This Time Last Year in Guatemala

The most adventurous year (so far)  is coming to an end and I'm nostalgic for the very place I found myself this time last year. It was an epic way to end 2012, a three day hike from Xela to Lago Atitlán with the non-for-profit group Quetzaltrekkers. If you're seeking a memorable adventure in Guatemala or Nicaragua I highly recommend checking them out.



Photo taken of Group B departing Xela by fellow traveller, Elise Leijstra.

After a long first day of trading the high density of Xela for the freedom of rural Guatemalan landscapes, I was captivated by the night sky above me. Our resting point was a town-hall made of concrete walls and a roof with a wood frame shielded by corrugated metal. Since we arrived at nightfall the village of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan  appeared to be surrounded by only a few small structures, the homes of locals and the closed tienda (a small grocery shop). It was dawn the next day that revealed a town much vaster.  As if I was lost in time and space, I stared up at the calm night sky to admire every star visible to the naked eye. It was an odd realization that the moon was in hiding. At 11:00pm in the Northern Hemisphere, the sky seemed incomplete without its bright, white luminescence.  After cramping the muscles in my neck, I retired to my sleeping bag laid out on a tiled floor accompanied by forty-one other travellers and the dread of 6:00am wake-up call.

By the time 5:55am had rolled around I had given up on falling asleep hours ago. Instead, the consequences of sleep deprivation kicked in and I wrote this weary passage:

The howling wind rumbles through the fragile tin-like ceiling. There's a smell of mildew rising from the vibrating floor. The metal door barely holds, its strong resistance from the wind eager to knock it down. A creak. Metal sways back and forth. No sleepers in this holding. Perhaps just one. His heavy breathing gives him away. Shadows and light illuminate the ground but darkness still hides in the corners. A gust of wind blows through a heavy cloud of dust, intoxicating us all. A warm chill. We are safe beneath these blankets, pressed hard against the earth. Dare we walk today in the sun after this restlessness. The dogs that howl warn us of something. An impending doom or the dawn of another day? Perhaps it's animal instincts we'll never understand. Are we that out of tune? Too busy building concrete walls, playing with machines, carrying heavy wood stacks on our backs, climbing mountains, breaking into a sweat, starving, gorging, sipping, smoking to speed up our heart rates when we could be slowing down.  Somewhere in the village there's a constant alarm from the horn of an unknown vehicle. Noise always consumes us. Even in the middle of nowhere, even when it's time to rest...

I was interrupted by one of the guides announcing it was time to get moving. With about 15km of walking ahead of us and the challenge of tackling what our guides called, Record Hill (a steep incline that takes an average of 15-25 minutes to climb and one that left me feeling like an asthmatic kid who decided to run up the playground slide without an inhaler), rolling over onto the hard floor and playing dead seemed rather appealing. Yet looking back, I'm glad I was forced to rise early and carry on. On the road it seems we rarely ever fail to seize a great opportunity despite our discomforts. Moving forward is always a constant, an unwritten necessity in our pledge to see the world. Here within the comforts of home it's too easy to fall asleep, stay ravelled in our bed sheets, miss out on a great opportunity because we'd rather stay still or avoid the risk all-together. This leads me to reminiscence about these defining moments in travel. The moments I very reluctantly but somehow willingly made the choice to rise and take the steps forward that propelled me into the great unknown.

Whether you're at home or out on the road Happy New Year! Keep on taking one step forward and don't forget to stop every once awhile to look to the sky above or the land below.



Elise admiring Lago Atitlán from the mirador. Photo taken by me.

Assignment One: Braving the Bar Alone

As a mission to explore the highly sought-after profession as a travel writer, I began taking Matador U’s 12-week course online. My first assignment was to use my hometown as a setting in a narrative. The idea is that your familiarity with a place allows you to present local knowledge using specific details as supposed to an outsider who is unable to convey these details simply drawing from observations. Ricky Gervais did an interview for Co.Create which supported a similar lesson in storytelling to write what you know. Describing the familiar, even the details that may seem mundane can breathe life to your story or in the case of travel writing - to the place. 


THE ASSIGNMENT: BRAVING THE BAR ALONE 


I STAND ALONE outside of the Horseshoe Tavern on a warm Tuesday night. I’m a wallflower checking for texts as I covertly eavesdrop into the conversations set among the bar's street side patio. Laid-back, music snobs chat intimately together, chain smoking and unfazed by the busy Queen St. West backdrop.

With no texts received, I delay my entrance. There’s something about braving a Toronto bar alone that rattles my nerves.

I’ve grown up in this big city and my best nights were spent with friends stepping out into the cool night air after hours of dancing elbow to elbow in some sweat-infused night club on Richmond St.  There were our drunken quests for a hot dog, aka Street Meat, before awaiting the Vomit Comet, the night bus that operates along Bloor St., Its rocking and rolling challenging the intoxicated not to vomit. Regular nights at the  Madison Avenue Pub better known as the Maddy, a Victorian house gone college bar with six floors, the patio overlooking a parking lot, or the first floor, where we’d arrive early to claim the front row booth and sing-along to the Piano Man hammering out our repeated Beatles requests. 

St. Patty's Day at the Maddy

These days we often end up in Koreatown, butchering karaoke in a not-so soundproof private room under the influence of soju, or in the Ossington strip also known as hipster hell to listen to live folk at Dakota Tavern.

Rockin' it out at Korean Karaoke.

I hear the muffled sound of pop rock coming from inside the bar as Groenland, an indie band from Montreal begins their set. At the door is a heavily bearded dude in his early twenties slouched forward on a stool, chatting with the cute girl standing next to him. Before I enter I pause, allowing him the opportunity to ask for my I.D or at least say hello. Instead he glances over for a mere second and mumbles “Go ahead”.

The crowd hangs away from the stage in the dimly lit backroom, groups of friends huddled around tables, casually bobbing their heads. I stand alone on the sidelines. I’m approached by a female server and I order a pint of Tankhouse, a dark local brew by Mill St., made blocks away in the Distillery District. It costs $6.75 and like a jackass I forget to tip. Soon I’m absorbed by the five musicians jammed together on the cozy stage, the rest of my surroundings are quickly forgotten. I feel my phone vibrate, “I’m the Asian hanging in the back,” Wayne texts me. He’s a fellow Toronto native who responded when I posted the event on Couchsurfers. I spot him and we exchange a hug, a rare gesture for two Torontonian strangers. Our attempt to make conversation is overpowered by the music and I suggest we head closer to the stage where some livelier newcomers have filled the void. As we join them, I’m relieved to have company. No one in this classic Toronto scene is out braving the bar alone.

____

Hey Readers, I'd love to see your feedback to help me master this course! What's your sense of Toronto after reading this piece? Would you brave a bar here alone? 

The Keeper of the Reef

The Keeper of the Reef first presents a grin. An undesirable greeting that lets his visitors know the task of winning him over won’t be easy. He sits on the blue porch soaking in the fading sun after a long hard day of sailing the sea. He could be people watching or trying to sell his business to the many tourists who pass by. Instead he sits there silently. It’s possible the Keeper is still lost in the underwater world he emerged from. His reputation on this strip of land is unwanted by locals. Famous to the few tourists who find him, as the 73 year old guide who can show them the sea. Take it or leave he says, be here at 9:45am to collect your fins and snorkel. Don’t be late. He doesn't ask for your foot size or sometimes even your name. He tells you to bring a lunch. If you ask what you’ll see below he refuses to say, it’s a surprise. There are those who would be put off by this, he doesn’t give a damn. There are those who decide to go willingly with him, these people are the lucky ones.

He dives in. The bubbles clear and the fish surround him. They swim close to him, like passengers along for the ride. A string ray sweeps its way forward as if understanding how humans admire its powerful array. Its wings spread out like a blanket, breathing in with an opening and closing valve. The Keeper takes his wondering friend and places the string ray on his head. The creature warmly invites him in, smiling beneath pounds of white flab. The Keeper's bronze Belizean skin is richly lit among the Caribbean sea.  His body moves through the water, the weight of his pot belly and sagging nipples do not direr from this seamless motion. He is a man who can break through any wave and has passed the many tests of a sometimes unforgiving sea.

The current drives him on. Through passages of coral, beyond forests of mangroves and over sea turtles gazing the flourishing world. Deeper he dives luring eccentric green eels with a shell. They swim in a swirl together, battling the fish for the taste of what drives their senses mad. In the distance, he spots the dark shadow of a shark escaping from the foreigner's view. He has known these creatures for many years and it took time for these creatures to know him just as well. When he was nine he swam so far away from the shore. The cruel words of his father fading as he made his trail. He found himself in the reach of the reef and since then he has continued to return. It was the fishermen who told him to pay attention and the students’ scientific observations who brought these creatures' names to life. Once upon time he could find himself alone in these waters until tourism came flooding in. Fat cruise ships dropping off herds of North Americans, Europeans and East-Asians led by monsters who smoke cigarettes and dump 'em in the sea, “The fish will put it out.”  He tried to warn the capitalists to take care of the Ocean but the dollar sign outweighed the value of the Earth. The islanders think he’s a strange creature himself, the crazy man who has a theory, “Don’t go into the ocean thinking about which fish will taste good to eat,” he warns, "It's bad karma." The Keeper’s best known friend is a Turtle named Irene. She’s missing a leg and swims rather odd, a fighter he’s known for twenty years. 

He has witnessed the changes in the ocean, watching it slowly die before his very eyes. He does not know the cause or the outside factors but he believes humans have not done a thing. He thinks we cannot stop it and that we can only start taking better care. But first people need to listen. "We are all connected to the Ocean," he claims, "The 13 spots on a turtles shell is the same number of full moons a year." For those who are willing, he can help them discover the way. Those who are willing must first suppress all negative thoughts, detach from their bodies, and then let the sea take control.

The Keeper of the Reef, he would never call himself that. The Keeper of the Reef, a title no other man in the Caye deserves.