Guatemala Communiques 1998

Non-cloudforest

Our camp here at St Tomas Padouj is situated on the ruins of an old coffee plantation. A tin roof has been built over the only remaining room with a floor. When our host brought us in his workers spread a layer of pine needles over the old concrete giving us a soft aromatic carpeting. The original foundation for the walls still remains about 2 1/2 feet tall and 1 1/2 feet thick; they serve as table surface for the lab and storage space for our gear. In other words there are no walls to keep out rain or flies. If the rain were to blow only slightly off vertical we would be sleeping and working in a swimming pool. The black flies go most anywhere they want and they want my legs

The land around our shelter has been turned back to coffee. Although some of the larger native trees still remain the slopping terrain around camp is mostly covered with coffee trees. Our host assures us that this area produces some of the highest quality of "shade coffee" certified by the national coffee producers. On a small rise immediately above is a cistern (repeil) approximately 10 feet square and 2 feet deep that serves as reservoir for our drinking, washing, and bathing water. An outhouse and shower have been added about 100 yards down toward the river. The surrounding land is on the surface lush and beautiful but when you dig a little beneath it's dangerous. Below camp the river runs along the major fault line that crosses Guatemala. The other side of the river is an impressive massive uplift perhaps 2000 feet tall. A major earthquake the year before killed about 60 people in the small village just over the mountain. The same village the workers working around us come from. The river itself is an ugly flash flood-driven drainage path littered with boulders and brush. The water rushes by generating a great volume of noise for so little substance. A steep trail leads down below camp to the river, while the cloud forest mountains loom above camp.

Yesterday in a fit of temporary insanity brought on by our overcrowed conditions I decided to climb to the summit of what appeared to be the tallest mountain behind our shelter. With a pint of water and a tin of vienna sausage for nourishment I began my assault on the summit about 9:30 AM. I chose a path leading through several coffee fields to a razor back ridge that I hoped would provide a path up the mountain. Large very old tree stumps were all that remained of whatever path may have existed in the original finca's heyday. Often near impenetrable, the secondary growth forest was littered with bramble, vines, and cane (it seemed most unusual growth for a cloud forest). The amount of effort it took to hack my way through the under growth stressed my physical limits. Joe's machete was as dull as the snake stick. At times it took both stick and machete to separate the brush enough for me to work my way through. Along the way the ridge was often only about two feet wide. The soil on either side sloped away precipitously, so loose that it was like stepping into quicksand. Once, approaching a fairly large tree, I heard a swarm of bees. They were small black bees and were massed on the ground beside the tree. My only way by them was to hug the tree and step over the little buzz saw. Luckily I didn't disturb them. There would have been no place to go.

Along the way I stopped to turn over every old log and rock, looking for animals. Although there were millipedes and scorpions no reptiles or amphibians showed up. I shredded every old rotten log looking for salamanders and occasionally laid under the brambles and looked up through the twisted vines searching for bicolor vipers or other tree snakes. Time lost its sequence as my attention became divided. The focus needed to look for potentially deadly snakes along with the gentle "sleeping children" made me lose track of how long I had been on the trail or how far back was the narrow ridge where the swarm of bees were. Somewhere below the summit I realized I was out of my element and had lost track of time. The entire experience was taking on some surreal overtones.

Hoping to find some human-scale path, or that the cloud forest canopy would provide some more open areas, I literally pressed on. At times the only way up was to crawl on small animal trails through the most thick of areas, still trying to negotiate my way on a thin edge that dropped off into soft slippery soil down steep slopes. As I reached a point where I could see the summit I was forced to give up hope of finding some mythical open cloud forest. It just was not there not on this mountain. There would be no lush moist cloud forest potentially full of animals to collect. So I began to hope for some other way back, perhaps some wide machete-cleared workers' path leading down through coffee fields to the road that would lead to the safety of camp. Still I held hopes of finding some animals -- after all we were here to collect, and I wanted to do my part.

Although I had given up hope of reaching the mythical cloud forest I was determined to reach the top...not just quit and turn back. The last 40 yards or so were almost straight up. As the razor's edge had rounded some I chose a path that offered a combination of rock, soil, and trees as footholds and grips. At one point my rock foothold gave way. As I fell back, I caught hold of and clung to a tree. The rock I had dislodged crashed down out of sight through the cane and vines, audible for several minutes as it crashed through rocks and brush and I presume over some unseen bluff. It eventually ended up in a faint clatter on the rocks far below. Pulling myself up hand-over-hand, I found a secure place to regain my composure. I leaned back on a solid tree and found a 6 foot long series of orchid tubers stair-stepping around the tree in front of me. They culminated in one tuber containing 2 blossoms one yellow/orange, the other white. I had to look and see what other differences they might possess. Except for their color, they were identical, not big and elaborate but small and delicate. Their beauty stopped me. Their delicatness refreshed me.

It didn't take me but a few minutes more to reach the summit. There arranged (as if by some master Japanese gardener's hand) in an open space amid a cluster of cane breaks were two gray boulders just the size to sit on. I sat on the closer one and examined the other. The few small ferns that grew from a crevice near its top asked for and received contemplation. I sat for a few minutes or a few hours and considered my surroundings. The amazement of finding a natural oriental garden in this nearly impenetrable non-cloud forest was broken by the realization that with my snake stick I had unconsciously dug up a small tree growing from the base of the fern boulder. In my mind's eye it didn't belong there. The choice to destroy was not a thought-out conscious decision but a subconscious impulse to control the environment. Without thinking about my actions I had imposed some aesthetic control over this beautifully odd little piece of nature. My actions shocked me, but then we revere the Japanese rock gardens, and they are recreations of nature controlled by a master's hand.

The clouds had blown in; all was gray. Having lost track of time and not wanting to take a chance of getting lost trying to find some new way back, I headed down the same path with an empty collecting bag. At one point coming down I literally slipped over the edge. I had lost the trail and stepped into some loose soil that gave way, starting a slow slide down the mountain side near the place where the rock had earlier gone over the edge. With my snake stick I caught a small tree that stopped the downward slide. It took the next 45 minutes and all my strength to work my way back up to the trail. Exhaustion and frustration had taken their toll. I stopped and considered spending the night on the mountain. There certainly should have been no danger from snakes; I hadn't been able to find one all day. But I was out of food and water, didn't want to concern my companions, and needed protection from the black flies and mosquitoes. I also wanted to share the experience of the mountaintop Japanese rock garden with my wife. The trip down certainly was not easy but from that point it was relatively uneventful. When I reached the first of the coffee fields I chose to find the workers' trail out. It lead down to the road perhaps a mile above camp.

Form there the walk was easy, but I wasn't. All that time and effort and nothing to show for it. I could have told my companions of the boulders and Japanese garden, but how could they have understood? Being there was the experience. No matter how hard I try to explain, this is not the experience but a description of the experience. Better this way, thought out and put down in words, than discussed over an open fire, roasted in its sensitivity. In the road where one of the workers had thrown out a mango pit was a blue morpho butterfly who had stopped to eat and in turn become a meal for the fire ants. I tried to pick him up to shake off the ants but it was too late. The ants swarmed up on me. My better judgment prevailed, I left the butterfly to feed the ants. When I looked up only another 20 or 30 feet on down the road a snake lay dead in the road. The tractor that had ferried workers and materials out only a short time before had broken its neck. I gently picked it up with my snake stick to avoid the fire ants. Placed it in a collecting bag and returned to camp with a new record of an animal from this area.....a gift of experience.

Sleeping Children

I have a special interest in salamanders. They appear so seldom in the Dallas area that they have been a rarity in my experience. Salamanders, like most other amphibians, are thin-skinned. Many breathe to some degree through their skin, while some species are lung-less and absorb oxygen through their skin and tongues. This precarious condition of having their lungs on the outside of their bodies makes them potentially more vulnerable to changes in the atmosphere, water conditions or soil. They are being touted as the natural monitors of the environment. ``Doomsday,'' ``Salamander populations down 50%,'' and ``Disaster'' have been catch phrases in hobbyist publications and on the internet over the past couple of years. The group of herpetologists I am traveling with claim that, except where habitat has been destroyed, there is little evidence of change in the salamander population.

The common name for salamanders down here is ninos dormidos (sleeping children). A beautiful allusion to their vulnerable character. Big-eyed and slow-moving, salamanders are often found sleeping under logs or in bromeliads during the day. On cool rainy nights they crawl out from their seclusion and rest on banana or other broad, smooth leaves. When you find them temporarily blinded by the light of your flashlight in the middle of the night, they appear to be out sleeping on a leaf in the rain. The common mythology here is that salamanders, ninos dormidos, will crawl into the mouths of the children during their sleep and kill them.

Topacoula

We collected several caecilians back at Finca San Ignacio. This unusual and strange legless amphibian lives beneath the leaf litter in shallow moist soil. They look like a cross between an earthworm and a snake. Jon knew they should be in the area and, as this was probably the only area where we would be able to find them this summer, he offered a high price to the local workers for them. The bounty paid off, and we were soon overrun with them.

The common name in Guatemala for the caecilian is topacoula. As Jon was talking with the workers, a noticeable underlying sense of childlike humor rippled through the conversations. Turns out that a myth exists. The topacoula is claimed to have the ability to jump out of the soil at the most inappropriate of times. As a person stops in the woods to relieve himself, the topacoula jumps. Topacoula means butt-hole-plugger.

Children Enigma

The children of Guatemala have been an enigma for me. The dichotomy of their often dirty faces and squalid environment and their amazingly happy disposition is striking. Every place we have been, there have been children all around us. Not crowding us, often a little scared of the gringos, but we were living and working around the working-class people, and they have lots of children. The average Indian family has 11 children and the survival rate is now over 80%. So children are literally everywhere and we almost never heard a child cry. I honestly believe I can remember every time I heard a child cry on this entire trip. That was six times. Two were in Todo Santos on market day; both were exhausted and throwing fits. The other four were spread out at different locations, and I think most of the children were probably sick. You know how the cry is different when a child hurts. The sounds of children playing were always there from mid/early morning to shortly after dark. In some ways this is probably a good way and place for kids to grow up. Mothers or siblings almost always had the babies in cloth slings on their backs. The physical contact between mother and child is not broken until the next baby takes over and the older child is passed to the back of the oldest female sibling or relative. Babies up to 3 or so were always being held. The experience of the womb extends past birth into childhood.

Asian woman from California

We were advised not to have too much direct contact with children along the way. There is a myth, based on some fact, that gringos will steal children for their body parts. It seems that some "Asian woman from California" was caught down here buying and/or stealing children to sell their transplantable body parts to hospitals back home (whereever that might be). So the legend goes. Anyway, sometimes the fear of the gringos was obvious, but more often their curiosity and rather shy sense of playfulness took over when we were around them for any length of time.

Recently some gringo woman's innocent, playful encouragement to some Guatemalan children was misunderstood. She was beaten to death. So, whenever we encountered children, we kept a respectful distance.

El Yeti Tropical

Guatemalan newspapers have reported mass slayings as the work of the tropical yeti. Neighbors of the slain people claimed to have seen tall, dark and hairy animals in the vicinity. Pictures of the slashed and hacked-up bodies appeared in the papers. The wounds look strangely like machete wounds.

Guatemalan military goon squads, the kaibiles, wore all black. I wonder if there is some link.

Big Foot

Sinquala, Guatemala lays claim to "big foot." On previous collecting trips both Jon and Joe claim to have seen the mythical character as they drove through town. The sightings caused great anticipation among our crew. But on both trips we made through town, he escaped our observation. Certainly not by lack of effort on our part. Although we did not drive off the main thoroughfare through town, all six of us scanned the streets, alleys, and parks. But to no avail; he just was not out. He remains a myth to me.

On previous trips through Sinquala Jon and Joe claim to have almost driven off the road when they saw the boy with the big feet.

Jon tells us that on an earlier trip to Mexico in Tijauna he saw a news report on television that included the boy with the big feet. It seems the boy had come to Tijauna for medical help to reduce the size of his enormous feet. The TV interviewer first interviewed the boy and then his doctor. When asked if he could reduce the size of the boy's big feet the doctor responded, "of course, but he will never walk again."