We docked in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, early Wednesday morning. Doug and I had not booked a shore excursion here as nothing really appealed to us that much. We had a leisurely breakfast and then decided to go on shore to look around on our own. The weather was warm but cloudy. There were plenty of shops near the dock, and we again experienced the frenzied selling of the local residents. This time we bought a few things: a scarf, a necklace and earrings, and coffee. Walking around, we discovered that plenty of local taxi drivers were offering to take people to see the sites. We decided to go back to the ship, eat some lunch, get some more money, and then return to hire a driver. Doug was a little nervous about hiring someone we didn’t know as he had read all kinds of warnings about Guatemala on the State Department’s web site. Apparently there has been a real problem with crime, especially the theft of money and passports from tourists. Until 1996, Guatemala was engaged in civil war. The web site stated that things are much better now, but tourists should avoid “agitated groups.” I think I would have done that without the warnings! Anyway, the drivers had very official looking taxies, so I really wasn’t worried. This might have been the first time in our entire married life that Doug was worried, and I was not! Doug did want to try to go with another couple, figuring there is safety in numbers, I suppose.
When we went back ashore, we saw another couple about our age talking to the driver of a Gray-line trolley. We stopped to find out the cost. It was $35 for an hour-long tour. Doug told the couple that we had seen air-conditioned minivans for hire for just $20 for an hour and a half tour, with an English speaking driver. They decided to go with us, so the four of us rented a taxi driver. His name was Francisco, and he turned out to be a very nice man whose English was fairly good. We enjoyed helping him find words at times. Francisco seemed to enjoy being with us and proud to show us his home. Our hour and a half tour turned into four hours, at no additional cost! (We gave him a generous tip!)
The other couple turned out to be John and Mary Ann Parsons from Scottsboro, AL. They were very close to our age, and we liked them instantly. Mary Ann was a trip; she must have asked Francisco a million questions, so we learned a lot on our tour. This day turned out to be the most fun day of our vacation. First we rode through part of Puerto Barrios. It is a fairly large port city. Near the docks are many, many cargo containers, most of them holding fresh fruit – bananas, pineapple, and oranges – ready for export. We saw many familiar American businesses such as MacDonald’s, Verizon, Bridgestone Tires, etc. Of course, these names were all that looked familiar as everything else was written in Spanish. Christen and Pris, you would have been proud of me. I was able to read a sign on a grocery store that said “We always have everything you want” in Spanish. The city was crowded and busy. There were lots of cars, mostly small ones, and older trucks, and many, many motorcycles. Most things looked pretty shabby and run-down, but it was colorful. Dogs roamed everywhere, and we even saw a few horses wandering free in the city. At one point, we saw men driving a small herd of cattle up a city side street. Even in the city, it was clear that most people have very little in the way of possessions. Very few homes looked even half as nice as the ones we are accustomed to in the poorer parts of American cities.
Francisco asked us if we wanted to see a banana plantation and we assured him we would. He drove us many miles out of town on somewhat mountainous roads. The only time I was a little nervous was when we passed through a checkpoint where they collected tariffs on cargo coming from Honduras, which was just 30 miles away. Lots of men stood around there, some with very big guns. One man came out towards us waving a fistful of money, in case we wanted to exchange currency before crossing the border. Francisco ignored them and kept on driving. We passed long lines of trucks loaded with oranges stopped along the side of the road. The drivers were waiting to go through the checkpoint.
On our way to the plantation, Francisco stopped at a roadside stand where a woman and her family sold fresh pineapple. There were large piles of pineapples. She chopped up some fresh fruit and sold it by the slice, so we all got a piece to enjoy right then and there. I hoped it was sanitary, but didn’t really worry about it and didn’t get sick. The older lady did not want her picture taken, but the younger girls didn’t mind at all.
The banana plantation was interesting. All the bunches of bananas were wrapped in blue plastic bags to protect the fruit from insects and the hot sun. There were banana trees as far as the eye could see. A lot of men have to do a lot of work to tend to those trees. The trees are cut down every nine months so new trees will grow up and produce a new crop. The trees are owned by corporations, such as Dole. (We saw lots of Dole trucks in Puerto Barrios.) It made me feel bad to think how rich these corporations are and how little they pay their workers, as evidenced by their poor living conditions. Frankly, I will never again complain about paying 64 cents a pound for bananas.
On our way back to the city, Francisco asked if we wanted to stop at a restaurant which also had a museum of Mayan culture and a rain garden in the back. He said we could see everything for $3.00. The restaurant didn’t look like much from the outside, but it turned out to be very nice and beautifully decorated. The lady proprietor took us through the museum and then served us coffee. About the time we stopped there, it started raining fairly hard. We still wanted to see the rain garden, so Francisco got a large blue umbrella that would normally go over an outside table. The five of us huddled beneath the umbrella and started down the paths through lush green plants, stopping now and then to take pictures of the colorful flowers. We were taking little baby steps to try to stay together. Only Francisco managed to stay dry, as he was in the middle holding the umbrella. It was all quite funny, and we laughed the whole time. We were glad to get back inside and sit at a table to enjoy our coffee before getting back in the van and continuing our tour.
Further down the road, Francisco stopped to point out all the iguanas that were resting in treetops. I didn’t even know they climbed trees. They sure are big lizards, and we would see many more of them before our journey ended.
Finally, we returned to the city. Francisco stopped at his sister’s roadside store and introduced us to his family. His sister’s name is Rosalinda. I think that is a beautiful name. Her small store was open to the road. She sold a few food items and school supplies, as she is also a teacher. I don’t think she understood much English, but we communicated with her and her pretty daughter quite well. Their little concrete house was behind the store, and another relative’s motorcycle shop was next door. A dirt yard separated the house from the store. A rooster, hen, and baby chick roamed the yard. I laughed at the way the chick followed its mother everywhere she went. When one of the men in the motorcycle shop saw that, he went and caught the chick to bring it to me, much to its mother’s consternation. I rubbed its little yellow head and made over it, thinking that this guy had no idea that I used to take care of 36,000 of these things at a time! Next, one of Rosalinda’s daughters went to get her new puppy to show to us. It was a scrawny little mutt, but we petted it and told her how cute it was. Then one of the girls brought out a beautiful parrot! The parrot laughed whenever we laughed, imitating us perfectly.
We left Rosalinda and continued through the city streets to the open-air market. We didn’t stop, just rode through and looked at all the wares available. We did stop at a nice Catholic church. As soon as we got out of the van, we were accosted by a family selling goods with, shall we say, great enthusiasm. The mother had beautiful woven throws she claimed were handmade. If so, it was a crime to be selling them for only $10, but I have my doubts about their authenticity. Her adorable little girl, whose name was Sonya, had little handmade dolls she was selling for a dollar. I couldn’t resist her big brown eyes. I gave her a dollar and picked out the doll that looked most like her. Then I pointed at it and said, “Se llama Sonya.” Her little face lit up in a beautiful smile. This only made her mother more frantic in her attempts to sell me her goods. I really felt sorry for the little family and would have bought everything they had if Doug had let me, even though their goods wouldn’t exactly fit our rustic, mountain décor. The only way we could get away from them was to duck into the church; they wouldn’t sell in there. The church was lovely in a primitive sort of way. Burning candles and icons graced the entrance. The ceiling was adorned with a huge tile cross. Beautiful stained glass windows seemed almost out of place in the simple little church.
When we went back outside, the little family started in on us again. I finally bought another necklace before we got into the van and drove away. Another interesting site in the city was the cemetery with its multi-colored stone tombs built above ground. A building in the cemetery looked Byzantine with its onion dome and carved elephants. It seemed very out of place. The cemetery was surrounded by a wall on which advertisements had been painted from one end to the other. Flowering vines grew over the walls.
We finally returned to the dock and boarded the ship. By this time, we had new friends and agreed we would meet for dinner the next night. This had been by far the best day of our trip. I realized that what I most love about traveling is experiencing new and different places meeting new people. Travel really does broaden ones horizons. Books can go a long way towards taking us to new places, but nothing is quite like actually being there. Francisco had done an excellent job of showing us life in Guatemala.
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