Technical Terrain Things

7am, Thursday, 29th November.

We visit the major who is already at work. Plenty of people we know have been going to him to have land title issues finalised. We find out that Friday is the cut-off date for this mayor. A new mayor is to be installed in Jan for four years and the current system closes new land business on Friday. We're in by the skin of our teeth if he has had time to correct our document. And what about this technicality he needs to explain.

As we wait we can see a big map of El Remate land plots on his wall. We can see ours. It officially exists!

The mayor brings us our papers. Our nationality is now tippexed to English.

The technicality - he tells us we must take this to the land office to a man called Elme and not to the town mayor. Elme is a man we know from Tuesday and is actually one of our land neighbours! That's it.

So Friday we will go to see Elme, with how long a queue? Then we'll visit a lawyer.

Land Transfer

Wednesday. We're moving on well.

The seller can't give us his ownership document because it has more land on it than just ours so he lends it to us to take to the assistant mayor and to photocopy. I visit the mayor with Anne for good Spanish back-up, Georgia is busy getting her last day party together for the kids, at about 12 noon. High noon?

We are greeted by his vicious, but thankfully chained, dog and a glowering mayor . Have we woken him from a siesta?

Anne speaks for us and he explains what he can do. We help speed up the process and he promises the completed document by 4pm - the same day.

We return the seller's document - have a mad party while I also tidy up and upload a website for the Unificacion Maya event organised by IxCanaan - then I'm back to the mayor by 5pm.

He has done the document. All seems in order...except...uh oh....he has our nationalities down as Canadian. Another volunteer who is Canadian is also buying a small piece of land and going through this whole process with us. I point this out and he says he will correct it by 7am Thursday but I must bring a Spanish speaker with me as he has something technical to explain.

Tales from the Land

The process of buying our land continues apace. Though there is a reputation that things take longer to do in Guatemala than somewhere like England it has to be said that so far buying the land is much quicker than in the UK. But then so far lawyers have not been involved to drag their heels.

Tuesday. I visited the municipality office in the local town of Flores with Enrique, the doctor of IxCanaan, as our Guatemalan resident. Needed to hold the transfer of land from leasehold from the government to our own title.

We queue in front of the office of rural land, agriculture and natural resources and decide we will also push in once a number of locals have barged their ways past the gringos.

We speak to the officer and he explains the paperwork which is a simple form. Our local resident however has not paid his council task so we go downstairs and pay it for him - about £1. We also have to photocopy our forms.

The queue is massive when we return to the office and I am glowered at when I join in the going straight into the door maneuvere. However, the assistant beckons me forward and staples all the forms together then drops the bombshell. The process cannot continue until either we get our seller's original ownership document or the assistant mayor to write a letter saying our land has been dismembered from the seller's larger plot. Cahones.

Well we've done what we can for the day.

Ways to find out England are not in Europe

Wednesday 21st Nov.

Just like the Likely Lads? Except Brian Glover was played by a short moustached and armed guard escorting tourists out of Tikal after sunset.

Estas Suisse? (Are you Swiss - informal)
No (No)
De donde eres (Where are you from?)
De Inglaterra (I'm from England)
Ingles?! (English)
Si (Yes)
Inglaterra equipo de futbol terminado (The England football team is terminated)
Que? (What?)
Terminado! (Terminated)
Copa de Europa? (European Cup?)
Si (Yes)
Croatia...? (Croatia?)
Tres (Three goals)
y (and...)
Inglaterra dos (England two)
Cahones (Balls)

Our land!

We are landowners!!!! (we hope....)
And we should soon be getting some photos online.



The land
We have bought a beautiful little piece of forested land on the edge of the village of El Remate, about 10 minutes walk from the lake. It has some big old jungle trees with beautiful epiphytes growing on them, and will be perfect territory for orchids in the longer term. It has many younger trees, including a little fruit (not much yet), some medicine trees and many ramon nut trees. The ramon nut is currently big news on the health food scene and is used here to make coffee, tortillas and bread flour.

We looked at it early in the visit and then looked at various other pieces and then realised, having seen more, just how lovely it is. It faces south and has a couple of sloping areas, although a view will have to be cleared/enhanced by selective thinning of the less outstanding younger vegetation, within the context of preserving and maintaining forested land and big trees.



We are not aiming to build a house on it yet, but simply put up a fence to try to help deter the land grabbers and plant stealers of the area (we’ll see....) and it is bang next door to our new Canadian neighbour who will be living here a year, and behind the women’s centre.

It measures something like 75 x 75 x 25 x 35 x 35 metres (in a weirdey 5 sided rhomboid kind of way) and we think has mainly good neighbours, most of whom just hold the forested land with no building on their patches.



We hope to get a few more fruit trees in before we leave, to give them time to grow up a bit over the next 2-3 years before we can come back.

And if we change our minds, it was a bargain and is beautiful and should be easy to sell, or simply to maintain as wild space.

The purchasing process
Amusing, although not to any of you who have recently been through 6 month property purchasing and selling experiences in the UK!

Friday night: decide to go for it for definite.

Saturday afternoon: hunt down Gonzalo, the owner and say we’d like to go up together and pace the boundaries, now even if it is getting towards sunset. Back to owners house, agree price, agree sale chat about contacting the mayor (who has to be involved) on Monday to continue.

Sunday morning: tip out of bed onto yoga platform on dock and into lake. And go for a HUGE swim only to arrive back to a grinning Gonzalo gesticulating about crocodiles and Bill. Oh no… had G changed his mind?
NO, but…
The mayor is only available now, we need to do it now.
Troop off to meet small bloke in scruffy clothes and think ‘is this a scam?’
Small bloke owns a bicycle (posh) and says he will catch us up if we start to walk to land. It is midday and hotter than a monkey’s bum.

Newly apparelled mayor in slacks and shirt sleeves and authoritative looking bag turns up on bicycle by football match and laughs at us for not having got further, pauses a while to watch the football.

We all go up to land and are relieved to find Carolyn and Anne (project managaer) and others at Carolyn’s adjacent land and they confirm YES it is the mayor(or att least the same bloke Carolyn had to measure hers).


Check out that big tree at the back. Hope its still there when we come back!

Mayor and G start pacing the boundaries, laying a tape measure and writing down the boundary measures as marked out by red-tipped sticks. This is the official and universally recognised way. Sometimes we come across a little sticky party near a complex arrangement of adjacent corners from bordering plots.

Mayor take a piece of cleanly sawn wood and sits on it while writing up the measurements. It is done in silence and with great dignity and this very quiet man clearly has a kind of natural authority that comes from his quiet dignity. We all sign, he signs and stamps it, hands it to us and then changes his minid and hands it to G.

Gonzalo takes the original until Bill can go to bank on Monday, and when a chunk of the money is handed over, G hands us the original and that is the deed, done by noon on Monday, with one further visit to the bank on Tuesday for the bit we weren’t allowed to get out on Monday. There is a daily limit on cash withdrawals and it is probably just a well, since (as per last post) the highest denomination not is 100Q and deals in tens of thousands just do involve stuffing it all in a carrier bag and trying to look like you’re only carrying string (thank goodness Santa Elena is not Guatemala City! We’d need armed guards then). Gonzalo asks to be let off at the airport and is last seen hurrying into the terminus with several thousand Q in a carrier bag…. Leading to much speculation!



The paperwork
Had a great reality check from our beautifully authoritative landlady the other day who reminded us that we MUST get a lawyer involved and we all kind of gulped a bit and I thought , well it´s not ALL our money if it all goes tits up, whereas Carolyn has most her house built already. But in fact a trip to the lawyer has reassured us all that things should be pretty tickety boo, although it takes a wee while to process all the necessary paper work.

We have to have a Guatemalan represente, who will initially be registered as a kind of ‘owner for the sake of the papaerwork’ with it being absolutely clearly known and still the legal position that B&I are the real owners. Then a lawyer takes that bit of paper and draws up the legal title document (legal title being a fairly new thing this year in a country where the political history and social land-grabbing customs mean very little land has much more than a 30 year provenance in this area, and much of that is chequered).-

Bill has just come back from 4 days at Tikal getting together the last of a set of photos he has had planned. His photography is getting better and better and he totally loves it. Landlady Mimi was hugely complimentary as she had stumbled across the Blog by chance when she was laid up with a bad leg in Guatemala city (what a place. She says she has lost count of the number of pairs of spectacles she has lost as people snatch them from her face in the street, and yet where she lives is a new literary zone full of libraries and daily reading clubs and so forth... certainly a place of contrasts).


Next plans
So next stop, land wise, is getting a fence constructed around the perimeter.

Comings and Goings

Goings
It’s been a hectic couple of weeks for comings and goings around El Remate. Marilyn and Joe, enthusiastic volunteers at Ixcanaan created a huge great bang of a party to leave with and the poor old doggie piñata was beaten severely, though “no kids were hurt in the making of this event!” Well, except a couple of wee ones who got trampled on, but that’s the nature of piñata, I think. It was pretty sad for them to leave, but certainly Marilyn left with strong hopes to come back next year. It kind of gets you that way.

Anne’s friend Andrea from Canada arrived with her fabulous 13yearold son Kalen and joined the whirlwind of landbuying. What a story. Having decided to go for it on the Wednesday night and with a flight booked for 11 am Friday morning, she went to the property on Thursday morning to have it measured. It´s big. It took a while. Thursday afternoon to face the usual extensive and slow-moving bank queues only to find a limit on per day cash advances that meant 3 days worth of queuing would be necessary. What to DO???

WELLLLL, fortunately the vendor was there and wanted a car. Off to a dealership to buy a pickup for Andrea to buy on her visa and hence deal with some of the money that way. Car bought without test drive, papers, nada. BUT…. Dealership doesn’t take Visa. What to DO???? Wellll dealer has a cousin who knows a guy who owns a service station which does take visa. Off to service station to pay them for pickup truck by visa so they can pay car dealer by cash. BUT…. More queues and 4 phone calls required to requisition the necessary amount of money. SO… there is still an outstanding balance. What to DO???? After a celebratory dinner at Gringo Perdido (they can cook), all to bed late with the plan, hope and everything crossed, of managing to get the necessary cash from the bank first thing in the morning before the 11 am flight. Now to any UK residents among you, this may not sound a tall order. HOWEVER….. But it happened! Denilo is a happy bunny with less land, a new car and a bunch of notes. There is no denomination bigger than 100 Quetzal note. Dealing in tens of thousands of Quetzals is absolutely a question of stuffing it all in a carrier bag and aiming to wander around looking like all you’re carrying is string. Andrea and Kalen have joined the posse of landowners.

Bill went to Tikal on Wednesday and is due back at the weekend.

Comings
Mimi our fabulous landlady arrived back from Guatemala City with Lucky her outstandingly wonderful daughter. What a family! It’s great to see both, although since Paco, Lucky’s husband, is also back from Copan where he has been working for the last 3 weeks at the beginning of his one year archaeology contract there, we a re not expecting to see much of either Lucky or Paco for a few days. It’ll be great to catch up with Lucky after Paco returns to work. What an amazing balance for an archaeologist: the intricate stelae and hieroglyphs of Copan, interspersed with the monumental BIGness of Tikal.

Bill’s certainly looking forward to Copan also.

US say it quietly and say it with not a little sadness.
We are going on 3 December, for a week’s holiday snorkelling and so forth on Caye Caulker, Belize, before returning for the Unificacion Maya ceremonies and goings on in the village.

But we shall certainly be back. After all, we’re landowners now! (probably….)

The Unbearable Itchiness of Being

There are three types of itchiness we have so far discovered in tropical central America.

1. The surface, nagging, itch of a mozzie bite. Its right on top of your skin, almost hot. You don't always notice it but then it kicks in screaming scratch me! It's difficult to resist, especially when half-asleep. Scratching these eases the itch but quickly hurts.

2. The exquisite pain of a sand-fly bite. These are pin-point pricks of intense itchiness that are almost too nice not to scratch. The pleasure can continue for minutes. They are particularly prone on the toes and in-steps of your feet which just heightens the bliss-agony, the delicious demand to scratch but like all itches hurts when scratched for too long. These are truly unbearable before sleep.

3. The deep, under the skin somewhere but not exactly sure where general itch of a fungal attack. Yes, its not nice but we have jungle fungal infections. Trouble is you can never quite get to where the itch is buried and scratching has no good effect at all.

There are ofcourse more itchinesses but we have so far been spared bed bugs or fleas. We have seen lots of dogs squint-eyed in enjoyment from scratching the latter.

Tikal for the Weekend

Monday, 11th November and we are resting after a weekend at Tikal. Well, I am. Georgia is back at La Biblioteca con Los ninos y ninas. I’ve been going up two or even three times a week to photograph the most visited and best preserved/reconstructed ancient Mayan city in Guatemala. But that involves an early start and a departure well before sunset, as well as the inevitable haggling over fare. Esta 10 quatzales por una Guatemelteca and usually 15 for uno turisto. Pero muchos collectivos quiren 20 or even 30 quatzelas. No me gusta! It’s a pain haggling with the minibus drivers but often saying I’m a volunteer at the library helps. We decided we would have a weekend away and stay in the luxury Jungle Lodge right next to the gates of the site. We could stay for sunset on Saturday and be up for sunrise on Sunday as well as treat ourselves to dinner on white linen under a palm-thatched roof and Victorian black and white photos of the temples being cleared of jungle.

We checked in with Oliver who has clearly been on a tourism training course that said a real smile is with the eyes and closed them everytime he did smile which was about twice a minute. We had a nice little room with a balcony overlooking a narrow, beautifully planted garden, into the jungle. Georgia was greatly attracted to the open air swimming pool surrounded by jungle. The Lodge lives up to its name!

We managed to eventually find out that for 50 quatzels we could enter the site an hour before official opening at 6am with a guard to be escorted to Temple 4 to watch sunrise. Oliver didn’t tell us this, the ticket seller didn’t tell us this. Only a guar overhearing our enquiry told us this.

We have had two great days wandering around probably the most dramatic Mayan city in Central America. It was one of the biggest and most influential in its day, though not the biggest. However, they still mostly survive as forested mounds with little uncovered to understand a Mayan city. What really makes Tikal are the six dramatic pyramid temples that soar above the forest canopy, Temple 4 is the highest at 70 metres and from here you can see jungle as far as every horizon, look down on mighty rainforest trees, watch branches and trees shake to the swinging and clambering of spider monkey foraging for fruit, follow parrots, toucans, vultures and hawks flutter, swoop, soar and glide above the trees. There are few rainforests in the world with such majestic and high viewing platforms.

Sunset was one where a large dark red fiery disc, fractured by fingers of cloud, sinks lazily towards the horizon. Flocks of green parrots squawked their way from one tree to another in search of a roost. Darkness and silence descended with it.

Sunrise was a gentle, gradual lightening of promise for a new day. The night had been quiet except for the chilling roar of a group of agitated howler monkeys and dark save the overwhelming lights of stars, planets and the Milky Way glimpsed between clearings. We climbed Temple 4 to look over the silhouetted proud crowns of four other pyramids to the east. Then, as half light burrowed into the shadows the jungle began to awake. First the howler monkeys let out their loud roars stating they were here, that others should not invade their tree-top territories. They opened their mouths, inflated their throats, and the jungle raged to the sound of demons unleashed from hell. Then, surprisingly, came silence with the dawn. The howlers stopped. Except it was totally quiet. Now that they could be heard, the birds filled the morning light with song. Sparsely came the notes at first until the sun was above the horizon, then every tree seemed alive with every type of song and call as they too announced their territorial presence. Branches began to bend to the first spider monkeys searching for food, toucans flitted to the tops of fruit trees. Ungainly in their swooping flight and comical with their oversized and overcoloured beaks, they kept high in twos and threes. If ever a bird was created based on the winning entry in a young children’s art contest, the toucan would be it.

Dawn went through a slow blending of grey, yellow and orange hues. Subtly, the clouds grew pink and orange high in the sky, the sun shielded by a larger cloud. Yellow vertical bands of light shimmered on the horizon below the cloud. After the light show, the dozens of other tourists left to start their various tours. We remained on high and were treat to the sound and sight of the jungle without camera shutters or flash bulbs. Cloud hung low in the hollows of the ground, casting treetops in silhouette. The bright oranges and pinks gave away to misty whites and diluted golds and then the sun climbed above the cloud and the jungle shimmered like a sea, the temples like majestic sailing ships waiting to set sail. What a way to spend a Sunday morning!

I have put some of my photographs of and from Tikal on my photography website - Tikal Photos
Enjoy!

El Remate and La Biblioteca

There are also some photographs of El Remarte and La Biblioteca on my flickr stream .

We have now been in El Remate for three weeks. It is a village of maybe 2,500 people spread back into the jungle alongside the road from Santa Elena, the nearest town 30 km away, to Tikal. It lies on the eastern edge of the mighty Lake Peten Itza, the largest lake in the region. Tikal is nearly 30k in the other direction, and the border with Belize 60km to the east. We stay in a cabana in the lakeside garden of a house. We swim in the constantly warm lake almost every day and watch the sun set over the water.

There are details of La Biblioteca under the IxCanaan link, along with the other initiatives supported by the Project.

Georgia spends each weekday afternoon leading activity sessions for about 25 children between 4 and 12. Other volunteers she has worked with include Eva from Poland and Marilyn from Chile. I have helped suggest ways of packaging an event run by the project to celebrate the Mayan solstice. Called Unificacion Maya it is a week of events designed to bring tourists into the village to participate in ceremonies and go on other activities from horse riding and boat trips to learning about Mayan cooking, medicine and their calendar. I also designed the leaflet and have installed a common suite of applications on the library computers including much-needed anti-virus software along with Word, Excel and Firefox. The computers are used by older children for internet research, when not browsing porn!, and hopefully future volunteers can teach various computer skills including word-processing, spreadsheets, web design and picture editing. I have been hoping to take high quality photographs of carved wood ornaments women make for tourists but despite the enthusiasm of the president of the women’s group nothing has appeared to photograph yet. Mañana, Mañana!

Guatemalan Elections

We witnessed the fervour of democracy inaction on Sunday the 4th Nov when we wandered down to the local polling station. It was a big day - the contest between the right wing ex army man Molina who leads the Patriotic Party who would use the strong arm to solve the country's problems and the supposed centre-left Colom of UNE who's logo is two hands forming a dove of peace. he promises to fight violence with intelligence and looks like a mild-mannered head master. His side-kicks - the Baldizon (I kid you not) brothers - look much more suspicious. One of our Guatemalan friends reckons both are right wing parties but UNE the least worse.



Colom and UNE won. A mild surprise. He promises to tackle gun crime and drug trafficking but it is widely reported that UNE are funded by the drug mafia. He doesn't quite appear to be a Guatemalan Hugo Chevez.

Skulls, Drunks and Broken Taps

El Remate, the Peten, northern Guatemala.

On Thursday we decided to head to the village of San Jose on the other side of Lake Peten Itza. It was November 1st, All Saints Day. This is widely and strongly celebrated here because of the mix of Catholic faith and traditional religion which honoured the dead and ancestors. People across the country walk in large numbers to the cemeteries to have picnics with their dead families, wash and paint the graves, and place wreaths of bright flowers. We had been told that San Jose, having a alrge Maya population, had a traditional ceremony where Three Skulls were taken in procession around the village.

The day started well with a beautiful boat trip across the lake from the town of flores to the village of San Andreas only 2km from San Jose. Andreas has the hotels and we´d been recommend Villa Benjamin on the basis of its view and restaurant. After disembarking we climbed the near vertical village streets, following directions further and further up the hill. THe directions got shorted each time suggesting we were really getting closer until the last person we asked pointed and used only one word - arriber - up! When we reached the hotel the view was truly spectacular - right across the jungle-fringed lake and down into the turqoiuse waters below where kids leapt off a wooden dock. The only hitch was the somewhat shady hotel managed who couldn´t say anything - and I mean anything - without winking or suggesting in hushed tones he was doing us the sort of favour that should have involved him producing silk stockings and silver watches from a raincoat. His somewhat dubious antics put us off but being tired and hungry, by now it was 2pm ,we decided just to have lunch before deciding our next move. As the food was great and his wife more normally friendly, we thought we´d take a room as we were here. The gardens were beautiful and we wouldn´t have to speak to him. We paid then heard the shattering news that they were leaving at 4m the next morning to visit her family grave so there would be no breakfast.

Not diheartened by the news, lack of light in the baño, unfinished electrical wiring, cobwebs or fake stone walls, we set off along the road to San Jose for a sunset walk beside the lake. The water shimmered blue and aqua in one direction, shades of pink and purple in the other. We hung out on a dock by San Jose´s part-built concrete promenade which promised tourists, cafes and car parks galore. We then thought, as it was nearly 6 and our reports varied between 6 and 7 for the start of the ceremony, we should find the church where the action was meant to begin.

Skulls
We climbed to the sound of bells and the vision of a white bell tower to find a church almost empty except for three skulls lined up in front of the alter, each with a raised cross on its forehead. After about 20 minutes of sitting in the empty church, except for the occasional bit of activity as a mujer brought a decoration or alter piece out, we thought best to get a drink and come back later.

Drunks
We pitched up at a small bar for a soda and a licuado de papaya to be hailed from the back by a guy saying ´why not come in´. Why not chat with the locals. The three guys didn´t instanly look like they had been drinking for that long. There were the husband of the woman doing all of the work, his father-in-law (both from El Salvador) and a local friend. Georgia was soon speaking Spanish to the father in law and friend while the other guy decided to talk at me ni English. Neither of us spoke much for the next half hour or so. My amigo had come to Peten after a vision of god while on magic mushrooms after leaving the US Army cadets. He had seen eyes appear on the floor and walls, then the earth at way and in hunger. A voice spoke to him, saying ´why do you think it doesn´t not explode´before two hands cupped the earth. Taking this as a sign that he hd to go to the Peten and show the locals how to save the rainforest by growing vegetables on rafts of waste in the lake, he had ended up drunk in San Jose.

Skulls again
The church bell rang again and we took this as our cue to escape, climbed back up to the chruch to find a full Catholic mass about to begin. THe church was packed, there were plenty of chicos and chicas hanging around outside the open doors and as the mass progressed more people wandered in and out. A dog sallied in, wagging its tale as it sauntered downthe aisle until it found someone it knew and sniffed them. It soon became bored and wandered out again. That was probably the highlight for me. Realising that the mass was going to go on for a long time and that any procession wasn´t shaping up to be that spectacular we decided to walk back to our hotel.

Broken Tap
We crashed out in our room but as the toilet cistern wouldn´t stop filling up Georgia went to flush it again and turn off a dripping tap. Suddenly water was flooding everywhere and I found Georgia trying to keep the tap on the faucet. I took over so she could get the manager, as our room and the balcony flooded. Thankfully he turned off the ater without trying to sell us a new plumbing system or blackmarket coffee and we moved room. About two hours later there was a knock on the door and he shouted something, apparently prompted by his wife. It seemed to be that he wanted us to pay for the tap we´d clearly broken. Giving the general unfinished and uncared for state of the rooms we thught we´d not enter into the conversation.