The upside of bad Spanish

One of the benefits of speaking beginners Spanish is that it allows me to partially comprehend things, and then let my imagination fill in the gaps.

Usually, this is fairly tame and mundane (and probably accurate), but occasionally, it shines. And sometimes, the connections that my imagination brings up are so good, I don’t even want to double check them to get the actual translation.

This happened last week.

Ice-cream with a police guard?

Guatemala, I feel like we both feel the same way about ice-cream. 

 We went on an excursion to San Andrés Xecul, one of the towns outside Xela. We got there on a shuttle, chicken bus and then a tuk-tuk. Now, I don’t have a photo of the exact tuk-tuk, but I thought our group of 5 would have to split into 2 or maybe even 3 tuk-tuks… For the first time in my life, I clearly lacked ambition.

The tuk-tuk

And the start of a game that I will affectionately call "how many people can you cram into a tuk-tuk"

Mario, our 70ish teacher/guide hailed one and all 5 of us piled in (3 fully grown adupts in the back, 2 hanging out on either side of the driver), and very slowly, trudged up the hill.  In fact, it turns out moped motors aren’t intended to carry 5 grown adults + a child up a moderately steep hill.

The town is predominantly Mayan, and when we were there, they were preparing for a religious festival to celebrate Mayan culture and the language.

The Mayans have many languages, however the most widely spoken is K'iche', which has approximately a million native speakers (7ish% of the Guatemalan population). Why are there apostrophes? In a deeply traumatic flashback to my failed attempt to learn Danish, the “ ‘ “ in K’iche’ represents glottal stops. The sound that you make when you start choking. (Fun fact: apparently there isn’t a word for “no” or “blue” in K’iche’).

Old-school knife sharpening

Now, as is becoming an increasing feature of my travels, the major landmark of San Andrés Xecul was obscured by a tent for said festival (see also, US Supreme Court, The Pantheon). But it was mighty pretty nonetheless.

Oh hi there Lucy, it's so nice of you to be here.
This is a nice church...

It would be a shame if someone... PUT A MASSIVE GODDAMNED TENT IN FRONT OF IT

The church was built by the Mayan people for the Catholics. But when I say that, I don’t mean that it was a good gesture. It was more of an enslavement situation.

But because the Mayans only take a limited amount of crap, they built the church, but made the façade full of homages to their own religion. Jaguars, bells, animals, birds and triangles all play important symbolic roles in traditional religions here (although they are not “the gods”, they only “represent” the gods, as Mario went to great pains to explain).

And here is where things started getting lost in translation.

There is a huge ladder and a tightrope (about 25m long) which leads up to the peak of the church. According to my translation of the explanation (and please this is purely my own fault - Mario is absolutely magnificent, knowledgeable and speaks great Spanish)… men in the town will participate in a purification rite for about 1 or 2 months. This includes nothing fun – no alcohol, no drugs, no sex, no meat, no nice food – nada. After this purification period, the men will don tiger costumes, climb the ladder and tightrope walk over to the church.

See the rope leading to the bottom of the cross? 

And this is the pole/ladder situation. 

I do not know if

1.  there is a safety net (there wasn’t when I was there, but it might be made a little later)
2.   they walk both ways
3. if any of this is in fact true.

After looking at the large church, we walked up an incredibly steep slope to see a smaller chapel. It was very similar in design to the larger version, and I’m not sure what it’s specific use is for. 

Not the tightrope.

Just pretty flowers. 

Lots of photos?

I just really like taking photos...

It's not because the road was prohibitively steep and I was struggling to walk up it in one go.... 

I do this for your benefit, yeah?

Pretty little church!

Although interestingly, next to the chapel is a large flat plot of land which is used for Mayan rites.

I did learn (I think) – that crosses play an important role in Mayan religion, although they prefer crosses with equal arms, as opposed to Christian crosses which have a long and short arm.

You can see the yarn being dried after being dyed at one of the houses!

PepsiCo: the leading supplier of security in Guatemala

The slope

I took this photo to indicate how steep it was - check my reflection. 

I waited forever to get a photo of this cute street cat, and it turns out it was the devil. 

Edit: So my Spanish + memory was so bad, I've mixed up my saints... apparently the following all relates to San Simon, not San Sebastian, as I'd originally written. I've fixed it now. Sorry Saint Sebastian. Apparently you're a more benevolent being than San Simon, so I'm lucky I've pissed off the right one. 

After the chapel, we went to what can be conservatively described as the weirdest shrine I have ever been to. This guy has a shrine to Saint Simon in his yard, which for 5Quetzales ($1AUD) you can have a quick look at.

Oh yeah, Simon also makes candles. 

This is it.

San Simon + backup San Simon.

Gotta have a spare.

Bizarre, no?

There are about seven Saint Simons (again, this is my translation/miscomprehension of the tour guide, and shouldn’t be taken as fact) for different regions in Guatemala, and he’s kind of a “jack of all deities/miracles” for the religious folks of Guatemala.

All the miracles

And how he works is that you have a shrine with a life-sized version of him, smoking a cigar (because granting miracles deserves cigars y’hear?), and then you bring colour candles to him, and he gives you what he wants.

And none of this Disney-style “no wishing for more wishes/no violating free will” weenie crap. It’s on for young and old. Simon’s got it. You want her to be in love with you? Red candle = done. You want him to leave you alone? *some other colour* candle = done. Simon will get it done. 

As you can see from the photos above, the shrine has two San Simons, which is apparently quite common for shrines, because you need to have a spare one. Obvi. And (this again, might be my shitty Spanish) for when you want to TAKE ONE OUT INTO THE STREET. 

That's right, folks, San Simon takes his all-miracle, no-free-will thing on the road. 

So if you see me tramping around Australia next year with two mannequins smoking cigars, lit with fairy lights and wearing aviators, you'll should definitely throw $1 my way, so that San Simon can grant you *your* miracle. 

Simon's got my back.