After the morning fog on Saturday burned off (see our art film on mornings in Xela here), we met up with four friends to spend the day at the indigenous village San Andres Xecul (shea-kool) for its annual festival.After meeting Ben, Krista, Kelsey and Tom outside our Spanish language school ICA in Quetzaltenango, we walked north to find a 'chicken bus' that could take us to Xecul. It turns out that old school buses don't die, they just get shipped to Guatemala and converted for use as public transportation. The conversion process includes a custom paint job, a booming sound system and pimped out accessories such as an air horn and a Mercedes logo mounted on the grill.
Bus drivers work in tandem with an ayudante, or helper. The ayudante seems to magically float on, around, and on top of the chicken bus. At one moment he is collecting our 3 Quetzales (0.40 USD) fare, the next he is weaving his way through the throngs of people to hang out the front door and shout out the bus destination. As the bus slowly winds through small towns, the ayudante will jump out and ply the streets for more customers, then run and jump back onto the moving bus a few blocks later to squeeze people into the seats and aisle to maximize the amount of passengers the bus can carry. If you get on the bus with more chickens than can fit on your lap, the ayudante will lug your package to the top of the bus, then swing into the bus through the back emergency exit door as the bus rolls down the road.
Back in the central plaza, following a speech of mixed Spanish and K’iche (the local Mayan language) and some earsplitting fireworks, a crowd gathered around a roped-off area. Three men adorned in sparkling costumes and wearing freaky masks (we think they represented Spanish conquistadors) began to dance haltingly back and forth as the crowd watched. Larger groups of dancers dressed in black and white bedazzled monkey costumes, or yellow and black spotted tiger costumes made their way into the roped-off area and danced as a group. They jumped forwards and backwards, hoping from one foot to the other, facing each of the 4 cardinal directions, before bowing to the crowd. Over and over, individual dancers faced the crowd, shook their rattle and beat their whip on the ground, then stood still while cupping their hand to their ear. After watching for about an hour, we headed back down the hill to catch another chaotic yet entertaining bus back to Xela (click here for a video of our day in Xecul). While we enjoyed the chicken bus experience, it made us appreciate having a our own car for transportation. We couldn’t imagine riding for 6 hours packed into the back of cramped school bus on the way to Tikal.
Saturday evening Shirly and Sergio dropped the kids off with their parents so the four of us could explore Xela’s nightlife. This is our last weekend in Xela, and we are very sad to be leaving our Guatemalan family. We shared two pitchers of cerveza mixta, another Guatemalan specialty made from a combination of the light lager of Gallo and a darker porter called Moza, at Cantina Tecun. This bar is the oldest in Guatemala, and serves up some mean pizza. Sergio and Shirly wished us luck on our travels, and told us that whenever we returned to Xela we would have a home with them. They also gave us a bottle of an indigenous alcohol called Quetzalteca and a tablecloth. In our halting Spanish we thanked them for welcoming us into their home and family. As the night continued and the litros of Cabro disappeared, we listened to live music in a small bar as all of the locals shouted the words along with the singer. We leave the Castillos on Monday for two weeks of travel through Guatemala to visit Lago Atitlan, Chichicastenango, Antigua, and Tikal.
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