Pausing Here and There

The journey to Todos Santos, which is described by Lonely Planet as “bone rattling” was actually not too bad. There were times, however, that I thought the carriage of our chicken bus, an old Blue Bird school bus, would give way and something would shoot up from the floor to impale me. Luckily, we made it fine and in good spirits.

Todos Santos is a small Mayan village about 40 km north of Huehuetenango. All the men wear the traditional garb of the village, which includes red striped pants, straw bowler hats with blue string tied around them, and blue shirts with a woven collar. It was interesting to see all the different renditions on this outfit…many of the younger guys had adapted the look to be more akin to contemporary US styles. The red striped pants were baggy with lots of pockets, and the shirt/jacket was worn over tshirts. The occaisional collar was popped.

We, Megan, Sarah, and I arrived in Todos on Sunday and stayed til Thursday. A lot of this time was spent walking around watching the men of Todos Santos get ragingly drunk, as is the custom for the week of All Saint`s Day. We also went on a beautiful and adventurous hike that was supposed to be “relaxed,” but which, at 8,000 feet definitely had some very steep and slippery parts. We found out about this hike from someone we met in a cafe, and who drew us a map on a napkin. The mapkin turned out to be generally useful, and we made it to our destination, despite directions like “Turn right at the place where it looks like broccoli can no longer grow, but does.”

We also watched a beauty pagent/queen of Todos coronation which consisted of lots of women in various Mayan dress slow dancing down a big cement floor to Marimba music. We had no idea what was happening, but one of them was crowned at the end. It was definitely one big anthropological guessing game, made even more mysterious by the fact that we were incapable of asking anyone becuase of our lack of language skills.

The next evening was another puzzle as we watched men specially dressed in hats with feathers and shawls that had American flags on them drink and crack their whips to marimba music on the street. These same men participated in the horseback riding the next day, going up and down the same strip of dirt road while Marimbas played, people watched and whooped and ate treats.

All in all Todos was a nice town: We routinely were awoken at night by music and artillery fire sounding firecrackers, drunken men puking or arguing, chickens, dogs fighting, roosters; every morning the beautiful landscape would slowly be hid by the opaque fog rolling in; everyone smiled at you, even when one asked questions consisting of one Spanish word and pointing gestures; and we ate so much fried chicken and panqueques at Casa Familiar. Still, we were excited to leave and looked forward to Xela as this welcoming beacon of the big city living we were missing.

We arrived in Todos–this beautiful foggy town of only 3,000 people. The fiesta is in full swing (the yearly celebration for All Saints Day, which will culminate in drunken horse races). We rode a ferris wheel for about an hour yesterday, met some lovely people, watched a movie about Todos Santos filmed in the early 80´s, and are about to venture off on a short hike to a village where they weave cloth. People here are very friendly and sweet. I´ll write more shortly…too unfocused to form sentences right now.