Hitchhiking To Guatamala Part 11

Potentially poo flinging monkeys and pornographic gods

We made our way to the visitor center. For ten American dollars we’d have access to the 2,000 year old Mayan city and the rainforest around it. A Scottish woman in line heard me speaking and asked if I was Scottish.

“Um, my mom’s dad is from Scotland” I told her. I had never been recognized as Scottish before and was surprised.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“I’m American, from California.” I answered.

“You sound a little bit Scottish.”

“Do I? That’s funny. I’ve never been.”

“Have you not heard this before?”

“Never. I had a New York accent as a kid. I grew up in California but I was raised by two New Yorkers, so I talked like them until about 10 years old, and since then nobody has ever been able to place my weird hybrid accent. But I’m often told I sound gay.”

“Well, yeah, you do that.” she laughed. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind. I’m used to it.”

“I was on the shuttle with you. Are you going back to the hotel?”

“No. We’re gonna find somewhere cheap to sleep. We’re broke.”

“He’s broke.” Windy added, and I was pleased to hear playfulness in his voice.

“Yeah, I’m broke and he’s stuck with me.”

“You can sleep here. They let you. On the lawn.” 

Next to the visitor center was a large green lawn surrounded on three sides by rain forest. “Really? That’s perfect.”

“You know that shuttle is supposed to be for hotel guests only, but they never check on the way to Tikal, only on the way back to the hotel.” She told us.

“Well, I guess we got the best of them.” I replied.

“Yeah. We’re clever ones, us. You boys have a good sleep and I hope we see each other again. I’m Isobel.”

“I’m Loyal and this is Windy.”

“You have very interesting names. I’m sure you are very interesting people. So long Loyal and Windy.” She walked to a group of friends who were just finishing buying tickets. 

“I’m in love.” Windy said.

“I thought you didn’t think you were capable of falling in love.” 

“Yeah, that was before I heard her speak.” 

“Ay, got a thing for the Scotts, do ya?” I asked in my absolutely awful Scottish accent.

“No. Just her. She is my new ideal.”

We found a spot to hang our hammocks from posts at the edge of the green clearing and read for a while, snacking on our supply of nuts and dried fruit. Windy was reading guide books, and graphic design text books. I was reading Bukowski and on Bokowski’s recommendation, Céline’s “Journey to the End of the Night”.

The jungle was noisy and trying to fall asleep reminded me of sleeping in my friend Allen’s warehouse on nights when he’d rented the space out for parties. I did now as I did then, focusing on the noise, finding patterns in it and letting it grow redundant until my mind trailed off, eventually into sleep. Everything works out, I thought to myself smiling. I’m an asshole. It works out because someone bailed me out. Whatever. It will be okay and I’ve given him as much adventure as annoyance. It all balances out. He knew the job was dangerous when he took it. I really am an asshole. I wanted to be angry at myself, but I fell asleep feeling good at how things had settled.

We woke up to the loudest bird sounds I’d ever heard. As the dawn broke a deafening chorus of chattering and whistling came from every direction. One particularly loud screech broke through one side of the clearing and was answered from the opposite side. I couldn't imagine what animal could make such a noise, as it bounced around the clearing. Whatever it was it seemed we were surrounded. We made cold instant coffee. It was horrible but the caffeine was a must.

Our admission included a map and we made our way onto a trail that led into the rainforest. In no time at all it felt like we’d found a passage to a different world. It was hard to believe such things as parking lots and mowed grass and visitor centers could be so near. I heard a loud roar that I believed I recognized.

“Howler monkeys!” I said to Windy, excitedly.

“They’re here to call your bluff.” he said. 

“Oh no!” He was referring to my drunken boast that if any monkeys flung shit at me I would shit in my hand and fling my own back. “I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that but I’m ready.” I promised. We walked on as the day grew hotter, amplified by the humidity which we were growing used to. I heard the roar again, much closer now, and then again. “Dude, they’re following us.”

“They heard about you.” Windy teased.

We saw the monkeys then and they did in fact seem to be following us. As we walked they jumped from tree to tree getting close to the trail we were on until the closest of the group of monkeys were only four or five feet from us. The largest of them leaned his face toward us, opened his mouth wide and the sound that came from him seemed impossible from an animal of this size, his tiny body behind this huge mouth that opened like a portal to unleash sounds from another reality.

Having poop flung at me was the least of my concerns now. These guys sounded angry and I didn’t want to fight a troop of monkeys with big sharp teeth. No Germans came forth to rescue us. We continued walking. A tense minute or two of walking, suppressing the urge to run, and the monkeys either grew tired of us or we passed out of the turf they were defending.

“Hey, you didn’t have to fling poop!” Windy said. 

“Yeah, well I have some in my pants after that, so it wouldn’t have been a problem.”

“That was intense.”

There were pyramids with the area around them cleared and other structures nearby. It was more exciting to unexpectedly come upon a pyramid that seemed to shoot up out of the thick jungle and start climbing. We were sitting on top of such a pyramid looking out over the canopy of trees. We sat in silence and took it in.

At such moments I try to time travel. I try to lock in the feeling of being there, the sights, sounds, smells, and to project them forward, to link this moment and the moments in my future when I can remember that I was here at this moment. I started doing this when I was 8 years old. I was thinking about time, and decided to grab that moment and commit it to memory so that I could from the past say ‘remember me’ to my future self. I was sitting on the toilet. This is the moment I sent myself. Sitting on the toilet in the bathroom, the one quiet place in a noisy house full of boys. I was content then, on the toilet, in a clean small bathroom and I felt content and happy now sitting on top of a pyramid looking out over a tropical rainforest.

We climbed down and spent a delightful two hours exploring the rest of this ancient city’s ruins, drinking water and eating dried fruit, trail mix and the last of our Clif Bars. 

In a field across the street from the Mayan ruins a small unauthorized market had sprung up where actual Mayans sold trinkets to tourists to scrape out an existence. As we walked past the first table a man held up a necklace and called to me “Friend, something for your wife?” then holding up a necklace with a few more shiny stones he said “For your girlfriend?” Then finally he held up a machete as he said, slow and well rehearsed, “For your mother-in-law.” He leaned into this last line with all the subtlety of a Catskills era comedian. We continued down the line of tables and we heard this joke three more times.

“Some salesman sold them these trinkets and that joke.” Windy said under his breath.

“Eek, I hope they didn’t pay much for it.” I groused.

“I don’t know. I think it may be serving them pretty well.” Windy pointed out as the tourists around us laughed long and hard at the machete gag.

A young man was selling clay flutes. Windy bought one shaped like a penis. The man was dark skinned, short with broad shoulders.

“You want something for your boyfriend?” he asked me. 

“Um, my girlfriend?” I corrected him.

“Girlfriend, boyfriend?” he pulled out a notebook and showed me a page with three rows. In the first row would be a simple drawing, a dog, a car, and boy and girl symbols like you’d see on a restroom door. The second had the word describing the picture written in English and in the third row, Spanish.

He pointed and asked us words and we helped him fill out a few squares that had been empty. “You are teaching yourself English and Spanish?” I asked.

“Yes. I am learning.” he said, carefully enunciating. 

“What language do you speak growing up?” I asked clumsily.

“I am Mayan.” he said.

“So, do you speak Yucatec? Yucatecan?”

“I speak Mayan.” he answered.

I was amazed at him teaching himself English and Spanish while working. He was charismatic and seemed very confident even as he struggled to find words. 

“Don’t tell him the joke.” Windy whispered.

“I’m not gonna tell him the joke.” I said.

“Good.”

“It’s a funny joke.” 

“Are most of the people here Mayan?” I asked.

“Here,” he said, pointing at the tables that made up this market. “Yes. In there, no Mayans.” he said sharply pointing at the visitor center for Tikal.

I bought a flute. We entered a structure made of multiple tarps laced together with a cardboard sign reading “18+ only”. Inside were statues made of the same red brown clay as our flutes. They depicted what I assumed were Mayan gods in every sexual position imaginable. 

“My teacher in 3rd grade, Mrs. Shepherd, told me Mayans were extinct. I didn’t know they were still around, still speaking the Mayan language.” I said to Windy.

An older woman with Mayan features stood over the pornographic clay statues with a very serious look on her face. “I don’t know Maya mythology well enough to know if these statues are accurate or blasphemous.” Windy said back in a low voice. 

“We could ask.” I answered. We looked at the woman behind the table. She looked back, expressionless.

We left.