Laguna Chikabal, Chichicastenango

The day before my birthday, after coming back from Chichicastenango, when my body temperature shot up from normal to 40 C in about one hour and the smell of my fountain-like diarrhea filled our hostel, I knew it was time to go to the hospital. SO, now that my intestines have recovered from the rather intense infection that put me in the hospital where Kaori recovered from pneumonia, it´s time to talk about the fabulous two days that helped the bugs in my gut put me in the hospital.

On Saturday, we went to Laguna Chikabal, a lake in a volcanic crater and sacred site for the Mayans at some 3,000 feet about sea level. Bare branches and flowers decorated the lake shore creating little altars.

Mayan families gathered around to fish and enjoy the cool weather in the crater. We enjoyed our lunch here in the shade of the trees.

(The owner of Taka-House, Taka-san. He likes Cheetos.)

The wailing of women in a gathering of Apostalic Protestant Mayans on the opposite shore reminded me of a similar gathering Kaori and I had participated in at a local church the night before. I was again at once surprised and perplexed at how mixed the two cultures, the original Mayan and the colonial Christian, had become.


Chichicastenango
The next day, at one of the major tourist spots of Guatemala, Chichicastenango, we saw multitudes of colorful Mayan clothing and a special dance that they perform over the Easter week celebrations depicting a Spanish bullfighter.

From masks of what look like very caniving Spaniards, to the local deity, Maximon (see the post on Zunil), the strange acceptance of the Spanish culture by the locals is if anything perplexing.

On a nearby hill, religious ceremonies performed by the Mayans now revolve around a crucifix, though the content of the ceremony is far from Christian. The crawling on the ground that we saw here was identical to that in the local Catholic Church, a clear indication of the merger of the two cultures.

Mayans also puff on cigars (kids included) as a method of cleansing. During the thrity minutes we were on the hill, this family of three smoked around 10 cigars. Why not just burn some insence?