Cerro de Oro

Chico invited me to climb Cerro de Oro with him, Monday, departing at 5 am, before sun-up, the air fresh and cool.... He duly picked me up, a little late, but ready to head off across the lower slopes and up the mountain, Cerro de Oro, a giant lava dome that towers 330 metres above Lake Atitlan. It was dark when we left with daylight peeking over the crater rim to the east. At first by torchlight, we meandered along paths, mostly ancient, through red-beaned coffee groves and dry-stalked corn fields. The coffee groves are shaded by huge, ancient avocado and jocote trees. Chico has his two dogs and a machete. Farmers we pass have just machetes and greet Chico in Kaqchikel, *xseqër k'a!*,then me in Spanish. *"Buenos dias!"* As the sun appears over the horizon behind us, we see Cerro de Oro bathed in orange dawn light up ahead. The mountain is steeped in Mayan mythology; legend involves an elephant, a serpent, and a giant. One legend continues that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry came to Lake Atitlán where he saw Cerro de Oro: the “hill of gold” became the model for “the boa constrictor digesting an elephant” on the first page of The Little Prince. He said when the Spanish first came to Lake Atitlán, they looked for gold hidden by the Maya in the caves and tunnels under the hill where they became lost and never returned. Other legends say the tunnels run all the way to Tolimán volcano, and that the Tz’utujil people hid from the Spaniards in the tunnels. The colossal steeped mound has the look of a crouching beast with a bristling head, lit up now in its fiery morning glow.

And a beast she was to climb. Not that high, but steep, on very dusty narrow trails, with sheer drop-offs down arid, dry-season-denuded slopes. At a cluster of massive boulders which serve as a ceremonial altar, the slope eases, winding like the snake around a wooded glade to the rocky, treed summit. The views are magnificent over Lake Atitlan, from Santiago, to San Pedro, to Panajachel, all the way round to San Antonio. The air is hazy; the sun glistens over the little peninsula of Pachitulul, where we have come from, way down below. The morning sounds of traffic and activity from the strung-out village of Cerro de Oro drift up on the pleasant breeze. At 8 am, the sun is already hot and our time of rest, re-hydration and contemplation is most welcome. Chico tries to assure me that this climb is good for the heart, legs, and soul. To him, the elephant swallowed by a boa constrictor seems sacred and hallowed. 

His world stretches before us - Lake Atitlan in all her glory. He says that when he was a youngster, the lake lapped at the feet of the now giant amate tree at Casa Pitaya where we regularly sit on a hillock with the lake some thirty feet below! The fields he farms today were, back then, under water and this whole shoreline is reclaimed. He says the lake level goes up and down in 45-year cycles, suggesting that another rise is due. As we gaze from this eagle's nest some 1100 feet above the lake, anywhere near a thirty foot rise over the breadth of this vast expanse of water seems unthinkable, but the twenty five feet drop in recent years is indicative of the possibility. It would certainly upset more than a few foreigners who have built homes and businesses perched close to the water's edge. The locals know better, of course.

Back home, a refreshing swim in the tranquil waters of the bay washes away the dust of the trail. Later on, Chico cut a fabulous bunch of a dozen ripe bananas and delivered them. A fruit salad of fresh-picked bananas and lemons, with sweet pineapples and mangoes from the market drizzled with local mountain honey was so juicily delicious.

San Lucas Toliman, revisited

Market days are Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. On these days, several streets are closed to traffic and thronging with vendors, their produce, and customers. The vibrant colours of Kaqchikel Mayan women in their *trajes* and the fruit and vegetables on offer, comined with the hubbub of banter create a boisterous and lively atmosphere. A large proportion of this food is locally-grown on small plots of land and brought fresh to market. We have never experienced anywhere else the depth of intense flavour of the beets and carrots, mangoes and melons of the markets around Lake Atitlan.

On non-market days, these same streets look desolate and unkempt. Any number of *tiendas* sell mostly packaged junk food in a sea of plastic. Any number of *farmacias* sell pharmaceutical drugs, largely to medicate and treat against this junk diet. Sugary carbonated drinks and salty snacksy made using industrial-strength glyphosated GMO corn and soy doused in unhealthy trans-fats help to fuel malnutrition, obesity, and diabetes rates.

The view from Hotel Toliman, towards San Antonio Palopo

Apart from a handful of hotels, including the lovely Hotel Toliman, this town of 17,000 inhabitants, 90 - 95% of them Mayan, barely caters to tourists and travellers at all. One cafe, Cafe Jade, offers free wifi and freshly-ground coffees. The restaurants and fast-food eateries in town service mainly locals. Hotel Toliman sits on a knoll overlooking a swimming pool, beautiful gardens, the bay and the open waters of Lake Atitlan beyond. The far view takes in San Antonio Palopo on the shore and Agua Escondida further along, up on the crater rim. The accommodations look delightful and the cuisine is sumptuous, making full use of fresh ingredients from their one-acre organic garden, fresh fish, and 100% grass-fed beef. What could eclipse this?

The Valley of San Marcos

The walk up and around the valley behind San Marcos is a delight. We love to saunter, thereby taking in the sights, sounds, smells, moving slowly, inhaling deeply. As John Muir so smartly noted: "Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."

We began our saunter at our home base of Pasajcap where we enjoy a panoramic view of Lake Atitlán and the sweeping contours of the three fully-forested volcanoes that frame our horizon. The walk into the village of San Marcos is along a dusty unpaved road where we encounter locals that greet us warmly (including this father, son, and dog returning from firewood harvesting). 

We also pass fellow-travellers and tuk-tuks that operate as the local taxi service. We have established that even small paths and alleys lead somewhere, so we just follow our nose, uphill out of town. The way zig-zags past simple dwellings inhabited by local Mayans, past walled and fenced properties with beatiful lush gardens mostly owned by foreigners, aka gringos. Some properties are rented out, as lodges, hostels, rooms, yoga and meditation retreats. The Yoga Forest "is a sacred sanctuary with ancient Mayan altars and natural springs that have been protected as a Natural Reserve in order to honor the land and the heritage of its people" according to its website. It has towering trees and sits nestled at the base of a gigantic sacred rockface. "The Yoga Forest shares conscious living as a spiritual practice, offering a unique retreat space for self connection, connection to the Earth, and personal growth. We live, work & play harmoniously in nature, creating inclusive abundance and a safe space for personal transformation and authentic self expression. Through intercultural relationships of respect, we weave together local and global visions that inspire positive social and ecological impacts in the world."

Up the trail beyond the Yoga Forest, the habitation thins to a few wooden structures perched high, soaking up the view. There are banana, orange, avocado trees shading the coffee trees with their ripening red beans. This trail, winding through solid boulder steps, feels like it has been here forever, helping local Mayans to ferry wood, fruit and coffee down the mountainside for hundreds of years. The valley is deep and broad and leads all the way up past its rim to the village of Santa Lucia Utatlán, some three hours distant, up on the plateau. As we paused to drink in the view to the lake, up came three petite Mayan women with big machetes and gauze bags; they were off up-valley to harvest firewood, which they will bring down to the villages strapped to their backs. They were chatty, cheerful, and giggly, radiant in their colourful local dress.

After an hour or so of climbing, we took a trail that led across the river (dry at this time but a raging torrent in wet season). It led us down the other side and offered up spectacular views out up the mountain, past the rockface, and down to the villages of San Marcos, San Pedro, and San Juan, the lake and the perfect green cone of Volcan San Pedro. Here, the land is like a jungle garden, with flowering trees spreading their ample limbs laterally. A local woman with her toddler son warns us to be careful. (Yes, we did encounter three women with machetes....) We returned via the tidy upper part of San Marcos down steep paved streets to the centre.

It was time to finally check out the eclectic Japanese restaurant Allala, tucked away down an alleyway that leads to the garishly astro-turfed soccer pitch. Hungry for a late lunch after our sauntered stroll, we tucked into miso soup, tempura vegetables, and arroz con pollo, or chicken rice. A quick shop for supplies, then back to Pasajcap by tuk-tuk too weary (or blissed-out) for Happy Hour with our fellow travellers. 

We did, however, get to met white-haired, gnome-like Yves from Quebec. He has been living here for a year in his schoolbus/van, jacked up on boulders to level it on the sloping hillside. He was first on the lake thirty years ago when there was just one motorboat daily between Panajachel and San Pedro. Now they come by every fifteen minutes or so, so there must be more than fifty a day in each direction. Yves spends half his Canada Pension helping local families here. As he says: "It's no good to me once I'm gone."

It's all about the Seeds

Erythrina flabelliformis, red coral bean seeds

I have been immersed, during my days and weeks on Lake Atitlan, reading "The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic" by Martin Prechtel. HIs writing glows throughout with indigenous wisdom. His words about the origins, durability and vital importance to us all of the Seed are particularly memorable:

"But our souls, like the seeds, remember. We need to find them, or we shall go mad or destroy ourselves trying to speed away from the incrementing trail of suffering unsung ghosts we leave in the wake of our flight into amnesia. Make the effort to look into the real past of the seeds you plant. Go as far as you can get, even into the annals of the standard empire-serving common system of belief, and you will find the people of the seeds and the seeds of your own past. Look into the people, and you will find your “seeds,” for all of us have them. Like all the languages, clothing, songs, ways of living, the seeds too have been taken from us, but their memory lives on, waiting to burst forth again if we just look beyond the Great Wall of cultural and historical prejudice and self-hatred. 

In every family, if you are courageous enough to stay on the trail beyond the prejudice of a family’s selective memory and belief, and don’t get your fate stunted by getting mired in some self-involved psychology, there are vestiges of customs, sayings, beliefs, that if assiduously looked into could easily lead to the more ancient evidence of your people’s unique version of the original spiritual “Agreement” with the Holy in Nature that all peoples have. Strange little shoots of bigger vines that have miraculously survived the simple-minded revisionist imperial histories we have all been taught yet dangle there unnoticed. 

These little leftover things are the signs of the “souls of our seeds.” The stories of these souls and our plants are the stories of our people; between the people, the seeds, and their stories, evidence of the ritual agreement with the Holy almost always pokes through if you know what you’re looking at when it does. 

In this way, whether you plant a small garden or sow a larger farm, if you know that many things about what your seeds carry on their backs, then you are cultivating origins to whose story your own story is then attached. By tending, growing, and worrying about the welfare of the living things you have planted, you are both caring for and are part of a true origins, and you are no longer stranded in time. You have become a vital part of the long umbilical cord of a life attached to the Holy in Nature."

San Lucas Tolimán

San Lucas Tolimán

Our visit to all twelve towns and villages around Lake Atitlán is now complete. And we think that with the last on the list we have found our Shangri-la! After Panajachel, San Pedro la Laguna, San Juan la Laguna, San Marcos la Laguna, Santa Cruz la Laguna, Jaibalito, Tzununá, San Pablo la Laguna, Santiago Atitlán, Santa Catarina Palopó, San Antonio Palopó, we finally disembarked the lancha at the tranquil backwater of San Lucas Tolimán. What a magical day we spent there!

It was like a dream - Sunday in the Country meets Picnic at Hanging Rock. We took advantage of a new 3-times daily public boat service, departing Panajachel at 8.30am, returning from San Lucas Tolimán at 4pm. The cost of the half-hour trip (for, sadly, just three passengers each way), was 20 quetzals, or $3, each.

As our boat rounded a headland, we left the open waters of Lake Atitlán behind and entered a bay with clear blue water, flooded tree trunks and weedy rim. The park that takes up the waterfront is shaded by big trees and lined with thatched bars serving simple fare and beer. Tuk-tuks were conspicuously few and the locals, while exceptionally friendly, are not perturbed by stray visitors. The whole town is paved with broad streets. A walk up the hill takes us to the vibrant central square. Off to our side are several streets taken up by the twice-weekly market. The vendors are mostly women dressed in an bright array of traditional weavings and offering their family's fruit, vegetables, flowers, meats, fish, dried goods, eggs, cheese, weavings, carvings, and household utensils. The scene is lively and convivial and, even as rare tourists, we cause no undue attention beyond welcoming banter. We asked a couple of locals for a place for a good coffee and they directed us to the sweet little Cafe Jade, which served the best lattes, 'fuerte' as requested.

After sidestreet meanderings taking in several species of tropical trees in extravagant bloom, we strolled down the hill to the tiled-roofed communal outdoor lavadero, where many women were doing their laundry, using water channeled from the mountains, in ancient large concrete basins. The grey water is filtered through sand catchments before draining into the bay. A crew of men was hauling out thick weed mass from the bay, piling it up for removal and making into compost. With wet, cold hand outstretched, Marlon introduced himself. Out around the bay, the pavement finally gave way to dirt. Here a quiet, mixed community of homes from the grandiose to the humble sits quietly looking out over the water. Small coffee plantations grow shaded by banana trees, single farmers prepare and plant fields of corn, beans, peppers, tomatoes, celery. We decided we could quite happily live here, cultivating our own little backwater just outside this pueblo, with a small self-sufficient garden beside our simple home, making our way into market to purchase fresh local organic goods, with a boat ride to Pana once week to top up on supplies. On our way back into town Marlon and a mate awkwardly asked for 10 quetzals (75 cents) to buy tortillas as they were hungry.

Having worked up a hearty appetite, it was time to visit the elegant Hotel Tolimán (www.hoteltoliman.com). Set in beautiful landscaped gardens, the hotel offers luxuriant accommodation with local character. The kitchen makes full use of the most complete and impressive organic market garden that takes up half an acre adjacent to the hotel. The views over the bay and lake beyond from the covered terrace dining room are jaw-dropping. Our prix fixe three-course lunch, which included a day pass for swimming in the pool and a tour of the market garden, was very reasonable at  150 quetzals ($20) per person. The food and drinks were fresh, delicious, tastefully presented, and service from our server Lionel came with a smile and affable chat. This was a fine dining experience.

Back to the waterfront to await our return boat, we passed a beach designated for boats, another for baptisms, and another for bathing. Bathed in afternoon sun, teenagers, girls and boys, stripped down to shorts and swimsuits and joyfully, loudly dived in. A young couple doffed tops to splash around playfully and wash hair and body, innocently oblivious to the world around. 

And then our boat launched us three passengers back onto the open waters, across the volcano-rimmed lake, out of daydream, back to Panajachel, thence onward home on a second boat, this one crammed full and heavy with well over twenty tourists, luggage, and locals, sprayed liberally with water on a choppy ride. We feel blessed to have enjoyed this memorable travel day soaking up such a rare traditional, vibrant, happy culture set in harmonious surroundings. 

Indigenous Soul

Luna Moon Rising by Mara Friedman, www.newmoonvisions.com

Martín Prechtel writes: "Every individual in the world, regardless of cultural background or race, has an indigenous soul struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile environment created by that individual’s mind."

I have always struggled with the notion of a "soul", and the attribution of an adjective such as "indigenous" makes the grasping even more intangible. The word "spirit" is more appealing, less dogmatic. I appreciate that historians, anthropologists, writers, philosophers, healers, shamans all derive deep meaning from cultural and earthly connections, given the rich evidence unearthed by study of civilizations and cosmologies such as those formulated and perfected by Persians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Chinese, Aztec, Toltec, Incans, Greeks, Romans, Mayans, Moors, Ottomans (and more) at the zenith of their Empires. Who wouldn't sense an innate "soul" underpinning such powerful displays of human ingenuity and grandeur? But do Empires derive build on a collective Indigenous Soul, do they imbue it, or do they depend on manipulation of such a Soul as a means of exercising tight central control?

Do we - born English, Irish, Canadian, American, French, Russian, German, Spanish, Australian - have a "soul" that is attributable to our homeland? Most of us are certainly proud of our nationality that bestows us with part of our personality. Yet these modern states are surely but fabrications, transitions drawn on a map and evolved from deeper, more indigenous entities, like the Vikings, Native Americans, Aboriginals, Celts, Slavs, Iberians that preceded us, and that we subjugated with our "guns, germs, and steel"! Yes, some of us are direct descendants of these proud peoples, but many of us - in North America, for example - are not. Some of us are unwillingly uprooted refugees, some live in self-imposed exile. Our "civilization" attempted to tame, even wipe out the "indigenous soul", so that our morality could take its place. And the battle is ongoing around the world to this day, as native peoples are threatened, marginalized, and have their "soul" (their homes, their lands, their very means of survival) stripped away from them by violent force. The soul is laid bare and goes underground, is exterminated, or co-opted by the conquering culture or religion.

Many of us try to seek a connection back to where we came from, whether it be through our family tree or the histories of our heritage. I am readily reminded of my own indigenous spirit when I recall (buoyed by nostalgia) endless playtime in the woods, bluebells, country walks, seaside holidays, chalk cliffs, folk music, Morris dancing, church choirs, village pubs, Saplings, Mill Lane, Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire (the physical soil into which I was born and became rooted), football Saturdays, cricket Sundays, foggy mornings, rolling countryside, downlands, grey drizzle, light and bitter ales, mischievous banter, a laugh and a giggle, Mum & Dad, my sisters ..... Childhoods anchor us to a semi-mythical past.  Now my world has been flavoured by Canadian, Chilean, and German influences. Stories written, visual, and oral help us in filling out our sense of self as we pore over books, art, sculpture, symphonies, faded photographs, utilitarian objects, myths, legends conjured up by ancestors of ours. And we go gallivanting around the world in search of meaning in exotic and far-flung cultures alien to our own. There is, perhaps, after all, "soul" everywhere, whether indigenous or not, and we end up picking up smatterings from all over. Modernity, mobility, mutability have blurred the lines and created a soup of ever-changing mores and cultural practise that is richly entertaining and edifying, yet ultimately unsatisfying in finding a new home for our soul. We are in large part the creation of where we came from; we have set down roots in places along the way, and we know not what the future holds. It is up to us to seek out our spiritual home, dig in, nourish those roots, plant more seeds, tend our garden, and keep looking.  The perpetual quest for love, beauty, connection, and perhaps even "soul" continues and deepens.

Francis Weller writes: "The indigenous soul lives close to the ground, to moss, river and loon. It moves in springs and wind, is close to the breath of coyotes. It is scratched on rock walls around the planet, is seen dancing around firelight and is heard in stories told under the canopy of stars. The indigenous soul is the thread of our humanness woven inextricably with the world. Where all things meet and exchange the vitality that is life, there is soul."

If we strip away human depredations of war, greed, conquest and overreach that are poisoning and collapsing our societies, we are left staring at raw Nature, true Earth soul. This is the foundation for human or "indigenous" soul.

Weller continues: "The recovery of the indigenous soul is imperative. We are in serious trouble as a people. Nearly every biological system is in peril: our watersheds, oceans and topsoil are experiencing rapid deterioration. We face a future that will be seriously impacted by radical changes in our climate. We are also witnessing the daily loss of the wild as we encroach ever further into wetlands and forests. We have forgotten our place in the world. And this woe is not confined to us alone; it extends to the others with whom we share this world. Many species find themselves threatened by these changes: grizzlies, blue fin tuna, spotted owls, coral reefs, Atlantic salmon, autumn buttercup, golden-cheeked wood warbler, Baker’s cypress. This list goes on and on. There are 2,269 endangered species in the United States alone. They are caught in a cascading net of sorrows, powerless to change or adapt. We must reconnect with this ancient ground of being that is our indigenous soul and recall that we are all of the earth."

Martín Prechtel likes to incant a blessing common among the Tzutujil Indians of Guatemala: “Be blessed with long life, honey in the heart, no evil, and thirteen thank you’s.”