Jan. 27, 2001
San Antonio Palopó, Guatemala
We’ve been in Guatemala almost a month now. Time seems to move at an uneven pace here, sometimes dragging by and other times dissappearing quickly behind us. Without a regular schedule days seem to blend into each other.
For the villagers the market days define the week. The major market in this area is on Friday, in Solola, up the hill from Panajachel, about 20 miles from San Antonio. The market day in Pana is Sunday. San Antonio is developing a small weekly market on Monday. The weekly markets have been for centuries the major form of commerce for the Mayas, who still are the overwhelming majority outside the major metropolitan areas. They pack the markets, wearing their brightly colored traditional outfits, buying and selling an amazing variety and quantity of stuff, including produce of every sort, small animals, furniture, raw materials for weaving cloth and some weird things sometimes hard to identify.
Nearly all of the goods come and go via Guatemalan mass transit, which consists of old school buses which look like they’ve been painted by Gypsies on LSD. I once rode back from a market next to a guy who, for 40 miles or so, hung onto the hind leg of a piglet dangling out the window. He must have been trying to avoid paying bus fare for the piglet. I can’t imagine there being any restriction regarding pigs on buses. There are often chickens on the buses (which is why travelers here call them “chicken buses.”)
The markets are a sensory experience to say the least. I think many, if not most, visitors to Guatemala would identify going to the markets as the most memorable part of their trip here (maybe not the best part, but certainly memorable.)
The kids and I went shopping for school clothes at the market in Solola a couple of weeks ago. Whatever it cost me was well worth it in entertainment value alone. Foreign visitors often feel guilty about bargaining with the vendors, but here buying and selling is nearly a blood sport, and visitors are amateurs.
It’s inspirational to see the locals bargain. When we were school shopping 13-year-old Rolando lead the attack, being the oldest. He would force the vendor to name his price first (an important bit of strategy). Then, regardless of what the vendor said, Angelina, Bruce and Yessica would laugh and roll their eyes in stunned disbelief. I tried to be supportive and follow my cues, but I am sure I cramped Rolando’s style by laughing at the kids instead of at the vendor. Still he did a great job, especially since he knew he was bargaining with my money.
We are on our way south to do some traveling in areas we haven’t been to before. We aren’t certain of our itinerary yet, but a sandy beach sounds good. We may go down the Pacific coasts of Guatemala and El Salvador, then across to the Caribbean beaches of Honduras. Hopefully the earthquakes are over. Usually the only things one has to worry about when traveling through these areas are hepatitis, cholera, amoebic dysentery and the occasional robbery. With a few common-sense precautions the risk of those things are pretty minimal. But there’s not much one can do about an earthquake. Generally, several small quakes such as the recent ones are thought to lessen the risk of a big one. However there have been warnings here in Guatemala to be prepared for another one in a few days. We’ll see. With any luck we’ll be on a beach somewhere in a hammock. Seems like the sensible place to be during a quake.