The Cogees are one of the indigenous tribes in the Caribbean part of Colombia. They choose their spiritual leaders as children and proceed to keep the children indoors during the daylight, letting them outside only after darkness has descended. Living the first nine years of life in darkness, they reason, will help the chosen few develop intuition – an important quality for a spiritual leader to cultivate.
Cross-dressing seems to be a trend in the second world -- though this, too, happens only in the dark. Of the three hostels I have stayed in since I arrived in Guatemala, two have weekly cross-dressing parties. I realize we cannot rightly draw too many conclusions from such limited research and data, but it’s the best that this amateur anthropologist has to offer.
I mentioned my alternative education, which came complete with what seemed like bi-monthly drag balls and daily bi-whateverism, so the scene of our first night at Hostel El Retiro in Lankin – an hour’s drive on a dirt road deep in the Cahabon River Valley – was nothing out of the ordinary. If anything, I re-lived the sensation of standing dumbly before a noisy roomful of men in skirts – some with dredlocks, -- trying to figure out where to sit. . . much as I experienced my meals in the dining commons at Hampshire. Recent vegetarian cafeteria excursions have been, however, more amusing than torturous.
I’ve been talking a lot about college, and perhaps it’s because several of the people I’ve encountered so far have been closer to college age than I am – which has made me reflect on that period. I’ve also been struggling to resist the temptation to draw conclusions about age or national stereotypes, but some encounters on the traveling circuit have made that difficult. To forge identity in a world where we are wont to commodify ourselves -- we imitate, conform and generally grope for emotional organization vis-à-vis our Facebook profiles and wardrobes and arsenals of electronic gadgets. We scramble through the darkness, lit only by the soft but persistent glow of our Ipods.
After a day at Lake Atitlan and a journey into the bi-weekly market in Chichicastenango, Hanneke Hermans and I decided to sign up to explore the legendary caves of Semuc Champey -- just down the road from the communal hippie camp where we were hanging out with the cross dressers. Armed with nothing more than candles and blind faith, we joined an international group and plunged into cold underwater caves with a long-haired Guatemalan man named Elvis as our guide. We swam through the pitch of dark, holding our torches above the water while using intuition to avoid pedicure-destroying confrontations with the rocks that lay beyond our field of vision.
Following this expedition -- which left me resolved to eat my way beyond any future bouts of hypothermia -- we warmed ourselves in and around a descending series of pools just beyond the caves, where Guatemalans kicked off Semana Santa with their families. These pools form where one river flows beneath the other, separated by a limestone land bridge. Some have theorized that if 3,000 people stood on the bridge at once, it would crumble to ruin and the rivers would merge. Once again, no real empirical research to substantiate this theory, but it's interesting anyway.
The less charming members of our hippie camp left in a mass exodus following our journey underground, which made for a blissful Sunday. After a morning of hammock swinging, coffee and more plentiful vegetarian food, we followed an Irish Huck Finn and his dog, Caleb, up the river to a turquoise swimming hole where we cooled ourselves in the magic hour light.
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