Pausing Here and There

I´m sitting outside of my bedroom in my host family´s courtyard. (Okay, well not really, I´m actually in the school´s computer lab, but I wrote this on Sunday and am sharing so you all can get a picture of my life here).

Their dog is harassing me a bit, making sure that I know that this is his territory…and, he just pissed on the fig tree. Good job perro. The electricity is out, apparently in the whole city so I know I should be using these remaining few hours of daylight to study as I haven´t all weekend. I hear a baby´s cry from the next courtyard, buses, birds, the dog chewing on a nasty bone, firecrackers (someone´s birthday?) Its overcase, and was raining a bit in Zunil, the town I was in for a bit earlier today. Today is kind of the antithesis of yesterday. Saturday, I woke up, put my music on and by the magic of ipod shuffle happened on an excellent New Pornographer´s song. That put me in a better mood because I was itchy the night before (fleas, bedbugs, no sé). I was also awoken on Saturday very early by the damn birds and the early morning breakfast eaters.

A group of us got together the night before to drink mango mojito after mango mojito in a cafe which was grand as I hadn´t really gone out in Xela before that.

Saturday morning another group converged (there were seven of us) to take a bus to Zunil (a town about half an hour outside of Xela) and then a pick up to Georgenas Fuentas. The bus to Zunil was especially clean, new luggage racks and such. All the people on the bus that morning were women and children, okay, well mostly. The women were mostly wearing indigena clothing, including the brightly colored hair wrap that is common in the Xela highlands. The fog hadn´t come in yet and the sun was soooo pretty on the hills: patchworks of agriculture, spots here and there of flowers, purple and magenta all in a neat little square.

When we arrived in Georginas, it was amazing too. We had taken the pickup, and saw more gorgeous farmland, a volcan, and then we passed into the fog. Geoginas was misty, jungle ferns, huge plants, hot springs steaming out of the rocks. We stayed in a bungalow there, and spent the afternoon soaking up the calming waters of the hot springs…we read, became pruny, talked, floated, felt the varying temperatures of water, and when we became too warm, played uno till dinner. An evening swim was, of course, compulsary as well. Then we experienced the lovely box spring only no mattress bed for the evening. Yippee.

We walked back down the hill the next day to zunil, about two hours, killing the time by chatting, and not noticing that our calves were becoming incredibly sore. That we noticed later. I took lots of wildflower pictures. At one point, passing over a bridge, we saw a river of callallillies (sp.) As we grew closer to town, there were less people in their fields cleaning carrots, mounds of white white onions, bagging huge hills of beets, blood purple. There was more trash and the road turned to cobblestone.

We went and saw San Simon in Zunil, a local God? Actually, I don´t know too much about him so I shouldn´t say much. However, he is a figure and the figure looked like a doll dressed up in a suit with a cowboy hat and a scarf. People would take his hat or his cane and touch themselves with it or wear it, or feed him aguar diente (alcohol) or light candles, or offer money to ask questions. I don´t know any more than that, really that is not an assumption. I intend to find out more soon.

On our way back I noticed the loads of trash people threw into the river by zunil, the cabbages growing right next to it, and the ominous, giant black vultures watching the trash (to see if anything good is coming?)

We spent Sunday evening eating and pretending to study. And then, the next week began…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.