve gotten way behind on my blog, and some of you -- well, ONE of you -- has been asking me to update it every day and tell everyone what I’m doing. Unfortunately, this is impossible, as internet connections are sketchy in some places, and it costs me money to get online, and I’m on a budget.

Last Friday, some of us at the student house in Antigua went out for drinks. This was exciting, as I had not had a proper night out since arriving in Guatemala. Before heading out to the bars, we started taking group photos. Conrad, a German doctor who specializes in tropical diseases, was among us; since arriving in Antigua, I’d gotten a creepy, older man vibe from him... like he was staring at me sometimes. While we were taking pictures Friday night, he tickled me, and then rubbed my belly, and then put his hand over my breast. Fucking creep! I told George later that night that he stunned the feminism right out of me. I was so shocked that all I did was yell and move his hand away. And then glare at him for the rest of the night.

Saturday morning, Paul, Eva, George and I caught the morning shuttle from Antigua to Panajachel, the busiest of the lakeside villages in beautiful Lago Atitlan. We were headed to San Marcos, reputedly the “most” beautiful of the villages, which also include San Pedro (stoner central), the aforementioned Pana (a tourist dump, as Paula, the snotty English expat who works as an administrator at Sevilla, told me last week), Santa Cruz, and several others. The four of us arrived in Pana around 10 a.m, and then took a boat to San Marcos. The view of the lake from the boat was stunning. Lago Atitlan is by far the most beautiful lake I’ve ever seen. It’s surrounded by volcanoes and hills and settlements, and is believed by its inhabitants to possess a special spiritual magic.

I didn’t quite know what to expect from San Marcos. I’d read that it’s packed full of hippies, but not in the “let’s get baked by day and tanked by night” way that defines San Pedro’s hippiness. Firstly, there’s hardly anyone there. At least it seems that way. Unlike San Pedro, where the tourists and Guatemalans seem to intermix quite a bit, San Marcos seems more divided. The place is full of new age centres -- yoga, meditation, massage and reiki schools -- and these, along with some hotels, hostels, and restaurants, make up the lakefront area of the village. Further up, past all the airy fairy bits, is the main village.

The four of us checked into Hotel La Paz, which is much like every other hotel in San Marcos; sort of built into the trees, almost coming out of them if you will. It was quite beautiful and serene, and there was a great veggie restaurant, sauna, and yoga space just steps from our room.

After checking in, we explored San Marcos, and then ran into Louis and Josie-Ann, a Quebecois couple we’d met at our school in Antigua. It turned out that they were staying in the upstairs portion (sort of like an attic space) of our dorm room!

Sunday, George and Paul headed back to Antigua for more Spanish lessons. I joined the meditation class, and at the end of it, I received an angel card with the word “expectancy” written on it. We were instructed to meditate on our angel card and to think about its significance in our lives. I thought it was pretty fitting that I received expectancy, as I am the queen of expectations. I expect a lot of myself, of others, and I’m constanty planning planning planning. I suppose this card was a hint that I need to relax and that I can’t control the future.

That night, while getting ready for bed, I saw a scorpion about 5 inches long on the bathroom wall. I stared at it in amazement; I’ve only ever seen scorpions in zoos, and I hadn’t even known that they run wild in Central America. Then panic set in. My bed was on the other side of that wall, and I started to wonder if other scorpions were living in or nearby hotel La Paz, in my bed, in my shoes, etc. Not a good night. I slept in socks, pants, my hoodie (with hoodie protecting my head), and cowered under the covers between fitful awakenings.

Despite my fear of scorpions inhabiting my bed, I decided to skip the morning yoga class and sleep in for the first time since before I even left Toronto. Sleeping in meant getting up at 8:15, showering, taking my anti-malarial pills for the first time (I’ll be in mosquito-infested Honduras in one week), and washing some clothes by hand in the bathroom sink (no scorpions).

There’s a super hippie “meditation” centre in San Marcos called Las Piramides (it’s hippie to the point of new age ridiculousness), and Eva wanted to check out their morning “metaphysics” class (I’m gratuitously using scare quotes here because the centre’s approach to meditation and metaphysics is, I imagine, quite different from, say, a Buddhist’s or a Heideggerian’s). Monday morning’s topic had something to do with the Initiative process, which I understood to be an introduction to several new age philosophies and practices (which have been handed down from Atlantis, supposedly, and which include Tarot, astrology, numerology, lucid dreaming, astral projection -- COME ON, I was interested in astral projecting myself out of my overly-developed body in the early 90s, but quickly realized it was probably a lot of hooey -- Kabala, and the list goes on. Eva decided to stay for the class and sign up for the duration of the week’s yoga, meditation and esoteric instruction. I decided to leave the centre, go swimming, and find an internet cafe where I could upload my photos of the lake.

I didn’t have much luck getting on a computer that day. There were only 2 internet cafes in San Marcos; the first one I visited was down, and the second was full. When some spots finally opened up at the second one, the internet went down. This was really frustrating, and I had to go back to the other one, where I waited for over an hour and a half for a computer to free up. While waiting, I read some more of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and acquiesced to the reality of yet another day of not swimming in Lago Atitlan.

A few words on Midnight’s Children, which I’ve been wanting to read since I was 19. It’s taken me 7 years to get to it, and I’m finding it REALLY difficult to get into. I’ve had it with me since I left Toronto, and I’m only on page 80. It’s full of the sort of self-reflexive, revisionist, postmodern tricks I went gaga over as a wee undergrad.

While I waited and read Rushdie, I overheard the owner of the cafe tell multiple people about a woman who’d bitten him earlier in the day. According to him, she’d become upset because she couldn’t use skype and, when he asked her to leave, she became irate. He’d then grabbed her and tried to push her out of the cafe and she pulled a Mike Tyson on him and bit his arm. Because I was at this internet cafe for so long -- waiting for an internet connection, waiting for a free computer, eating lunch -- I heard him tell this same story at least four times. Each time he told it, he sounded increasingly sexist. Suddenly she was a “chick,” and had lifted up her shirt at the end of the incident in order to flash everyone. The last time he recounted the story, someone asked him how old she was. His answer: “She was young, she had nice tits.”