Ferris wheels
Crowded double ferris wheels drew long lines in Todos
Santos, a gathering point for colorfully dressed villagers
from the highlands of central Guatemala.

Todos Santos, Guatemala, 11.1.06

Dia de los Muertos: The Spanish honor their dead as if they never left. They festoon their graves and crypts with fantastic floral displays. They gather in their town squares to eat and listen to music and ogle provocatively dressed women and enjoy themselves. It is heartening to see people who realize that loved-ones may be gone but, because of their efforts, are certainly not forgotten.

Colorful bus
Colorful, personalized public buses rumble down unimaginably
difficult dirt roads throughout Guatemala, delivering simple
folks to every inaccessible corner of the country.

GrillTransported: Central America's legendary chicken buses are the great fearsome dragons of Guatemala's highways and byways. One sees them lumbering, and sometimes careening, down impossibly small roads, packed with humble passengers and their possessions and bound for the remotest of places. Each one has its own name emblazoned across the windshield and distinctive, vibrant color scheme. Not all of them make it. En route to Todos Santos, a mountain village tucked into a picturesque high valley, the road winds along precipitous mountainsides. At one curve, there was an ominous gap in one of the few guardrails. People had stopped their cars on either side and were propping up floral displays. A bus had gone over the edge, taking 35 passengers to their deaths. It must have fallen a long way before it hit anything. A sobering lesson for the frugal intent on sampling the local bargain transportation system.

Beer drinkers
Many local men and some women use the annual observance
of Dia de los Muertos to get happily, peacefully drunk. They
drink until they stagger and fall in their tracks to sleep off
their excesses wherever they land.

BorrachoBorracho and proud of it: One comes to think of Guatemalans as a simple, hard-working people. So it comes as a delightful surprise to see villagers forgoing their inhibitions during Dia de los Muertos. In Todos Santos, the compact men, proudly wearing their village's distinctive attire, including gaudy red-and-white striped pants, swill the national beverage of choice - Gallo beer - until they are blind drunk and stumbling into each other. When they fall, they usually sleep off their indulgences wherever they fall. Nervous gringos are relieved to see these drunks never get ugly or obnoxious. One fellow vigorously shook my hand and asked, "What is your name?" I told him and he added a follow-up question, "What is your name?" This continued until I realized he spoke no English and was merely parroting a phrase someone probably had told him would elicit a response from foreignors.

Plants Sign
Colors pop in the thin air of Guatemala's high country, from exotic
looking plants to simple, hand-painted signs on brightly colored walls.
Kids
As in most Spanish-speaking countries, kids are everywhere.
In small villages they joyfully ogle passing gringos or anything
out of the ordinary.
Copyright Gary Olson 2006-2010