Guatemala

Guatemala 1992 When I quit my envious job with Boeing aircraft everyone told me I was nuts but I just couldn't see the point of scrambling after the dollar every day working from 3:18 in the afternoon till 3:48 the following morning. I had a new truck, an airplane, other toys and lots of credit cards. What was the point? My life was just passing by. One of my friends told me about an old Jeep Wagoneer that was for sale  for 500 dollars  so I went over and had a look at it and drove it over to my friend Abe's house that night. I was camping outside in a tent in his backyard and went to town rebuilding the front end on the Jeep. We welded a rack for gas cans and spare tires and gear on the roof and I was off the next week for Mexico. I had about 2000 dollars and figured I would last a long time especially if I did a lot of camping in the back. Belize was my first stop. It was a pretty cool place to hang out but seemed rather expensive to me. After a one or two week trip to Guatemala arriving by boat I decided to head back to Belize and get my rig and head over to Guatemala. I was moved by the kindness of the people there. In Belize I found the people to be a tad aggressive and unhelpful but the Guatemalans seemed to go out of their way to be friendly and sharing. If you were on the bus riding through the Petan on very harsh roads they would always try to at least get you a corner of a seat so you didn't tear up your knees so bad by standing for hours on end. In Belize if there were two people in the seat they were adamant that you stand. In Guatemala they would scoot over even if there were already 5 people seated there. I decided to double back through Mexico with my jeep because the road through the Petan Province of Guatemala was super muddy due to the heavy rains that had been falling recently. The Petan is where the Tikal ruins are and I did get a chance to make several trips there at other times. It is spectacular to see the Temple of the Grand Jaguar and the other ruins. At that time in my life I rarely took a camera but had a polaroid so I could give photos to the people. I didn't get any pictures of Tikal, but trust me, it was well worth the trip up there. The Yucatan in Mexico is very beautiful and remote and I found it to be a pleasant place to be. Magna sin gasoline was plentiful and cheap. It was a good life. I came down the mountain road into Guatemala and set up camp in the tourist town of Antigua. Rooms were cheap so I pulled the battery and spare tires off my rig and moved indoors for a while. I made numerous trips from there and became intrigued by the native handicrafts that the local indigenous people made. It seemed that there might be a market for some of that stuff in the US. Woven palm hats, Greatful Dead gear and other wacky stuff filled the back of my rig as I headed up towards New Orleans for Mardi Gras. I had a good time in Guatemala but got restless after a while. It is that gypsy spirit in me maybe. I will always have fond memories of the town of Panajachel up there on the edge of a volcanic lake Lago de Atitlan. The people from the surrounding villages would all wear the same style woven clothing and one could identify where they came from in an glance, even in Guatemala City. A lot of these people suffered greatly during that period especially those from the Nebah Triangle. It would really be great to make another trip down there some day. I had made 16 trips in all. My first time down there I did not even know a single word of Spanish so that added a new element to the whole program but it was a blast. My only problem was that I didn't bring screening for the windows of my jeep and it was just too hot to sleep with the windows shut so I got a lot of mosquito bites. Sometimes I would burn paper to smoke them out. My good friend Barris the Black Star told me thats what they used to do in prison too. That was a comforting thought. pic  -  dp, michael, mishka 2008   www.dutchpickle.com

 

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