Chicken Bus To Zunil - 9.19.2006

A ´chicken bus´ is just a regular American school bus, but with one heck of a paint job. Usually lots of red and green stripes. Sometimes there is chrome on the windows.

Inside, the bus is normal except instead of school children there are dozen of Mayans and Ladinos. Dresses with a thousand colors and lots of cowboy hats.

I don´t think the buses are equipped with shocks. Probably no struts either. In their place lives a clan of gnomes with sledge hammers. Their only joy in life is whacking the bus floor just as the passengers are starting to get comfortable.

Occasionally the drivers do wheelies and hit jumps and such.

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Today’s bus took us to Zunil, and to San Simon. We rode through beautiful farms, broken into small (family?) plots that ascend from the valley floor to the middle of the ridges. Corn, cabbages, radishes and all kinds of other vegetables jump from hillsides that require two free hands to climb. If you fell, it would be a good 6 or 7 rolls before you could figure out how to stop yourself.

Zunil is famous for its vegetables. The soil here is deep red with a black feeling.

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There are 5 San Simons in Guatemala. Zunil has one. He is about 5 feet tall and made entirely of wood. Today, San Simon was wearing work boots, blue jeans, a nice blue button down shirt, a matching tie, a dark jacket, a neck warmer, dark aviator glasses, a red bandanna, and a cowboy hat. Around his neck hung a beautiful satchel, and by his right (mittened) hand was a walking cane.

San Simon is somewhere between a scarecrow and the title character from A Weekend At Bernie’s.

In front of San Simon burned hundreds of candles that have been lit by worshipers. Each candle color corresponds to a different problem that San Simon is asked to solve. Blue for love, White for health, etc.

When we visited the sanctuary - a family’s concrete garage – there were 10 or so worshippers. They sat on benches that lined the walls. They were silent and still, except when they rose to sprinkle rum around their candles.

One Mayan woman nursed her child.

One Ladino man poured a little rum on his fingers, and then flicked it over his candles.

One Mayan woman’s cell phone rang. Her ring tone was the Hokey Pokey.

Worshippers bring gifts to San Simon: clothes for him to wear, various kinds of food, and today he received a 2 liter bottle of Pepsi. San Simon’s mouth is frozen into a permanent yawn, and occasionally his caretakers pour food down his throat.

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On our way back to the bus stop, we briefly visited the town’s massive Catholic Church, which was founded in 1730 or so. The original cross is still there too, behind bars with the other valuables. The cross is made of gold and stands probably 10 feet tall. Everything is covered with thick dust.

In front of the cross burned dozens of candles. The church’s lone worshipper sat silently in the front pew.

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Our tour guide for this trip was a guerrilla for 5 years before the current peace accords were signed. For 5 years, no one knew his real name, and he did not know the real names of the others. That way, if one of them was captured, he couldn't rat out the others.

One of my friends here wondered how our guide had the will to change from a civilian to a guerrilla, and live in the mountains like that for 5 years. I figured the bigger question was how he could find his way back his first life.

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The guerrilla dozed off on the trip back to Xela. The bus picked up Mayan women at every stop until we reached a certain point mid trip where they all departed, pouring off the bus like spilled paint. Each of them slipped past the large wooden crucifix that was mounted to the dashboard.

Photos of Zunil