Guns, Cobblestone Streets, Volcanos, Chicken Busses & Cranky Westerners

This city is beautiful. Built on a grid, it is squaty, cement and plaster, and occasionally painted. The center is a park with trees and a fountain in the middle, benches and trees scattered about. Around the park are restaurants, cafes, small stores, language schools, and a grand cathedral, old, unpainted, guarded by small brown men with sweet round faces dressed in military fatigues.....they stand all day holding assault rifles, always responding when I bid them a good day or evening...sometimes smiling shyly. They are young and a reminder that this is a country that has endured decades of civil war and political and racial strife.

Here is not the only place where guns are seen. Visiting the bank one is accompanied by young men in municipal uniforms, ballistic vests, and the equivalent of a sawed-off 12 gauge shotgun, pistol-gripped. For those of you who know guns, you know that these are weapons designed for immediate and total close range "stopping power"...and the spread of a shotgun blast is not discriminating. Such short-barrelled pistol-gripped shotguns are illegal in the US. Rob a bank....get blown in half. Sobering.

The streets are cobblestone, a course type without sand-fill to smooth the surface like I have seen in the villages of Mexico. The streets are swept clean, but nothing grows here....it is all cement and plaster. The plants are saved for the courtyards and gardens that live behind the heavy wooden doors leading to houses and businesses. Most places seem to be built around a courtyard in the traditional colonial style...open air, a fountain, flowers and trees and ivy climbing the walls. And pardon my candor (those of you who have travelled in Latin America will appreciate this) the city does not smell bad.....(save for the vehicle exhaust) no sewage smell.

The dominant forms of transportation includes small cars, scooters, chicken buses (rehabilitated and wildly decorated school buses) and dirt bikes (motorcycles)...the latter making a lot of sense given the rough road. There seems to be absolutely no regulation of emissions. In the narrow wall-lined streets, a cluster of passing vehicles means a hefty dose of inhaled toxins.

The city sits in a valley, fronted and flanked by volcanoes, some large some less imposing. These are not quiet little buggers, no, many are active and moody. This morning I was attracted to "oohs" and "aaahs" in the courtyard at school where everyone looked up as the volcano Fuego (fire) erupted! White and grey smoke puffing up into the sky, mixing with the lenticular clouds. Apparently this is a regular occurrence...every few days or so. The rumor is that the volcanoes are more active in December, but this assertion seems apocryphal given my understanding of geology (but then volcanism is hardly my specialty!). I will hike a volcano soon. Guide books warn to inquire carefully as some hikes present the real danger of blasts of poisonous gasses or small burst of hot rocks. Hiker beware.

People are friendly, except the westerners. I am so surprised that when I try to engage westerners most literally avert their eyes before I can bid a greeting. Finally, this morning a young friendly guy from Chicago saw me desperately walking around on my morning "coffee" break looking to say hi to someone....he called "hola" across the garden and introduced himself. His group of young men were friendly and kind and I thanked him for saying hello. I could opine for some time on possible reasons for the cold shoulder....many of the young women are French and such behavior feeds the stereotype....but I will conclude for now that they just want to speak Spanish. I shan't take it personally for now....but starting Thursday I will (ha ha).

Oh, an exception to this was today in a cafe where a man wore a Missoula shirt and I asked if he was from Montana. He said no, Iowa. He asked where I was from and I said San Francisco. His reply, "oh we don´t even think that is part of the United States.....the coasts that is" he explained. Hmm. He continued to explain that folks in the middle of the country are a little more conservative. Wow, I never knew sir. Thanks so much for the clarification.