New Roommates -- Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

I'm starting this post post from Circles Cafe. A place with chill music, frequent dog fights, an option to put turmeric in your latte, cappuccinos served in topsy-turvy clay bowls, and a wifi password of "happy rainbow. "

Is there such a thing as a sad rainbow? I wonder what that would look like. Sad rainbow. Or angry rainbow. Haha. Curmudgeonly rainbow. Resentful rainbow.

I'm waiting for Namish, an Indian chap I met at Three Monkeys Hostel in Antigua, to arrive. One of the best parts of traveling Central America is that often, people travel the same sort of path.

I wonder where I'll run into him next time. 

I've now been at the Yoga Forest for over a week. And while there are a good many aspects of this place that rub me the wrong way (just serve coffee in the morning, dammit), I feel that enough of my passions are being satisfied to keep me here for my three months.

Each day starts off with me teaching a yoga class, taking a yoga class, or "space holding." Space holder is a fancy title for "kitchen bitch/receptionist". The one who prepares fruit, salad, washes a few dishes, and greets exhausted and sweaty guests after they've trudged up the never-ending stairs. At some point, I'm usually able to hike down the hill to San Marcos. Where I indulge in coffee, Wi-Fi, and melt into a space wherein nothing is expected of me. To retreat inside myself and pour out my heart through writing and painting.

I've even found a local poet who does workshops at Circles Cafe once a week. The workshop yesterday included limericks. I quickly scratched the following into my notebook:

I'm not sure how long I will last...

This vegan diet gives me gas. 

I pine for the days

When I cured malaise

With a bacon and eggs repast. 

Nele, a yoga volunteer from Germany

Bri (like the cheese) and Kayla, volunteers from Canada and France

Kayla has all the style.

Walking along the winding dirt trail to San Marcos, I dodge steaming piles of dog shit. I hear rustling in the tall grass and wonder what kind of creature is making itself at home. I see small Guatemalan men deftly carrying large stacks of wood up the hill. Small Guatemalan women balancing cumbersome baskets atop their heads. School children scampering along the path, black hair trailing behind them.

"Hola!" they shout over their shoulders, bright eyes catching mine for a moment.

"Hola," I reply to the dust they leave behind.

I see a tall, slender Caucasian woman dressed in a thin, flowing skirt with elephants on it. She wears half a shirt, revealing a belly-button piercing and a sacred geometry tattoo. Her blonde hair is dreaded  and has the occasional feather poking out. Her graceful, expressive hands and fingers are adorned with bangles and rings that catch the sunlight and click against each other when she gesticulates.

"What are you doing for the full moon tomorrow?"she asks the hippie across from her.

"Oh, I think we'll start off with a cacao ceremony. To open the heart. And then we'll set intentions and meditate. And then have an ecstatic dance."

...

"Hola," the hippies greet me as I pass.

"Hola," I respond, cringing slightly. It seems to be customary here to say "hola", regardless of whether you know with 100% certainty that the other part is a native English speaker. Which... I dunno... feels a bit odd. I can understand, support, and respect greeting locals in their language, but it feels bizarre to be carrying on an English conversation and then say, "hola" to someone else. Who was also in the midst of an English conversation.

San Marcos smells like fried papas and pollo. Also like incense, tuk-tuk exhaust, and dog shit.

"Taxi? Hola? Taxi?" the tuk-tuk drivers call out as I pass their line-up on the way to my cafe.

"No, gracias," I reply with a smile, exhausting my last bit of Spanish.

I'm always careful to walk back to The Yoga Forest well before dark. Like in Mexico, the numerous street dogs can become very aggressive at night. And I... well... I forgot to get my rabies vaccination before coming to Guatemala. There has been a movement to vaccinate the animals, so every dog sporting a red plastic collar is rabies-free, but their are plenty of collarless dogs wandering around... And I've gotten to a place where I've been attacked by dogs so many times that the moment I sense a smidgen of aggression, I panic. My heart starts pounding in my chest and I freeze.

Which is how I react to most traumatic situations. Just freeze. It's all very healthy.

The dogs sense my fear and I'm sure it makes it all worse. So they get more aggressive and I get more panicky and I'm sure that this is how I'll one day die of rabies.

Blurgh. 
 
The trail also makes me nervous at night, because although the village of San Marcos la Laguna is safe during the day and the touristic areas are safe at night, I don't trust the trails on the outskirts. Guatemala is the one place wherein someone I know was stabbed because he resisted robbery. In San Pedro, just one village over. And here in San Marcos, I local woman was raped a couple of weeks ago.

So regardless of whether or not I'm working at night, I make sure to be back within the gates of The Yoga Forest by four or five at the latest.

So far, I think the main issue that could lead me to prematurely end my time here, is that I don't feel comfortable in my space. The circus tent in which I sleep isn't a home for me. It's a space I reluctantly return to at night and leave as soon as I can in the morning.

For an introvert, that isn't really sustainable. 

There's a large black beetle who is currently building a home inside the pole that holds up my tent. Every night when I poke my head inside, I'm greeted with a pyramid of sawdust on my blankets.

 

My black beetle roommate (I've named him Charlie) is annoying, but I'm not afraid of him. He does his business, I try to shake off the sawdust before I go to bed, and that's it. The more loathsome, unwelcome roommates are the spiders and scorpions.

"Last time I was here, I saw one scorpion in a whole month!" I exclaimed to one of the guests. "I've only been here a week this time, and I've already seen six!"

"It's the season. The scorpions and spiders come out when it gets cold. The rainy season is the time for flies and mosquitoes."

So I religiously shake out my sheets before going to sleep. I shook out my sheets last night, and this fellow flew onto my mat and skittered towards the edge of my tent.

He didn't make it very far.

At the Yoga Forest, scorpions and spiders are not killed. They are relocated. It is not yogic to kill scorpions and spiders.

Then I'm not a fucking yogi. Because I will squash every one of these little bastards I find in my space. 

I stared at the scorpion corpse for a few minutes, in a daze.

There was a scorpion in my bed. IN MY BED. BETWEEN MY SHEETS.

How am I going to sleep tonight? 

I didn't sleep well that night. Every five minutes, I'd turn on my headlamp and sweep it across the floor of my tent, seeing if it would catch the eyes of spiders or scorpions lurking in the cracks.

I don't think I'm meant for jungle. Gah.