A couple of quiet days

Yesterday I got caught up in some work stuff and by the time I got done it was too late to go out to one of the villages and get back in time for afternoon class so I just hung out at Villa Sumaya.  Today I'm just hanging out here as well.  We had class this morning, I'm going to do a session on my own in a few minutes and then we have another late afternoon class.  Here are some photos from the class late yesterday and today.

Tomorrow I may go back to San Juan in the afternoon.

Day Trip to San Juan

Yesterday, 12 of us visited San Juan on the west side of Lake Atitlan.  We took a boat with our guide, Domingo Juan Solis, who is with www.tours-atitlan.com.  He was very knowledgeable and friendly.  Everyone in our group really liked him.

We all enjoyed San Juan more than Panajachel or Santa Cruz.   San Juan was much less busy and less commercialized than Panajachel and had more cultural attractions than Santa Cruz.  The people were very friendly and there were murals on the walls everywhere.  Also, unlike Panajachel, in San Juan it is illegal for vendors to approach you on the street so you are not constantly hassled about buying something.  It really stands out as a charming village.    I asked Domingo how long they had been doing murals on the walls and he said only about 15 years, "since the tourists have been coming here."  He also said they change the murals every year and some of them are quite extraordinary.

There were a lot of interesting street scenes.

One of the highlights was our stop at Casa Flor Ixcaco, the Tejedoras Mayas Weaving Cooperative, which has 22 women weavers who all work indepently at home and return finished products to the store to be sold.  The women are provided with cotton and they work together to naturally make and dye all their materials, including the spinning of natural cotton thread.  At the store they demonstrated that process from spinning to dyeing to weaving with a back strap loom.

This is Mona, who weaves at home, trying her hand at the back strap loom.

After the demonstration I took some pictures of women and some children from the Co-op and then gave them Instax prints.

After that, while most of the group ate their boxed lunch, Mona, Cindy and I went with Domingo to a coffee plantation because Mona wanted to buy unroasted coffee beans for her husband.

This is a picture of a man bringing in some beans in from the hills above the plantation.

These are some pictures of the beans drying and being raked to help the drying.

When we got back to the rest of the group they were playing with four little girls and Krisan said, "You're just in time.  Can you take some pictures of these kids?" So I took a couple, including this one of them holding the prints I gave them.

On the way back we stopped to see a church, the front part of which was built in 1640.  The church was damaged in an earthquake some years ago and they are still working on construction of the back part which which shows a different stone structure.

Shortly after we left the church these two little kids, brother and sister, ran up to me and said "Photograph" and pointed to my camera.  As I was trying to figure out why they were asking me, the little girl on the right in the blue dress in the previous picture came running up waving the picture I gave her.  It turns out the boy and girl are cousins of the girl in the blue dress and she told them to ask me for a picture. 

On the way back to the boat I stopped at an art studio that we had visited when we first arrived in San Juan and bought a painting that really struck me.  Here is a picture of the artist with the painting.

And here is a picture of the artist, Felipe Mendozo. He was working on another painting when I came in his studio and put the paint brush behind his ear.

After I bought the painting he told me that he has painted a large mural in Philadelphia and another one in New York and taught at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Monday in Guatemala

Below is a map of Villa Sumaya

You will notice that at the very top of the map is Room 10.  That's mine.  Its a great room with great views but it is a very steep long climb to get to.  Yesterday, one of the owners saw me huffing and puffing my way up the trail and later told me she had two other rooms right down by the lake that were available but I like the room and views so much I'm going to keep it.  Here are some pictures.

You will note in the picture below that there is a tree branch coming through the floor of my bathroom and going out the side wall.  

When visiting the bathroom in the middle of the night (which happens a lot for 60+ guys) you need to veer left as soon as you go through door or you'll stub your right big toe on the branch.  The owner told me it was a sacred tree so she couldn't cut the branch when she built the place.  I told her I hoped I was not cursed for cursing the sacred tree branch when I stubbed my right big toe in the middle of the night.

This morning a couple of the ladies wanted me to take their pictures doing handstands before class.

This is a view out of the west side of the yoga room.

This afternoon several of us walked to the village of Santa Cruz la Laguna.  They have a school there that teaches basic education, teaches the kids to speak Spanish because their native language is a Mayan dialect and speaking Spanish allows to get better jobs, teaches computer skills and teaches women how to sew. http://www.amigosdesantacruz.org/ We stopped in and I asked if I could take some pictures.  After I handed out a couple of prints of the first women I photographed, they ALL wanted their pictures taken and were laughing and having a great time.  I finally ran out of printing paper for the Instax printer and promised to email them the pictures.  Here are a few I took at the school.

Then they told me they wanted to have a group picture and when I looked around trying to figure out where the best place was to do that they told me we should go up on the roof.  So up we went.

Here is a picture of Mona and Cindy  next to the Tuk Tuk we took down the hill back to the trail to walk back to Villa Sumaya

Arrival and First Day in Guatemala

I have to make a slight correction to the previous post.  As it turns out there was no train, not even an airport tram because we left Atlanta from the same terminal we arrived in.

The drive from Guatemala City to Panajachel took longer than expected because of heavy traffic and we arrived at the boat ramp for the short ride to Villa Sumaya just as the sun was going down over the mountains.

Here is a photo I took with a long exposure from my room by moonlight.

Our routine here is a morning yoga class with time off after lunch and then another class at 5 p.m.  This  is a picture of the yoga room at Villa Sumaya; the most scenic I've ever seen.

In the afternoon several of us took a boat ferry to Panajachel and walked around the town.  Here are some street photos I took.

This is a picture of a guard in front of a Western Union store.  Note the shotgun with the pistol grip.

Below is a picture of Anna a street vendor who spoke pretty good English and was all the more aggressive for it with her sales pitches.

I had my Instax printer with me and used it to strike up a conversation with Anna and her daughter Nancy.  I gave her a print of this picture right after I took it.

Below is a picture of Roberto and I also gave him a copy of the picture.

And below is a picture of Jesus who I bought some post cards from.

Planes, a Train, Automobiles and a Boat to Yoga Camp on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala

Well, the train part is a bit of stretch because its only the tram in the Atlanta airport between terminals but otherwise the title of this post pretty well describes my travel day tomorrow.   A group of about 15 yogis from Minneapolis are going to a yoga retreat with our teacher, Momi Jhung, at Villa Sumaya on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala for a week.  My wife, who is not coming on this trip, refers to it as "yoga camp".

In previous years Momi has taken groups to Tulum, Mexico but it has gotten so developed we wanted to try somewhere different this year.  I did some internet research and found several places in Belize, Honduras and Gautemala and Momi chose Villa Sumaya.  However, one day in class a couple of months ago she said,"We're going to Guatemala and if nobody likes it we'll blame it on Dave". She was just kidding of course.  But still, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it turns out well. 

On Saturday at 5:30 a.m. we fly from Minneapolis to Atlanta and then from there fly to Guatemala City, arriving in the early afternoon.   We then drive about 3 hours west of Guatemala City on a winding mountain road to the town of Panajachel, an 800 year old pueblo with a population of about 14,000.  From there we take a boat to Villa Sumaya in Santa Cruz la Laguna, because there is no access by road.

 

The lake is at about 5,000 feet and has three volcanos on the south side.  Santa Cruz la Laguna where we will be staying is on the north side.The Mayan word "Atitlan" translates as "the place where the rainbow gets its colors" and according to Wikipedia, Aldous Huxley once wrote "Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing." But you know how the Brits prefer understatement.

 

 "Lago de Atitlán 2009" by chensiyuan - chensiyuan. Licensed under GFDL via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lago_de_Atitl%C3%A1n_2009.JPG#mediaviewer/File:Lago_de_Atitl%C3%A1n_2009.JPG

As best I can make out studying the maps it seems like the picture above would have been in the hills above Panajachel looking to the south in the morning.

This is a picture from the Villa Sumaya dock
 

I'll be posting a lot of my own pictures next week.