It has been about six weeks since Farrah and I started our travels, and I find myself having a lot to share about the experience of living here.
For those who are not familiar, San Marcos la Laguna is a small village of around 4000 people on the northern shore of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. The lake in general, and San Marcos specifically, is something of a spiritual center, or hippie hangout, depending on your point of view, and how you choose to spend your time.
The population here is split between Maya who tend to live higher up on the hillside, Guatemalans from elsewhere in the country, who tend to live closer to the lake side, and expatriates, who also often live closer to the lake side. My initial impression as an American was that the wealthy outsiders had pushed all the local Maya up the hillside away from the more desirable waterfront properties. While this is likely true in some cases, we also learn from speaking with some locals that many of the Maya prefer to live higher on the hillsides to avoid the drastic shifts in water level, which have varied something like 40 meters in the last 60 years, and also because most of the locals have land higher on the hillside where they grow coffee. We also learned about the devastation that hurricane Stan brought to the area in 2005. The flooding was extreme, and the waterways down the hillsides widened so significantly that much of the surrounding areas were completely washed away. If you hike near the creeks around the lake you can see large rocks and boulders in these tiny creeks, some of which were planted in their current locations by the floods from Stan.
There is a large community of musicians here, and most evenings you can find several places that have live music of one type or another, which I love. We have had many opportunities to experience a wide variety of live music in very intimate settings. As an aspiring mandolin player I find it remarkable, and a bit intimidating, how many amazingly talented musicians you can find playing at local venues, and jams. It is not surprising to find musicians who could easily play any club in the states popping up at open mic nights. One of my favorite local venues is a restaurant called Vida Cocina, which has some of the best views on the lake, and seems to perpetually have some sort of live music going on. One particularly interesting aspect of events here, for those of you who frequently attend shows in the US, is that there is a fairly strict ban on noise after 10p, so music tends to start by 6pm and places shut down right around 10p. Quite a change from the main act starting at 10p, or later for many DJs. This has meant that we get to see lots of music, and still enjoy the following morning, instead of dragging ourselves out of bed at 11a the morning after a show.
I mentioned that San Marcos is a small village, but I think that requires a bit of explaining for folks who haven’t spent much time in small towns outside of the US. First of all, there are very few cars here. Sure, some folks have pickup trucks, and there are a few cars that come through town, but mostly the streets have pedestrians, and tuk tuks. Around town tuk tuks are the quick way to get places, and they are particularly nice when taking any sized load up the hills around here, which are very steep. One oddity of tuk tuk pricing is that you are generally charged per passenger (yes, visitors commonly get charged more than locals, suck it up), so if you have two people an a ton of crap to haul up a hill the price of two tuk tuks is generally the same as getting one tuk tuk and trying to fit yourselves and your stuff in a tuk tuk. If you want to get to another town on the lake the tuk tuks might be able to help you, but they are generally expensive to take in between towns, and some tuk tuk drivers don’t like going to other towns (we’ve heard there can be rivalry, but I haven’t seen anything of the sort). The better way to get to another town (at least during daylight) is to take a lancha. The lanchas circulate the lake clockwise (towards Panajachel from San Marcos), and counter-clockwise (towards San Pedro from San Marcos), stopping at any dock that people need along the way. The lanchas operate much like public buses do in the US, and they have an equally low cost as a means of transportation (again, visitors tend to pay a bit more if they don’t know the price and don’t have exact change). The only thing about the lanchas is that they don’t run at night and they are somewhat subject to winds on the lake. A choppy day on the lake is not a fun day for a lancha ride. We have taken several ventures over to Tzununa, another town to the east about 2 miles away, to visit friends and take in live music. While these trips have always been worth the trouble, we have found that getting a tuk tuk to bring us home after 830p can be quite an adventure. I have collected the numbers of half a dozen tuk tuk drivers in Tzununa, and I still managed to find no one to give us a ride one night. Thankfully the bartender at the Granja Tz’ikin had more numbers than I did and we were able to get a ride home for Q150 (or $20 USD), which is about 4 times what it would have cost us during the day.
A note about walking in San Marcos and other towns around the lake:
The second reviewer of this post, my sister Xan, suggested that I’d kind of glazed over what it is like to walk around San Marcos.
So, let’s talk about it.
Walking around San Marcos has a couple of quirks for my readers from the US. First, there are a lot of footpaths around town. Some of these are stone paved walkways like the primary walkway down to the dock, sometimes referred to as the “hippie highway”. However, there are numerous dirt paths, and social trails, particularly along the beach. On the main streets in town you can sometimes find a sidewalk, but it’s very common to see people walking in the streets, rather than using the tiny bit of sidewalk that is available. The footing on walkways, streets, and trails are often uneven, so it’s easy to trip over small ruts and cracks as you walk around, particularly if you aren’t watching your feet.
Also, it’s important to note that everything is on a hill here. Lake Atitlan formed in the crater of an ancient and extinct supervolcano. So, the hillsides are very steep. In places, it can feel like you are walking straight up a cliff face.
The people who live here tend to have very strong legs.
This seems like a good time to talk about safety. In my experience, San Marcos and the surrounding areas are quite safe. That said, there are some things you will want to be aware of. First, don’t walk around in unfamiliar areas late at night by yourself. I feel like that’s a good rule anywhere since I once wandered into a neighborhood in downtown St. Louis where there was a large and very angry encounter taking place between what I assume were two gangs. Luckily, I was able to turn around and walk briskly back to my hotel. This is precisely why wandering in unfamiliar areas at night is kind of dumb. Another general precaution is to not go around flashing money and other items of wealth in unfamiliar areas, day or night. Mostly you won’t have a problem, but it’s best not to advertise wealth when you don’t know who is watching. People are generally pretty cool, here and elsewhere, but there is always the possibility that someone is watching who is down on their luck, desperate, insane, or on drugs who might think you are making a nice target. So, don’t flaunt whatever wealth you have like an asshole. Also, try to get a sense of the community norms. I had a bag stolen from me three years ago in Cape Town, South Africa. The wealth gap there is shocking, and I left my bags in plain view in the back of a locked vehicle. Someone smashed the window and grabbed what they could. Thankfully everything was replaceable. In hindsight, I realize that no native of Cape Town would have left a bunch of stuff in the back of their car for over an hour unattended. It must have been a clear sign to thieves of an easy theft from tourists. I guess I’m saying that I feel very safe here, and I try not to make myself a target. Talking to locals and expats to learn more about any given area you are in is invaluable in this regard, plus you’ll likely meet some nice people. One final note about safety for my American reades, there have been no mass shootings in Guatemala in the last decade, possibly longer, to my knowledge. I believe I’ve read about 6 mass shootings in the US in the last 3 weeks. Trust me safety here should not be a major concern.
A note about local wildlife:
It’s always smart to watch where you walk. There are a lot of stray dogs here, and they don’t have the best manners about where they poop. If you are from a wealthy western country you may be wondering why no one cleans up after all these dogs. The reason is simple. The resources don’t exist to spay/neuter all of the extra dogs and cats, and those same resources don’t exist to hire people to wander around cleaning dog shit.
You will also contend with bugs. Most buildings are not the hermetically sealed boxes we tend to live in in the US. You will find ants, and flies, and bees, and spiders, and the occasional scorpion. When possible simply escort them outside, and keep your food containers well sealed.
Shopping in a small village is also a bit different. There are a number of tiendas, small shops, around town that have basic groceries. You can generally find what you want/need in one of these shops, but you may need to visit more than one if you have a specific meal in mind. Most of the tiendas do not have fresh produce. So, you will buy produce from one of a variety of small stands around town, and indigenous people who you can find selling avocados, bananas, and occasionally cherimoya. We found a couple of stands, and an older indigenous woman who we have bought much of our produce from. We were also turned on to a local delivery service, Cinco Azul, which has a good selection of meats and produce. This service was great because we didn’t know where to find much in the way of meat when we first got here. Also, if you find that you need dishes or other kitchen supplies, you will likely need to visit a second hand shop (this requires some luck to find exactly what you need) or you will have to go to Panajachel, or another larger town. I broke a french press in the first cabin we stayed in, and I spent 3 weeks, halfheartedly, looking for a replacement without any luck. Thankfully, our hosts had an extra. Oh yeah. The economy in San Marcos is mostly based on cash, and there is only one ATM in the town. We learned quickly that having a good bit of change can mean the difference between being able to buy something, and not. All of the vendors around town need change since they are constantly breaking Q100 notes. We often tried to keep our small bills as long as we could for those occasions when someone didn’t have change!
A note about food in San Marcos:
San Marcos has a great selection of restaurants, and there is a lot of good food to be had. However, there are a surprisingly large number of vegetarian and vegan restaurants per capita here. If you happen to like eating meat, my favorite restaurants around town are Vida Cocina, Restaurant Fe, and Tul y Sol. You can sometimes buy buffalo meat from Nectar Cafe in the afternoons, if they have extra to spare. There are also some butcher shops around town, but they never seemed to be open when we were out shopping for groceries.
One other thing that we thought was quite entertaining is our initial laundry situation. The first cabin we stayed in didn’t have a washing machine, or even a sink large enough to wash more than two pairs of socks at a time. We asked our hosts what they recommended for a laundry service as we had seen a number of signs around town. They directed us to the local “car wash”, which also happened to do laundry. So, for our first month in San Marcos we took our laundry to the car wash every ten days, or so. As I mentioned earlier, there really aren’t many cars in San Marcos, so the “car wash” mostly seemed to service tuk tuks. The rates for laundry seemed reasonable to me, although I have no basis for comparison. On average our laundry cost about Q70 for two boxes of laundry (we didn’t have a laundry bag, so we repurposed the cardboard boxes our food delivery came in), which is a bit less than $10. I’ve had dry cleaning bills for 10 times during the brief era when I had to wear business clothes to work. In the second cabin we stayed in we had a small washing machine. This is not the kind of washing machine you may have seen in the US. It has two components. A wash basin, that you need to fill with water, and drain when you are done, and a spin cycle type of chamber for removing as much excess water as possible before you hang the clothes dry. It’s a bit of extra work compared to the fully automatic US washer dryer combos, but my clothes never smelled like sunshine after being washed in the US, so I think it’s a fair trade. Having this washing machine saved us the trouble of walking boxes of clothes to the “car wash”, which was nice.
The bombas! I asked Farrah if I had missed anything interesting about daily life in this post, and she immediately mentioned the bombas. Around the lake it is something of a tradition for locals to light off crude fireworks (not sure if they are homemade, or just not very interesting visually). It is not uncommon to hear multiple explosions day, and night, around the lake. If you want to read people’s opinions on the bombas you can follow the San Marcos Facebook page. The topic of the bombas and how loud and annoying they can be comes up every week or two. When we first visited San Marcos we heard that “the locals” like to set off bombas to celebrate people’s birthdays. We were also told that the timing of the bombas is supposed to coincide with the time of birth, so you get some bombas being set off in the middle of the night, or first thing in the morning, or any other random time throughout the day. The Facebook page generally contains the following discussion: “I’m new here and I hate the surprise of loud explosions, what gives?”, followed by two types of replies, 1) “It’s traditional for some locals, you are a visitor here, buy ear plugs and suck it up, we are in paradise”, and 2) “We should change this it is terrible for everyone, especially the locals since it is a tradition adopted from the Spanish conquistadors and is in no way part of indigenous traditions’’. I personally don’t like the bombas. They can be very loud and surprising. However, I don’t like hearing people loudly chanting Kirtan either, you will get that here too, and it’s never the locals chanting. Live and let live? I was curious about what some actual locals here thought, so I asked a friend we met here what her opinion is of the bombas. Her take was interesting. She is a younger Maya lady, in her twenties, who has lived around the lake for the majority of her life. She hates the bombas, and wishes people would stop, but she says that many older Maya folks feel it is part of their tradition and heritage. She also mentioned that she thought the tradition was more tied to the Catholic church here than to any sort of Mayan traditions. So, the question seems quite nuanced even in the local community. The bottom line is that there is no reason to believe that the bombas will be banned, or that the people will stop celebrating in this way any time soon, so if the bombas really bother you, bring earplugs.
I think that covers most of the day to day differences that have stood out to me, and this post is getting a bit lengthy. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! I’ll be back with more in the coming weeks and months.