by Ken McCormick
I had a free day to kill in San Pedro La
Laguna before heading back to Guatemala City.
Volcan Toliman, the next volcano past Volcan San Pedro, had erupted for
the first time in about fifty years the day before, when I was too busy to do
anything about it. It had belched out a
lot of smoke and ash which had filled the air inside the fifty-square-mile bowl
of Lago Atitlan and had made the mountains on the other side of the lake a
little hard to see. At least that’s
what everybody said had happened. The
authorities said that although Toliman had acted up that day, the smoke and ash
had blown in from another volcano further west. Whatever the case might have been, it is true that two hundred
people had been evacuated from a village at the base of Toliman due to a
landslide or lava flow on the side of the mountain and a continuous loud noise
like boiling water.
I had thought I might travel over to the
village for a closer look, but the volcano had gone quiescent again, and the
news was that there was really nothing to see.
Since I was running very low on cash, I thought it might be a better
idea to just walk around the shore of the lake to take a look at the lakeside
towns of San Pablo and San Marcos, and to see San Juan once again before
leaving the lake.
Walking from San Pedro to San Marcos is hike
of several miles. The mountains rise
steeply from the lake, so the road is often cut into the side of the mountain,
and follows the contours of the land, curving sharply into ravines, rising and
falling steeply according to the terrain.
Always to the downhill side is the lovely view of the fields and
tropical growth along the shore of the lake, the beaches or the reeds at the
water's edge, kids swimming in the turquoise water of the sandy areas, or women
at the water's edge scrubbing their laundry.
On the uphill side are mountains, wooded for the most part, but also
with milpas, or farmers' fields on the steep slopes, sometimes amazingly far up
the mountains' sides.
I walked out of San Pedro on the dirt road
that goes along the edge of the lake and eventually turns inland to intersect
the paved road that follows the shore all the way to San Marcos. I hoped to be able to catch a ride on one of
the three modes of public transport available along that road, the bus, the
minibus, or the picop.
Picops (pronounced “pee cops”) provide the
most frequent service in the San Juan and San Pedro area. These are mini-sized pickup trucks produced
by Japanese manufacturers such as Datsun and Toyota. They usually sport custom-welded sturdy steel frames that cover
the beds of the mini-trucks in much the same fashion of the frames that will
hold a canvas cover over the beds of big military trucks. These frames do hold canvas or plastic tarps
during the rainy season, but they also serve another purpose. This second purpose is to hold in the people
riding in the bed of the truck.
Although the trucks may only be rated at a quarter-ton, they frequently
hold so many riders that not only is there standing room only, but the riders
will be packed in so solidly that there is no space between the trunks of their
bodies, and since human bodies are normally wider at the shoulders than at the
waist, the tops of the standing riders will hang out over the sides the same
way flowers hang over the sides of a vase when their stems are tightly
packed.
The picops usually also sport hefty
trailer-hitch rear bumpers with broad diamond-plate platforms upon which to
stand, the purpose of which is not for hauling trailers, but rather for more
riders to stand upon when the bed of the truck gets too full. Indeed, there are often two or three men
hanging on for dear life and standing on the rear bumper, the rear of the truck
so weighted down that it is almost dragging on the surface of the road. One of the more hair-raising rides I have
had was when the only room on a picop for me was the cutout for the trailer
hitch – not the nice, big, steel plate, but just the few inches wide cutout
with a trailer ball in the center of it.
When the picop would hit a bump, which was pretty often, and I would
become airborne, I figured if my toes didn’t land back on the trailer hitch
cutout, I was probably going to be hurting pretty bad.
Picops are also used for ambulances
and hearses. There are North-American
type hearses in Guatemala for those who can afford them. I can’t picture members of the leading
families riding to the cemetery in the back of a pickup truck, but that’s just
how the majority of people go to their graves if they lived too far from the
cemetery to be carried there by people on foot. In these cases, the picops aren’t fixed up in any special way to
serve as a hearse. They’re just rented
for a few hours. The casket is laid in
the bed with some flowers, and the pallbearers sit atop the sides of the bed
for the ride to the cemetery. Since few
people own cars, rented chicken buses follow carrying the mourners. But I digress.
Owners of picops used to give rides to
everybody for free, but in the past few years picop ownership has become a
regular business as owners charge riders one quetzal, or about thirteen cents,
for a short ride, and two or more quetzales for a longer ride, like the road
from San Pablo to San Juan, for example.
Many picop owners run regular routes all day in competition with the
public buses.
Anyway, as I headed up the first
really steep hill on the road out of San Pedro, a picop less than half full of
riders came careening around the bend at the bottom of the hill and gunned the
engine to climb to the top. I waved as
one might wave to hail a taxi. Just
what is the proper gesture to hail a Guatemalan picop? I wondered. I had only ridden in two picops before that
day, and one was a ride while hitchhiking, so it didn’t count. Apparently, I didn’t have the right gesture
for stopping one on a steep hill, because the driver not only roared right on
past me, but a young woman in the back pointed at me, said something to
someone, and laughed shrilly as the truck sped on past. But then, I often have that effect on women.
A little bit miffed, I continued my
hike to the top of the hill. The
hilltop affords a nice view of San Pedro, but this stretch of road between that
town and San Juan is quite heavily strewn with trash – even more so than the
average Central American road – and I had walked up there many times before and
was anxious to get on to someplace new.
As it was, I would have to hike through San Juan to the other side
without finding a ride.
Many Latin American towns and cities
have big crosses placed atop hills on the outskirts, and San Juan is no
exception. I was at the bottom of the
trail to the “Cerro de la Cruz” having just decided it wasn’t worth climbing,
as I was sure to slip in the type of gravel on the trail on the way back down
and get my street slacks scarfed up, when the chicken bus to Solola came
rolling out of San Juan. I did a good
imitation of a Guatemalan farmer’s loose, loping run, and I guess my
bus-stopping gesture was up to the task of communicating the willingness to
spend a quetzal, because the bus stopped to let me on.
Actually, it would have been some sort of a
miracle if the bus had not stopped, as the driver’s helpers, or ayudandes, the
guys who collect the money and try to arrange for some place for people to sit
and so on, can often be seen hopefully trying to persuade people alongside the
road who had no plans to go anywhere to decide on the spur of the moment to
climb aboard the bus. Chicken buses
will stop or at least slow way down for anyone who looks as though they might
have thirteen cents.
I climbed aboard and saw that there
were no seats left. Moreover, a rather
stocky middle-aged woman in the traditional Indian garb who was preparing to
get off at the next stop in San Pablo, was planted firmly at the head of the
aisle, just behind and to the side of the driver, and was staring at me quite
fiercely, signaling that she was not going to let me past without a fight. Since there was no place to go, anyway, I
decided to join the other passenger just behind the windshield, hanging onto
various protuberances to try to keep from falling out the open door as the bus
careened happily along the side of the cliff.
I had the second step to stand on with one hand braced on the top of the
door to keep me from flying forward out the door on the many curves, sweeping
the ayudante out with me, as he clung to his usual spot on the first step with
his hands firmly gripping the handrails on the outside.
The bus stops in front of the church
in San Pablo. This is the center and
the focal point of the town. From
there, it climbs on up the mountain to finally arrive at Sololá in another
couple of hours of winding through the mountains. But I wanted to stay on the road along the edge of the lake, so I
got off, walked around the town a little, went in a dark little food store –
there’s one on just about every block – bought a soda and a snack and stood
around in the street a while, an object of obvious curiosity to the locals who
apparently didn’t see many foreigners wandering about their impoverished
neighborhood of adobe structures and trash-strewn open drains on the edges of
the streets.
The ayudante had pointed out the road
out of town to me, and I now followed it back to the cliff along the edge of
the lake. Well, maybe it’s an
exaggeration to call it a “cliff,” as it’s not totally sheer, and it’s usually
no more than a fifty-foot drop. Anyway,
it’s pretty scenic, whatever you call it, and the road did a couple of
switchbacks to lose some altitude from San Pablo, and continued to slide
downhill as it curved around the contours of the mountainsides until it was
passing through some coffee groves almost at the level of the lakeshore. This was within the sphere of San Marcos,
and there was some construction activity along the lake side of the road as
big, expensive, homes for rich folks went up.
San Marcos is hard to reach except by
private launch, and it is getting to be a trendy getaway for the upper crust
and for tourists. There is not much of
a town, and no nightlife, so it is just for people who like it quiet and who
want to have nothing to do but lounge around on the beach. There were a couple of inns with restaurants
and paved driveways, and a place with tourist cabanas with thatched roofs
overlooking the lake as I climbed the last steep stretch of road into San
Marcos, but I tend to avoid such places, and I headed up the paved walkway into
the indigenous town, such as it is.
What I saw of San Marcos was a
Protestant church and a stretch of houses along the paved walkway that climbed
straight up the hill. The houses are
concrete block houses near the church, but heading toward the top of the hill
is like going back in time, because the houses further from the road have
frames of sticks with thatch roofs and dried corn stalks for walls. Women were out in their yards with their
backstrap looms fastened to trees weaving bright clothing that their family
members might wear, or which might be sold to bring in a little cash. One quetzal, or thirteen cents per hour for
work on hand-woven material is the average.
Many or most communities only have running
water for a couple of hours per day, and so everyone runs the water just about
constantly while it is available, filling jugs for drinking, cooking, and wash
water to be used over the course of the day, and doing laundry and washing
dishes in sinks in their yards as long as the water lasts. The water was running when I was visiting
San Marcos, and the sinks were draining into trenches on either side of the walkway. The community had been corrupted by
tourists, because the children had learned to wave at passing tourists and ask
for coins.
The paving stopped a little beyond the last
house, and the walkway became a dirt footpath that crested the hill and headed
down into a pretty little canyon full of trees. The canyon headed up into the mountains and leveled out until it
was just a crease in the side of the mountain.
This was a darned pretty sight, and the kind of trail that draws one on,
higher and higher, but whereas my spirit used to soar up into any mountain pass
I used to contemplate, exerting a strong pull on my body to follow, nowadays my
spirit is more inclined to just enjoy the view from down below. The main thing was, though, that it was
getting late, and if I didn’t want to have to hoof it all the way back to San
Pedro in the dark, I had to start heading back and catch a bus or picop
somewhere along the way.
Back on the road to San Pablo, I saw a
passenger-carrying minibus come tearing along the straightaway down below and
come roaring up the hill, the pedal obviously to the metal, but losing momentum
just the same. The bus was full, with
two guys standing in the sliding door area holding on underneath the roof,
hanging on the outside of the speeding bus.
It didn’t stop for me, of course, but topped the hill and careened
around the curve out of sight. A couple
of trucks caught up with me as I headed up the switchbacks into San Pablo, but
the road was so steep and winding here that they could not move much faster
than my walking speed, so I had their company for quite a while.
A picop was parked in front of the
church. I asked the driver where he was
headed, and he said he would be leaving for San Juan shortly. “Shortly” in Guatemala means any time within
the next three hours, but I decided to buy a Coke and hang around. There were only four or five other potential
passengers loitering on the sidewalk near the picop. As the picop business has grown, drivers have taken on ayudantes
to supervise loading of the bed and to collect fares, just like on chicken
buses. A big guy acted as ayudante on
this particular picop, and finally announced it was time to get aboard.
As we were standing around for a few minutes
waiting for the driver to start up the engine, what should come into view way
up the hill at the far end of town but the San Pedro chicken bus! The ayudante called out a warning to the
driver. ¡Carramba! The chicken bus would take people all the
way to San Pedro for one quetzal, whereas the entire journey by picop would
cost two quetzales. Moreover, on the
bus, the passengers might have some hope of finding some place to sit
down. The picop driver was facing the prospect
of having his vehicle abandoned by all his passengers.
He started to crank the starter frantically,
but the engine wouldn’t fire. The bus
was getting closer, and people were starting to turn their heads and look
longingly at it. One or two passengers
managed to jump ship before the engine finally fired, but as I had positioned
myself just behind the cab, I was still several small steps from the tailgate
when the picop lurched into motion as the bus pulled up almost alongside and
started to disgorge passengers. The
driver accelerated rapidly to prevent any more passengers from jumping off.
Or maybe that was just the way he always
drove, because as we headed out of town, he really got up some impressive
speed. This was getting to be like an
amusement park ride, sort of like those roller-coasters where the passengers
stand up, held upright by a bar, the wind wailing through their hair, but just
a little tamer ride and a lot more scenic.
Then we were rolling at reckless speed through the potholed streets of San Juan. People actually had to scatter and run to get out of the way of the onrushing picop juggernaut with its smiling passengers hanging tightly to the welded steel framework over the bed, but nobody seemed to take offence at this as I know they would have in the great white North. Down in Guatemala, running for one’s life to get out of the path of speeding vehicles is just viewed as an unavoidable necessity, sort of like a force of nature. I had to admit the exciting ride was well worth the extra thirteen cents.