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In the westernmost parts of Guatemala a whole day’s bus ride (with interchanges) from Panajachel are small remote villages that offer a genuine picture of what daily country life is like. These villages are still untouched by the demands of tourism, with their unpaved dirt roads and their lack of sophistication, the bustling markets and the wailing sounds of country music that seem harmless enough until you are on a particularly bumpy bus ride, at which point its endless cheer seems to mock you.

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From my travel journal on Tuesday, 27 May 2008 –

6:50 a.m. I am in Soloma. The ‘hotel’ dueño and his male buddies are early risers. Their gregarious chatter woke me up well before my phone alarm, which had been set for 8 a.m., did. So I was very tired, but determined not to go back to sleep like I was tempted to do. I wanted to make the most out of my last days in Guatemala. Although I sometimes lack discipline in many other areas of my life, I possess it in surprising quantities when I get on the road. I see nothing exhausting about waking up early in the morning to catch a bumpy bus ride, nothing dreadful about having to wait – sometimes interminably – at bus stops, think nothing of having to put on and off my back the 16kg load of my backpack several times in a day, nothing about being on my feet all day in the sometimes-scorching heat. And I always keep my sense of optimism no matter how wrong things go. Really, and I can say this without any uncertainty, I’m a born traveller.

8:00 a.m. Since I only arrived late last night in Soloma when it was already dark (read about my journey from Panajachel to Soloma), I hadn’t had a good look at the town. The only impression I had of it was of badly-lit streets and sketchy corners once you walked away from its small central square. So this morning I went for a walk around the area, bought some pan francés (plain white bread, not sweet) and a banana along the way from the clutter of stalls set up along the street near the central park. Only after a few minutes I collected mud in my sandals because once you get off the main thoroughfare, there’s no more concrete, only mud – wet mud after the morning’s rain. The town didn’t look any prettier from the night before. It’s a very workaday place, a small center of commerce for people living in these parts.

And as usual, I felt like a peacock walking around the place. Everybody was staring at me. Got the usual piropos (street calls), some shy and some bolder, but always the same: “Chinita! Chinita!”

9:00 a.m. Left on a bus bound north for Barillas, but didn’t plan to go that far. Planned to stop en route in Santa Eulalia, which sounded nice from Lonely Planet’s commentary. As I first left Soloma and into the countryside, I was greeted by a tranquil but inhabited landscape, with little bungalows dotting the corn fields. I couldn’t decide if the roofs were painted or if they were only aluminium gone to rust, a burnt orange-red colour that complemented the landscape. It’s also ‘sheep-farming territory’, and I saw shepherds wearing capixays (short woolen ponchos) in the fields, herding little black sheep.

45 minutes later, upon chatting with a Mayan mother seated next to me, I realised that I had missed my stop for Santa Eulalia. The ayudante (the bus driver’s assistant who collects money and helps you with your bags) had forgotten to inform me when we had arrived at Santa Eulalia, so instead of turning back, I decided to continue onwards to San Mateo Ixtatán instead.

11:00 a.m. Arrived in San Mateo and liked it immediately. The town itself was a bit delapidated, but there was something charmingly provincial about it.

One of the more colourful blocks

The central park where the buses arrive and leave looked and felt very much like the central parks of every town, in Soloma and in Xela, just different in terms of scale. The difference, however, were the steep slopes that the town center was built on, kind of like San Francisco haha. And if you descend one of the slopes leading away from the central park, you will see a big white church, which looked to me like a large ornamental cake, flanked by classrooms of a school and overlooking a basketball court, where I saw children having their Phys Ed lessons.

The white church

San Mateo seemed to me quite untouched and I was feeling rather smug to be there, although later my bubble burst some when I ran into two rubias (blondes) on the streets, but it was clear they were both long-term volunteers. One of them was jogging on the slopes and decked out in full shiny sports gear, complete with iPod and wristband and she looked like any one of London’s serious joggers, and wholly out of place. And the other girl I assumed was a teacher because I saw her being greeted familiarly by the school children who had started to crowd around me.

Sometime later, as I walking down a slope, a girl’s voice called out to me, “Yo! Yo! Quiero una foto! Quiero una foto con mi papá!” (“Me! Me! I want a photo! I want a photo with my daddy!”) Clearly someone had spotted the large camera in my hands. I looked around to see who was calling out to me but I didn’t see anybody. Then the voice called out again and I realised that she was three stories above, on the roof of a shop-lot. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I saw three heads poking out of the balcony, back-lit by the clear blue sky. So I shouted hola and took several pictures, after which she yelled, “Gracias!” And I yelled back, “De nada!” However: she, her dad, and the third kid turned out as mere silhouettes against the bright sky, so I’ll never know what they look like.

Silhouettes against the blue sky

Then I went walking around some more, through a narrow street flanked by houses walled with firewood, bound and collected, with one stack dominated by a dog having his afternoon nap.

Dog having his afternoon nap

And there I met a family manning a sundry shop, with whom I spoke to at some length about Malaysia and about my time thus far in Guatemala and Nicaragua. One of them was a boy who looked my age who wanted to know if I had a boyfriend. Incidentally, that’s one of the first questions I get asked travelling in Central America. And also, I’ve realised, boys here lie about their age all the time depending on how old you say you are. So if I say I’m 22, which I am, they will say they’re 22 also, or older, because they can pass for older most of the time anyway. Like this guy, said he was 22, then later said actually that he was only 18 when I mentioned that people tell me all the time that I look 18. On the same note, I have a Guatemalan friend who lied about being 26 when he met a 29 year-old Dutch woman whom he found attractive, when in fact, he was only 21. She believed him, and didn’t find out the truth till his birthday came around.

1:00 p.m. Found a place near the Escuela Urbana (Urban School) on a corner simply signposted ‘Hospedaje/Restaurante’. I was feeling hungry and there weren’t that many eating options in town. I walked into this place through the dark, narrow opening that was the entrance and was greeted by this Mayan lady and ushered into what was simply a kitchen with three tables. It was very badly lit, with only a small light hanging from the ceiling, and a candle burning on my table. I knew immediately that I wasn’t going to get a menu, so I asked what she had available. Chicken pepián (with sesame and pumpkin seed sauce) and caldo de res (a soup with beef and rice and vegetables in it), were the only two options. I had chicken pepián the night before, so the choice was easy. The place doesn’t sound like much, but I liked the experience of eating here, with the Mayan lady busying herself at the stove slapping tortillas into shape, her three kids running intermittently in and out of the kitchen. You are literally in her kitchen, in her home (they live and work in the same place) and for a half hour you are a tiny part of her life. It reminded me of being in my grandmother’s kitchen 15 years ago.

I managed to get her permission to let me take a photo of her busying around in her kitchen. It wasn’t the easiest thing. She was quite hesitant, and wanted to know what the photo was for. Solamente para recuerdos. Just for keepsakes, I told her. In the end I asked if I could just take a photo of her kitchen, and she could keep her back to the camera if she wished. And I said I would then show the photo to her to see if she approved. In the end that was exactly the photo I took, and she approved.

La duena in her kitchen

Spot her baby in this one!