Chapter 27: Dessert at the Dengue Mansion

Recipe: Sublime Pie

Chapter 28: Road to Coban

It had been a year and a half since my bout with dengue . Javier had played nursemaid for much of the time and while we’d joked about his culinary skills and colour-coded meals (Orange juice, cheddar cheese, split pea soup and toast made up the orange meal while cucumbers, mounds of rapini and guacamole the green ones), much as we tried to be light-hearted, my illness had shaken both of us. Neither of us had been sick in the almost two decades since we’d met. He’d broken down and cried heaving sobs when I got the diagnosis.

“I’d never cried like that. Ever,” he said, surprised by his reaction. Capable, responsible, able to fix anything, he was caught completely unawares. He wasn’t meant to be a widow. I recovered and I took it as a sign we were meant to be together for many more years.

At the one-year anniversary, I started travelling again but focused on countries where there was no possibility of dengue. I turned down Mexico (worst dengue epidemic in ten years) and Key West (global warming meant the aedis mosquito was moving northward into Florida) and went instead to Quebec City, the Magdalen Islands, Wales, London and Germany in the dead of winter.

The trips weren’t entirely successful. I was weak and had limited ability to follow written instructions. In London, I’d wandered around lost, map in hand, for three hours between the Totenham Tube Station and the British Museum, less than 300 metres away.

But when I received an invitation to attend the Central America Travel Market from INGUAT, the official Guatemala tourism department, I responded yes without hesitation. The event was going to be held in Antigua at Casa Santo Domingo, the swankiest hotel in town. Over 200 presenters from Belize, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Panama would be participating. I couldn’t miss it.

“Aren’t you afraid of getting dengue again?” asked my girlfriends who thought I was nuts to even consider returning to Guatemala. After all, my hair had just started to grow back. The new growth looked like a halo over my head.

“Can’t you just go to Palm Springs?” asked my 79-year old mother. My sister had married an Italian and her international travels involved hand-tossing pizza dough and picnicking in olive groves not dodging military checkpoints and disease.

“I’ll avoid areas with mosquitoes,” I argued making sure I registered for the conference’s cultural tour of museums and art galleries.
My final itinerary looked nothing like what I’d signed up for. I was assigned Peten Outdoor Adventure and headed to the jungles of Tikal where I’d contracted dengue.

I kept that information to myself. I could always opt out once I arrived.

Two weeks later, standing in line at Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson airport waiting to check into my flight, doubts began to surface. I tired easily and had packed on a few pounds. Far from being a “wasting away” disease, dengue slowed down my metabolism but didn’t reduce my appetite.

Would I be able to keep up with the group? What if I got dengue again? If I did, would having only one kidney make it worse? Was I being irresponsible?

My family had been through a lot over the past year and now I was forcing them to begin worrying all over again.

More than the physical concerns and guilt, I realized that my confidence had been shaken. I had never considered I might not grow old. Now, I read the obituaries almost daily, looking at photos of people my age and wondering Had they been as surprised by their diagnosis as I had been.

During the weeks leading up to the surgery, my friends and family had thought I was brave –I’d even joked about getting a face-lift while under anaesthesia. But the reality was that I’d felt frozen – like a deer in headlights -- knowing the end was near but unable to move or alter course.

Lost in memories, by the time I got to the front of the line at the airport, I was ready to turn around and go home. What I learned next didn’t help.

“We can’t confirm your connection from El Salvador to Guatemala” said the reservation agent with a look of apology. “It’s likely that the only remaining flight of the day would also be full.”

That meant I’d be stranded in El Salvador searching for a hotel in the middle of the night.

“I’m travelling as a guest of TACA airlines,” I argued, pulling out my press credentials. The laminated photo of me, taken at a Glamour Shots photo studio 10 years earlier, never failed to impress.

I took a seat and returned to my musings while the agent investigated the options.

Many people when faced with illness come away with a determination to “live life to its fullest.” I had been living a full life before I got sick. When it came to drawing my life’s bucket list, I was already on my way. I’d visited over 40 countries, I was married to a devoted man I loved, my kids were healthy, I had a loving family in two countries, I volunteered and worked in the charitable sector.

I didn’t know if longevity ran in my family. My paternal grandmother had died in her twenties while my maternal grandmother had died of Alzheimer’s. On the other hand, Javier’s beloved Papa Nico had died at the age of 96. He’d lived life on the ranch, riding his horse out to the fields of tobacco, until he’d been bitten by a barba amarilla or fer-de- lance snake, a yellow snake known for its swift attacks. The venom had spread so fast that even amputating his arm at the shoulder wasn’t enough to stop the spread of toxins. He’d died shortly after.

“He would have lived longer if he hadn’t been bitten by that snake,” Javier often said.

How long would I live? I wondered. Live life to the fullest? What did it mean to me?

Today, I had to make a decision. Go home or continue?

I just wanted the life I had before I got sick -- and that included Guatemala.

Decision made, I approached the ticket counter. Heaving my suitcase onto the baggage scale, I took a deep breath, put my misgivings aside and handed my passport to the agent.

“I’ll go stand-by,” I said, my voice sounding more confident than I felt.

I made the connection to Guatemala City. As we boarded the plane, my rosy glow of contentment -- drawn from the wine I’d enjoyed in the VIP lounge and the relief at not having to overnight in San Salvador -- faded fast. I saw a gigantic red cockroach scurrying up the gangplank. The glossy as my Chanel lipstick, it wove its way between the feet of waiting passengers like a New Yorker in rush hour. When it arrived at the threshold of the entranceway to the plane, it paused for one brief moment as though checking for traffic and scurried onto the flight.

I hoped it wasn’t an omen for the trip.

We arrived in Guatemala City after dark, the yellow lights of the city an undulating carpet wrapping the hills and valleys. It was strange not to have family at the airport to meet me. Instead, a team of uniformed INGUAT tourism representatives hurried forward to collect our bags.

Inside my designated shuttle van, a young man in an INGUAT uniform introduced himself.

“Gracias a dios, you made it,” he said. “Your husband has called me three times already. We were worried about your connection in El Salvador.”

I was shocked. I always left behind a copy of my itinerary but Javier had never once called any of the contacts. Was he concerned because of my illnesses or because he didn’t have confidence in the Guatemalan government’s ability to organize a press trip? No matter the reason, I could see that this visit was going to be different than any of my previous trips.

I’d never been in Zona Viva in the evening, so the trip to the hotel was an opportunity to see Guatemala City as a business visitor might. Avenida Reforma, a wide leafy boulevard built in 1897 by president Justo Rufino Barrios, a president known for liberal reforms such as the public school system, separation of the Catholic church and state as well as Guatemala’s first constitution, was impressive. Inspired by the Champs Elysées in Paris, it held shadowed monuments of cultural and political figures. At its southern end stood Plaza del Obelisco, itself reminiscent of the Eiffel Tower.

I’d been assigned the Westin Camino Real, which was lit up in a golden light and evoked the grandeur of old Hollywood with its crescent-shaped 10-storey honeycombed white facade, marble columns and carpeted entranceway. Bellhops rushed to grab our suitcases as though we really were visiting movies stars.

Built in 1963, the Camino Real had been designed by Harvard-educated architect Raul Minondo Herrera, a member of the Guatemalan Modern Movement. Visionary leaders such as Roberto González Goyri and Carlos Merida visionaries transformed Guatemala’s skyline by rejecting the European colonial traditions and creating a new modern vision of murals and sculpture influenced by the work of Picasso and Diego Rivera.

As I stood in front of the hotel and took in the view, a man stepped out of the shadows and approached me hesitantly. He wore a yellow polo shirt with a company logo and looked faintly familiar. Hotel security moved forward. The stranger was Rodolfo my brother-in-law He was so out of context it had taken me a few minutes to recognize him.

I dropped my purse and gave him a big hug.

“How long have you been waiting?” I asked.

He was still in his uniform, which meant he’d come to the hotel straight from work. I did some quick calculations and figured out he’d been waiting here for at least four hours.

“Not long. I wanted to give you this,” he said, pulling a cell phone and charger out of a bag. He flipped it open and scrolled through the phone numbers. The name of every family member was listed in full and their numbers (indicating home, cell or work) shown tidily beside. I was touched by how much time had taken to program all the information.

Our reunion had taken place on the driveway and it was obvious hotel security would like us to move it inside. We stepped inside the lobby and Rodolfo pulled my suitcases to one of the seating groups. A sparkling chandelier reflected off the shiny marble floor.

It struck me that it wasn’t very dignified to open my suitcase in the middle of such a public space, but I knew Rodolfo must be tired and I didn’t want to haul the family’s gifts all through Guatemala. Gifts flying, we managed to get everything transferred into one big duffle bag and Rodolfo was on his way.

Five minutes later, I was in my room and in my pyjamas. I took one last look out the window where nightlife was swinging into action and fell quickly asleep. I slept so soundly I didn’t even hear the gun battle that took place outside my window.

“Your husband hasn’t even called me yet this morning,” joked my guide, looking at his watch. “But it’s only 7 a.m.”

A gun battle had taken place at 3 am in a nearby nightclub. Three people had been killed in an organized hit.

This had all the journalists salivating for more information but INGUAT was keeping details under wraps. A few enterprising journalists were logging into the online version of La Prensa, the national Spanish-language newspaper, where information was slowly becoming available. Others just mingled around speculating on the implications for tourists. .

Eventually our entire group congregated and I took a full poll of the participants. Given the adventure theme it was understandable that most of the participants were men. They ranged in age from their early thirties to late fifties and looked fit enough to qualify for the United States Navy SEAL special forces. There were a few women, including a young woman from Uganda who wrote for a fashion magazine and an older overweight couple from Russia. If the going got tough I’d stick with them. I was willing to bet that they couldn’t move any faster than I could.

Apart from the fashionista who was wearing 3-inch high heels, the rest of the journalists were wearing shorts, safari-style dresses and T-shirts. Not me. I was wearing a black leather jacket and thick jeans and wafting the Deep Woods Off insect repellent. Armed like someone prepared for an outbreak of biological warfare I also had two bottles of insect repellent in my camera bag plus a few spare in my purse. I wasn’t taking any chances of getting dengue.

As we drove out of town, the bus filled with murmuring. People were trying to identify which nightclub had been hit. The INGUAT representatives talked on their cell phones, looking busy. Their mandate was to promote tourism to the country not scare visitors away.

In 2007, Guatemala City had introduced TransMetro, the first bus rapid transit (BRT) system in Central America. This high tech system of Kermit-green buses, which operated on specific corridors and within mixed traffic in Guatemala City, had accomplished quite a bit in terms of reducing air pollution. In 2010, it even garnered an Americas Award from the United Nations for the contributions the transit system had made in improving the quality of life for residents and in environmental sustainability. Plans for expansion of the system were in jeopardy. Nevertheless, I had noticed real improvements in air quality in recent years.

As we wove our way through the streets of Guatemala City’s historic centre, our guide provided a running commentary of what we were seeing. I remembered Javier telling me his memories of the huge fissures in the ground and his frantic search for family members following the devastating 1976 earthquake that had killed 23,000 people. Major landslides along the highway leading to San Vicente had caused widespread destruction of Guatemala City’s adobe buildings leaving thousands homeless. The 7.5 magnitude quake had been centered northeast of the capital along what was known as the Motagua fault zone, the same name of the river that ran past our family ranch in Zacapa.