Rodeo In Guatemala

Last week I went out to a remote Maya village. This week there was a rodeo in town and the last of the festivals or carnival here. Seeing all of this in Guatemala has been a cultural experiences for us. Seeing how people live here with so little has been great but as I have said in all our blogs. “It’s different.” As for the trip out to the Maya village, if you went to the You Tube video in our last blog, you can see how people there live but there is a lot more to it than just seeing a video. Like the little guy that works for us. I ask if he went to the rodeo and he said. “No, no bus from town to his village at night. I don’t think any one there has a truck. Remember he is the only family in the hold village with lights in his house. We helped him find and old solar panel, old battery and some LED lights. He is also the only family with a fan. We got that for him too. Remember it’s better to know how long it will take you to get some were down here than how far it is and how hot is it here. Over a 100 degree every day now so he talks a lot about how great it is having a fan. He lives not that far out of town but too far out of town to go to town after dark and get a ride back. This is why getting a small motor bike here puts you in a higher standing in the community. The most we have seen on a bike is a man a women 3 kid holding a grown dog and carrying a back pack full of groceries on a little 49 cc motor bike. A lot of the work we wanted to get done is happing now so I don’t know how much longer we will be able to keep our little helper but if we were going to just live here like a lot of boaters here are doing and just talk about going on. I would try to find him and old bike and make him a side car. This would truly make him the richest man in the village. Maybe building side cars for bikes will some day be the thing to do down here. Just think of what you could hall down here in a side car. “ It would be endless.” Remember we posted a blog of them loading a live grown milk cow here in a launcha. That’s a small boat they use here in the river and took it on down the river tied to a pole with its feet sticking up bellowing away. Seeing them move a live cow in a small boat was something I had never seen and may never see again. Almost as good as a rodeo. We really like rodeos and we have gone to see all kinds of rodeos in the states from little rodeos put on by just a few local cowboys to going to see the big boys. Here was not what we expected. The bulls had no horns and less attitude. I have seen milk cows when we were back on the farm with more of both. It took them longer to get on the bulls and get ready to ride than we have “ever” seen. The bulls were tired standing there by the time the cowboys were ready to ride. At one time they opened the gate and the kid operating the return gate open his gate, the bull jumped a little on his way to the return gate going on out of the arena in a run. When the 8 second buzzer went off the bull was already out of the arena and long gone. That too was a first. How do you score a ride when the bar on the exit gate knocks the rider off and the bull is back with the other bulls when you here the buzzer. There was no pretty girls. No horses but they had music and if you have ever been down here, you know there never has been a speaker built that is too big. I truly believe they think the louder anything is the more fun you are having. If you go in to a restaurant here and there is music, you can’t talk. Most gringos won’t go near a restaurant that has music. Away from the rodeo you could hear the music at our boat miles away and it was loud there. There at the rodeo you could just feel the music. At the rodeo they had a big screen playing a loop real of cowboys riding some better bull but not that much better. About half way through I was getting ready to leave when the power went off and now the only lights they had was the big screen they had running on a generator showing cowboys riding some where else. We just got up and went on to the carnival where there was maybe more action. There they had and old ferris wheel that maybe was built in someone’ back yard. If it was not home built it was the oldest one I have ever seen. It was tide with a rope to the highway bridge rail at the top. That’s the bridge that goes over the river and the wheel turned way to fast This made most kids cry. They would stop and let them off and take on more riders. It was powered by a very old maybe farm tractor motor and a cable. The motor looked older than the wheel. Gasoline up draft carburetor, oil dripping everywhere, smoking but it was still running. About this time, I was feeling guilty I guess because like a lot of people that come here, I was thinking people here need to see how they do thing in the US but then I stared to think, we are not in the US. I tell people down here that every day when they complain about how things run down here. Pam and I are here to see this, Not change it. By now I was feeling better just looking around. People were every where laughing . Alcohol every where for sell but there was no drunks we saw giving trouble and no police. Not a one anywhere. Didn’t see one all night. Some how things just work here. Remember that if a crime happens and it not solved very soon , it won’t ever be solved A lot of how you live your life here, you are on your on. Some how that too makes us feel free. How safe do I feel? If you are here, Leave your Rolex and your puffed up ego where no one can see it and you will be all right here, I think. Will we go to another rodeo? I know we will. We go to a lot more than most gringos do here and I love seeing how other people live. What we are looking to see now is a bull fight. They must be “really bad” because there not many left. What is really good here is seeing every day life Watching real cowboys work there cattle. Women taking care of there family with out power are running water. This week our helper needed to have a tooth pulled. We walked in off the street and a few minutes later he walked out with one less tooth. Six dollars and 66 cent US to have the tooth pulled. Went on to a place here where you can buy a simple ¾ water hose for our motor. Just a simple heater hose $21.33 for 2 feet. This to makes us know every day we are living some where very different than the states. Where a dentist will pull a tooth for under $7 and you will pay over $10 a foot for a water hose because they are the only people in town that sell water hose and remember most people here don’t have a car and if they do they are not worried about it having a heater. We are glad we even found a hose at any price. We hope to post one more blog before we leave to fly back to the states. Pam is calling our trip back a little vacation. I want to go back to the states and go shopping to buy things they say if you ask for down here “ They don’t make.” Like simple half moon keys for key ways Maybe rotary files. Tapping fluid that works. Buy these things before we go on even farther south. We want to renew our drivers licenses and ride our old motor bike at least one more time before we head on south. We are to pick up our old bike in Mississippi and ride it to Kansas to see our son. We’ll be in the states about a month. We have always struggled with money and this is why its took us so long to get to here. This is why it has taken so long to do the repairs and get the boat ready to go on south but what a few years it has been so far seeing Central America. We have people that shake there head and say. “Why don’t you just fly to Kansas?” But we will just have to do it our way. We have never had the opportunities to do any thing where money wasn’t a problem but that in its self my have opened up the road less traveled for years and I know going the way we have to traveled. We have had more time to stop and smell the roses.

Not so Bad Bulls

Happy, Ferris wheel riders

Ferris wheel looking down from bridge

 

Village Life, Guatemala

This week we have been working on our boat trying to get it ready to leave. Heading on a long trip south after hurricane season . We’re safe here getting things done to the boat and we are getting ready to go back to the states soon to do some shopping and go see our son. Taking our old Honda 450 motor bike cross country to his house. New Orleans to Kansas and I know it is a small bike in the states but it is a very big bike down here. Anyway we believe it’s got a couple thousand more miles left in it. We will see but this week I did something I have been wanting to do for a long time. I went out to a remote village. It all stared weeks ago when we helped the little guy that has been working for us put an old used solar panel at his house. Now he is the only family with lights in his whole village. There is a women here now that’s trying to take the old solar panels people are replacing on there boats out to people that don’t have any kind of power at all. This is not that easy. First you have to get out to these remote places. Then who get lights and who doesn’t. I have been helping. Checking out the stuff she been bringing in. This week we installed the first solar panel and I learned a lot. We had a driver with his on 4 wheel drive car. A government employee that is a health care worker. If there a rabies scare. He will go out and vaccinate dogs and helps get vacancies to remote villages for and to vaccinate children. What ever is needed. Remember medical care is different here. You can get sewed up at the fire department called Bombers if you need a few stitches and things are more hands on here. Where a doctor may be many hours away if you have a 4 wheel drive truck and “ money” In the car we had the women leading the effort. The health worker. A video editor to make a video of what we were doing, my little helper and me. I was to wire up every thing. I was told on the way there that you should never refer to people here as little Indians. I don’t get it but for some reason it’s very racial. I hope I don’t make anyone mad by telling the truth and saying that the indigenous people here are on the bottom of the economical scale. The people we were going to see were indigenous people of Maya decent. They speak K’iche. Just one of the many languages spoken here. We went north on the main and only road out of town going north. Out in the country we came to a dirt road and went west. A little over 24 miles and two and a half hours later down a dirt road. We were there. Think about going 4 wheeling for two and a half hours and you may have some idea how rough this road was. It was different than I thought it would be. Remember I can only tell you what I see but it looked like the land a long the road belongs to ranchers. 80 % of the land was pasture where the land has been logged out not that many years ago. There some strong laws here against logging now. It’s very hilly. Mostly as far as you can see from the road it’s that way with little village where people live close to each other a few miles and sometimes quit some time apart. A friend told me that distant is better told in time here. If you are going to the next town. It may not be that far but it may take you a long time to get there. We met a few of the trucks I see in town. They’re small mostly 4 wheel drives truck with flatbed on the back. With side beds and maybe a covers. They can haul about anything from cows to fire wood. Mostly they were loaded with people going to town. I have put this in a lot of our blogs about people coming to town standing in the back of trucks and now I saw where they come from. Most of the time there is no where for any one else to stand or ride in the back of these trucks. They come from these little towns a long this road and a lot more roads like it. When we finally made it to the little town of Serranch and on to a health center. The health center is where they ask us to install the lights. It was a small building built out of cement block with a few rooms. What looked like a waiting room. Rooms to store things in. They had a propane refrigerator to store vaccines in and the building was already wired for lights. I ask about the wiring and lights and was told it was done years ago when the building was built by the government but there was never any power brought to this town. The last power pole I saw was not that far in miles. Maybe 10 miles, but in time, Hours away. I ask about a generator and they said no money for one or money for gas. I set out to wire a single light in the waiting room and in the examining room. I was told that the examining room was where women in trouble come to have babies and they just use flash lights at night. A light would help greatly. It’s hard to explain how the women that worked there looked when I had them pull the string on the light to turn the light on. They had been told we were coming and the head man in the village had to give his approval of these lights before we could come. He pulled the string first. Their LED lights I wired in a pull string socket. and a single cigarette lighter type socket to charge a cell phone or any thing you can plug in to a 12 volt socket. Before we left they were making pictures so as they had us all line up, I put my hand up behind my little helper’s head to make it look like my hand was coming up out of his head. It didn’t take long for the women that worked there to catch on. They stared to do the same to anyone in front of them. This brought on a lot of laughter from everyone watching. So maybe I made a few people there happy. Maybe the simple two lights we installed will help and make it easer for them. It wasn’t what I thought it would be like out there. The village was and looked the same as the village at the start of the road. Remember these people don’t make much money and can’t buy power. We pay 50 cents per KW hour here at the marina so if you work hard and don’t make a lot. A lot of whole families make under 2000 US per year. It doesn’t change things if you live way out are close to town. Your house and your life doesn’t change much. Again remember I can only tell you what I see and how I feel. How do people that don’t make much live. They eat rice and beans with tortilla bread every meal from corn they grow and grind at home. In all of Central America you find chickens in the yard and pigs are not uncommon just walking around even in town. Their houses are simple. Maybe 2 rooms with dirt floors. Maybe a lean-to built on the side of the house where they cook over and open wood fire. In some of the houses, they cook inside with the smoke coming out the top boards of the wall. I have been told this shorting the life of women in the family breathing in this smoke. There is one thing that is unbelievable here, it’s how clean every one is down here. The poorest people will be clean. Maybe things around them won’t be but they will be and they seem so happy. If you want to see the video of our trip and the clinic it’s on You Tube.

PASS IT ON (Serranch, Guatemala)

“I am not a believer in just giving freely.” It’s just so easy for it to cause people to become dependent. There is a lot of people that don’t believe in change but remember. “Change is always coming” I hope what we did will help when people see the technology that’s available to them today. The old used solar panel were going to be scraped. Battery don’t have to be that large or even that good to run just lights. You can buy LED 12 volt bulbs here that screw in to a pull string socket for 4 dollars and 66 cent apiece US. 15 watt bulbs. That’s the main reason I did it. It’s getting cheaper every day. Remember I said I learned a lot. If I do it again I have already ask for someone in the village to be there to help set it up. Someone that maybe able to keep it working or help someone set up their own. Like the old proverb.

“Teach them to fish. Don’t just give them fish.”

School Kids Everyone is always clean

House where they cook inside. You can see smoke on top boards

Town of Seranch, Guatemala

Pigs in the village

Look close and you can see the road winding over the hill

 

Motor Work (Late Blog)

Easter is over but the carnival in town is not. Most people are back to work. The town is still crowded and this week we put the motor Pam has been walking around since we took it out in September back in. We have been over hauling it inside the boat laying in the floor. She tied a red ribbon around it for Christmas. We have not tried to start it yet but there is no reason to rush things down here. We are going back to town tonight to the carnival. We will worry about starting it next week. Maybe. As I have always put in all our blogs, it’s so different down here. Remember if you are coming this way, there’s not much law here. The people you need to know here if you are in trouble is the fire department. If someone is trying to rob you, You need the police but if you are hurt are sick and just don’t know where to go. It’s the Fire department here. It’s hard to explain how little the police do here. How hard it is to get your stuff back if you find it after it’s stolen. Ownership in all of Central America is procession. If you have it. It’s yours. If they have it . It’s theirs In all of Central America. “All its’ people sleep locked up at night.” You lock up all you have if you want to keep it. We have not seen what the Bomberos do in other town but here they’re great. We had a friend that got in trouble here, he jump of the bridge here on a repelling line and got his fingers caught in the line some how. The Bomberos came right out got him down and sewed up his fingers right there on the spot. This week they were working hard with all that been going on in town . Remember I don’t think they drink as mush as I thought they would here but there was some that were putting it away. We watch how the law worked the drunks here, they called the Bomberos. The Bomberos are the Fire Department. They came with a wheel chair, put a drunk in it and rolled him to the fire Department. There we watched as a truck showed up later. Maybe they found some one that knew the drunk and when the truck showed up, they pick up the drunk there like he was dead, laying him in the back . Hands across his chest just like he was dead and just let him sleep it off. Never were they ever mean to any drunk we saw. There was a couple of people came up to us that were drinking hard trying to talk to us. I just said “Fiesta.” And they went on. Saying things in Spanish I couldn’t understand but they seemed very happy. Pam and I are planning a trip back to the states soon and to tell the truth, I worry how I am going to adjust to the law in the states. When ever I have gotten a ticket in the states they always give me a leisure of how they are protecting me from hurting myself. How not wearing shoes and riding a little motorbike. I may be cripple for life. Down here they ride anything with wheels with no shoes and women ride with 5 inch heals on. In the states you have to ride on your bike with your light on in the day time or get a ticket. New Years night they were riding girls across the bridge with no lights at all in the rain, Fast enough to make the girls squeal. The river last week was full of people with out life jackets Things like that go on all the time here but some how it works. No one died here last week . If this sounds like I think we don’t need the law in the states, I don’t mean for it to. It’s just its so different here. We watched a man hooking up a power line to a store here and I was thinking maybe a little more law here would be nice but I guess you don’t need to fix something that is working. He turned the power on working it hot and lived to tell it. Maybe when we get back to the states we want get a ticket for something people here would not believe you could get a ticket for. We are flying back to Florida and maybe taking the bus to New Orleans. From there we hope to pick up our old motor bike and ride it to Kansas to see our sons place before we head on south and are getting farther away. Then we hope to ride our old bike back to New Orleans and leave it there. From there we hope we are taking the bus to Texas and from there we plain to help a friend bring his truck down here. I think driving all the way across Mexico will be an adventure. I know our adventures are very small compared to the people we met now but I am happy to just be going. Maybe for us its not how great the adventure is. Maybe its just us finding adventure in our life at our age that makes it so much fun. Life is good here in Guatemala. It will be better on the “Pamela Ann” now if Pam hears that little diesel running again and I won’t have to hear her say that having a motor laying in the floor for months is not just part of the adventure of being here.

The head is back on

Back in the hole

Hook it up HOT

 

Easter Week Rio Dulce

This week here in the Rio Dulce is Semana Santa. There is a lot of ex-patriots here from the states and one of them told me to prepare for Semana Santa like it coming a hurricane. Buy food and gas for the generator. Find a place to wait it out and stay out of the water. Remember living here on the river it normally dug-out canoes and a lancha they build here on the river. The fiber glass lanchas they build here are designed maybe by the people here by looks along. They’re long narrow boats with a bow that’s way too high for the waves in the river. This makes then very dangerous because they can’t see where they are going but they do look good when they power up and the boats bow comes up. Sometimes they put a kid up on the bow for a look out This doesn’t work all the time. We were almost run over a few days ago when the kid up on the bow was telling the driver we were in front of their boat but the driver was going to where the kid was pointing. It was a near miss by just feet with the boat running maybe 30 loaded with 20 people “tourist” and you could not see a one in the boat coming at us. Only the kid. The kid was crying by the time they got there. I was cursing trying to find something to throw at the driver and the people on the boat all knew how close we came but they never slowed down. What happens if you are hit? We have heard a lot of stories about people being hit. Most of the time we don’t listen to a lot of stories people tell because there is “most of the time” just a little of the truth left if it told over and over but what we hear is always the same story as the 3 people we know that were hit have said. The lancha never stop to help. If there boat will run, I think they will leave even if you are hurt bad. It’s people knowing who they are if they stay and that they’re guilty of running over another boat. Remember there is very little law here. No title to any of these boats. No one has a license to run a boat. There is no captain license needed here in the river to charter your boat. No one to check. None of them have lights and they run fast as they can at night. With all of that, this week add personal water craft and the boats rich Guatemalans have stored and only take out on holidays .Some of these boat are huge and there is no wake law here. You have probably guessed by now. The only thing I have left out is alcohol and it’s stacked to the ceiling in most of the stores here for this one week end. We have taken little Dumpling our dink out of the water and locked our outboard motors on the Pamela Ann. We will just walk this week and hope we don’t get run over by a 3 wheeled little tuk-tuk. Maybe when this is over we will still have Dumpling and her motor. A lot of dinks are being stolen here this year. They just want the motors and if you think you are cleaver and have one of those covers over your lock on the motors that is hard to remove. They will just cut the back out of your new inflatable and take the motor anyway. It has happen. It’s wall to wall people her now. In a way it’s fun to watch all that is happening and to be here. Before we left the states we would stayed anchored on the week end in south Florida and only travel the ICW on week days. We never tried to travel at all on a holiday. We made the Miserable Mile once in Ft Myers on a Sunday afternoon. This is a lot more crazier than that. Next week it will be all over and the river will belong to the dug-out canoes again but this week, this is the place to be. To see and to be seen. It’s hard to walk in town it’s so full of people. They have a carnival set up under the bridge. The little buses here that travel between towns are just 3 seat vans. Full as you can get them with 6 to ten people riding on top and maybe 30 that’s right 30 inside. Tuk-tuks can just barley move they’re so full. People are hanging on the outside. Tuk-tuks are little 3 wheel motor bikes built to be cabs in India. Built to carry 3 people. I have seen them carry 9. There is food everywhere but I don’t like it. Pam and I are from the deep south in the states. We hear that we are strange from people that don’t like grits or boiled peanuts. So we know a lot of food is regional but we sometimes forget that just because you see corn on the cob, it may not be sweet. Here it’s tough and starchy. We heard from a woman this week here traveling through on a boat going to Indonesia that she thought the food in Alabama was the worst food she had ever tasted. Let me say this as clear as I can. “I love Alabama and I love southern food.” I ask her what she eat and she showed me the curry she was making to pour over some steamed vegetables. Me telling her that I might could eat a little of that if I had a lot of something fried didn’t help us bound. We are not that far from the states but a world from the food I grew up on and out here remember the people you met on boats carry there world with them. So even if we haven’t made it to the far reaches of the world we are experiencing a lot of the differences in people. Maybe we are no different than the woman that hates Alabama with our dislike of the food here but I do like being here and I like trying there different foods but its not just the food. Its every thing is different here. Like there is a cat that we see sometimes hiding in the bushes. We bought some fried chicken in town to take back to the boat to eat. They put garlic in the batter they fry things in here. Not so good on fried chicken but I can eat it. A cat was walking around making some noise so Pam said “Kitty, kitty” and held out her hand. The cat didn’t get any closer when our helper that been working for us and lives here said in Spanish “ Say Mish, Mish.” She did and hear came the cat like it belong to us. How do you call a cat in Central America. I am not sure but here on the river it’s “Mish, Mish.” It was hungry and really went for the fried chicken Pam gave it. Our helper tried to feed it some tortilla bread. It turned up its nose and I agree with the cat. Our helper pulled it tall and ears playing with it as it eat. He said “Niña’s I laughed and agreed that this cat belong to kids that handled it a lot. We haven’t seen the cat today and the family that lives near here is back. We seen them getting off there little motor bike they leave near the marina. A man and women carrying groceries with two little girls and their dog all came in on that little bike. Maybe the cat doesn’t ride well. I am sure after seeing these people travel they could find some where for the cat to ride. Maybe by Tuesday, every thing is over Sunday, things will be back to what people call normal here. We have been told a few people will try to make it back to work Monday. If you ever come this way remember it’s hard to see all that going on because they have a very hard time keeping a schedule anywhere in Central America. You may hear from a lot of people that they are going to have a parade this afternoon. You wait just to find it’s tomorrow. You ask, why did so many people said today and they will always say. “That’s what we heard.” Finding a written schedule is impossible. Things happening when they say it will just never happens. So how do you see things? If you want to see something, just go to town and stay there. It may happen. Maybe not. We were told by a lot of people that they were going to come across the bridge carrying a cross at daylight Sunday. We were there and it didn’t happen We just found a lot of people sleeping in there cars around town but it was a peaceful way to start the day. Watching the sun come up from the top of the bridge over the Rio Dulce here in Guatemala. “Life is good.” Some days are better than others You can see the Pamela Ann from the bridge. I knew as soon as we got back. There would be grits, eggs and ham. I hope every one reading this is as much at peace as we are and Happy Easter.

 

How many can ride?

Have some corn

Carnival

Holiday Coming

As I have said in our last blog, when we travel we bond with the people where we are. Maybe we never know their names. We just know where they will be and what they do. There’s a holiday coming up here in the Rio Dulce called Semana Santa. It’s celebrating Easter but like most celebrations it has little to do with Easter now. It’s more like Spring break for every one here. Especially the young. Even with Easter not being here yet there is more people coming here every day and they all want to stop on the bridge crossing over the river. In the states you would never think of stopping on a bridge but here buses will stop on top of the bridge and let people off to walk around. Big truck will stop to look around. This is a two lane bridge and most of the time you just have to wait for the lane to clear and pass someone parked on the bridge. Here if you have something to sell you may have to pay the store you are in front of trying to sell stuff. They may want you to rent a space maybe 4 foot wide out front to sell in. So a lot of people go up on the bridge to sell stuff. There seams to be a lot of coconuts for sell here so how do you make your coconuts sell when the others are not. Maybe by cutting off all the husk and then cutting off all the shell with out cracking the coconut in side. With that done, then you can buy one and give it to your girl friend where she will run to your car just stopped on the bridge to get something to wrap the fresh coconut ball in to keep her hands dry before the guy cuts a hold in the top for a straw so she can drink the warm coconut milk from inside. This process may go on with pictures of her setting if she is brave on the rail or standing sexy in front of the bridge rail drinking warm coconut milk from a fresh cut coconut. When I see these pretty young girl posing I sometimes make their pictures or sometimes just pretend to make there pictures. It’s like one time I was making a delivery down the ICW and our son had come to help me. Pam had a job and couldn’t get off. He ask me if it was true that there were sometimes women on some of these boat with little or no clothes on. We were meeting a catamaran coming up the ICW. It was to cold for the girl laying on the trampoline sun bathing in a bikini to be out there. As we got close I told him to take the wheel. I ran for my camera holding it up and stared to waving my hat. When they came by she sat up enough to let me make her picture, topless. I thanked them still waving my hat and laughing. Went back to the wheel where our son said “Do you make a lot of pictures like that?” I said “No I never make their pictures. I just act a fool like I did. I was just having fun.” This was when it cost a lot to get pictures developed. I said “Cost too much.” Then I said “ Did you have a good time? Did that girl have a good time? And when your mother has these pictures of this trip developed., I will still be having a good time.” I have made a lot of pictures or maybe not since then but it’s still fun either way. In the next few weeks I will definitely have my camera with me. Who knows what I might see and what I may make a pictures of or not.

Stopped on bridge to make pictures

Selling slices of watermelon and other fruit