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A room with a view

All Saints of the Cuchumatanes, they call it. And it fits. This serene village populated by Mam-speaking Mayans is located at an altitude of about 10,000 ft in northwestern Guatemala in the barren, rocky Cuchumatanes mountain range. It is notably cooler here than other parts of this verdant country, where everywhere you go the fog follows you, or leads you astray. It is a little village with a lot of indigenous character and although there is not very much to do here for someone used to a city like London, it is one of my favourite places in Guatemala. Todos Santos is for an intimate chat with strangers over sweet coffee in the silence of the night, for claustrophobic chuj (a Mayan sauna) experiences, and slow walks to the surrounding countryside. And the journey here from Tres Caminos is breathtaking.

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From my travel journal for Wednesday, 28 May 2008 –

10:00 a.m. I am in Soloma and there are no direct buses to Todos Santos. Have to head to Tres Caminos and switch there. I like the public transport ’system’ in Guatemala. There are no sure-fire signs or info sites or maps, but it’s easy to find the stop, which is never even signposted. All you have to do is ask around, and people just tell you that you have to wait at this corner or that corner down this block or that block. I guess here in Guatemala that’s possible because in each place, public transportation is limited to only a handful of destinations, and often times if you have traveled from one place to another and want to get back to your original destination, you have to travel the exact same road back – there’s no shortcut to bypass all the destinations you’ve passed to get back to point A.

On the way out of Soloma, I realise that even though the commercial centre of Soloma is nothing to shout about, the outskirts are actually very accessible on foot, and very pretty. There were little houses dotting cornfields, alongside the highway out of town. Having arrived in Soloma in the dark, I’d not seen the view but now on the way out I realise what I’d missed. Staying in the town center I’d been blinded by the ordinariness of it, when really if I’d just taken a 20-minute walk out I would have escaped its urbanity, which of course, is nothing like the urbanity we know.

12:00 p.m. I was surprised when I was told that we had arrived at Tres Caminos. I had expected a transport-switch point to be quite busy, with stalls and vehicles stationed around the place, but Tres Caminos looked like it was in the middle of nowhere, amidst one or two low nondescript buildings and fields of green with sheep and children playing in it. It was on a stretch of lonely highway with only one comedor (canteen) to mark its existence as a stopping point.

Comedor 3 Caminos

Now I was somewhat relieved that I hadn’t come at dawn like I’d planned to. At least now there were 2 or 3 people around, in the light of day. I was very excited, however. I felt like I was in one of those American intrepid adventure movies, carrying only my backpack, myself bundled up in a thin jacket and scarf. For a while, I was the only one at the rock at the bisection of the highway where the ’stop’ supposedly is. And seeing no bus or minivan in sight I went to the comedor to buy some food. When I went back to the rock a Mayan man was there too, fully clothed in colourful traditional dress, and when I saw it I knew he was from Todos Santos. It is rare in Guatemala that indigenous men wear traditional dress, and I had read that men (even little boys!) in Todos Santos were an exception, with their red and white striped trousers, hats with a blue ribbon woven to a leather strap wrapped around them, thick long-sleeved shirts with multi-coloured stripes and a thick, equally colourful collar to keep the neck warm. Anyway the man advised me that the next bus was only coming an hour later, so we would probably have to hitch a ride from passers-by. We sat making small talk for a while, and 15 minutes later a truck drove up and we flagged it down, greeted by a smiley-faced driver, who joked that he was going to take 3 hours to get there, as opposed to the usual 1 hour or so, because he was going to take his own sweet time for the pleasure of the scenery. I didn’t mind. The open back of the truck was filled with cement, but there was space for two in the front with the driver, so we got in. I’ve only hitched a ride solo two other times, and not in a place half as remote as this. It felt like a grand adventure, this unfettered mobility I’ve enjoyed these past few days, where I choose – anytime, and at whim – to go anywhere I want to.

The road to Todos Santos

Click to play

1:30 p.m. Arrived in Todos Santos an hour later. The driver had been joking about taking a detour. When he’d picked us up we had said nothing of how much it would cost. I’d just got into the truck and that was it, no questions asked. Only at the end of the journey did I ask, and it cost 8 Quetzales. I thanked him, unloaded my backpack from the pile of cement I had thrown it in, and went on my merry way.

Dug up street

Looked for Hotel Casa Familiar as listed in Lonely Planet as it had sounded like the best option. Asked a man on the street where it was and was somewhat stumped when he pointed me up a stretch of mud-street that was being dug-up. Heavy construction was going on around there, and apparently the hotel was up that road. I went up two blocks, feet sticky with mud, but when I arrived at I was told by a little girl that the hotel was also under construction. The pretty young morena had surprisingly piercing green eyes, and I looked to her mother, an indigenous Mayan lady, to see if she’d inherited them from her. No, she hadn’t, and I learn from an American girl I later meet who had been in Todos Santos a year ago that her father is German. I also learned that her indigenous mother makes the best banana cake in town, although I didn’t get to try it because apparently the oven wasn’t working.

So I backtracked a block down the dug-up street and came upon Hotel Mam and right next to it, Hotelito Todos Santos. Decided to stay in Hotel Mam, it was slightly cheaper. 35 Quetzales for a private room with shared bathroom. But in these northern parts where not many tourists congregate at the same time, you’re normally not sharing with anybody . The family who owns the hostel also lives in the same building and they were very friendly. Rooms afford good views here. Would recommend the third floor because there is a nice spacious balcony where you can enjoy the breeze and the view of the village mystically obscured by the omnipresent fog. And there’s a Comedor Martita right across the street from these two hostels and a panaderia (bakery) between them so when you’re hungry it’s convenient. The Comedor Martita also offers the cozy, but rather claustrophobic, chuj experience.

The valley where Todos Santos nestles

Went looking for a Spanish school because apparently they sell walking maps for the area. But Nueva Amanecer is now closed and so are all the others listed in Lonely Planet, and there’s only one Spanish school left called Hispanomaya, which is off the main street where Museo Balam is, down a nondescript dirt track. It will occur to you that surely a Spanish school cannot be situated here, but it is (it used to be next to Hotelito Todos Santos but it has since moved). Just walk some two minutes and you will find it, a low block of white concrete. At the time I was there Lucas, a British traveller from Nottingham, was staying there and was working as the coordinator. He can help you with everything, from arranging Spanish lessons to guiding you on the more difficult walks. The ‘maps’ are really just very detailed instructions, and if you want to visit these places you have to walk, you can’t get there on wheels. You will also marvel at how cute (and surprisingly, not out of place) he looks wearing the Mam Mayan men’s traditional pants.

They also show documentaries about Guatemala at the school. Anyone can drop in to watch without charge. However since Todos Santos is quite remote, there aren’t very many students at any one time so although it’s officially said they will screen at 8pm it can be a little more flexible so you could ask for a little earlier or later in the day. At Hispanomaya, I met a girl from Michigan studying anthropology who was learning to speak Mam at the school and we planned to come back to watch When The Mountains Tremble later that night. Then we went for an early dinner at Comedor Martita, and back to our respective hostels to rest a little before meeting up again to watch the documentary. Then we hung out at the school for the rest of the night chatting with Lucas over hot coffee.

Honestly I have to say that as much as I liked Todos Santos, it’s not a place I could imagine settling for any long period of time. It’s too quiet for me I suppose, too remote, and after a time I might not know what to do with myself anymore. But Lucas seemed to like it there, although he did say that the local men aren’t very social people, and it’s hard to get to having conversations with them, or making real friends. But I loved that he knew the village gossip, like how once someone had gotten highly drunk at one of the local comedores and there had been a fight and then 200 or so of Todos Santos’ inhabitants signed a petition to ban alcohol throughout the village and then how a representative of Gallos (the leading national beer) had made a personal visit down to Todos Santos to oppose the ban because it would disrupt their sales, and how Lucas himself after the incident had had to drink covertly so as not to attract unwanted attention or disapproval. It’s this sort of local knowledge I’ve always sought from travelling or living in a foreign place for a little while, journalism of a kind, and it is my main motivation for travelling.