Smiles Amidst the Earthquakes
GUATEMALA | Wednesday, 20 May 2015 | Views [348] | Scholarship Entry
It took 4 buses to make it across the border from Oaxaca to Antigua. The final bus weaved me high into the hillside village of El Hato, nestled in the jungle overlooking the small city of Antigua, a common pit stop for backpackers trekking through Central America. It felt good to let its overrun tourism slip below like hushing the hustle when you climb the hills of L.A. Except, atop these hills weren’t where glitzy glamour lived, it was a few hundred friendly townsfolk, and intermittent electricity.
The bus driver reached the road’s end. With an implied tone of mumbled Spanish, I took his tip & continued on foot. The dirt trails led me to the small organic avocado farm I was in search of; rumor was it led a double life as a traveller’s refuge. Beautiful homemade wood signs pointed me to the terraced viewpoint of the Earth Lodge patio. Weaving down the hillside of avocado trees & the specks the Antigua rooftops, my viewed crossed up the horizon’s trough. As massive bookends to my view, there stood Volcan Acatenango & Volcan de Agua.
After 3-weeks of unzipping my tent & climbing the farm’s handcrafted staircase for my morning coffee, I still had wonder in my eyes from the view. While I sat waiting for another avocado laced breakfast, Acatenango erupted hourly spewing plumes of grey dust into the air like some ancient cuckoo clock. Today, a local village mother named Catalina offered to cook local recipes with me from her home. I collected extra batteries for my DSLR camera & trekked up the hillside to her home.
At the path’s gate to her pueblo, I found myself greeted by her child son & nephew. These small boys laughed that the tattooed gringo had found his way to their home. They were the same boys who’d discovered me hiking last week & convinced me to help carry their bushels firewood. I’d helped them, not because they wielded machetes half their size, but their laughs at how I could carry both easier than they could carry one felt infectious.
Promptly Catalina & I began cooking on the woodfire iron stove. The kitchen floor was dirt. The room walls felt of smoke. For 5-hours, we built the base for pepian de pollo, a local Guatemalan soup. As the thick brown stew finished she taught me to hand form tortillas using the fresh masa we’d made with her corn mill. Appetites were within us all by now. My feet began shaking. I wondered if my stomach's hunger was making my knees weak. Catalina quickly put a lid over the pot, but with a smile said, “Terremoto!".
Tags: 2015 Writing Scholarship
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