As promised, here is the Old Year’s last few hours in La Antigua.
The Festival Calle del Arco in La Antigua, as Prense Libre informs us, was created by a group of Antigueños in 1999, neighbors who were working on a peatonal project to increase street traffic. “Little did they imagine that 10 years after the activity would become the most anticipated celebration of that place, to dismiss the Old Year and receive the new one.” Since 2006 when I attended it last, it seems to have grown by the thousands with increased street vendors, fireworks, and more clubs. There’s also more music and performances as can be seen from the lineup which starts at 7 PM on the night of Dec. 31. While my mother feared for her safety amid the yelling of excited, and tipsy, young Guatemalans elbow to elbow with expats, tourists, Antigueños and random rifraff in for the possibilities, I was very surprised that a party this large did not get out of hand or violent the way something of this size, some 35,000, gets in the U.S. The last time this number of people got together last in the Castro district for Halloween there were a few shot, or stabbed and just general mayhem that made the authorities shut down the decades long celebration. For now, the worst threat is getting hit by a firework shooting off the torito during the “Baile del Torito,” one of the many masked dances that make the Festival del Arco a visual treat for me. While I was filming, the person next to me did in fact get hit by one of the bombas coming off the angry torito circling around in its own sea of fire.
At midnight I ate 12 grapes and made 12 wishes with my mom and my husband next to me under the Arc in Antigua. Two years ago in this same street my husband and I were engaged and we made a promise to return to live if only for a brief moment in our lives. This year my mother lost her husband of 17 years and my husband lost his grandfather and I lost my dear friend Ellen to Cancer. I thought of loss and of gratitude and how the lights from all the fireworks pushed back all the darkness. I thought of beginnings and how beginnings are a state of mind, an innocence that we bring everyday to the way we live and what we experience. It was one of my wishes, to always look at life with fresh eyes and to always be humble and grateful when doing so.
¡Feliz Año Nuevo y un Happy New Year to all from Guatemala!
Unexpectedly, while we were giving Safari restaurant a second try in Puerto Barrios, we witnessed the “Baile del Vendo”. The Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes informs us that during the period of the conquest of Guatemala, the Spaniards would watch the wildlife that crossed the road and delighted by the wild diversity of quadrupedal locomotion, heading towards the Mayans asked the names of animals, they responded that they were called “deer”. The picture of the oral tradition, the basis of this “dance” continues in this way:
The Spanish came back to ask why not kill the deer to eat them, they answered that they had no weapons to do so, others pointed to the Spanish, who lived on a hill a hunter, this was allowed to hunt with a blowgun. Then the natives were in search of the old hunter and asked permission to Tzuultaq’a, God of the hill. The Spanish then got guns to hunt the deer and then they realized that these animals were rabid, so they prepared a dance.
All accompanied the old hunter, the deer were also accompanied by the tiger, monkey, lion, and others. When the old hunter’s hunting ends, he is charged by the monkeys, lion, tiger and the dog to no longer continue to hunt over the riverbank. The companions of the old hunter dancing with joy because this was not hurt when faced rabid deer. With gun in hand the hunter tells the Spanish: “I bring the deer already dead then cut up, to finish eating the old hunter dancing with joy.
Each “are” (by the vernacular genre) played on the marimba, for each couple looking for the hunter.”
It’s true that if I learn it for myself there’s a better chance I’ll believe in it. And so it goes with car permits and immigration renewals in Guatemala during the holiday season. We knew our 90 day permits for both our passports and the car would expire on December 26, so we mentally prepared for anything from Chiquimula onward. Fortunately for us, the roads resembled something out of “Omega Man:” empty, quiet and breathable because even the camionetas aren’t running as many routes- we didn’t see one single Pullman or Ruta Orientales headed to Puerto Barrios that entire day.
A quick trip to Tapachula at 6 AM could’ve done the trick for both our visas and our car permit (as recommended by Maestro Rudy), it would’ve been geographically inconvenient. But let me back up. Why in the world would we be headed to Tapachula, Belize or El Salvador to renew anything? In a nutshell Brad and I both have tourist visas that expire every 90 days (there’s a $114 penalty and mandatory 5-day expulsion if you violate that deadline, according to El Salvadorean aduana); the same applies for our car permit which has a penalty of Guatemalan import taxes being assessed on the total value of the car (something like $3K) if we overstay the 90 days. So simple enough, just get out of the country in time. Pero fijese, no es tan facíl.
Lessons learned:
You can renew your car permit at any aduana or border crossing because those permits don’t require you to leave the Central American nations formed by the Sistema para la Integración Centroamericana or System for the Central American Integration. This means we don’t need to drive our car to Mexico, Costa Rica or Belize, but we only learned by this a trial and error process which consisted of us crossing the border at El Salvador about 20 Km before Esquipulas. Be sure to take at least two copies of your old permit, car title, registration, US driver’s license and Q40 to pay the permit. There will be much back and forth at the border, but within an hour we had our permit and we didn’t have to be out of the country for three days as my previous calls to La Mesilla aduana informed me. “We all have the same laws, seño, but each of us interprets them differently,” the La Mesilla customs agente informed me. It always helps to know people at SAT and in this case both my cousins knew people at SAT so they guided us through the process as rows upon rows of trailers parked along the El Salvador border.
You can only renew 90-day tourist visas in Mexico, Costa Rica or Belize because those are considered outside the group of Central American nations. So while we could renew the car permit in El Salvador, we could not renew our passports.
You must be out of the country at least 72 hours so that your tourist visa is renewed, except sometimes it just depends on the “kindness” of aduana agents and you pleeing that you have nowhere to stay in the other country so you have to return the same day. I am horrible at pleeing, so I asked the aduana guy in Puerto Barrios how I can ever repay him for his kindness and the inconvenience to him?
Make sure you go at least 48 hours in advance to renew your visitor visa because you will be charged a multa or fine of Q80 if you arrive on the day your visa expires because it takes one day to process and while technically you may be in the system, you are officially not legal until the day after. Go figure.
Stay more than an hour in Belize or you will incur a $30 exit tax per person.
Make sure to buy a roundtrip ticket to Punta Gorda, Belize, because you have to show that at Belize customs.
While there is a place to leave your car at the Muelle Municipal in Puerto Barrios for Q20, who knows if your car will be there when you get back. What we did was book a couple nights at MarBrissa, left our belongings and our car on the hotel premises and got a taxi for Q25 to the Muelle. MarBrissa is located at 20 Avenida 25 Calle Col Virginia, Puerto Barrios, GuatemalaPhone: +502 (0) 9 480 940. You can get a very nice room with AC, kitchenette, cable TV, free Wi-FI, pool and gym access and free breakfast for Q450, around $50. Lesson learned early on in my travels in Central America is to not skimp on hotels, especially if you’re carrying cameras and gear, because it’s just not worth it. Today we met a German student who was travelling in Belize with some friends and all of them got their expensive cameras and iPhones stolen from their hotel rooms because the windows would not lock. What’s also nice about MarBrissa is they are totally cool about you leaving your car there overnight and paying Q20 per night. It’s an insanely safe location even though it’s less than 3 Km from a large prison. The good thing is the prison now has new cement walls, not just wire mesh like it did for many years.
There are ONLY private ferries to Punta Gorda. A private ferry costs Q3,000 if you insist on taking your car over.
Livingston is not Belize.
While it may seem logical to have a ferry or water taxi that takes you from Livingston and then to Punta Gorda, only private expensive charters will do that. Most people jump off from Puerto Barrio (PB) to Livingston (30 Minutes) and then back to PB, and then hop over to Punta Gorda (1 hour) and back. Prices range from Q175 to Q250 per person and on holidays (as it was for us) it can be triple the price because of additional Belizean charges added on to lancha water taxi services. We paid a total of Q400 each way for both of us, $97.56 round trip, with Mar y Sol the company which conveniently sells you tickets from the Immigration Services office located one block from the launch off point at the Mulle Municipal in Puerto Barrios. They depart at 1 pm everday and return the same day at 4 PM. Here’s us on the lancha which only had one life preserver and I was the only one to jump for it and request we not leave without more (to no avail):
In Belize people speak English so drop your “holas” and “buenas tardes.” Bust out with your patois instead.
Don’t forget to pay your Q80 at the Immigration office in Puerto Barrios. It would suck to have to take the lancha back because you forgot to pay your dues, it’s worse than forgetting the milk.
Don’t argue with the Guatemalan Immigration officer unless you’re prepared for a long catfight. I think I won because I tired him out.
Punta Gorda is a border town unlike anything I have ever experienced. It was sleepy, quiet and everyone seemed to be on quaaludes. Brad wasn’t too impressed with the shopping experience.
Fireworks are a must for Christmas in Chiquimula, Guatemala! Director: Kara Andrade. Music: “Keep It Hott (BradElectro Remix) by The Middle Agent, feat. Garth Culti-Vader & Tech N9NE. Available on Tarantic Records from iTunes.
My uncle Nefta’s eyes are big black globes around which his face orbits in thick folds of skin sunken in by the sun, lack of food and a grin that has filled his entire face since I was a child. At times it is a seven-year-old child gazing into the banana fincas of Media Luna and other times it’s the emptiness of confusion that makes me wonder if somehow he knows that he has schizophrenia. I stare at his eyes hard across mi tia’s dining room table in Chiquimula trying to understand what he feels as he is speaking to his son (in Pennsylvania) and his daughter (in LA) over two separate Skype video chats on Christmas eve. He touches the screen carefully and looks over at me and then back at his son waiting on the screen waiting for him to say something. “Marlon, why does your image move so quickly on this thing? Are you ok?” He chuckles and gets closer to the camera.
I sit next to him and press his arm to reassure him. For the next hour he talks to his eldest son who he hasn’t talked to since his son was a teenager, meets his son’s wife, asks him about his work, his life in Pennsylvania, almost makes logical conversation and then goes off on tangents regarding electricity and how it affects his head and liver.
“¿Mama, coma esta su higado?” he asked my grandmother when we picked him up from the Media Luna finca. Media Luna is where he worked as a 12-year-old boy picking bananas and playing the father role for the family before he even finished fourth grade. It’s the last finca once you enter the Hopy 1 and Hopy 2 finca on the way to Honduras from Puerto Barrios. Its unpaved road for 20 kilometers and home to dozens of water buffalo brought in from Asia to haul huge loads of bananas. They still graze along the muddy stretch filled with gaping potholes filled with water and deep enough to swallow your entire car tire. It’s here that my uncle Santos whom I’ve never met lives with his extensive family consisting of 16 children living in two cinder block homes surrounded by a moat that is a public health hazard I try to block out of my mind that rolls off the water-borne diseases: encephalitis, malaria, cholera, Hep A, the list continues.
When we drive into town we are the event which brings everyone out onto the street, faces curious to see who the visitors are with the Tule on the Honda with California plates, asking for this man that many call poporopo or popcorn. I know mi tio is near so I get out of the car anxious to meet Santos and track him down. Santos leads us to two stores and then finally he and I go by foot ready to cross fields. Before we enter our first field someone yells “Aye Santos!” at us and we turn around. A smile crossed Santos face and he says “Nefta, your family is looking for you.” I try to distinguish him from the two men sitting under a white awning, small and thin with long white hair covering his head, eyebrows and beard and a Dr. Seuss hat trick consisting of three hats stacked on top of one another. “Tio,” I say as I walk towards him, “it’s such a pleasure to see you.” He called me by my mother’s name and then I tell him it’s me and I resort to an old tone of voice I had with him when I was a child and would do my homework at his dinner table and confuse me with her. Things have changed, but they haven’t.
At my aunt’s house he complains of chest pains when he gets up from his video chat with his children. I ask him where it hurts.
“It’s right here,” he says pointing to his heart, “it’s like my ribs are breaking, my lungs are bursting and my heart is cracked. It might be the wires from the telephone poles because they impact not just our heads.” I give him a hug and tell him that’s what he’s supposed to feel. As he walks out towards the pila I see a few tears in his eyes that he wipes away with his shirt. Brad walks up to the dining room and asks if he’s been on a Skype call that entire time. Yes, I tell him, that’s right. “That’s a good use of saldo. Are you ready for cuetes?” It’s almost midnight and all of Chiquimula is about to explode in fireworks.
Puerto Barrios is cold, wet, and dirty. It is, as Brad so aptly put it, “the armpit of the armpit of Latin America.” Barrios, named after President Justo Rufino Barrios in 1884 (you’ll see a nice statue of Rufino at Parque Tecun Uman) , is known for three things: boozers, prostitutes and Hotel Del Norte.
Del Norte, without the blue of the Caribbean reflecting from the high noon sun, is a cross between the spooky emptiness of the hotel from “The Shining” and a New Orleans swamp house with the yellow wooden roof rotting from all the rain, the crooked floors making the hotel look like it’s leaning and sinking into the sea and all the comforts of indoor camping. There’s no hot water in the rooms facing the water and the doors to our room are a fancy version of a porch door with a padlock similar to what you would see on a gym door. We give up the one television set upstairs because the receptionist has quoted us three different prices for it and every time it keeps getting higher. I tell her to take it, on principle of course. She shrugs. Before we get towels the housekeeper is seen carrying the TV set down the creaking stairs that feel like climbing the steps of Tikal. Nevertheless, the character surpasses all these minor inconveniences because mi abuelita reminds me that when she was younger El Sindicato met at this hotel and the hotel wined and dined them for free. That’s how long a free meal can last.
During rainy season, which began last week mi mama informs me, things are just more depressing. She tells me this as we are driving over pot holes that could swallow our entire two front tires on 4a calle as we head to El Safari seafood restaurant which she cannot stop raving about. She orders the tapado seafood soup, made with coconut milk and about two cups of salt mixed in with seafood and crab legs. I order a shot of vodka and the grilled fish to warm up.
It’s a different Barrios for abuela and she doesn’t recognize the streets – some of which still lead to her brothers’ houses – the new mercado, and the cold which makes her shiver as she listens for the boats in the distance not too far from the pier at El Safari. Allí estan, los vas a ver. They’re there, you’ll see them.
Tomorrow we find out if we can cross over with our to Punta Gorda by ferry. At this point, I’m wondering if any ferries are crossing because el mar esta bravo from all the rains. Either way we’re headed to Entre Rios and then la Finca Inca to find mi tio Neftalie and take him back to Chiquimula with us in time for Christmas. It’s a two hour trek into what used to be United Fruit Company land and now it’s a dense jungle of banana leaves and people co-habitating near the Motawa River.
PS: Another way to get to Puerto Barrios besides bus, mule and car:
