Upon crossing the northern Guate border from Belize I was immediately greeted by touts for taxis or shuttles at extraordinarily overpriced amounts. $60 US to my destination city of Flores? No gracias. I'd rather walk aimlessly around Melchor De Mencos, a nothing border town of 14,000 people, thank you. Fortunately it didn't take long for the public shuttle to spot the wandering gringo. For $55 US less I was cramped in the middle seat of a twelve passenger van dripping in sweat. A twelve person van stuffed with fifteen, yet continuing to stop and pick up more passengers. The van didn't really seem to have a capacity I guess. It didn't matter that people were "smushed" against the door or sitting cannonball position between rows of seats. Apparently safety regulations do not exist in Guatemala.
After four hours of Guate public transport I made it to Santa Elena and got to ride on my very first Tuc-Tuc. A tiny three-wheeled dome shaped taxi (I believe originating from India). Santa Elena leads directly by causeway to the island city of Flores. A beautiful little city with no room left for expansion. Hopefully a city stuck in a perpetual state of being. Jumping off docks into clean blue lake water and strolling cobbled streets became my daily routine.
The world famous, amazingly beautiful, ancient Mayan city of Tikal sits an hour north of Flores. The Mayans were geniuses. Plain and simple. Mapping their cities to the sun, moon, and planets. It took modern civilization until the 20th century to know what these guys knew and were able to predict two thousand years prior. Thanks to sonar imaging it's now known that the entire city of Tikal has some 17,000 stone builders. Most still buried by 1,000 years of jungle growth. Shamefully the Spanish burned most paper evidence of the writings of the Mayans so little is still known about what caused this amazing civilization to abandon their massive cities. (An abandonment which happened well before the arrival of the Spanish). What lessons will we never be able to learn from them? Are we heading down a similar road? No...I'm not going there...BUT shit, perhaps we need to remember the importance of looking in the past as advice toward our future. Millions...billions...have lived a life time of experiences and yet we often live ours without so much of a glimpse of thought into the rights and wrongs already started and ended a thousand times over. Sadly it seems to be human nature that most of us are incapable of learning certain life lessons without experiencing them first hand. In the sake of travel, I'm all about first hand, but in the case of reaping the land for resources with no thought to the long term, to the idea of tilling more land, to support more people in an Earth seemingly already stuffed to capacity...well, I hope we all don't need to experience poverty and starvation first hand in order to learn the lessons of their root cause.
I read an interesting book in the last couple weeks "The Story of B". It made a curious point about population. In the animal kingdom, what causes population growth? Answer: Lack of predators or increased food supply. In nature, when an animals population becomes too high for the food available the population stabilizes. Always. Add more food the population continues to increase. Always. Its a law of nature. More food = more population. Stabilize food = stabilized population. It gets only slightly more confusing when you throw predators in the equation. The population will fluctuate, but still remain stable over the long term. I'm talking about this because humans are not exempt from this law of nature. More food = more population. One of the many points of the book is you cannot cure hunger by making more food. We've tried this method for years and like a child continuing to try to stick the square peg into the round hole, we make more food, and amazingly more people are born and hunger and starvation doesn't go away. Population growth is the root cause of nearly all the woes this planet is facing. Interestingly, with controlled experiments it was found populations didn't suffer when a raising food supply was suddenly kept stable. No animals withered and starved. No fighting between animals over resources took place. Population stabilized. The only problem with this theory is we need to regard the human race as part of the animal kingdom. An equal subject to its laws and regulations. Not above it, but part of it. I'm capable of admitting that. Are you?
On brighter news while taking my two weeks of Spanish language lessons in San Pedro on volcano ringed Lago Atitlan I learned about the Guatemalan Civil War. 200,000 Indigenous murdered, 150,000 missing, 1,000,000 displaced from their homes. Military soldiers stormed towns, filed the villagers into churches, locked the doors and lit the churches on fire. Babies were smashed against rocks. Some grabbed by their legs and swung head on into concrete. Unfortunately, that only scratches the surface of the horrors committed, but I'll limit it to that. The survivors rarely got off without first losing an arm, leg, or hand with the swing of a machete.
I'm a USA fan. I see the fortunate life I was born into, but I sure as hell don't want it at the expense of unimaginable atrocities like this. In fear of Communism the US, during the 1980's, fueled this war by providing money to the Guate military fighting the mainly indigenous army. Not the 1880's or 1930's or even 1960's. This happen in the 1980's, less than 30 years ago. An indigenous Guerrilla army initially in search of fare labor rights and an opportunity to own the land they worked on. The land owned almost entirely by the US United Fruit Company. Later, filled with hate, they fought for other reasons. In case there are any "God Bless America", "Right wing Republicans never do wrong", "America is the greatest country in the world" people reading this...I'm not saying this to bash my country. We have done great things and are certainly capable of greatness, but we wronged here and unfortunately this is only one of several cases where the US became involved in foreign countries for causes shrouded in hidden agendas and in the past these incidents ultimately led to the death of thousands and thousands of innocent people. (I hope with the intention of protecting our way of life), but unfortunately at the expense of innocent lives. I, as an American, refuse to accept that as OK. It's important to admit we wronged, but America is too damn proud to do that. Interestingly we are involved in yet another foreign conflict as I write this with the nation of Libya. I hope for solely humanitarian reasons, but I honestly think we never know what our government is doing. Whether our president is liberal (Obama now) or Republican (Reagan in the 80's) I think it is all shrouded in bullshit.
If I've learned one thing so far from this trip it is that we are all people in this world. Whether your American (Estado Unidense to the rest of the Americas), Mexican, Guate, Spanish, Australian, or any of the some 200 countries in the world - you bleed, you cry, you feel pain and pleasure. You're no better than any one else. The people I've met are friendly, out going, love their family, and hard working. Qualities an person would respect. Love thy neighbor. Right?
Ahhh crap....I've gone off a bit haven't I?
Wrapping up...Thank you Tio Raymundo for coming to visit for ten days. We had nice walks and roof top chilling in Antigua and amazing coffee sipping time in San Pedro. It was nice to have a companion for a time.
I've hit the road again, now in Quetzaltenango (Known also as Xela - (shell-a)) and am immensely happy to be wandering again.
Peace and love friends and family.
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