Ginger is now back in Richmond and new goodies will be arriving soon.
April - 2008
April 18: Panajachel, Gautemala
It´s back to Antigua again this afternoon. When I was there last weekend, it was night time, and rainy, and looked like one of those Colonial Vampire Cities. If you are in the store sometime, ask Chris what a Colonial Vampire City is, he´s been in two of them.
My buying is pretty much finished, and it´s been good. I went to Chichicastenago yesterday for the twice weekly market, I found what I was looking for, which are the pillows made of old huipiles, or blouses, but not over-dyed. The overdyed ones are easy to find, and I´ve bought some beautiful ones, but the non-dyed ones no one brings up to the States, and I think that they are really fun, and pretty, if you have the right place for them.
This morning I went to the huipil market on the outskirts of Panajachel, it was textile heaven, I had my shoes off and was wallowing in huipiles. I got pretty much what I wanted, except I ran out of money, and the market is over by 1 p.m., but I did get 46 huipiles. I looked for condition, design, quality, price, and wearability, as well as a pan-Guatemalan assortment, though I am especially partial to huipiles from Xela and Chichicastengo, as well as San Juan. If you´ve never worn a huipil, you should try one on, they are very comfortable, its a nice heavy, quaility cotton, and a loose, boxy fit, but can be worn short so it isn´t shapeless.´
The previous time that I was in Chichicastenango, I had stayed there so I could get to the market early. That night it rained hard enough that it knocked the power out, so the whole town was just lit by candles or kerosene lanterns. I went past the church of Santo Tomas, and the bellringer was out behind the church, with his path illuminated by candles, and swinging an inscensor, to keep witches out of the church, as they enter on rainy nights. To top it off, he was hunch backed, with one bad eye. I am not making this up, or even exagerating. Well, maybe the one bad eye, I just remember there was something different about his face that made me think of the 40´s movie version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Panajachel has been so tranquilo that it´s hard to reconcile all of the travelers warnings about Guatemala, the robberies going up to the volcanos, the pick pockets, etc. I am sure that all of that exists, but it has not been the Guatemala that I´ve seen. I had bought my bus ticket to Pana a day ahead of time, and I left my suitcase at the bus depot while I looked for a room. When I came back, the kid at the desk said that I should check to see that I had my ticket, as they won´t let me on the bus without it. I told him, no problem, I´ve got it, and when he asked, are you sure?, I looked in my purse where I thought it was. He didn´t make me look long, I had left it on the table in the restaurant where I had coffee, and somehow it got back to him.
I´d also wanted to buy a bag of sliced mangos from the mango vender out my door, but no one was around, so I just took the bag and left the money under the salt shaker. I figured that if someone stole the money, I would just pay him again the next day. When I asked him if he´d found the money, he said yes, it was right where it had been left. He could have lied, and gotten paid twice, and anyone could have taken the money, but no one did. Same thing, a bag had been left on the bus, but it got back to it´s owner.
I´ve only got an hour until the bus goes, so guess I will take one last walk down along the lake.
April 16: Panajachel, Guatemala
I should apologize for my knee jerk description of Panajachel as a tin roofed shack town. That´s just the market area, and I´ve finally gotten to do some further exploring, after turning the markets over, inside and out. Pana has some absolutely beautiful areas, there is a spectacular waterfall outside of town, and the lake during the morning is an unbelievable dark turquoise, with three volcanoes reflected in it.
Now that the midwest is also approaching spring weather, I dare say things like , the weather is absolutely perfect here. Warm, sunny days, and cool nights. Pana has such a big expat community, that its also known as gringotenango, or place of the gringos. But it doesn´t take that many gringos to make the proportion high, as this is a really, really small town. I´ve run into the same people, including Myron the sea pirate, and the Canadian-Iranian-Bahia couple, whom I had last seen in Antigua.
Buying as been going well. At first glance, I didn´t think that I´d find anything, because, as Lonely Planet says, the main street on weekends looks like a Grateful Dead concert. Yes, that is true, and there is way too much jaspe´cloth, Todos Los Santos purses, and Rasta colored jewelry. However, when you dig deep, there are treasures. For example, I had seen these beautiful table clothes in one of the restaurants. Nobody in the markets had this kind of cloth, it was obviously back-strap loomed, and a very distinctive design. Then I ran into an old lady, she had a bundle of them on her head. I asked where she was from, some village on the other side of the lake. She only had two in the colors that I was looking for, so I bought them, and asked if she had more, and should I go there, or she bring them to me.
She said that she´d bring them, so today I got three more. The first time I met her, she said that she had woven them herself, and then today when I asked when she had time to weave, as she was busy selling, she ´fessed up and said that her daughter-in-law wove them, her shoulders are too bad now to weave. She did show me her permanent weavers calluses on the top of her one foot, so the truth was only slightly stretched. She had a lot of questions for me, like where were her cloths going, what was I going to do with them, did we do any weaving like that.
I´ve also bought a lot of chaquira, or the traditional beaded things. One of my favorite buys were these beaded horses, and they have beaded manes and tails, and nice designs on them. Also crossed off my wish list are the Santos, I sprang for 6 of the excellent quality ones, they look great, and I found nichos, nicely done, in the size for the santos that I bought yesterday. By far, though, my favorite purchase has been San Simon, Maximon, Ry Lay Mon, all the same guy. San Simon is a combination of Maya gods, one of the Spanish conquistadors of Guatemala, and the biblical Judas. He´s the effigy that Guatemalans go to for blessings, given after offerings of cigars, cigarettes, liquor, or candles. I´ve already gotten him a package of Payaso (Clown) cigarettes, and plan on getting him the alcohol after he gets to Richmond. I don´t mean to be disrespectful, but his effigy looks like an old reprobate. If you see him in the shop, you´ll understand. I might have to google him to see what other images I can pull up, as how he is depicted varies from one village to the next. One village just depicts him as a cardboard box with a cigar coming out of it.
April 10: Panajachel, Guatemala
It´s funny how things work out for the better sometimes if you just go with the flow. Originally I was going to stay in Guatemala City on the first day of arrival, and then head out the next morning, bypassing Antigua altogether, as I thought that it would be hard to get from Antigua to Pana. When I arrived at the airport, I didn´t have a hotel lined up yet, as the phone codes had all changed, and while getting the tourist desk to make a few calls for me, I met a couple from Iran, Bahai refuges in Canada for the last 35 years, and I overheard them say that they were going to Antigua, and their hotel had sent a car. So I spoke up and asked if they´d mind sharing the car, I´d help split the cost, and I ended up in Antigua.
Soray and her husband were the nicest people, she told me that the Bahai faith believes that we are all related, if you go back 52 times, so we were calling each other cousin within 10 minutes. Anyway, I am so glad I got to Antigua, it is so beautiful, it´s another World Heritage Site, surrounded by volcanos, with cobble stone streets, and lots of traje tipica. I did catch a bus the next morning, it was a classic chicken bus (where it´s the brightly painted old school buses, with roof racks for lifestock and goods on top) and makes stops at what seems like every 500 feet. I was glad I had the 52 cousin thought in my head as my various seat partners either fell asleep on my shoulder and my arm went numb, or their elbow in my hip was an hour long reminder to love humanity for what it is.
So, for the last two days I´ve been in Panajachel, it´s a beautiful place, surrounded by mountains, with a gorgeous lake, but the town is one of those little tin shed towns, and I hope to get back to Antigua for a day or two before I leave. I´ve got a good, established shipper lined up, have started buying already, and will do the market at Chichicatenago, as Roxana says thats a good place for old huilpiles, or the traditional blouses, and my shipping lady says that on Fridays the ladies come to the gasolene station to sell their old húipiles as well. Food is simple, and cheap, and good, and I even found a street vender in Antigua with banana leaf tamales, they were really moist and maybe the best that I´ve had yet. Nice internet service in Panajachel, it has a fair amount of ex-pats, so for such a small town it´s got a lot of amenities.
April 10: Panama City, Panama
Another stop with too short of time. I've been working from early until late, but it's all good, and it's been fun. What a city - jungle, beaches, girly shows, casinos, urban sprawl, parrots, high rises and people from all over the world - though I did meet Linda, who lives just outside of New Glarus, Wisconsin.
The past 48 hours have been Mola Mania, I've looked at literally thousands, and am bringing back about three hundred. I also bought a few Wounan baskets, and Embera masks. The Turkish language to me sounds like poetry being read, the Wounan language sounds like coconuts dropping to the ground, it's soothing. Unfotunately, I didn't get everything shipped, so in addition to my handcarried Cuzceño paintings, I've added five Embera masks. Shipping is really cheap out of Panama, so I've taken a chance and shipped all of my heavier clothes home except for one pair of jeans and a jacket. I've gotten down to so few clothes that it's getting hard to get laundry done and still be dressed, so I picked up something at the resale shop for Guatemala. What was fine for hot weather in Bali is not fine for hot weather in Guatemala, this dress is long and modest.
What good food there is here, except- I bought exotic fruit I've never heard of or seen before, and you'd think that any fruit would be good, right? Out of five different fruits, one was wonderful, similar to Vietnamese dragon fruit, three were weird and seedy, like pomegranit, do you eat the seeds or not, and one was so nasty I just threw it out. Last night I'd bought a tamale on the street, and was eating it near a trash can, to throw out the corn husk when I was done. There was a street person digging through the trash, he was looking for a styrofoam cup that was still good, and all of a sudden he starts jumping up and down and laughing like a maniac, and slapping his thigh - I wondered if he was having a seizure or what - then he pointed to what he had in his hand, it was a tamale, he loved it that we were both hovering by the trash can, with our tamales. International bridge of understanding made through tamales - cool
April 8: Miraflores, Peru
Road notes will be sporatic for the next few days, I have a lot of ground to cover, and not a lot of time. After a nice send off in Paraguay, (they have a harp player at the airport to serenade the departure gates), I arrived in Lima around midnight.
Peru obviously rates higher on the adventure scale than Argentina does, judging by the number of young Japanese girls at the airport. These girls are fearless. When I started going to Turkey some 20 plus years ago, my Turkish friends lamented that the Japanese tourists only traveled in groups, and wouldn't seperate themselves from the herd, so they only shopped where the tour guide took them. Now you see this phenomina of young Japanese girls traveling in groups of two or three, blazing trails off the beaten path.
I ran into a base player from Ashville while in India. He was quite a traveler, he and his ex-wife bicycled around the world in three years. Anyway, a month earlier he had been in some out of the way historical city in Yemmen, and the only other tourists that he saw were Y. J. Girls. While in Jaipur, early one morning I taken a tuk tuk out to a craft village outside of the city. It was too early for anything to be going on, but mainly I just wanted to walk around in the country's peace and quiet. No one was really up and stirring , and after about an hour I was heading back to Jaipur. Walking over the rise of a hill, I heard drums, singing, a harmonium, flutes, and there amongst a group of Rajastani musicians were two dancing Y. J. Girls. So Peru has to count as an adventure, as the airport was crawling with Y.J. G.
It was a very unsettled time twenty five years ago when we were passing through Lima on route to Cuzco. The taxi driver wouldn't take us as fares unless I covered my head and Evan slouched down in the seat, as there had just been a spate of armed robberys on taxis carrying foreigners. In the early morning hours we heard gun shots just outside the door of our flea bag hotel. What a difference 20 years and a more upscale neighborhood makes.
Miraflores is clean, clean and green. Lots of great restaurants and a terrific supermarket with the best tamales. Did you know that Peru has over 3000 varieties of potatos?
Too bad that most of my time is spent working. As in Bali, where all the Timor traders were from the same family, it seems that everyone here at the Indian Market who deals in Cuzco textiles are all from the same family. They work such long hours at the market, about 12 hours a day, that this is both their work and entertainment. Victoria, who is the sister of my shipper and supplier, Guilfredo, has already issued me an invitation to stay at her house, and since we are together all day, meals are en famille. His younger brother, Moises, had started as a street vender, selling post cards. He said that his big dream had been to be able to sell water colors on the street. Through his family, lots of hard work, and some luck, he now has a very nice alpaca export business, and he's still just a kid. I'm sending back some beautiful alpaca vests, also am trying angora ruanas, and alpaca throws and blankets.
I found another really sweet family who makes these totally cool funky purses out of the big, thick Altiplano blankets, and decorates them with crocheted flowers. The other thing that I bought are the Cuzco School paintings, reproductions of the Spanish Colonial art. I'd seen some for sale in Argentina, and was disturbed to see that they were using so much gold leaf that it detracted from the painting. This is a new development, as Peru is also doing repros of Byzantine art, which is heavy on the gold leaf. Fortunately, I did find beautiful quality, traditional Cuzco style, it's so nice that I plan to hand carry it back rather than trust it to the Panamanian post office, I can't ship it from here without getting a museum certification that it's not the real thing, antiguidades, I just don't have time to do that, hope I don't get busted at the airport for it either.
The flight to Panama will be like a Circus Jump. I need to leave the hotel at 1 am to make the 5 am flight. Too short of time here, the Peruvians have been so sweet and curious and friendly. Ah, and no more blasts of Inca Kola, that pee yellow, bubble gum flavored, addictive concoction of mega caffeine and over dosed sugar - it's a buzz like you wouldn't believe.
April 3: Asuncion, Paraguay
This is a keyboard with no apostrophes, so there will either be no contractions, or there will be typos - sorry. It is really interesting about everyones world view and how their experiences shape their views. I had been dreading Asuncion. When I was here 25 years ago, it was springtime, and very hot and humid, and the city smelled bad, and our hotel smelled worse, it had mold growing on the walls. To add to the experience, Evan insisted on wearing a pair of really loud, colorful shorts that he had bought in Brazil, and eveyone made fun of them, and him, when we were in Asuncion, so he got surly, and the locals got surly back. It was not, overall, a good experience.
This time its fall, and the weather has been dry and beautiful, the city seems much cleaner, and I've been having a good time even though I've been really busy, and its too dangerous to go out at night. At least in my part of town. I'm at the Plaza Hotel, which is a three star hotel that at one time was probably one of the best hotels, and best location in Asuncion. Its right on the Plaza Uruguay, which used to be the very hub of the city, with the long distance bus terminal there, the trolley cars, and the train station all on the plaza. Now the train station is just a train museum, the trolleys are long gone, and the bus terminal has moved to the outskirts of town. Actually, down town Asuncion reminds me a lot of down town Waukegan, its about the same size, it still has a lot of government buildings, but a big chunk of the buildings are vacant, with a few of the big, old department stores hanging on, like dowagers on a park bench.
Speaking of world views, my last day in Buenos Aires, I had run into an American couple who had just come over from Chile. They HATED it, and said that theyd tell anyone who asked, to not bother going- it was dirty and the hotels were all dumps and expensive. I always thought that Chile was the best country in South America, drop dead gorgeous scenary, friendly people, cozy and clean, at least in the south. They (the two gringos) also couldnt wait to get out of Buenos Aires, they had heard that it was all pick pockets, and it was just another big city. I loved my time in B.A., I couldnt believe how safe I felt at all times, and how nice everyone was, and what a beautiful city it is, and so much fun to walk in. I am really missing here all of the fantastic cafes that B.A. seems to have on every street corner, you can get a great cup of coffee or an expresso, it seems, about every 100 feet. Here , at least in the city center, restaurants are few and far between. Oh, the other thing that I miss about Argentina - the way they speak. My first time in South America, it was a really long winter that year, so I spent 6 months in Argentina, so thats really where I learned to speak Spanish. It was weird to speak Argie spanish after so long, but it felt like putting on an old pair of slippers after 20 years, a little strange at first, but soon all too comfortable. I love how the Argies speak - theyve got a way of talking that almost sounds like theyre complaining, when theyre not, and a question is often asked by dropping the voice at the end, not by going up. And I get to say things like, barbardo, when something is ok.
The few restaurants that downtown Asuncion has have all been good. My first day in A. I went for lunch at the Bar San Rocas. Its been run by the same family for the last 102 years, most of the food they grow on their own farm, they even had their own honey for sale at the restaurant. The portions are huge, and it was just good, wholesome homegrown homecooking. The restaurant, midweek lunch, was just packed with local businessmen, a birthday party with the grown children and spouses, and the clan matriach, a few old Mennonite couples. I also went to the Confiteria Bolsi, which has been in business since 1960, and they claim to be the first restaurant in all of South America to have air conditioning. Paraguay also claims to have had the first railroad in all of South America, and claims to have the last functioning wood burning locomotive in the world, it runs twice a month. Lonely Planet claims that Argentina has more plastic surgery done, per capita, then anywhere else in the world. I have not verified any of these claims. Though I will verify that the Argies do look pretty gorgeous. I got my hair cut at a fancy salon in B.A., and even the men get pedicures, and their feet calluses removed. They also talked me into putting highlights in, I think they were pretty dramatic, I feel like Marilyn Monroe, I will get lowlights put in when I go home, Im not a high visibilty type person. Ciaou, chicos, que barbardo!!! |
