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The boat guys weren’t too rude, and after being told that I didn’t need a boat, mostly left me alone.

Lots of tour groups running around today.

After catching a few minutes of peace and quiet, or as close as you can get here, down by the lake, I thought I’d take the bus up to Solola, which is higher up the mountain, and far less touristy.

I climbed on the bus, and after a little bit, we where off. I paid my fare of $0.38 and got a little change. I had decided to head up to Solola because today was one of the twice weekly markets, and it was nice and sunny.

Normally I wouldn’t recommend running around very many places in Guatemala with big and expensive (looking) camera equipment, but I’ve taken that bus ride a number of times, and generally don’t worry too much around the indigenous cultures unless the place I’m going is kind of deserted. It was market day, so deserted was gonna be the last thing Solola was.

After arriving in town, I walked through the square, and towards the market. Unlike Pana, Solola doesn’t have a dedicated market building, and instead twice a week (Friday and Sunday for the curious among you) they clsoe down the streets around the town square, and vendors from all around carry in their goods.

I normally try to respect peoples desires not to be photographed, especially away from tourist areas like Pana and Antigua, and simply planned to walk through the market taking photos of the colors. It seems that many things here are more colorful, the fruits and vegies, the clothing, the buildings, you name it, it’s likely to be colorful.

So far so good, everyone that I asked had been more than happy to let me take photos of their wares, and I think they appreciated me asking (many gringos fail to respect them enough to ask even before taking photos of the people) and I saw a pile of chickens feet. I asked, and the lady said it was fine to take a photo, so I did. After taking the photo, she demanded that I pay her 5 Quetzales for the photo. I was dumbstruck. It’s not uncommon for people to ask to be paid if you want a photo of them, but I’ve never had anyone try to charge me money for taking a photo of their goods. I played stupid and said a lot of things in very poor spanish that didn’t string together very well. She was unhappy, but not as much as I was. In the end, I didn’t pay her anything for taking the photo, but it did cut my day in the market short.

Here’s the photo by the way:

I’m sure that 5 Quetzales means more to her than it does to me, I think it was the way she went about trying to get it that bothered me. If she had said it would be 5 Quetzales to take the photo, I would have walked away, but she said it was fine, and then put a price on it.

My camera gear has been no different. My battery charger still functions, but no longer recognizes that there isn’t a battery plugged into it, and continues to try charging after the fully charged battery has been removed. My flash ceased functioning within 3 days of getting here, and now occasionally works, but the LCD screen doesn’t always, even when the rest of the flash is, and I’ve lost most of the controls on the control panel. thankfully, some of the time, it still communicates properly with the camera and TTL works, but that’s only some of the time. My nice tele-zoom has pretty much locked up in the fully zoomed position, and refuses to budge to zoom back to it’s shorter focal lengths.

But probably the oddest thing that’s happened has been the fact that my my 60mm AF micro Nikkor lense has suddenly started to work properly. I’ve always used it as a manual focus lens, it was that way when I bought it 5 years ago, and it never worked in Auto Focus mode. Now the Auto focus works. go figure. Not that I’m complaining mind you, when I bought the lens I got an amazing deal on it because the AF didn’t work, I picked it up in a box of stuff along with a sunpak 622 pro, an AIS 55mm Micro nikkor, and a bunch of other stuff that a company that was switching to digital didn’t think they could use anymore. I paid the whopping sum of $25 for the whole box. I’ve gotten a lot of use out of the sunpak, though I did buy a IR head for it to go with my D1R Infrared camera, and have used it pretty much exclusively with that. And I’ve used the Micro-nikkors for several projects as well. That’s the kind of deal I’d love to stumble into once a year, sadly I haven’t found anything close in quite a while, though I did pick up a nikkor 55 mm F1.8 AF-D lens at a thrift shop for $10 the day before leaving to come down here. Sadly it stopped working upon my arrival here as well…

Less than 6 hours after writing that, I made a new “friend” which means someone randomly stopped me in the street to talk to me because I speak English. Maybe that’s it, I should feign ignorance, and let people believe I’m a European from some odd country, maybe the Czech republic or something. Maybe then I won’t make so many “friends.”

I digress. The newest “friend” I’ve made is named Matt, not to be confused with the fairly normal Matt that I know here who’s from Australia and rode here on a bicycle. This Matt is an American. And when the conversation got to what we do, he said “I’ve got a bunch of kids with a lot of different women, that’s kind of my thing.” American Matt always runs around either bare-foot or bare chested, and sometimes both. he’s always wearing his sunglasses, normally a baseball cap, and a small backpack. I’ve seen Matt around town for about a month, and according to our conversation, that would coincide with his arrival date.

I don’t know how Matt makes his money, and I didn’t want to ask why “his thing” is having a bunch of kids with a bunch of women. Maybe I’ll have the opportunity to say something constructive to Matt.

Manny is from Mexico, his dad’s Mexican, and his mom Guatemalan. Manny lived in the states for a little while, and even claimed to have a US Social security number. I’m not sure if I believe the last part, since as he was naming off the states he was a “resident” of, he included Florida, Miami, and Orlando, each as separate states.

This was when things in the conversation began to get kinda weird. Manny lifted his shirt to show me the tattoo he had, which read “MEXXXICO” and perfectly framed his beer gut. After that he proceeded to tell me that the reason he left the states was because he had killed three people. “@$%)*^’s needed to die” was his explanation. Afterward, Manny proceeded to curse at and make rude gestures to a group of Nun’s that walked by, and then ran after them, calling them names and opening the fly of his pants.

Sadly, such occurrences aren’t that terribly uncommon here. I’m just glad Manny doesn’t live in Pana, I have enough “friends” that act pretty similarly here.

Still having about an hour a day of water here… oh well, at least I can flush my toilet once a day.

I’ve been walking around and looking at the damages done by the landslides and torrential rains, and I wonder how I can complain about something as petty as not having water at my sink.

So I’ve started working to help locally, in a problem that spans much of Guatemala, and parts of surrounding countries as well. There’s not much I can do on a large scale, but I’ve been working with a local family to redesign the drainage on their property to reduce the likelihood of future damage. I’ve also been trying to spend my market money with families that need it to rebuild their homes.

But the things that really struck me and made me start thinking about it were twofold today. First when I was walking by the lake, I saw two young men rowing around in a funny looking canoe. I immediately recognized that this was no ordinary canoe, but rather, it was a gutted jet-ski.

Back in the states, this thing would have been relegated to the scrap pile, here, plug the holes, grab some oars, and we’re good to go fishin.

Later on, I was given a pair of earrings to give Rachel that had been made in a local village. The interesting thing about the earrings was the origin of the materials used to make them. They are quite colorful, and they’re made of the aluminized mylar packages from potato chips. This is the ultimate recycling, if you ask me. Potato chips cost 2-3 Q for a small bag, eat the chips, and have the material to make at least 5 pair of earrings that sell for 20 Q each. And everybody who saw them loved them and wanted some (the women for themselves and the men for their wives). Man, I’m in the wrong busines.

Things you can get easily in Guatemala:
Prescription medicine, not everything, but antibitiotics, etc, are easy to get, and cheap.
Cellular internet, cheap and fairly reliable
Tortilla’s
Fruit nectar and juice
Eyeglasses
Dental work
Non-specific batteries (AA’s AAA’s D’s etc.)
Cellphones (starting at about $15 with $12 service included free)
Amoeba’s
Horses and cows
Umbrella’s
tuk-tuk’s
Steak
Clothing (Paca’s have a lot of american clothing, though not frequently in my size)
Chickens
Fresh Fruit
Dynamite
Incarcerated
Drink coasters
Sushi rice
Amazing coffee
Cheap lodging

Things that are either hard to find, or ridiculously expensive:
Clothing (other than T-shirts, in my size)
Clean water
shampoo (available, but not cheap, and it all makes my hair fall out)
butane gas
Fresh fish (available, but not safe to eat)
Real Ketchup (the stuff here is more sugar than Tomato)
Steak sauce
Gringo’s that aren’t crazy (not a cost comparison, but very hard to find)
Sturdy silverware
Anvils
Specific batteries (for camera’s, phones etc.)
Good roads
Raspberry or maple syrup
Canned Tuna (hardly ever found for less than $2 a can for the cheap stuff in oil- and it’s in smaller cans!)
Milk in a carton (it mostly comes in bags that don’t need refrigeration)
A decent mattress

All in all, it makes life interesting. I bring back what I think I’ll need, and invariably forget something, or discover that I need something not available locally, and add it to my list for the next return trip. Last time I brought a mattress pad with me rolled up and stuffed tightly into an old military duffel bag, along with gun-magazines (the reading type, not the holding ammo type) and fire starter flint thingies, along with my normal clothing, laptop, camera’s etc.

It rained almost the entire time I was in Antigua, so I didn’t get to walk around as much as I would have liked. I did make it to the market, where I ate lunch, and probably got a parasite. And I made it to the arch and the central square. I didn’t get to hang out in the Square at all, due to the rain, but I did stop by an interesting coffee shop. It’s run by a guy named Tony, he slow roasts the coffee, and I wasn’t really impressed by it. But the chocolate he made was interesting, if a bit “rustic” if you will, with bits of the cacao bean still in it. tasty, but crunchy, and not like a nutty candy bar.

On my second night there, I ran into an interesting old Guatemalan man. We discussed things for a bit, and it occurred to me that he was kind of crazy. He told me about how his father had been a catholic priest, and how he went to “religious school” and after informing me that he worshiped “jesus” he offered to show me his “jesus” idol. I declined. Afterward, he confided that he was a witch doctor, and offered to bless me, I declined again. We talked a little bit more, and now he’s gonna look me up on facebook. Imagine that!

I also met a very nice young man named Jonathan Tiemensma, He lives in Antigua, and is married to a Guatemalan woman, they have a 6 month old daughter. He’s from Holland, and wants to work in the US as a social worker, that’s what his degree is in, and he loves helping people. I hope he finds his way to the US.

After the rain finally let up for a bit on my last morning in Antigua, before catching the shuttle back to Pana, I finally made it to a Guatemalan blacksmith shop, something I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while now. I was impressed by the level of work they produced based on the fairly simple tools and techniques they were using. I took a lot of photos, I’ll be adding an album later on, and will post back with a link when I do.

I have to go back to Antigua next week for the final crown to be fitted, maybe I’ll have more adventures then!

The fair was interesting, I’ve met some of the kids who were performing, but only a few of them, and my broken Spanish didn’t make the conversation very good… but it was neat seeing them perform anyways!

One interesting thing I’ve noticed about life here, is the sheer number of things available in bags… and I don’t mean ziplocks, or dispenser bags, I mean like plastic bags that you cut open and pour out of… So far things that I’ve seen in bags that I haven’t really seen in the states:
Ketchup,
Mayonnaise
Soda pop
Drinking water (single servings)
Milk
Shampoo
Sour cream

Those along with lots of other things are available in bags, it’s not uncommon to see someone walking down the street with soda in a bag, with a straw sticking out of the corner. Last week, I saw a police officer driving while drinking soda from a bag…

Speaking of driving, recently Guatemala has passed laws saying that it’s illegal for people under a certain age to drive cars or motorcycles, and my understanding is that it’s pretty well enforced in Guate’ city, they aren’t cracking down as hard out this far, so I’ll regularly see a kid driving around town taking fares in his tuc-tuc (local taxi variety), who is 12 years old, I know he’s 12, because I asked him.

I’m amazed every day here that more people don’t get hurt, there’s no real concern for safety or health, and since the only “liability” around here is “if you do that, you’re liable to get hurt” there’s no indication that things will improve in the near future.