7 May 05
This week's journal is mostly about food. Yes, Kathe is here, and we have seen some amazing things. We went to Tikal, and it is an amazing site. We went to Yaxha, and it has the most splendid vista I have ever seen. And we wandered around Flores, and met some of the nicest people I have yet seen. But the focus of the week's activities has not been any of those things – it has been the thing that made Kathe decide to stay here forever and never return to the second-world country that we call New Orleans. It is about the food.
Ever since Brasil, I have always been one to try any food that came along. Sometimes that has been unfortunate, leading to me trying things that I would not necessarily try again, but mostly it has served me well.
Street food here is the best, especially for breakfast. It is cheap, quick, and tasty, and I get to hang out with Antigueños. I love trying things that I have never had before, eating and drinking the same thing that the guys on their way to (or from) work are having. One morning it was a chicken sandwich and a hot coffee substitute made from lima bean juice. Other days I have gotten egg sandwich (two whole boiled eggs shoved in the middle of a small loaf of freshly baked bread, complete with mayo and fresh salsa) with supersweet coffee, or sandwich of chile relleno (fiery concoction) or even octopus ceviche (surprisingly good, even for breakfast!) And the drinks vary between atol (a thick, white, cornmeal drink served hot with some black beans and chile in it) and a sweet version of the same thing.
Incidentally, my initial response to the lima bean drink was positive, but there is only so much I need of a hypersweet vegetable-based hot drink. I asked for the rest of it to go, and then used the remainder to paint the street.
Kathe arrived a week ago, and we have been a dynamo of food-eating power-walking sightseeing locos for the whole week. As I was going to get a cab to take me to the airport, I passed what appeared to be a local businessman, and as I walked by, he asked, almost sotto voce "¿Taxi?"
I walked about three more steps before it registered. I turned around, and looked at him. He did not appear to be a taxi driver. "How much to get me to the airport and back? I am picking up my wife."
He thought for a moment. "Go and come back? Wait for you? Q300."
About what I had figured. I agreed. After explaining that my wife needed me waiting there when she arrived, and so we needed to leave now (a half hour earlier than he thought was necessary). "Are you married?" I asked, by way of explanation. I then found out that Miguel Angelito was a recent widower (Doh!).
We went around the corner to see this beat-up 1970s Nissan sedan that looked for all the world like it was on its last elbows. We got in, and he said, "I do have to make one stop first, if it doesn't molest you. I have a delivery to make." He pointed down to a half-dozen roses in between the two seats. "For my girlfriend," he explained.
At that point I knew I was in the right car.
We also stopped on the way to the airport to get my girlfriend some roses.
We arrived nearly an hour early. So I bought Miguel Angelito a cup of coffee and we sat at one of the nice overlook points inside the airport, where you can watch the planes come in. About 75 schoolchildren were also there to watch the planes come in and land, all of the girls dressed in traje. It was fun to watch them watch the planes take off, and talk excitedly about flying.
Finally, it came time for Kathe to arrive. The tension mounted – my fingernails were already gone, and I was starting in on plucking my eyebrows nervously.
Enter stage left, 11:41:00 am, Continental Flight 1141 from Houston. She's here!
Exit stage right, 11:41:05 am, Continental Flight 1141 from Houston. She's gone again!
"They're just turning the plane around" Miguel Angelito offered as explanation. 11:45, no change. 11:50, another plane lands. OK. Since Guate has only one landing strip, there were limited options for where she could have gone. 12:00, still no sign. Finally, a half hour later, another plane lands, and all three do an out-of-sight U-turn and come back down the lane.
Another half hour and we were finally together.
The taxi ride back was interesting. Kathe had brought into the country two additional huge boxes of excavation bags for me, bless her heart, which fit neither in the trunk nor the back seat. So we packed the front seat full of boxes, the back seat full of bags and us, and held on to everything in each curve to keep it all from collapsing on the driver and killing us all.
It was with relief that we finally entered Antigua.
We started with a night at Santo Domingo, and were awed by its gardens and architecture and art and colonial religious icons and, well, the food. Steak that is so very unlike the rawhide Yucatecan beef I had come to expect in the field, vegetables steamed to perfection, service of the highest quality… we were in heaven. If only Commander's Palace were as good.
The next morning brought the most amazing buffet (we re-visited it yesterday morning for old-time's sake). Eggs made to order, twenty types of bread, fresh fruit, cream, ceramic-pot cooked beans, refried beans, chilaquiles, yoghurt, cereal, every kind of fresh fruit juice imaginable, and coffee – well, Antigua's coffee is world-famous for a reason. The buffet was huge and everything was perfectly made. We wandered the streets for a while afterwards, taking in some of the sights in Antigua, and made the arrangements to move to Casazul, where our reservations were for the next two nights.
We then ate too much at Rainbow, a fun little hippie-esque bar/grill/reading room, and then turned our attention to some serious eating at the Café Opera, where we went out with Ingrid and Matt.
The food there was magnificent, as well. Wonderful antipasto. Steak braised to perfection. Ice cream desserts to die for. Wonderful wine. And, as the name suggests, crashing opera surrounding us, but not so loud as to interrupt conversation. After we were stuffed to the gills (again), we drove back to the hotel Casazul, to turn in for the night.
For all the good things I want to say about Casa Santo Domingo, I cannot say enough bad things about Casazul. The accommodations were acceptable, but the service was worse than bad. We were treated as fleas, rather than guests. When we arrived with the car, they told us to wait for the parking guy to open the gate, and then left us there (in traffic on a Saturday night) for a half-hour. Then acted like it was our fault – the parking was full. We ended up parking at the apartment, over a mile away, and walking back (I, at least, was not wearing high heels). They were unpleasant about everything. No one could even check us out when it was finally time to leave – we had to wait until someone else came back to do that. Please, if you are thinking about staying at Casazul, find a park bench instead.
Since Victoria Regia in Belem, I heve never been quite so anxious to leave a place as I have that one. We even skipped the free breakfast to re-sample the Casa Santo Domingo Sunday breakfast.
Monday morning, 4am. That was when we left for Tikal. Surprisingly enough, not only the shuttle driver, but also Helmuth, the guy who sold me the package for the tour showed up to see us off. I have never seen a travel agent get up at 3 just to make certain that his clients got off safely. Rainforest Tours, (one block off the zocalo in Antigua, for those of you who need an in-town travel agent). Amazing guy.
We got to Tikal, and it was wonderful. The wildlife preserve has captured an atmosphere almost as amazing as the architecture of the archaeological site, which is impressive. The site is a little overwhelming after a while, though – everything is so vertical and huge, you almost immediately go into sensory overload. The structures are so tall. The stelae are so numerous. The buildings are so tightly packed – ballcourts, palaces, temples, and residences. I had the same kind of feeling that I had in Vienna – it was hard to get my bearings, because every structure was so memorable, that I ended up remembering none of them, except the ones you see in every Maya picture book. And, of course, the Rebel Base from Star Wars.
The animal presence is amazing. I have pics (hopefully to be sent this coming week) of the critters we saw in the park, including the coatimundi, the oscellated turkey, woodpeckers (called carpinteros in Spanish), howler monkeys, spider monkeys and various birds. The foxes we saw never got photographed, and we did not see toucans or snakes (Kathe's quest and mine, respectively).
I finally got Kathe to climb one of the structures – the principal structure in the Lost World group can be climbed directly ("climbing" the rest of the structures involves very rickety wooden stairways set at varying slopes. The Lost World group, though, has the least climbability of any of the stone stairways at the site – all the steps are set at odd angles and varying depths. She got most of the way up and then got spooked.
The view from on top was equal to any I have seen. Everywhere else, the structure atop the pyramid obscures the view in all but one direction. Only here can you really see the panorama. Truly amazing vista.
We then left for Flores, and actually enjoyed our time there, too. Flores is not a place to choose for a weekend getaway – the Petén as a whole is too dusty, humid and hot to be a good getaway destination – but we went to Yaxhá and otherwise spent two days looking out over the beautiful lake Petén Itzá.
Yaxhá is now my favorite site in all of Mayaland. The view from atop the principal structure includes a blue-green lake and wide expanses of forest that have been pretty well maintained as reserves. Except when there is big money to be had.
As we entered the bio-reserve around Yaxhá, Elmer (the bus driver) pointed to a large patch of ground that had recently been burned, where there was one gringo and a crew of Guatemaltecos working to build a path over a drainage ditch. There were a host of trailers at the edge of the burned clearing and there was a single split-log structure in the center. Yep, you guessed it. Survivor. The TV "reality" show that we have groan to know, is filming in the jungle around Yaxhá, according to local gossip. The alternate explanation is that it is the site of Mel Gibson's next film, since he has recently been in the area. Either way, a big production has already obtained permits to modify the landscape in a protected park. ("Excuse me, governor, would you mind if we placed a dome over Old Faithful while we are filming in Yellowstone?) The things that happen when you have money…
Now we are back to the eating part of the journal again. We saw very little at Tikal or Yaxhá that was not prominently displayed on the menu at the Mesa de los Mayas – a restaurant in Flores. Turtle, venison, armadillo, and even tepescuintle (Agouti paca for those of you who have tried paca in Brasil) all had cameo appearances on the menu.
The tepescuintle was delicious. On the hoof, it is a large tailless rat with fawn-like markings, but on the plate it just looks scrumptious, especially with handmade tortillas. Kathe sampled my plate, and concurred – the rat did taste like her dish, a more reasonable chicken.
I have come across what is apparently a very popular singing group in Guatemala. They have both a restaurant and a type of bread named after them. I asked, while we were in Café Luna later that night, who the group was that was being broadcast. The waiter looked troubled, and said "La Verdad No Sé" (English equivalent: "I dunno"). I am guessing that both the restaurant and the bread of the same name ("What is the name of this bread? It is wonderful!" "La Verdad No Sé") was named for the band. It might have been the other way around, and the restaurant and the group were named for the bread…
The meals we ate at Café Luna were wonderful. The waiters were funny and attentive, and they ended each meal with a complementary digestif of expensive rum. The first night we ordered shrimp, that arrived every bit as big as lobsters, and steak that came the consistency of butter. One meal there and we were hooked.
We relaxed in Flores for a couple of days, trying to decide whether we could summon the energy to visit another site. We didn't, but did decide to grab one of the local guys to take us on a boat tour of the lake. There is apparently a zoo, a place from which to overlook the lake, and a number of other attractions to entice the lucky gringo who decides to shell out a few dollars per hour of entertainment. And the tourist industry in Flores has been abominable recently (one shopkeeper confided that, due to the high heat, she had not sold anything at all in four days), so everybody immediately became your friend and invited you out for a boat ride.
In the course of two days we had four offers, and we politely put them all off with "Maybe later."
Maybe later came, and we went looking for the 85 year-old ex-chiclero Don Miguel who we had liked best of those who approached us, offering rides. We didn't find him, but as we were walking around, we came across another of the boatmen, and we agreed on a price. Walking down to his boat, we ran into another. And then Don Miguel was at the bottom of the boat ramp, with his boat.
Thus began the "Lucha de la Lancha". All three began to argue over who had met us first, who had been promised what, and who was going to take us out. After a couple of uncomfortable minutes of back and forth, I announced that it was not worth the effort, and we had changed our minds. We went back to picking through the same offerings at the hundreds of little tourist shops that measle the landscape in Flores.
Upon our return to the beautiful (and refreshingly cool!) Antigua, we moved into the house of a dear friend who had offered her house to us while Kathe is here. Jeanne, a friend I met on the project at Isla Cilvituk (my first Mesoamerican project) bought the house years ago and still escapes here, although less frequently than she used to. After the field season she brought me here, and I was struck by its beauty and the amazing serenity that it offers.
Kathe immediately fell in love. With Pirus, the twelve year-old dog Jeanne liberated from a mean owner in Mexico. With the caretaker, Don Gilberto, who creates beautiful things with his hands while taking beautiful care of the lush garden. With Doña Anamaria, a loving soul who brings out the beauty of the house. With the view of the volcano (which appeared for the first time since Kathe arrived). With the flowers, the art, the icons, the wood, the architecture. And most of all, with the serenity. She immediately canceled our other night at Casa Santo Domingo (her last night here) to stay at Jeanne's house, and is talking about asking Jeanne to adopt her (which makes Don Gilberto laugh).
This morning we went off to the Sunday market at Chichicastenango to take pictures, I was told. We would not be buying huipiles, because Kathe really doesn't need them. We might make a couple of small purchases, but this is a photography trip, not a buying trip. Kathe was in it for the research – she wanted to gather information for her tile work, which will incorporate repeating textile designs into her stamps.
Heh. Any of you who have survived the market know better. We have now textiles to recover all the chairs in the house and have a couple of wall hanging pieces left over. Kathe, incidentally, likes Chichi designs better than any of the other huipil designs, each of which is diagnostic for the village where it was made. And Kathe is amazing at haggling for them. A decade of practice haggling in the highlands of Peru has produced an incredible creature – her big eyes make you think she's innocent, and then she goes in for the kill, paying a fraction of the original asking price. It works for a variety of reasons. Partly it is because she is nice. Partly it is because she speaks beautiful Spanish so easily. Part of it is the fascination with the blonde woman with big, innocent blue eyes. And partly it is because she is a haggling machine.
So we did pretty well. Kathe has seen a number of collections be accessioned by MARI, and has seen the price tag put on each. She did OK. She would do even better next time. I have got to keep her away from that place.
I hope your Mother's Day is a bright and joyful one. Hug somebody's mom for me.
This week's journal is mostly about food. Yes, Kathe is here, and we have seen some amazing things. We went to Tikal, and it is an amazing site. We went to Yaxha, and it has the most splendid vista I have ever seen. And we wandered around Flores, and met some of the nicest people I have yet seen. But the focus of the week's activities has not been any of those things – it has been the thing that made Kathe decide to stay here forever and never return to the second-world country that we call New Orleans. It is about the food.
Ever since Brasil, I have always been one to try any food that came along. Sometimes that has been unfortunate, leading to me trying things that I would not necessarily try again, but mostly it has served me well.
Street food here is the best, especially for breakfast. It is cheap, quick, and tasty, and I get to hang out with Antigueños. I love trying things that I have never had before, eating and drinking the same thing that the guys on their way to (or from) work are having. One morning it was a chicken sandwich and a hot coffee substitute made from lima bean juice. Other days I have gotten egg sandwich (two whole boiled eggs shoved in the middle of a small loaf of freshly baked bread, complete with mayo and fresh salsa) with supersweet coffee, or sandwich of chile relleno (fiery concoction) or even octopus ceviche (surprisingly good, even for breakfast!) And the drinks vary between atol (a thick, white, cornmeal drink served hot with some black beans and chile in it) and a sweet version of the same thing.
Incidentally, my initial response to the lima bean drink was positive, but there is only so much I need of a hypersweet vegetable-based hot drink. I asked for the rest of it to go, and then used the remainder to paint the street.
Kathe arrived a week ago, and we have been a dynamo of food-eating power-walking sightseeing locos for the whole week. As I was going to get a cab to take me to the airport, I passed what appeared to be a local businessman, and as I walked by, he asked, almost sotto voce "¿Taxi?"
I walked about three more steps before it registered. I turned around, and looked at him. He did not appear to be a taxi driver. "How much to get me to the airport and back? I am picking up my wife."
He thought for a moment. "Go and come back? Wait for you? Q300."
About what I had figured. I agreed. After explaining that my wife needed me waiting there when she arrived, and so we needed to leave now (a half hour earlier than he thought was necessary). "Are you married?" I asked, by way of explanation. I then found out that Miguel Angelito was a recent widower (Doh!).
We went around the corner to see this beat-up 1970s Nissan sedan that looked for all the world like it was on its last elbows. We got in, and he said, "I do have to make one stop first, if it doesn't molest you. I have a delivery to make." He pointed down to a half-dozen roses in between the two seats. "For my girlfriend," he explained.
At that point I knew I was in the right car.
We also stopped on the way to the airport to get my girlfriend some roses.
We arrived nearly an hour early. So I bought Miguel Angelito a cup of coffee and we sat at one of the nice overlook points inside the airport, where you can watch the planes come in. About 75 schoolchildren were also there to watch the planes come in and land, all of the girls dressed in traje. It was fun to watch them watch the planes take off, and talk excitedly about flying.
Finally, it came time for Kathe to arrive. The tension mounted – my fingernails were already gone, and I was starting in on plucking my eyebrows nervously.
Enter stage left, 11:41:00 am, Continental Flight 1141 from Houston. She's here!
Exit stage right, 11:41:05 am, Continental Flight 1141 from Houston. She's gone again!
"They're just turning the plane around" Miguel Angelito offered as explanation. 11:45, no change. 11:50, another plane lands. OK. Since Guate has only one landing strip, there were limited options for where she could have gone. 12:00, still no sign. Finally, a half hour later, another plane lands, and all three do an out-of-sight U-turn and come back down the lane.
Another half hour and we were finally together.
The taxi ride back was interesting. Kathe had brought into the country two additional huge boxes of excavation bags for me, bless her heart, which fit neither in the trunk nor the back seat. So we packed the front seat full of boxes, the back seat full of bags and us, and held on to everything in each curve to keep it all from collapsing on the driver and killing us all.
It was with relief that we finally entered Antigua.
We started with a night at Santo Domingo, and were awed by its gardens and architecture and art and colonial religious icons and, well, the food. Steak that is so very unlike the rawhide Yucatecan beef I had come to expect in the field, vegetables steamed to perfection, service of the highest quality… we were in heaven. If only Commander's Palace were as good.
The next morning brought the most amazing buffet (we re-visited it yesterday morning for old-time's sake). Eggs made to order, twenty types of bread, fresh fruit, cream, ceramic-pot cooked beans, refried beans, chilaquiles, yoghurt, cereal, every kind of fresh fruit juice imaginable, and coffee – well, Antigua's coffee is world-famous for a reason. The buffet was huge and everything was perfectly made. We wandered the streets for a while afterwards, taking in some of the sights in Antigua, and made the arrangements to move to Casazul, where our reservations were for the next two nights.
We then ate too much at Rainbow, a fun little hippie-esque bar/grill/reading room, and then turned our attention to some serious eating at the Café Opera, where we went out with Ingrid and Matt.
The food there was magnificent, as well. Wonderful antipasto. Steak braised to perfection. Ice cream desserts to die for. Wonderful wine. And, as the name suggests, crashing opera surrounding us, but not so loud as to interrupt conversation. After we were stuffed to the gills (again), we drove back to the hotel Casazul, to turn in for the night.
For all the good things I want to say about Casa Santo Domingo, I cannot say enough bad things about Casazul. The accommodations were acceptable, but the service was worse than bad. We were treated as fleas, rather than guests. When we arrived with the car, they told us to wait for the parking guy to open the gate, and then left us there (in traffic on a Saturday night) for a half-hour. Then acted like it was our fault – the parking was full. We ended up parking at the apartment, over a mile away, and walking back (I, at least, was not wearing high heels). They were unpleasant about everything. No one could even check us out when it was finally time to leave – we had to wait until someone else came back to do that. Please, if you are thinking about staying at Casazul, find a park bench instead.
Since Victoria Regia in Belem, I heve never been quite so anxious to leave a place as I have that one. We even skipped the free breakfast to re-sample the Casa Santo Domingo Sunday breakfast.
Monday morning, 4am. That was when we left for Tikal. Surprisingly enough, not only the shuttle driver, but also Helmuth, the guy who sold me the package for the tour showed up to see us off. I have never seen a travel agent get up at 3 just to make certain that his clients got off safely. Rainforest Tours, (one block off the zocalo in Antigua, for those of you who need an in-town travel agent). Amazing guy.
We got to Tikal, and it was wonderful. The wildlife preserve has captured an atmosphere almost as amazing as the architecture of the archaeological site, which is impressive. The site is a little overwhelming after a while, though – everything is so vertical and huge, you almost immediately go into sensory overload. The structures are so tall. The stelae are so numerous. The buildings are so tightly packed – ballcourts, palaces, temples, and residences. I had the same kind of feeling that I had in Vienna – it was hard to get my bearings, because every structure was so memorable, that I ended up remembering none of them, except the ones you see in every Maya picture book. And, of course, the Rebel Base from Star Wars.
The animal presence is amazing. I have pics (hopefully to be sent this coming week) of the critters we saw in the park, including the coatimundi, the oscellated turkey, woodpeckers (called carpinteros in Spanish), howler monkeys, spider monkeys and various birds. The foxes we saw never got photographed, and we did not see toucans or snakes (Kathe's quest and mine, respectively).
I finally got Kathe to climb one of the structures – the principal structure in the Lost World group can be climbed directly ("climbing" the rest of the structures involves very rickety wooden stairways set at varying slopes. The Lost World group, though, has the least climbability of any of the stone stairways at the site – all the steps are set at odd angles and varying depths. She got most of the way up and then got spooked.
The view from on top was equal to any I have seen. Everywhere else, the structure atop the pyramid obscures the view in all but one direction. Only here can you really see the panorama. Truly amazing vista.
We then left for Flores, and actually enjoyed our time there, too. Flores is not a place to choose for a weekend getaway – the Petén as a whole is too dusty, humid and hot to be a good getaway destination – but we went to Yaxhá and otherwise spent two days looking out over the beautiful lake Petén Itzá.
Yaxhá is now my favorite site in all of Mayaland. The view from atop the principal structure includes a blue-green lake and wide expanses of forest that have been pretty well maintained as reserves. Except when there is big money to be had.
As we entered the bio-reserve around Yaxhá, Elmer (the bus driver) pointed to a large patch of ground that had recently been burned, where there was one gringo and a crew of Guatemaltecos working to build a path over a drainage ditch. There were a host of trailers at the edge of the burned clearing and there was a single split-log structure in the center. Yep, you guessed it. Survivor. The TV "reality" show that we have groan to know, is filming in the jungle around Yaxhá, according to local gossip. The alternate explanation is that it is the site of Mel Gibson's next film, since he has recently been in the area. Either way, a big production has already obtained permits to modify the landscape in a protected park. ("Excuse me, governor, would you mind if we placed a dome over Old Faithful while we are filming in Yellowstone?) The things that happen when you have money…
Now we are back to the eating part of the journal again. We saw very little at Tikal or Yaxhá that was not prominently displayed on the menu at the Mesa de los Mayas – a restaurant in Flores. Turtle, venison, armadillo, and even tepescuintle (Agouti paca for those of you who have tried paca in Brasil) all had cameo appearances on the menu.
The tepescuintle was delicious. On the hoof, it is a large tailless rat with fawn-like markings, but on the plate it just looks scrumptious, especially with handmade tortillas. Kathe sampled my plate, and concurred – the rat did taste like her dish, a more reasonable chicken.
I have come across what is apparently a very popular singing group in Guatemala. They have both a restaurant and a type of bread named after them. I asked, while we were in Café Luna later that night, who the group was that was being broadcast. The waiter looked troubled, and said "La Verdad No Sé" (English equivalent: "I dunno"). I am guessing that both the restaurant and the bread of the same name ("What is the name of this bread? It is wonderful!" "La Verdad No Sé") was named for the band. It might have been the other way around, and the restaurant and the group were named for the bread…
The meals we ate at Café Luna were wonderful. The waiters were funny and attentive, and they ended each meal with a complementary digestif of expensive rum. The first night we ordered shrimp, that arrived every bit as big as lobsters, and steak that came the consistency of butter. One meal there and we were hooked.
We relaxed in Flores for a couple of days, trying to decide whether we could summon the energy to visit another site. We didn't, but did decide to grab one of the local guys to take us on a boat tour of the lake. There is apparently a zoo, a place from which to overlook the lake, and a number of other attractions to entice the lucky gringo who decides to shell out a few dollars per hour of entertainment. And the tourist industry in Flores has been abominable recently (one shopkeeper confided that, due to the high heat, she had not sold anything at all in four days), so everybody immediately became your friend and invited you out for a boat ride.
In the course of two days we had four offers, and we politely put them all off with "Maybe later."
Maybe later came, and we went looking for the 85 year-old ex-chiclero Don Miguel who we had liked best of those who approached us, offering rides. We didn't find him, but as we were walking around, we came across another of the boatmen, and we agreed on a price. Walking down to his boat, we ran into another. And then Don Miguel was at the bottom of the boat ramp, with his boat.
Thus began the "Lucha de la Lancha". All three began to argue over who had met us first, who had been promised what, and who was going to take us out. After a couple of uncomfortable minutes of back and forth, I announced that it was not worth the effort, and we had changed our minds. We went back to picking through the same offerings at the hundreds of little tourist shops that measle the landscape in Flores.
Upon our return to the beautiful (and refreshingly cool!) Antigua, we moved into the house of a dear friend who had offered her house to us while Kathe is here. Jeanne, a friend I met on the project at Isla Cilvituk (my first Mesoamerican project) bought the house years ago and still escapes here, although less frequently than she used to. After the field season she brought me here, and I was struck by its beauty and the amazing serenity that it offers.
Kathe immediately fell in love. With Pirus, the twelve year-old dog Jeanne liberated from a mean owner in Mexico. With the caretaker, Don Gilberto, who creates beautiful things with his hands while taking beautiful care of the lush garden. With Doña Anamaria, a loving soul who brings out the beauty of the house. With the view of the volcano (which appeared for the first time since Kathe arrived). With the flowers, the art, the icons, the wood, the architecture. And most of all, with the serenity. She immediately canceled our other night at Casa Santo Domingo (her last night here) to stay at Jeanne's house, and is talking about asking Jeanne to adopt her (which makes Don Gilberto laugh).
This morning we went off to the Sunday market at Chichicastenango to take pictures, I was told. We would not be buying huipiles, because Kathe really doesn't need them. We might make a couple of small purchases, but this is a photography trip, not a buying trip. Kathe was in it for the research – she wanted to gather information for her tile work, which will incorporate repeating textile designs into her stamps.
Heh. Any of you who have survived the market know better. We have now textiles to recover all the chairs in the house and have a couple of wall hanging pieces left over. Kathe, incidentally, likes Chichi designs better than any of the other huipil designs, each of which is diagnostic for the village where it was made. And Kathe is amazing at haggling for them. A decade of practice haggling in the highlands of Peru has produced an incredible creature – her big eyes make you think she's innocent, and then she goes in for the kill, paying a fraction of the original asking price. It works for a variety of reasons. Partly it is because she is nice. Partly it is because she speaks beautiful Spanish so easily. Part of it is the fascination with the blonde woman with big, innocent blue eyes. And partly it is because she is a haggling machine.
So we did pretty well. Kathe has seen a number of collections be accessioned by MARI, and has seen the price tag put on each. She did OK. She would do even better next time. I have got to keep her away from that place.
I hope your Mother's Day is a bright and joyful one. Hug somebody's mom for me.
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