Travelogues

Una Sirena De La Fuente, Parque Central, Antigua, Guatemala

This is the second post in the Spin Cycle series. Post one is available here

Hi, I’m Ilana and I’m writing this post because Robbie is now apparently a fugitive who has vanished without a trace. For the record, I think that going into hiding was a bit extreme. Or maybe I am being unfair - he did have a gun placed under his chin, and I am more used to weapons than Robbie. Guns freak him out - apparently.

When I came across Robbie’s post on this blog, it was the first I had heard of or from Robbie in over two months. Whatever he is doing, I hope that he feels that the coast is sufficiently clear for him to resurface soon. Its probably too late for Robbie and I to meet up again - I’ve moved on, am not longer in Guatemala and write this from the banks of the Amazon in Brazil. But it would still be good to know he’s alive. So Robbie, if you are reading this - come out, come out wherever you are. I’ve missed you! And, hey while you’re at it, maybe you can tell me what the hell happened!! :-)

This is my first time traveling on my own away from home – I’m from Bat Yam, on Israel’s Mediterranean coast – and Robbie was the first person who I met in Latin America that I really connected with. About four months ago I flew from Tel Aviv to New York, where I stayed a week with cousins, before arriving in Guatemala City via North Carolina. My plane touched down at one thirty in the afternoon on a Sunday and by three pm I was unpacking in my new room in Antigua. The host family I stayed with were really kind and looked after me like I was their own daughter. I lived in Colonia El Manchen on Antigua’s North side, which was pretty close by to my Spanish school and to most things in the city. The only downside was that it gets a bit spooky at night.

I spent my first week in Antigua trying to be a good student – though I was late for class twice - and getting to know the other students in my school. In addition to the four hours a day of Spanish lessons, I went on a few trips organised by my school. For the first few days, I did my homework with a group of my fellow students at Fernando’s cafe. But then one of the guys in the group starting weirding me out a bit, so I stopped with the homework club and started studying by myself in the Parque Central.

It was in the Parque Central that I met Robbie. I had noticed him for the two days prior to actually meeting – though I don’t think he noticed me. His mind was on other things. For the first two days we each sat on the same two benches, facing each other a few metres apart. Between us were the sirenas of the park’s famously naughty fountain - mermaids squeezing jets of liquid from their proudly displayed naked breasts.

Each afternoon I would go to do my homework on one park bench and watch as Robbie sketched in an art-pad. It was the sketching that made me notice Robbie in the first place.

One of the main things I felt when I finished my two years in the army recently was a need to be creative again. I don’t want to seem negative about my time as a soldier. I loved the army and am grateful for my time there. Although a lot of my girlfriends got placed in units where their main responsibilities seemed to be to sit on their asses and get fat and lazy, I was assigned to army intelligence. My army service was difficult, I learned a lot and I helped my country.

Even though I know I owe a lot to the army, I also feel that becoming a good soldier meant I sacrificed my creativity – I didn’t even meet or hang out with creative people anymore. In some ways I think that, for all my life, other people have been telling me what to do and what to think – my parents, teachers or hamefaked (army commander). I had begun to feel that every lungful of air I breathed had been exhaled just one second before by someone else. So that’s why I needed to leave Israel, why I chose not to travel with other Israelis and why Robbie and his sketch pad seemed so interesting to me.

On the third day I saw Robbie in the Parque, my regular seat was taken so I decided to sit in the free space beside Robbie on his bench. When he saw me approach, he looked at me, gave me a great smile and said “hey.” As both a greeting and a question, it totally slayed my plans for sitting down in silence to do my homework.

Robbie quickly proved to be really charming. He’s a big guy – about 185cm, in good shape and with broad shoulders and strong arms – but he’s also really sweet and funny. Even though Robbie is a pretty talented artist, he seemed a bit embarrassed when I asked to see what he had been drawing. Most of the recent sketches were of the topless mermaids of the fountain, artistic license applied to the size of their breasts and the violence of the liquid jets exploding from their nipples. Flicking further back in the sketch pad, I noticed a recurring theme of a young woman in various poses - lying on a bed wearing a baggy t-shirt, singing with a guitar or gazing mysteriously into the distance in profile.

Robbie told me that he had learned to draw two years ago as part of a night course he took in Melbourne. Drawing was something he had started in order to take his mind off work. “I am a bit of a worko!” he told me, though he looked so chill that I find it hard to imagine him as a stressed-out workaholic. He became comically evasive when I asked about the girl in his drawings, so of course I teased him about her until he ‘fessed up some details. “Actually, they are two totally different girls - but thanks so much for not noticing the difference. Gets rid of that Rembrant complex I was developing.”

He remained studiously vague about the identity of the first girl - this time I did not push him for details, even though I was really curious - but he was funny, relaxed and self-deprecating about the story of the second girl. “She’s someone I met a few months ago, knew for only eight hours and who totally re-arranged my life. Because of her, I am now unemployed, thousands of miles from home and without a baldy notion about what to do with myself! Any suggestions?”

Robbie made me laugh. Even though I was surprised to find he was really old - 33, twelve years older than me! - he was really easy to talk to and I quickly felt that he was a man I could trust and would want to spend time with.

One of the most difficult things about being away from Israel is that I am away from my boyfriend for the first time in 3 years (I miss you Yair!). Yair has one more year left in the Army and at first I really didn’t want to start traveling without him. But he was really supportive and said he felt I really needed to start traveling now. We both felt confident that our relationship is strong enough to survive six months apart - it may even be a healthy test.

Even in Latin America, Yair feels really close to me. But not having him physically here means I have to be more careful with the male friends I meet. What I liked about Robbie was I didn’t feel I had to even tell him about Yair – a defence tactic I use with guys to prevent them hitting on me. In fact I felt so comfortable with Robbie, I totally forgot to tell him about Yair at all for over a week. Looking back, I should have told him sooner.

Robbie told me that he had been coming to the Parque every afternoon after his Spanish classes since he arrived. As the Parque is the hub around which Antigua revolves, he felt that if Katherine – the second girl in his drawings, the one who had convinced him to quit his job and come to Guatemala – was in Antigua, she would walk through the Parque sooner or later.

Robbie told me he’d been coming to the Parque’s fountain for the last three weeks, each day keeping an eye out for Katherine. Normally, information like this would make me bolt as rapidly as possible to flee a potential weirdo. But, Robbie spoke in a really matter of fact, confident and open way about what he was doing. There was no shame, concealment or desperation in his tone or body-language.

I felt I got where he was coming from - he had met someone he connected with, was invited to travel with her and knew he had messed things up. Belatedly acting on his feelings, he was now being as methodical as possible to try and find her again. Robbie seemed to have reached a point of resignation and acceptance about the reality that he had simply arrived too late. Following up one of the replies to his first blog post, Robbie had found that Katherine performed in a bar near the centre of Antigua just before he had arrived. However, no-one there had seen her since nor knew where she was now. Once again she had disappeared.

“Y’know, the funny thing now is I’m not sure it matters whether I see her again or not. Of course, I’d like to, it felt really right when we met - in a way I hadn’t felt in soooo long. But, although I was an idiot for not acting quicker, I’m glad I eventually found the stones to do something. Leaving Australia feels like I’ve saved myself from drowning. Meeting her was like being thrown a life-ring.”

We changed topics and passed the next hour guessing the life stories of the people passing us in the park - “Korean, learning Spanish, utterly unaware of what a terrible salsa dancer she is” “French couple, have come here to adopt a Guatemalan child, he’s having an affair with his secretary, she only eats lettuce” “American, volunteer in a faith project, believes God planted dinosaur fossils just to mess with our heads.” “Guatemalan, school-girl, will be pregnant and married next year, wonders when these gringos will clear out of her city and go home.”

Our people watching was terminated by the arrival of a thin, forty-something Guatemalan guy who stood a few metres away from us. He opened a Bible and started a manic rant in Spanish - I’ve no idea what he was saying but Dios was the main theme - and generally made anyone within sight of him feel uncomfortable. Grabbing his sketch pad, Robbie stood up up suddenly. “Hey, I’ve an idea” he said, before flashing a mischievous grin. “Wanna come with?”

Its getting late and I have a big day jungle trekking tomorrow, so I will finish this another time. But, by saying “yes” to Robbie, I began my best week in Guatemala. I will write about what we did and how Robbie made an enemy of a local hitman in my next post.

Chaos Of Movement On The Dancefloor - Salsa In Casa De La Musica, Havana, Cuba

This Article Is Track 05 Of Travel Soundtrack

A man, a woman and music. A simple compound that, like gunpowder, has an explosive power for creativity and catastrophe alike.

A personal goal on arriving in Latin America was to progress beyond the inexpert fumblings in Salsa, Merengue, Bachata and Cha Cha Cha that I had previously managed in Dublin and Melbourne. I nursed an optimistic belief in the improbable theory of mojo osmosis. Living on this continent would surely imbue me with more body rhythm than is natural for a pure-bred Celt to possess....

While still in Ireland, I had developed a number of ready-made excuses as to why, despite two years of dance lessons, my dance-floor performances still oscillated between the ponderously robotic and wildly epileptic with no suave middle-ground. The real reasons for my inability to look smooth and to keep time were a lack of both confidence and real world practice outside of the security of a dance class. Yet, on arriving in Latin America, I also began to suspect another subtler reason for my lack of success - I had lost any sense of real connection or understanding of my own body. Career energy had been supplied by intellectual rather than physical reserves and I had largely forgotten myself as a biological being. It was high time to re-learn that a body is more than a vehicle for transporting one's brain.

On my fifth week in Guatemala, I began lessons in Salsa. Despite the fact that none of Salsa's numerous styles and influences - amongst them, Columbian, Cuban, Puerto-Rican, New Yorican and Los Angelina - owe any real debt to Guatemala, there is a large choice of Salsa schools in Antigua. Accepting the recommendation of a number of friends I began lessons with Gloria.

Gloria is a wonderful and striking presence both on and off the dancefloor. In a country of relatively short people, Gloria's tall and elegant frame is easy to spot, even from a distance. A personality that combines strength, fun and intelligence, Gloria is an excellent teacher. And when she dances, she is visual poetry embodied.

Despite her talent as a teacher, Gloria had her work cut out with me. Her advice that I needed to "feel it" with my body was alien to my tendency to "process it" with my mind. It took a number of weeks of daily one on one lessons with Gloria before my body felt liberated enough to find its own rhythm, without first asking permission from my frontal lobe.

Gloria's greatest gift to me during the 20 or more lessons we had together was to bitch-slap me into acting like a man - "con decision". Dancing with such a talented partner can give one a totally deluded sense of one's own level of skill. To bring me back to earth, Gloria would occasionally switch mode to the wayward and physically inept - invoking memories of many of my dance partners in Dublin - to test my ability to give a firm, clear and accurate lead.

Mid-way through my lessons with Gloria, I test-drove my new moves with Helene, a French journalist with an Irish accent who I had met at my Spanish school. We went to salsa night in Sin Ventura, near Antigua's Parque Central. Though charming company, Helene made a poor job at concealing her gleeful mirth at the rictus of panic and concentration she read on my face as my lips jabbered the mantra "quick, quick, slow, quick, quick, slow." Evidently, not the cool, calm and collected vibe I was going for - I still had plenty of work to do.

However, over the next few weeks, I absorbed Gloria's instruction and my movements became stronger, more confident and expressive. This was more than just a lot of fun. I felt I was beginning to articulate something important, that my body had previously lacked the vocabulary for. Dancing is a particularly profound form of communication between a man and a woman - enabling one to discover a mutual resonance that makes words superfluous.

Despite its evident sensuality, latin dancing can in some ways be a sex-free zone. "If he's doing it right the guy doesn't have time to think about sex" as Gloria informed me. Of course, that is not to say dance is without sexual politics. When still in Ireland, I noted that Irish women had real difficulty accepting a lead from a man. Perhaps that was just because Irish woman were as genetically unsuited to latin dancing as their male compatriots like me. But I also suspected it sprung from a deep philosophical objection to yielding dominance to any man who lacks the expertise to earn the privilege. Almost to confirm this thesis, Gloria noted that the western women she teaches appear much more free when dancing with a Lain male (who probably knows what he is doing) than with their gringo male counterparts.

Something else Gloria taught me was that the politics of latin dancing are more subtle than most give credit for. "To do it well, it is really 50/50 leading. The more the woman knows, the more comfortable the guy will be. The woman will be able to improvise and to cover up the guy's mistakes." In other words, women allow men the illusion that they are making the decisions. True on and off the dance-floor.

Play Music:
Hips Don`t Lie (Shakira feat. Wycleaf Jean)

This Weeks Places:
Antigua
Guatemala

This Weeks Sleeps:
Renting A Home

This Weeks Doings:
Coffee Farms
Dance
Learning Spanish

Spin Cycle is a piece of interactive travel fiction that is set in Latin America. Initially, it begins with the character of Robbie. Robbie arrives in Guatemala at a difficult time of his life in search of someone he met in Melbourne three months ago. From this starting point, the story will evolve in part in response to the comments and contributions of visitors to this website. As part of this story Robbie will travel throughout Latin America and experience more than his fair share of the magic, wonder and heartache of this fabulous continent.

Visitors to this site are invited to make comments and suggestions about the story in reply to this post.

People can also volunteer to enter the Spin Cycle narrative as characters or friends of characters by replying directly to the posts of characters in the Story section. Potential characters can be people who have met Robbie on his travels, have information to share about the people and events that characters write about or strangers who are some way drawn to commenting on characters’ posts. The only rules when entering the narrative are:

- you cannot enter the story as a character created by someone else (unless they have given you the permission to do so)
- contributions should not be inconsistent with what has happened previously in the story (though of course two different characters can have entirely different recollections of the same events)
- events can only occur in locations in Latin America that have posts relating to them in the Travel Guide section of Fuego y Agua. Currently, there are posts in the Travel Guide about locations in Guatemala, Honduras, Cuba, Brazil and Argentina. Therefore if you want to introduce a narrative strand in Managua, you’d have to also add a factual descriptive post about Nicaragua’s capital
- all contributions are subject to editorial decision by the overall story editor (that would be me - Matt Hamilton)

The story is told in the following chapters or posts:

Post 1 - Laundering Money And Soul In Guatemala
Post 2 - Flirting With Disaster (Part One)

Struggling With The Weight Of The Cross, Semana Santa, Antigua

This is the first post of Spin Cycle. The second post is available here.

Hi I’m Robbie, I’m from Melbourne and I arrived in Guatemala four weeks ago looking for an English girl called Katherine.

It may strike you as a bit extreme for someone to trade continents, hemispheres and languages in pursuit of someone they met only once and whose surname or contact details they have never been entrusted with. Friends have gently (or brutally) pointed out that what I am doing in trying to find Katherine sounds a lot like common stalking. I disagree – there is nothing common about it. I prefer to think of it as an Intercontinental Grand Final of stalks. So yes, I do know what I am doing and how it must appear. I’m cool with it - if you give me the chance to explain a little more, maybe you will be too. Some of you may even feel you want to help me in my search.

I arrived in Antigua, a beautiful Guatemalan town of colour, smoke and magic during what I’m told is its big week of the year - Semana Santa. I initially struggled to find my bearings in a town enveloped in the incense, flowers and billowy purple robes of the procesiones that had taken over its cobbled streets. Crowds of hundred of ceremonially clad men, women and children became a swaying, musical river of humanity that rhythmically wove is magic through and between a seemingly endless series of ruined and restored churches. Caught up in this human current and with many of Antigua’s streets blocked off, I often found myself unsure of how to get back to my hostel. As I had yet to begin learning Spanish, I also couldn’t find the words to ask for help. My head was spinning from the profoundest culture shock – just three days before I had been taking a leisurely farewell walk from Fed Square to my home just off Lygon Street in Melbourne. Now it seemed I had entered a different world. I was confused, disoriented and over-stimulated. But I felt excited and alive again – buzzing on a feeling that coming here had been the right decision.

However, the exuberance of Antigua during Semana Santa is at odds with the misery and suffering of the week’s central character. When I first saw one of the (far too numerous to count) representations of Jesus with his Cross that are carried on the shoulders of boys and men throughout Antigua, I felt my growing euphoria briefly fade as I remembered my reasons for coming to Latin America. I looked upon the forlorn, abandoned and soon to be crucified Christ and thought “I know how you feel mate. You poor bastard.”

Read more »

Guest Blogger Luke Oldfield Writes About Life In Antigua, Guatemala

The strangest thing about being an expatriate in Guatemala is the feeling of belonging here.

“So how did you end up here?” is a question I am all too familiar with from working in a bar. Many people also ask whether I was just passing through Antigua Guatemala and fell in love with the place and ended up staying. Six months ago I would have said that it was nothing as romantic as that, but actually part of my university degree program (Spanish and Linguistics at Edinburgh University). Ten months down the line, my story has changed a little.

I am not the kind of guy to make solid plans. And if I do make plans I rarely stick to them. The plan was to go to Antigua and find a volunteer job for four months which would count towards my degree. I traveled down from Mexico City with some friends at the beginning of June 2007 for ten days and checked into a hostel in Antigua. They departed a few days later leaving me with a sense of “what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here?” I could not have imagined that everything would fall into place perfectly within just a few weeks. I secured a room in an amazing house, a great volunteer job and a few shifts a week in my favourite bar. In fact, as you may already have guessed I did in fact fall in love with the place. Change of plan. I extended my stay to twelve months.

The main reason I decided to stay is because of a bar. No, I am not an alcoholic. Café No Se is described in the Lonely Planet Guatemala guide book as “advertising uncomfortable seats, confused staff and battered books”. Ramshackle, downbeat and bohemian are words that spring to mind to describe it. I ended up working there after they set my shirt on fire and gave me third degree burns on my left foot leaving me and crippled for weeks. Yes, its that good. The best thing about No Se is the community vibe. Regulars, expats and locals come there almost every night. I lived across the street from the bar and one thing let to another. I was an addict within a week and became part of the No Se community.

Antigua is beautiful. Lined with cobbled streets and littered with ruined buildings from the 1773 earthquake. Imagine waking up every morning and going out onto a terrace with a view of 3 huge volcanoes under blue skies. I look at Volcán Acatenango and think about the incredible hike up to the summit (4000m) where I played guitar at sunset and camped out.

Antigua is a small town. I arrived here as a backpacker with no friends and only a vague idea of what I was doing. After working at Café No Se for six months and playing my own nights of music around town people know me. I am Luke. My romance with Guatemala and Antigua will come to an end in a few months. I have had an incredible experience and hope to come back some day.

I know I will be back some day.