Avoid The Antigua Tax With One-Way Tickets To Guatemala

Airlines should ban me from booking anything other than one-way flights. Please, airlines, ban me! I’ll do whatever illicit behavior it takes. I’ve just clocked in my 12th day in Guatemala, a full month left before my flight to NYC and then to Asia. But already my February 12th flight out is coming up way too soon. If I don’t push it back another month, how will I tell the Mariachis of San Felipe that Mariachi or Muerte Music Festival is not happening? In March, the weather will be nicer in NYC anyways, which will minimize the chance of freezing my tongue to the back bumper of a moving vehicle. And in Asia the weather will be. . . I HAVE NO IDEA!. . . that’s why I have to go. I need to see if raining cephalopods is a real thing. . . I have to get out of Guatemala if I’m to get to Asia, but this will have to be eventually. . . no later than March we’ll say. . . changing your plane ticket once is par for Antigua’s course. Changing it thrice is the sign of a serious Antigua addiction.

Gringos are Not Good At Getting Out of Antigua

The price of the flight change to extend one’s stay in Antigua, Guatemala is a common annoyance of travelers giving up their lives anywhere else to stay in Antigua. Let’s call it the stay tax. Before I came back this stint, I had sworn an oath. I stood on an empty bag of Doritos in the K-mart parking lot and declared, “I will live at Lake Atitlan this time!”

But an apartment situation in Antigua just sorta fell onto my lap. Dam you, Antigua! Stop making the things so easy. It’s not that everything is easy in Antigua, but the things you fret about elsewhere–getting places, paying rent, paying your bar tab, meeting friends up every alley–are easy here. When stuffs not going down in Antigua, life, even in difficult jobs (holla NGO workers busting your boots in the field), is good.

Here goes a bi-annual attempt to try to describe Antigua, Guatemala which is like trying to describe NYC, which is dumb:

In Antigua, every bar is filled with your friends. If not your friends, friendly travelers who would like to be the little spoon. Interesting people with ridiculous background stories abound here. These stories, along with the Mezcal, is capable of setting the bar on fire.

Is there anyone in Antigua who can’t lick their elbows? Antigua is filled with curious people exploring their virtues and vices, while doing fascinating social, artistic, cultural, business or bottle work. It’s impossible not to accomplish a lot in Antigua, since just by arriving and staying you accomplish being within earshot of three volcanos every day.

Do not come to Antigua, Guatemala if you have an important life to return to somewhere else, it will only fill you with a lifetime of regret. Do not come to Antigua if you are scheduled to go into surgery for a bionic arm. Likely, you will say f*ck having a left arm, and just stay. Don’t ask me, ask One-Armed Billy. He lives by La Merced and rides a flying kangaroo every night to The Ocelot Bar, where he drinks until he turns into a webbed footed elephant. All the gringos who live here know exactly who I am talking about and will swear this is exactly what Billy does on Thursday.

What’s Keeping Me In Antigua, Guatemala This Time

So, here’s what’s keeping me here beside the usual. If all goes well, I’ll be building my “Writer’s Cabin” at Hobbitonango, which is marching forward with remarkable pace with Dan, Betto, Ana and Hanna doing whatever they’re doing to turn the mountainside above El Hato into a magical kingdom in the clouds where the views pour themselves on you like syrup on a buttermilk pancake farm.

Covering Deforestation in Guatemala

For this year’s journalism piece, I am going to be spending a lot of time in the deforested areas in the hills beyond Hobbitonango. The deforestation is significant, and the opportunity to spend time outdoors documenting and trying to understand it from social and cultural angle is attractive.

 

Last year’s journalism pieces I researched on sea turtles are good to go once I find a publication home for them, so that has opened up time to work on something else. My plan is to make some contacts in the next two weeks and then in three weeks find a guide to take me by trail to various remote villages in the area, sleeping in some if that’s an option, or setting up camp in the woods (Yes, I’ll bring smores).

For this year’s fundraiser, I will change gears from the regular music night at a bar. I’m going to see if there are enough musical artists in town interested in submitting an original track to sell as a benefit CD for a to-be-named cause. Then I’ll combine this with Mariachi o Muerte and have a the CD’s release coinciding with a Mariachi Music Festival (If you are a musician based in Antigua reading this, email me pues!).

Though I think they’re worth writing about, I’ll skip individual descriptions of nights in bars. Every night I have been out, after maybe my third 3rd drink, I think, ” I should write about this.”  But I never do, because there is not enough time. I barely have time to make sure I have clean clothes around Antigua, since everything wonderful is coming at you from every angle.

I’ll simply say, I am down one bracelet. I left my “gringo bracelet” made Anthony as a collateral for my tab in Tropicana Hostel and Bar. When I came back, I forgot to recoup it. While I was able to track the bartender Marta down, by the time I found her, she was already referring to it as “my braceleot,” so I let this one go and then made her walk the plank at Hobbitonango:

Anyways, I’ll leave you with something I was quite fond of witnessing. When I started filming this, I totally thought I was going to film a bucket come out of a well. . .