Chapter 29: Blood Woman and Chocolate

Chapter 29: Blood Woman and Chocolate

The press tour bus - packed with 25 journalists including a film crew from Taiwan and a TV personality from Miami - was flanked by a police escort and a convoy of security vehicles in constant contact with each other - and the army - by radio. Traffic blockages were quickly cleared with a few rounds of flashing red lights.

As if that wasn't enough security, I was in constant contact with Lorena, my s designated handler . So far, I'd called several family members by mistake when my purse got squashed and accidentally dialed their numbers. No-one seemed to mind and they were all pretty impressed with my conga line of police escorts.

"It's like you're el presidente," said Lorena.

Following the same route we took to San Vicente, we drove Highway 9 from Guatemala City to El Rancho Junction, where I was looking forward to making a roadside stop at the dusty but colourful market scene. When with the family, Thelma would choose a pineapple from one of the vendors, pull a knife and cutting board out of a box she’d packed for the purpose and we’d eat big slices of pineapple, with the sweet juice running down our chins into the dirt. Other times we’d stock up on bags of roasted cashews harvested from nearby trees, where their broad dark green branches spread across the plain.

I almost cried in disappointment when, instead of stopping at El Rancho Junction, the tourist bus turned north along Highway 17 and stopped at a gas station convenience store. It had clean bathrooms but there was nothing to eat except bags of potato chips and coca cola.

We also drove right past the Biotopo de Quetzal nature reserve and Posada Montaña de Quetzal, the cloud forest lodge where Thelma, Javier and I had stayed when hunting for blue jade. I could almost see a bowl of Kack-ik soup through the restaurant windows.

Then we got lost in the fog in Cobán, the misty coffee town in the highlands that was our destination for the night. By the time we checked in, we’d spent 13 hours on the bus and had seen nothing but each other.

I fell asleep thinking that the journalists hadn’t seen anything of real Guatemala at all. Like someone who’s thrown a party and the food is disappointing, I felt somehow responsible for everything falling short. I even began wondering if there was anything I could do about it.
Coban, is a misty, ghostly town. Its white stucco buildings rise out of tangled vines that creep from gullies and across roads. The rich soil from the surrounding cloud forests is a fluid orange and supports a thriving coffee industry. Founded by Dominican friars in 1538 and sitting at an altitude of 4,000 feet, the town serves as the social and commercial hub for surrounding Q’eqchi Mayan communities.

Over a meager breakfast with instant coffee and powdered creamer – a real shame considering we were in coffee country- there was plenty of beefing from journalists who weren't too impressed with the prospect of another 13 hours on the bus. I mentioned in passing to one of the more vocal journalists that there was an atmospheric church El Calivario nearby, a popular pilgrimage site, where Mayan shrines and sometimes ceremonies often took place.

“Drop me off there,” said the Croatian, hauling his camera out to the bus, angry. He’d brought all his equipment to Guatemala to take photo and so far we hadn’t stopped in one place long enough to set up his equipment. With the entire bus echoing his opinion, a small cheer sounded when we were parked at the foot of El Calivario.

I’m not Catholic so, as I climbed the white steps leading upward, I asked a local the meaning of the shrines located at each bend along the way.

One boy, a student of law who said he found the stairs a quiet place to study, explained, "Each shrine represents the seven stages of the cross - Jesus is condemned to death, Jesus is mocked, Jesus speaks to women and children, Jesus accepts the cross, Jesus is stripped for death, Jesus is crucified and Jesus is buried."

The shrine was a curious mix of Mayan offerings. Wax had been melted in half moons and held feathers which circled an arch blackened by smoke. Inside the altar were cigars, coins, pictures, food offerings, even M & Ms positioned carefully and stuck in soft wax around a circle of charred material. Slim candles, yellow for health, were propped up by an iron cross and burned steadily.

Lost in reverie, I was startled by a sound overhead. It was just three pigeons leaving their roosts in the roof of the church but it seemed loud as I’d climbed far above the town s street noise. My hand grasped hold of a monkey’s head, part of the crumbling railing, and I noticed a clearing in the woods. It was a gravesite and among the headstone are more blackened offerings and altars.

A man and his elderly mother were pouring a deep brackish red liquid. They turned, their back facing me, so I can see nothing further. Inside the church, I gazed at the Black Christ his face a rich oak colour and I was reminded that his sacrifice and suffering are perhaps a symbol of their own suffering under Spanish hands and then their own government’s army.

Realizing the rest of the group is nowhere to be seen, I headed back down empty stairs toward town. In the mercado, barefoot women sold copal incense, chiles and carrots the size of my forearm. The carrots were a brilliant scrubbed orange, like liquid amber, while the chiles were a fine burnished red powder with a lingering smoky, bite. Nearby, our media tour security detail was hamming it up for the Croatian photographer. I realize how much things had changed. Twenty years ago, a person in uniform was to be avoided. There was no eye contact let alone the easy banter I was seeing today. It was a completely different atmosphere than the ominous vibe of the 1990s.

Hoping to get a photo that would capture this change and that I could send to Javier, I mugged for my own photo with the police. They struck poses, puffing their chests out to look more macho and moving their guns to the front of their bodies Pancho Villa style.

Lanquin Cave, a rock formation in Alta Verapaz, known for its turquoise underground river, was a surprise. I had expected something like the manicured Black Hills of South Dakota where cave admission came with a flashlight, a tour guide, colour-coded maps and a souvenir shop. In Guatemala, exploring this deep limestone cavern meant scrambling over wet rocks and dodging stalagtites and stalagmites through virtual darkness.

It didn’t take long for me to get spooked. In Mayan mythology caves are the openings to Xibalba the subterranean home of the deities of hell. The streams, pools and sinkholes trap the unsuspecting and drag the living into a watery world where they wander for years amid burning bones, dark beetles and rivers of pus.

I was separated from the group within minutes. Many of the others had silently given up and returned to the bus and was soon feeling my way through the dark accompanied only by a grim Russian journalist and an Italian in fine leather loafers.

When I took a wrong turn and ended up alone in the cave’s innards I was ashamed to find myself begin shouting “Nyet” the only Russian word I knew in the hope that the Russian would come to my rescue. He didn’t.

My hands were bleeding and I’d broken several fingernails scrambling to get a handhold on the slippery rocks. With my night vision problems, my slow progress meant I was feeling my way with baby steps in the dark as though blindfolded.

“This wasn’t a very good idea,” I muttered, close to tears. Thinking it would be just a quick jaunt along a well-marked trail, I carried a Gucci purse, a heavy camera bag and a dictionary. Whenever I missed my footing and slipped down a rocky ledge with a jolt, my bags would swing off my shoulder and whack me in the head.

My face was so slippery with sweat I was in danger of losing my glasses. Far from being cool, this cave was hot and humid. It fit the description from Mayan mythology of fetid decay. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the wide yawning mouth to the underworld at any moment.

Thinking I had gone more than half the distance through the cave I thought if I could just catch up with the group and find the exit my ordeal would be over.

Finally I saw a light. It flickered back and forth behind boulders. Then I could hear voices.

Thank God, it’s the exit I thought.

Instead of the red exit sign, there was just two of the guides and one of the younger male journalists.

“Where’s the exit?” I asked, not even bothering to choke out the niceties of hello.

“It’s back the way you came,” said the guide with a look implying I was either stupid or confused.

Which I surely was. Reality dawned upon me. Of course there was no exit at the end of the cave. It wasn’t a Disneyland ride like It’s a Small World where visitors emerged delighted from the other end. A real cave was simply a big hole in a mountain. There was no exit. I’d have to turn around and go back the way I came.

“Come look at El Madre (The Mother),” said the guide, pointing to a big stalagmite believed to have birthed the cave itself. The height of a oak tree and the width of a Volkswagen, it glowed like onyx from the water dripping down its sides. It reminded me of the slimy creature Sigourney had done battle with in Alien.

“More like Motherfu***er,” I muttered to myself, mad at her, myself and the guides for not warning us how difficult the cave would be.

I looked out into the endless expanse of darkness and wondered if there was any possibility I could be carried out on a stretcher. I thought back to the entrance booth where an old guy in flip flops had been taking money and decided that wasn’t an option. Just then I saw the grim Russian stumbling up the trail, stumbling over rocks and grabbing for handholds along the wall. I must have passed him in the darkness without noticing. Perhaps he had been more lost than I was. He certainly looked in worse shape.

He couldn’t speak and was almost crawling his way towards the light. His shirt was drenched with sweat, his dress pants covered in mud and his eyes had a glazed look.

“Dios, he’s going to have a heart attack,” said the guide rushing forward. They opened his shirt and poured water down his throat. After some discussion, they decided to link arms and support the Russian between them for the return trip.

With a boost of adrenaline out of the fear of being left behind, I scurried ahead of the group and began heading back they way we’d come. That way, I figured, if I had an accident they’d come across me on the trail.

The cave sloped downhill to the entrance and I devised a move which involved sliding down rocks on my butt. My leather jacket provided protection and once it became wet it was like being on water slide. I could hear bats squeaking overhead but didn’t even look to see how much of guano was smeared on my Gucci.

An hour and a half later I stumbled from the mouth of the cave, feeling like a modern day version of Xquic or Blood Woman, a maiden from Mayan mythology. Sentenced to death by her father Blood Gatherer, she managed to escape to the surface of the earth by convincing the death messenger owls to present a handful of red sap from the croton tree in substitution for her heart.

Not only was I was covered in sweat and mud, blood dripped from my scrapes and from the insect bites covering my face. I hoped none of the bites were from dengue-carrying mosquitoes. Dengue’s incubation period for is 3 – 5 days I wouldn’t know the consequences for several days.

Until then I could only worry.

The next day, I was both worried and fascinated by the opportunity to explore the even larger caves within Candelaria Caves National Park north of Coban. The cave system, the largest in Guatemala, stretches for 32 kilometres and is formed of seven separate caves connected by an underground river.

The cave tourism project was run by a local Q'eqchi' Maya community, who offered tours of the caves by water, where visitors float by inner tube along the Río Candelaria underground. My legs were aching, my clothes were still covered with mud and I was worried that given the recent flooding due to heavy rains, I'd lose my glasses or my flashlight and never find my way out.

I decided to stay behind while the rest of the group headed inside. Fortunately, the cave's ticket office sold Gallo beer and before long, a small crowd had gathered - drawn in part by the unexpected sight of a middle-aged gringa with a briefcase drinking a beer in the middle of the day.
Time passed slowly in the heat. First I chatted with the few ladies who weren't doing laundry and then I bought some of their Chocolate Campesino, harvested from 100% organic cacao and considered by the ancients to have hallucinogenic and aphrodisiac qualities, chocolate was revered, along with gold, maize and honey for centuries. The Mayan glyph for ka-ka-wa on artifacts unearthed in archeological digs and Cortes and the conquistadors prized it highly during the conquest of Mexico.

According to the women of Candelaria, the cultivation and preparation of cacao hasn’t changed much from how it was prepared in the 16th century. The beans from the dried pods were roasted until the shells could be removed. Then they were rolled and crushed, sifted to remove the chaff and then ground into a paste which is dried and then wrapped. (What about fermentation?) The squares, cubes or disks are then stored for home use to sold in the market. The package of cacao I bought was a pale mocha square, quite fragrant but easy to crumble.

After we exhausted our discussion of cacao, I wandered into the rainforest to see the community’s cacao trees, their dark green leaves and feathery underbellies, delicate in the shade until the insects drove me back out into the sunshine.
Then I took my camera out. Although in other areas of Guatemala and Mexico, you risk your life by taking a photo without permission ( a topic I wrote about for Vancouver’s Georgia Straight magazine), in Candelaria, the sight of a camera served much like a casting call for America 's Next Top Model.

Kids began jockeying for photo-ops. A handsome beagle climbed up on my lap. Even the shy abuelas (grandmas) came over to strike a pose. I was the new Tyra Banks.

I took photos of each of the children on their own, in groups, with their abuelas, I even took pictures of the dogs. Then I set them up as an automatic slideshow on my laptop so the kids could watch themselves in a never-ending loop of entertainment. They clamored for more photos and even more kids emerged from houses up and down the nearby highway with hopes to become part of the show. They didn’t ascribe to the belief, as in other parts of the Mayan world, that each photo stole a piece of their soul.
At least there didn’t seem to be any suspicion that I was planning to kidnap any of the children. In parts of Guatemala, foreigners had been targeted by vigilante groups who suspected them of stealing children for adoption or for murdering them to harvest their organs. A mob had murdered June Weinstock, an American environmental activist from Alaska, in San Cristobal Verapaz, just south of Coban. She had been photographing children in the town during Holy Week and when a little boy went missing a crowd set their targets on Weinstock and had hunted her down, smashing down a door in the county court building. They stripped, stoned and stabbed her and then left her for dead. Although the incident happened over a decade ago, even today rumours of gringa kidnappers persist and the US State department still has warnings advising foreigners against photographing children on its website.

Things can turn ugly fast in Guatemala. I put the camera away and distracted my Top Model contestants with leftover cookies.

Instead of being pursued by a mob, I was invited to participate in a Mayan ceremony to be held inside a nearby sacred cave. I sprayed myself with Off and the kids and I were soon in single file behind Senor Candelaria or el anciano, the community's shaman, following his footsteps through the rainforest. We passed the cacao trees, squeezed through rock crevasses and then slipped down several sets of rough hewn wooden stairs until we entered the yawning mouth of a cave. Soaring two stories high, its interior radiated blackness. Squeaking of bats echoed off the walls.

Wooden benches circled a fire pit at the centre of the cave. The shaman shuffled to the firepit to prepare an offering to the gods. The air was thick with the sweet smell of copal incense as the shaman lit four candles representing the elements and a fifth for the selva or jungle, and began the ceremony.

“Help these travelers on their journey,” said Senor Anciano. I got the feeling he was talking about something broader than travel. Life itself perhaps.

I paused at the conclusion of the ceremony and lingered in the cave after the journalists and locals filed out. I want some alone time with the darkness. A few small children stayed behind, horsing around on the rocks.

An hour or more later, I emerged out of the cave and back into the light - transformed by my journey into Mayan lore, legend and spiritual belief. As I journeyed further into Guatemala I journeyed into myself, gathering new knowledge and experiences. The previous day, I’d been thinking about myth of Blood Woman, the virgin daughter of one of the Lords of Xibalba, and had seen only the story’s darkness.

Blood Woman was much like the Christian Virgin Mary. A skull spat on her hand and she became pregnant through immaculate conception and gave birth to the Hero Twins, who defeated the Lords of the Underworld. The temple they constructed caused the Tree of the World to erupt from the bowels of Xibalba, pushing the sky upward and creating the world between heaven and hell.

I felt alive, as though I’d tapped into something new. The creation myth and its belief that light and darkness were each an important part of one beautiful whole, described Guatemala itself. The images reminded me of the Guatemalan national anthem.

Fortune Guatemala, may your altar

Never be trampled by the tormentor

Nor should slaves lick the yoke

Nor should tyrants spit in your face

If tomorrow your sacred soil

The Guatemalan national anthem rates as one of the most bloody anthems ever written, but symbolizes the fortitude and the resilience of Guatemala. The beauty -- and the blood. All of it, wrapped up in one song. It also described Javier – his struggles and successes. Our relationship and its challenges.

Recipe: Mayan hot chocolate

It’s possible to purchase Mayan chocolate at specialty shops where it comes in blocks the size of an iPod. Because the ground coca is mixed with coarse local sugar, the chocolate is gritty in texture not smooth. Abuela brand Mexican chocolate is a close substitute but is chalkier in texture and has added cinnamon which imparts a different but still pleasing flavour. The key to making a great cup of hot chocolate is to whip the cocoa to a froth with a molinillo or whisk

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