Chapter 4: Finding our Feet / Guatemala

By Paul Fast

It is dusk in the border town. The sun has fallen but the remainder of the day’s heat lingers, not yet fully spent. Colour has come back to the street as the sun’s rays disappears, and everything is vivid and sharp. The air is laced with the smell of grilled chicken and a dozen charcoal fires. Border towns at night are places where opportunists come to feed on the seething current of humanity that ebbs and flows between countries, pinched by the narrow vendor lined streets. Everyone is here to sell, take or get something through. This is a no-man’s land caught between customs agents and military checkpoints.

We had decided to make a run for the Guatemalan border despite the late hour of the day. We had clocked the day’s kilometers quicker than planned, and knew of a good camping option just over the border. It seemed better than the alternative of spending the night at a Pemex Gas Station parking lot on the Mexican side. Border crossings in Central America are difficult at the best of times. Crossing with a vehicle makes it even less enjoyable. Bringing a truck into the country requires a temporary import permit, which usually triggers additional paperwork inspections, fumigations or scans. This is a continent that loves paperwork and seems to find satisfaction in stacks of papers and issuing receipts. Mostly, the processes are harmless. Go there, park here, stand in line, dig out any one of thirty various types of required documentation, pay this fee, make 4.5 copies of this paper and come back, etc. etc. It would all be fine if it wasn’t conducted in 35⁰ C and in a language we didn’t understand. Nevertheless, we always make it through, although it sometimes takes several hours. I have developed a fine affection for the thud of the final approval stamp, and by the gusto with which it is delivered, it’s clear that the border officials appreciate it equally.

Our approach to the Guatemalan border ran along Mexico’s coastal highway where we encountered miles of migrants strung out along the road, heading north. We are told they are Haitians fleeing from Venezuela. They wear small backpacks and some of them are carrying children. Most of them wave and break out into smiles when we pass by. I wonder what they think, seeing our Canadian flag heading precisely in the direction they are fleeing from. Perhaps it is a reminder to them that their destination is still there, somewhere through the dust, the burning heat and the uncertainty. An odd contradiction hangs heavy in my heart. We are paying more money than they will earn in a lifetime to travel willingly and unencumbered through the countries they risk their lives to traverse. I am suddenly very grateful for the Canadian passport sitting in my pocket.

The border crossing goes relatively well. We are accosted by fixers as we approach, one of whom is particularly aggressive and jumps up on the running board of our truck. It takes a lengthy yelling match to get him to leave. Daniella is at the wheel and 6 inches from this guy, and I’m leaning over her telling him to shove off. The guy who owns the only parking lot in the tiny, jam-packed street try and charge far more than they should for a spot, but we are prepared and threaten to leave. The bluff works and we park our rig and run through the gauntlet of customs and immigration offices. 2 hours later, the final stamp lands on our import permit and we hit the road, navigating the Guatemalan touts and taxi-drivers as we find our home for the night.

Our road the next day takes us to Antigua, an old colonial city in the heart of Guatemalan mountain country. It is the height of the dry season, and it feels like every drop of water has been long since been extracted from the air and the ground. We climb up to 5,000 feet, and the turbo on the Duramax is screaming, sucking in the thin air. The air here is thin, hazy and dirty. Antigua sits in a cradle of volcanoes, and the small city is filled with 80’s era American school buses that have been converted for public transport. These buses have old, unfiltered diesel engines that belch black smoke at every gear change. This black smoke pours into the bowl of Antigua, filling it with an even layer of smog that never seems to go away. There is no standard branding to these buses, and each driver is at liberty to decorate at will. The result is jacked up, Mad max type rigs fitted with huge extended chrome mufflers and bumpers, painted in a riot of colours, their touts yelling from open doorways.

The city itself is small, relatively walkeable and has a scale to it that feels understandable. The buildings are low, one storey stucco affairs with courtyards buried in their centres. The old world charm here is no secret, and the streets are thick with tourists and the prices expensive. Our Spanish teacher calls it “Gringolandia”. We are here to learn Spanish, and on Monday morning we pack our school bags (mom and dad included) and walk to school from our campground. The Ixchel Language School, a Guatemalan family run business is located in an old building in the heart of the city. The kids are quickly whisked away by their teacher to a rooftop patio for their lessons, while Daniella and I are guided to a pleasant table under an umbrella in the courtyard. Our maestra is straight laced, old school and runs a tight ship. She discovers rather quickly that Daniella is a much better student than I am, and from then on caters primarily to her star pupil. Every once in a while she turns to me and sighs, offering me an easy question. I am her delinquent student. For the first time in 25 years I find myself with homework.

It is nice being in one place for a week. We get to know Antigua. We find a baker who makes a mean sourdough, and deploy a mission to find the best coffee shop in town. We walk to school each morning, and I find my favourite corner in the city. It sits at the northwest side of a small pocket park with a fountain. The corner has a red and yellow building, red tiled roofs If you stand at a certain point, you can see the volcanoes peaking over the red-tiled roofs. Every morning the cornerstone of the one house bears a fresh urine stain, and it is clear that this is not just my favourite corner.

Antigua is not an easy place to navigate. The streets are entirely of cobbles, and the sidewalks raised at frightening and wildly varying heights. These streets eat high heel shoes for breakfast. I begin to wonder what it is like to navigate this city in a wheelchair, and then realize I haven’t seen any. There are small, tiled accessibility symbols embedded in some of the sidewalks, denoting the easiest path to the major tourist landmarks. Despite these pathways, it would be impossible to navigate these streets in a chair without assistance. Later that day I see a beggar in a wheelchair. He is on the street, and his outstretched arm is level with the sidewalk beside him. This is not an easy place to be if you are not able-bodied.

Central America is the land of volcanoes, and we have been told that the one to see is Fuego, so we book an overnight tour. At the trailhead, we are herded onto the trail along with dozens of other tourists. The trail climbs steeply right from the start. The pale, weak-kneed tourists are quickly winnowed from the pack and shunted onto waiting horses, where they have to pay to get the privilege of being carted up the mountain. The rest of us suffer as we grind it out under the Guatemalan sun. The boys quickly realize they are the only kids on the mountain, and are quick to point out that their parents (mostly their Dad) has taken them on yet another adult-oriented torture fest. I trot out my favourite motivational speech, about how everyone else around them is expecting the boys to give up and ask for a horse. They shoot daggers at me and trudge on.

This climb is no joke, even for adults. 4,700 ft straight up, no flat sections, and in 30⁰C heat. Shortly before we arrive at base camp Elias declares, “this volcano better be worth it, or I’m going to be sooo mad…” At whom, I wonder. We turn the corner and there is Volcan Fuego, the Fire Volcano. It issues forth a plume of sulphur laced breath that mushrooms high into the sky, and the boys are already impressed. We settle into our shelters (this description being overly generous). We are feeling the altitude, but the place we have landed ourselves in is completely overwhelming, and we forget the blisters, the thirst and the terrible food. We are camped on a small terrace dug into the side of the mountain, and before us hangs the entirety of the sky. As the sun sets, we can see the entire ultraviolet spectrum stretched across the heavens, a horizontal tapestry with careful, even gradations of colour, and punctuated with the staccato speckles of early stars. This is mountain light at it’s finest, and I suddenly feel homesick. The sun slides below the horizon, but the show is just beginning. As the blanket of darkness is drawn over our corner of the earth, we are presented with a scene that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Fuego begins to erupt, and not in a small way. From the depths, as if the arteries of the earth themselves have been opened up the mountain pushes up massive showers of molten rock, carpet bombing it’s lower flanks with glowing lava. Eruptions are prefaced with explosions that are felt first through the feet and the then in the chest as the sound reaches the surface. The very earth we are standing on is active and moving, tectonic pressures moving molten liquid around until it finds its escape from the mouth of Fuego. We are watching the earth being formed, and it is awe inspiring. We fall asleep that night to the sounds of the volcano, which we can see erupting continually from our shelter door.

The next morning, we are coaxed out of our sleeping bags in the 4:00am pre-dawn chill. It’s close to freezing as we lace up our shoes and head for the summit of Acatenenango. Most of us have been hit with altitude sickness and our pace is lethargic. We are grateful to catch a glimpse of the summit, which helps motivate the boys. We are above tree line now, and there is something special in the air. The boys sense it, and push past the pain of aching limbs and screaming lungs. We reach the top and watch as the sky gathers its colour from the rising sun that we can’t see yet. The colour of the sky is a hyper saturated shade of blue; the Spanish word azul feels much better. In the thin air everything is flushed with vivid, full spectrum colour. The sun is drawn up from its resting place and balances carefully on the apex of a curved horizon. We watch as a family in silence, and I feel overwhelmed with gratitude to be sharing this place with them. One of my goals in life is to put my children in places where they are overwhelmed and confronted with the beauty of a created world, and it is in places like this that I feel like I have made some progress. We tighten the laces on our shoes. The road is calling, and it’s time to keep heading south.