Monterrico...a weekend at the beach!

Last Friday (September 12th), I returned to Guate, recovering my passport from its hostage status in the immigration office. Sheila was already planning a trip in to pick up Dr. Strode, a Carroll chemistry professor who will be down here working on a sabbatical project for the next few weeks. The timing worked out perfectly, because it also happened to be a three day weekend. September 15th is Guatemalan Independence Day, and the whole country shuts down. The last time we’d gone into the city, Mary and I stayed with her friend Judy, a Montanan who teaches in Guate at an international school for rich kids. The night we stayed at her house, Judy invited a young woman she’d just met to come over for dinner.

The woman, Janet, is a fellow doing HIV/AIDs research for the CDC. She clearly took pity on my isolated, friend-less state, and we exchanged phone numbers and email addresses that night. To be honest, I wasn’t all that disappointed to learn that my passport wouldn’t be returned the same day I dropped it off. After meeting Janet, I was hoping that a return trip could potentially be turned into a weekend retreat with my friendly, interesting new acquaintance. Lo and behold, it turned out far better than I myself could have planned, since the whole country had a three day weekend. Janet emailed me shortly after we met, inviting me to join her and some friends on a mini vacation during those days.

So that’s how I ended up wandering around Zona Quince (the number in Spanish, not the fruit), one of Guatemala City’s upscale neighborhoods, on a beautiful Friday afternoon. After picking up Dr. Strode at the airport I was dropped off at Janet’s apartment complex. She’d left a key for me at the front desk, so I was able to take a real, hot shower and drop my things off. I continue to find the city to be a somewhat unreal experience. I was struck by how very normal Janet’s apartment is. It’s very nice – spacious, with large windows and several balconies. Aside from one very typical Guatemala painting of women in traje, there seemed to be absolutely nothing distinguishing this particular place as being in Guatemala. That seems like such a contrast to my life in Xejuyup and Santo Tomas, where it seems like almost nothing we have or do would be considered normal at home. To put it simply, Janet’s apartment made me feel as if it would be possible to live an American life in a foreign country, should one so choose.

I spent Friday night with Janet and her roommate, and then Saturday morning we loaded up the car for a trip to Montericco, a Pacific coast beach resort. Before leaving town, we picked up two of Janet’s friends, Kammie and Stephanie, who are both teachers at the same ritzy international school as Judy. Apparently, and I was totally unaware of this, there exists somewhat of a circuit of international schools all around the world. They are very expensive, multi-lingual schools which generally conduct classes in English for half of the day. There are teachers who jump all around the globe, working on one- or two-year contracts in sundry large cities all around the world – Social Studies for a year in Hong Kong, 7th Grade Math for two in Rio de Janiero, 4th Grade in Paris, World History in Cape Horn, and now a year or two of Biology for middle schoolers in Guatemala City. It seems like a great way to be a professional nomad – they get paid on an American salary scale, which is enough to live like a king in a good ¾ of the world’s countries.

The entire school had a three-day weekend, thanks to the Independence Day holiday. There were several other teachers who’d also chosen to spend their days off at Montericco, and we ended up spending most of our time as a large, very fun group. It was fantastic relaxing with other Americans for awhile, where it was easy to crack jokes that made sense, we could have analytical conversations about world politics, and all anyone really wanted to do was drink beer by the pool. I figured out rather quickly that I’m much younger than any of them – I’d guess their average age to be a decade greater than my own. However, that only was really evident when I was the only on who didn’t know the words to a Salt n’ Pepa song which was part of our hotel’s eclectic soundtrack.

The weather in Montericco is almost debilitating hot, and the ocean has a frighteningly strong undertow. In response to these two conditions, nearly every establishment boasts a swimming pool (or several.) We spent much of our time drifting between restaurants, the beach and pools. Both nights we sat lounging on the beachside for hours, playing games like Mafia until it was late enough to go dancing. In the on-the-beach clubs, we quickly learned that Montericco is more of a Guatemalan destination than a gringo hot spot. The only other Americans we met were some Peace Corps volunteers, but the place was packed with very upper class rich Guatemalans. I concocted some elaborate tales about being happily engaged or a mother or married or pregnant in order to ward off the latino machismo, although you’d be surprised how persistent they can be. They always asked why my husband/boyfriend/fiancé/baby’s daddy wasn’t there, and pointedly inquire where my ring was to prove my taken status. I only recount all of this so that I can share the level of absolute absurdity to which these schmucks took it. After very deliberately explaining to me all about his Corvette, one guy asked how much my ring cost. “However much it was,” he told me “I’ll buy one for you that’s twice as expensive.” He just looked confused when I replied “But I don’t love you,” and walked away.

In addition to dancing and drinking and swimming and eating, we were able to squeeze in a little, well, I guess you’d call it culture. Endangered Loggerhead and Leatherback turtles lay their eggs on the beach in Monterrico, and the town has a preservation center. Even though they’re endangered, the eggs are sold in large volumes in the local markets. Despite my confusion with regards to international acts protecting endangered and threatened species, locals are legally allowed to sell 80% of the eggs from a given nest. Apparently their supposed aphrodisiac qualities are more important than, oh, I don’t know, the preservation of the oceanic biosphere. Because that’s what this country full of seven-child families and little acceptance of contraceptives needs - more babies.

Luckily, this preservation center buys eggs at the going rate from locals, then incubates them and releases the hatched babies. For a price (of less than $1.50) tourists can buy a baby for the nightly “turtle race,” where everyone lines up, lets them go, and sees who reaches the sea first. Not that that’s really winning, since that’s probably the first cute little bugger to be gobbled up by a seal, but that’s beside the point. We all found the process to be somewhat morally confounding. Babies who hatch during the week spend several days swimming around in a pool, waiting for the weekend’s tourist crowd. They surely use up a fair amount of their finite energy stores, and undoubtedly spread amongst themselves whatever diseases happen to plague turtles. Additionally, “buying” a turtle sort of promotes the currently legal system of selling 80% of the eggs. If the current system is acceptable to both conservationists and turtle egg snatchers, the laws will never get changed to protect the turtles more.

On the flip side, tourists pay about 3 times more for an egg than the conservatory buys them for. All of that money goes to help further their cause, promoting conservation efforts and hopefully educating the public. Basically, it’s still supporting a good organization.

Eventually, we concluded that morally, it’s a wash. But, if we paid 10Q, we’d get to hold an adorable baby turtle for a few minutes. With that decision made, I got to spend at least fifteen precious minutes with my newly adopted Camilla before having to understand the pain of that cruel adage “If you love something, you’ve got to set it free.” She was among the last turtles to enter the sea, losing the race by several minutes. I interpreted this as a sign of intelligence: she was waiting for her siblings to satisfy the appetites of waiting predators before risking her own retractable neck. That a girl!

I feel like this post would be somewhat dishonest if I didn’t mention the fact that en route to Montericco we were in a pretty serious car accident. I don’t think I’ll go into details, since it still terrifies me to think about and I don’t want to pass on the nightmares to whoever may read this. There is no doubt whatsoever that our driver was not at fault, the other driver fled the scene without leaving so much as the glow of a brake light, and Janet’s car was totaled. Some exceptionally kind Guatemalans who’d seen the accident (fearing that the semi would trash them as badly as it had us) stopped to help. They were truly a God-send, as I was the only one of the four of us who speaks conversational Spanish and I had no idea what to do after making sure everyone was ok. Which, by the way, we all were, thanks be to God. The cops did show up, although all they did was take pictures of the gringas while waving their semiautomatic assault rifles around and shrugging their shoulders. As if there wouldn’t be significant and noticeable damage on the truck. Thanks guys – I’m glad it’s not my tax dollars paying your salary!

We did a pretty great job of taking it all in stride, and once we figured out we were stranded near Montericco the decision to stay for the weekend was unanimous. We all need to wash the glass out of our hair, and a little beach time seemed like just the right thing for our rattled minds. It all turned out alright, and we were able to disperse ourselves among the cars of the other international school teachers, so we didn’t even have to ride the chicken bus back. One more adventure for the memoirs, I guess. All in all, a great weekend, despite the rough start.