Xatinap Segundo Visit

On Sunday, Toby and I had the pleasure of traveling with Andy and Tomasa to the neighboring village of Xatinap Segundo. There are actually 5 Xatinaps all around the same area, but separated by huge valleys, making it quite a scary 4-mile ride as we stood in the back of the pickup getting wet. Between Xatinap Primero and Xatinap Segundo is a huge ravine that we have to drive down into and wind back up to the other side. Only a small portion is paved (thanks to the corrupt FRG political party) but otherwise the road is potholed, muddy, and quite dangerous. The trucks try to speed up the hill to make it over bumps but then get stopped with wheels spinning, and almost go over the edge with a truck bed full of standing passengers. It is quite difficult to safely hold on while all this is going on. The photo below is where we ended up after our attempts to make it up the hill. The car stalled out and was over heating so we decided to walk the rest of the way. BTW...this photo does not accurately portray how freaked I was on this journey.


When we made it up the hill we headed over to Tomasa's mother's house, where Tomasa and her siblings all grew up. We were very sweetly invited to have lunch with the whole family, some of which we already knew and some new faces. We all crowded under the porch around miscellaneous tables and shared a very pleasant lunch of chicken, tortillas, beans, and cucumber salad.
After we ate, we were able to visit further with Tomasa's family and play games with the kids. Above we are playing the card game Kings (or Reyes) that Toby and I taught Lisa and her cousins. It seemed to be a pretty big hit with them once everyone understood the game. Below shows us playing a local game called Aguas (or sodas) where 1 person is the store owner, 1 person is the shopper, and the others are flavors of sodas. The first round I played the shopper and had to guess what flavor soda the kids were. Once I guessed right then the store owner (Lisa) would "open" the bottle and then the soda had to run to across the courtyard to a set location before I tagged them, or they were out. It was fun to play something local here, but really tested my soda flavors and tired me out running each turn!

The fair in Xatinap Segundo was taking place so we followed the blaring music and all went over to watch the dancing outside of the church. Because of the fair, there was a greater number of people in town, and an exhibition soccer game taking place for the festivities. Normally, the population of Xatinap Segundo is only around 200, without any kind of town center, except the church and school. Most men travel to Guatemala to work at factories or tire repair places during the week and only return home on the weekends. So the fair was quite the treat for everyone in town.

Below are the costumed dancers stomping through the mud in front of the church. As the live band played the masked pairs of dancers changed their positions. If you look close you can see only 1 full-body furry costume of a cat. This one cracked us up because it was unlike the others, which were all dressed in fancy medieval type costumes in matching pairs. This white cat danced around without a partner getting its white suit all nasty and muddy at the bottom. We don't know what it was doing there, or the significance of the costumes in general. However, we've learned this is a common scene during feria week.

Above all, Toby and I really appreciated spending time with family and seeing a new way of life here in Guatemala. It's great to put a picture with the place Tomasa and her family grew up. We hope to spend more time out there with the Bulux family, possibly staying out on Andy and Tomasa's property someday in the future.