Quien es Mas Guapo?
© Cheryle Easter
by Char Easter
12-27-02, Panajachel
WINE TASTING WARS
On the waterfront, there is a league of 8-year old maitre des competing for patrons. I just watched a kid lead a couple into his restaurant like a sheep dog. Parents send the children out for the hard sell and any indecision on your part is their cue. Having never learned to decline graciously, the army of boys in suits and bow ties approached. Changing our defensive position to offensive – we staged a wine tasting war.
Pitting three competing restaurant representatives against each other, the goal was to prove who has the best wine. As we assumed our neutral position on the street, they fetched us samples and we made our selection. The boys were good sports and seemed to appreciate the diversion.
photo by cheryle easter
Budget per day: 250 Q ($40)
We are leaving Panajachel on a public ferry to Santiago de Atitlán. Volcanoes loom around us, large and silent. But the spell of the natural beauty ends as our boat pulls up to the dock at Santiago de Atitlán.
From Cheryle’s diary:
“Santiago de Atitlán left us gravely concerned for a culture affected by the impact of tourism. Our desire to visit indigenous people, in the end, has exploited and destroyed what attracted us there in the first place. Boatloads of tourists are brought to the village and hundreds of booths cluster the pathways with souvenirs galore. The entry to the town is polluted. The filth and poverty mortified us as we were accosted in all directions. Young children managed to bribe me out of all but one of my pens, all my change, and several Polaroid snapshots. We barely escaped with our shoes and clothes.”
Two girls, who have been hitting us up at a feverish pitch, are silenced as they watch Cheryle paint on a Polaroid. They implore us to follow them to a religious ritual/performance. Right now, it’s hard to trust even an adorable 6-year old. We turn down the offer.
“I guess I just wasn’t in the mood today,” Cheryle said as our boat chugs away. We cruise past the outskirts where large houses can be seen on the distant shoreline. It’s an affluent side of Santiago de Atitlán behind the ragged gateway of out turned hands. A young couple from San Salvador is sitting across the deck. They seem in love. The boy driving the boat has a decent gig. I compare it to my job. His CD/radio/cassette player is blaring music through a wood-framed stereo speaker. He’s holding a nautical steering wheel and is perched on a white metal swivel seat.
Cheryle has stopped taking photographs so she can write postcards to her children. The smaller private boats are speeding past our lumbering public ferry. But the view is great, the air is clean, and the sun is out. I’m trying to convince a little boy to draw in my book, but he’s too shy. He is dressed in jeans and a polo shirt and he’s not trying to sell me something.
As we near the shore, we can see three vacant high-rise hotels. J&G had mentioned that these hotels went bankrupt before completion. Maybe the story involves the war.
That night over dinner, we asked J&G why bracelets, necklaces, and canvas hats looked massed produced. Were factories in Guatemala City mass-producing the products? They defended the originality of the work explaining that each pattern represented a village tradition and that the wares were handmade by the families.
Our restaurant table faces the boardwalk. A vendor wanders in and I brace myself to refuse her. In the end I buy her woven belts because she took the initiative to demonstrate the unlimited fashion configurations a brightly colored belt can manifest. She wrapped it around Cheryle’s head, me acting as a stylist. By the time I get home, I will possess an arsenal of accessory ideas and a few sales techniques. So much for the “No means no” mother drilled into my brain. “No” is the just a few ploys away from “Yes.” I’ve noticed if I walk away uninterested, how quickly a price can drop.
My tape deck got wet and it doesn’t work. Hopefully, it will dry and be okay. Cheryle has left to take photos. The restaurant’s door guy, Noe, is chatting me up, wanting to know my age and marital status. He looks 22 or less. The tablecloth here is nice – a patterned, thick, woven fabric. I wonder if they change and wash it after each customer.
QUIEN ES MAS GUAPO?
That night, bored with the wandering tourist routine, we staged yet another contest with the maitre des down by the waterfront. This time the theme was, “Who is most handsome? We are so bad. But there were so many willing contestants ready to compete in this TV-level drama. Enlisting two women off the street to be judges, the contest kicked off. The contestants put on their best faces, going between being embarrassed and jostling for a top dog position. It was a tough decision so an all-contestant tie was called. The reward was a portrait. It was getting dark so we used makeshift lighting gear as the winners posed for their photographs.
