En route to Lago de AtitlanWe set out from Antigua a little later than usual – bogged down in no small part by the tequila we drank last night at an amazing little café called the No Se Café (The I Don’t Know Café, which appropriately summarizes one’s state of mind if you stay there too long – “Where am I?” I don’t know. “Who am I?” I don’t know.) The tequila was top-rate, at least.
We set out from town amid the din of chicken buses (even the Guatemalans call them chicken buses - expect in Guatemala it’s el chicken bus) and tuk tuks, those funny little motorcycle taxis that are the backbone of Latin American transportation. We stop at a little roadside tienda to stock up on snacks. Mmm, Guatemalan potato chips are good.
Soon we are climbing on a wide singletrack up into the mountains above Antigua. It’s a grunt in the morning heat, but it feels purifying. We can almost smell the tequila dissipating into the air. We pass through lush forests, fields rife with avocads, and the everpresent volcanoes looming over us like sentinels. They remind me of the mountains in Peru, whom the Incas called apus. The apus are spirits, and they can be kind or they can be vengeful. These Guatemlan apus can certainly be vengeful, when they erupt and bury villages as they have frequently over the past few decades.
For today, the local apus are benevolent, and we arrive safely at the town of Parramos a few hours later. We bike to the ruins of a beautiful colonial church, where our support vehicle has already set out a delicious lunch. We chow down frantically, having worked up an intense hunger, and kick back in the midday heat.After lunch, we hop on the bikes for the climb to San Andres Itzapa, where we meet an affable fellow named Dom. Dom is the local head of Global Vision International’s school project. He wears a smile like the rest of us wear a shirt – it’s on him constantly.
Dom takes us to the school, a small, modest building where workers are busy building another wing. The local doña greets us with smiles and vigorous handshakes and takes us on a tour of the school. Dom explains that the school services 150-200 Mayan children every day, children who would not otherwise have an education. In addition to schooling them, the program also provides them with breakfast and lunch. Many of these children, he explains, wouldn’t otherwise eat more than a few tortillas a day. Education is the only way this community can break the cycle of grinding poverty which has been their lot for centuries. By learning Spanish, they will be able to move on to higher education; several students have already graduated teacher’s college and are back in the community teaching at the same school they started in years ago.
We leave the school after making a donation of books, pencils and other school supplies. On our way out, the doña’s husband offers us a drink of local whiskey. Stephen tries it and his face immediately contorts into spasms. As we leave, I think I spy the dona’s husband pouring it into the tank of his motorycle…Our next stop is Maya Pedal. Maya Pedal is an incredibly cool organization that takes in used bikes and fixes them up and sells them to local communities – at a heavy discount. The bikes that can no longer be fixed up get turned into fantastic Dr.Seuss-like contraptions: water pumps, blenders, corn huskers… These are then sold to local communities, who use them to accomplish certain tasks by footpower in a fraction of the time it normally takes.
We finish off with an amazing road ride down to the Posada de mi Abuelo, a very laid-back horse farm and guesthouse. As the sun sets, we kick a soccer ball around a makeshift field, soaking up memories in the fading sunlight.
--
note: Supporting and visiting local development projects is an integral part of our tours. On every one of our trips a portion of your tour costs will go toward supporting projects like the GVI school project. Also, our non-profit organization, Bikes Without Borders, will be partnering with Maya Pedal in the coming months. If you want to contribute to either of these projects, visit:
www.gvi.co.uk or www.bikeswithoutborders.org
No comments:
Post a Comment