On a side street in San Pedro

The hike up the hill from the docks in San Pedro to the centro is a long one.  It’s a town built right into the side of the mountain and flat spots are hard to find. We’re out of shape, that has become painfully clear.  We’ve forgotten how to walk for a living and carry every single thing on our backs.  It’s good for us.  We’re happier for the fresh air and the slower pace and we’re healthier for the several miles a day afforded by the daily need for fresh veggies and eggs.  Right now, however, it hurts.

We were all winded with the mountain goat climb by the time we ducked through the green lace curtain into the little street side restaurant across from the mercado.  We ordered the “economico”: 20Q for a piece of chicken, a pile of veggies, rice, and unlimited stack of the small, fatter Guatemalan tortillas and a Coke.  That’s about $2.50 USD.

While we waited we made small talk with the proprietor.  He congratulated us on our family size (something that often happens here but NEVER in the US and Canada) and insisted on knowing all of the children’s names… “Hannah…. Gabriel (pronounced: Gahb-reee-el here, with a rolled R)… Elisha… and… EXTRA?  His name is EXTRA?!”  We all laughed, “No, no, no, EZRA, not EXTRA.”  “EZRA.  Excellent.  Good Bible names.  Nice family.  Mucho gusto.”  He kept cooking.  We kept giggling.

Needless to say, Ezra endured an entire day of jokes about being “Extra.”  He’s extra loud, extra fun, extra stinky, extra obnoxious, extra cuddly, extra dirty, extra brave, extra smart… he’s extra everything.  “And, if you lose one of THEM, you still have me, so I really am an extra!” He announced proudly on the way home.  So he is.

In the cemetery... the girls to the right are lighting candles

We discussed the Dia de los Muertos celebrations with our lunch host as well.  “Ah yes, the cemetery is just there, go left, up a block and then right, it’s at the end of the street.  Everyone will be there, drinking, eating, playing music.  It is a happy day.  Do you have this day in los Estados Unidos as well?”  Not exactly.

I tried, in my slowly improving Spanish, to explain the difference between Halloween, as celebrated in North America, and Dia de los Muertos here.  It’s not at all scary here.  It’s not about fear at all.

Instead, families gather with fresh paint and bouquets of flowers to give their loved one’s resting places a face lift.  They take lunch and picnic with their long passed grandparents.  They take rum and share it with the dead… at a 1:3 ratio I think, dead to living.  The children fly kites all over the city to honor the souls as they fly away from the earth.  It’s a beautiful celebration.  I like it much better than Halloween, and I told our host as much.

The cemetery was not hard to find.  Merely turn right on the street that is hung high with fringe across the road way and follow the party.  We heard the marimba players before we saw the church yard.

The kids would have loved to have purchased fat twists of cotton candy and coated nuts from the street vendors, but we were mean parents and declined.

We weren’t entirely sure of the etiquette.  We always err on the side of quiet respect.  The locals were a mixed bag of solemn, cheerful, and falling down drunk.  The whole grave yard smelled like fresh acrylic paint and flowers; marigolds mostly, huge bunches stuffed down into old coffee cans and perched on the ledges of the mausoleums.

Elisha noted the long beeswax yellow tapers being lit, and stuck by their melted bottoms to the ledges, “Just like that church in Chichicastenago, Mama.”  Sure enough, I can’t believe he remembers.

The middle boys were steering a wide berth around a particularly “jubilant” celebrant when a fellow with a blue cooler, covered mostly in duct tape walked by, popped the lid and announced, a little too cheerfully:  “Choco-bananas?!”  We all laughed.

All of our reminders of quiet respect in the church yard, honor for the deceased, and that we are guests who need to keep a low profile, seemed silly now.  What with the drunks and the choco-banana vendors, we were the LEAST obtrusive element, even if we were the only outsiders in attendance.

A guy canoeing where the walking path used to be.

It was a long walk back to the boats.  We went the back way through town, to the other docks, thinking we’d walk the quiet path along the waterfront that we enjoyed so much in March.  Not so much.

With water levels higher than they’ve been in twenty years, the entire waterfront has disappeared and we had to snake our way back through the warren of dirt walking paths through town to the “other docks.”

By then, the boys had to pee.  Of course.  Ezra offered to do like the local boy (who reminded us solidly of our little friend James Wood) and pee in the street.  I declined his offer and made him wait.  We paid 2Q a piece (.25USD) to use the public facilities at the hotel we stayed at last winter.

I visited with the owner while we waited on the long line of boys to use SOAP the second time they washed their hands.  “Aren’t you the family that stayed her last winter?” He asked.  “I remember the boys, they played cars around the trees, and that one cut the end of his finger off… and you had that BIG bus.”  Yep.  That was us.

We must have made quite an impression.  That, or there aren’t many families just knocking around Central America for months at a time.  He was pleased that we’re back and congratulated us on our choice of house in San Marcos, “Es muy tranquillo!” Very peaceful… yes, it is, we like it very much.

Storm clouds gathering over the mountains.

The clouds gathered in great grey masses over the mountain tops as we crossed the lake and rain began to fall.  I worried about the laundry hanging on the line that I’d spent all morning hand washing.

The grey weather had no effect on the kites, which flew by the hundreds over every puebla on the shore.

Fortunately, our little cove of the lago remained dry and we even had time to stop at the wine shop and for veggies from our new friends Jose and Pasquale.  We’re settling in here, and finding a routine to our days.