The Guatemala Diaries : Part 1

As a Spanish speaker, I find it surprising to admit that Guatemala was my first incursion into Central America. Falsely assuming that I was stepping into a culture reflecting that of its northern neighbours in Mexico, I was pleasantly surprised to find it was in fact more a leisurely retreat from Mexico’s comparatively frenetic tempo.

The short, yet well-built Guatemalan farm labourer, sporting the ubiquitous wide-brimmed ranch hat was the common sight on the unpaved rural backroads. I was making the awkward border crossing at the Usumacinta River, deep inside the expansive jungle covering the Mexican-Guatemalan border region. A small shack in the rural hinterland constituted the remote border outpost where I was greeted with the manic Guatemalan grin that I soon became accustomed to as the national manner of greeting foreigners. Little else occupied the area, aside from the intermittent passing of ragged units of the Guatemalan army, severely under-equipped to counter the drug-cartel war which has rapidly spread south from Mexico, even incorporating ex-special forces operators who, having sold out, now work freelance carrying out mass executions and preserving the balance of the regional power struggle.

  

I was heading to Flores, a small island village at the western end of Lake Petén Itzá, a miniature urban paradise with the convenience of beautiful fresh-water swimming to offset the searing dry heat which hung over the region just prior to the arrival of the summer rains in June. Flores provided an excellent base from which to make the journey into the Guatemalan jungle to access Tikal, the classical Mayan capital which held influence over the area stretching north through Belize and Mexico. By fortunate coincidence, I met a Slovenian fellow solo-traveller cum philosopher who pointed out that we were visiting the archaeological remains on a full-moon, a spiritually significant event within Mayan cosmology as well as the perfect opportunity for some moonlight photography.

Inspired by the British/Norwegian couple Simon and Kristine and encouraged by a few travellers heading the opposite direction, we made arrangements to financially incentivise the guards so we might be allowed to stay in the park, sleeping in the Grand Plaza after official closing hours, surrounded by some of the most impressive remaining structures in the Mayan world.

I struck a fair deal with the local guard and we were led in to watch the sun-set and moonrise from atop of Tikal’s Temple IV, towering 200 feet above the jungle floor. Taking time to sincerely contemplate this seemingly routine event served to remind the true insignificance of the human species relative to the size and majesty of the cosmos. As well as further impressing upon me the vastly superior universal understanding of the Mayan elite, guided by their astrologers who were producing theory which far surpassed Western thought for nearly a thousand years.

We spent the following hours enjoying the moonlit plaza before being abruptly confronted by a cohort of park guards. It transpired that following a disagreement at the drinking table regarding the amount of money that had changed hands, a discontent warden had informed the boss, ensuring our abrupt dismissal from the park. The departing impression of Tikal was that of a wealth of indigenous knowledge which had been lost alongside this civilisation and later expunged by over-zealous Catholicism, civilizing populations on behalf of the Spanish crown. The reality of contemporary Central America however, is that this indigenous understanding of the art of living still exists in rural pockets of the country which will continue to outlast the era of the nation of Guatemala as we currently know it.