TOURISTS.

(Weekend)
This past weekend I had the chance to travel again and head to Lake Atitlan. The director of the organization’s family came from the states to visit for a week, and aside from treating us like family all week and feeding us, they gave us a free, and greatly appreciated, ride to the lake! The sight of the lake was absolutely breathtaking as we came around the mountains and descended into Panajachel. However, once we unloaded from the micro, I knew I was definitely in for an experience. One of the nice things about Comalapa is that even though we are “outsiders”, we are not hassled or ever really bothered unless we address someone and ask them for help. In tourist town, the minute you step out of a vehicle you are immediately approached and hassled by everyone to buy this and buy that. Tourists are literally walking money signs.

Lake Atitlan is literally a lake created by a collapsed volcanic dome, and is surrounded by three beautiful volcanoes. The most efficient way to travel from one town to another around the lake is by boat, so we wandered around Pana and tried to find the public dock so as not to get ripped off by the private boats. Our first night we spent in San Marcos…this place was RIDICULOUS. It was supposed to be good for swimming, and since most everyone (aside from myself of course) had the desire to swim in the lake, it seemed like the most likely first choice. This town was literally an implanted hippie paradise, and while I have nothing against hippies and paradise, this was not the Guatemala I was looking to spend time in; all there was were meditation and massage retreats and a really cool view. After a night in San Marcos, we hopped on another boat and headed to San Pedro, a town on another part of the lake. While San Pedro had a bit more going on, it was still overrun with tourists and aggressive street vendors. We watched the game (GO SPAIN!!), wandered around and met quite the array of interesting people. One night was definitely enough, and we headed back to Pana Monday morning to catch up with the family and head back to Comalapa.

Overall, while I didn’t particularly enjoy this tourist experience, it was a good learning experience, talking to people, observing people, understanding what brought them to these places. I talked to a man at La Piscina yesterday who is just there, in San Pedro, just for the sake of being there. He built a house, courted this wild woman who owns a restaurant/bar in town and is just living. We talked about how we’ve both moved a lot (his father was a diplomat), but he just decided to settle in San Pedro and see how it goes. Another guy we met was from Iowa, and he came to San Pedro just to get out of the US, have some fun and see some new culture. I had a hard time taking this guy seriously, and found myself being terribly judgmental! He was drunk, completely unaware of how loud he was, and had a far from modest appearance, to say the least. He talked about how the locals always beg, asking for money and whatnot. What has tourism done to these communities? That was the question I kept asking myself the entire weekend. Obviously this totally contrived western tourist culture exists everywhere, but I had never realized how severely it takes away from the real traditions of the region and how as tourists we are barely learning anything about these places that we claim to go for “cultural experiences.” Honestly, the only Guatemalans I saw in this entire area were the ones who were working in the service jobs. I’m sure that my sentiments were coming from having been in Comalapa for a month and a half now, where the culture and daily life is so rich and so purely Guatemalan, and where most Guatemalans seem to be so proud of everything they have, no matter how little. Are the Guatemalans working in these tourists happy with this idea of having to live their lives providing services to ungrateful extranjeros? Or is it just a means of getting by?

What we saw last weekend was not the real Guatemala – no pilas, no traditional foods, very little Spanish (even the locals knew enough English to harass you). It makes me wonder what the progression of these regions was like, how they become tourist icons. While I understand that I am essentially a tourist in this country too, I came with the understanding that I would need to humble myself to truly be able to absorb what life here is really about. I feel that as volunteers, and not just simply tourists, we are here representing something bigger than ourselves. We really are not unattached by any means, because when we come into an environment like the ones we were in this weekend and someone asks us what we are doing in the country, everything they’ve seen up until that moment is a reflection of what it means for us to be volunteers here. We are working for and with a community to meet its needs and learn, but that will not matter in the end if all someone sees is a volunteer carrying on in public and acting like a fool. Essentially, that is why I think it is so important for us to be able to get out to meet other extranjeros and see what others are doing here.