El Camino de los Cayucos (Part 1 of 2)

Dispatch from Iago

Introduction

The very day we first arrived at our new home here in Santiago, I looked out on Lake Atitlan and saw it dotted with numerous small boats that I later learned were cayucos, the traditional dug-out canoes of the region.

I got a closer look at them over the next few days and came to the conclusion that: a) I wanted one, b) They must be quite simple to build, and c) I will therefore build one.  I let this well thought-out, grand plan of mine be known to some of the long-term expats here in our neighborhood, asking if they knew of any cayuco builders who might be game for taking on an apprentice.  Lo and behold, it came to pass that one guy’s (Stanley’s) gardener (Antonio) knew a guy (???) who knew a cayuco builder and floated the idea to him.  It was about three weeks of radio silence before I finally got the word: Yes, said builder (Sebastian) is open to the idea, after he was convinced that the particular strange gringo in question (moi) was not out to steal his tricks and open a competing cayuco factory on the lake.  Perfecto.

BUT

Just to be clear, said Sebastian (so I’m told), this is very hard work and he seriously doubts that a gringo is up for it.  He expects, in fact, that I’ll not last beyond the first day – therefore, he would like Q250 up front, on the first day, as almost certainly I will not finish the boat (a total project cost of Q3500).  I smiled when I heard this and said, yes sure, that’s fine.

Meeting Sebastian

Both Stanley and Antonio expressed interest in the whole enterprise and wanted to come along, at least on the first day.  Since both speak Spanish (yo no hablo mucho) and Antonio speaks Tzutujil (Sebastian’s preferred tongue), having either or both along for the first day seemed like a great idea to me, just to help is ironing out the agreement, etc.  Unfortunately, coordinating everyone’s schedules was proving difficult; so I set out to talk with Sebastian on my own one Wednesday afternoon, resolved to go on my own with him the next morning.

Small world that it is, Sebastian turned out to be the husband of Magdalena, a gregarious woman who lives right on the path to our house from the main road.  We’d been buying hot tasty hand-patted tortillas and criollo chicken eggs from Magdalena for weeks now but had never seen or met her husband before.  I was told that Sebastian would be back “from the mountain” (where he builds his cayucos) by 6 PM, so I returned then.  Pleasant natured but of few words, salt-of-the-earth Sebastian told me I needed to be at his house at 5:45 AM the next morning, at which point we would set off for the mountain.  “What do I need to bring?” I asked.  “Plenty of water,” he said.  “Some food,” he added.  And he smiled.

Primero (y ultimo) dia de el trabajo

Leaving Santiago

I am not a morning person, and it was still pitch black out at 5:40 AM when I left the house – already a difficult day, in my book.  The rooster was crowing heartily at Magdalena’s and Sebastian’s when I arrived.  In their unlit, half-walled outdoor cooking area connected to their small cinderblock house, Magdalena was stoking the wood cookstove and Sebastian was sitting in a dark corner, waiting for a mug of “coffee” (very, very sweet brown water), which they offered me.  As Magdalena slapped and cooked a small pile of tortillas for us, we sipped our hot brown waters and I asked, as best I could, some questions.  First order of business: Sebastian’s real (Tzutujil) name is Mapash; Magdalena’s is Yalien.  And happy days, I also have a Tzutujil name, by virtue of Iago being a Spanish name – mine is Atikó, which I love.  Mapash is 61-years-old and has been building cayucos for more than three decades.  On average, he builds about 10 per year; and it can take him anywhere between 15 and 20-some days of in-forest work for each one, depending on lots of factors which I soon came to appreciate.  Enough talk, time to get moving.

At 6 AM, when we get out to the road, the town is quite dead – no zippy 3-wheeled tuc tucs, no fletes (small pickup trucks where passengers all stand like sardines in the back) – so we walk.  Mapash is easily a foot shorter than I am, has two decades on me, and is wearing incredibly uncomfortable-looking thin rubber wading boots – but it’s all I can do to keep up with him.  Into town, up the steep hill to the central square, almost all the way to Zadi’s and Bo’s school on the other side of town, where we finally happen upon a nearly-full flete ready to take off.  Mapash hops in and so do I, trying to find space to stand as the truck fills.  By the time we start moving, the little pick-up (think Toyota Tacoma size) has 32 people (all men and boys, all with machetes or backpack sprayers or both) standing in the bed.

The flete flies south out of Santiago and through the next town of Chicagao where, incredibly, four more guys stuff themselves into the back.  Rounding the southern end of Lake Atitlan, clockwise, on the road toward San Pedro, we start gaining altitude.  It is cold and the view of the lake is stunning, with low fog rising off its surface, as the wind beats against all of us passengers.  Soon the pavement turns to pot-holed dust, the land on either side of the road turns into endless coffee plantations, and over the next several miles we drop off passengers, one-by-one and in small groups, in the places where they will toil for the day.  Continuing to gain altitude, Mapash and I are the last ones left; and eventually he gives a whistle (the standard means of communicating to flete drivers), the truck stops, and we hop off.  There appears to be some haggling back and forth between Mapash and driver, some agreement is reached, and Mapash darts into the coffee trees where he apparently has stashed six eight-foot 4”x4” chainsaw-hewn cypress posts.  We loaded them into the back of the truck, and the flete turned back to Santiago, leaving us in the middle of what felt like nowhere.  It was 7:15 AM.

Arriba, arriba, arriba…y bajo

Not losing a moment, Mapash put his MTV backpack back on and motioned for me to follow him into the berry-laden trees, where we began following a small footpath toward the mountain in front of us.   We rose quickly out of the flatness of the little coffee-filled valley, passed through a young avocado orchard, and entered the forest.  Some sort of “whoop whoop” sounds came to us from up the slope, to which Mapash responded in Tzutujil.  Rounding a switchback, we came upon a young guy (30’s?) named Artur who joined chattily with Mapash up front.  What followed was a little more than an hour of relentlessly steep (30-45°) incline, as the distance between me and my two leaders steadily increased.  Gorgeous views of San Pedro volcano, of the lovely town of Santa Clarita in the far distance, then into the clouds.  At 7:30, a mere 15 minutes into our walk, I was breathing hard and sweat was in my eyes, the chilly coolness of the flete ride a distant memory.

Before too long, I confess I began to worry a bit.  I “think” Mapash had said something the night before along the lines of it taking 2 hours to get to his work site in the forest.  I had assumed he meant 2 hours from his house, which meant we should be arriving at his open-air workshop by 8:00.  As 8:00 came and went, however, I started to suspect that this hike itself was going to be a two-hour ordeal…and it was no joke.  Legs burning, huffing trying to keep up with chatty Mapash and Artur, another realization dawned on me and I had to ask, incredulously: “Excuse me, is this the same path that the finished cayucos come down?”  Mapash stopped for a moment and turned to me: “Of course it is,” he said.  Impossible.  What look like small, quaint canoes on the lake are, in fact, monolithic carved hunks of hardword trees that weigh upwards of 150 pounds or more.  There is no way that someone carries them down this path.

And then, not 15 minutes later, one passed us.  An old man up front (later I learned this was the father, the master builder), followed by a newly hewn upside-down cayuco, floating down this insane path by virtue of the four swift feet underneath it (two sons).  Lastly, another son loaded with what looked like close to 100 lbs. of wet hardwood planks.  It all happened so fast, and they were moving so quickly, I couldn’t get a good picture.

Around 8:20, we reached the top of the mountain and I was so very thankful for the leveling off.  Surely we were getting close, and I relaxed a little and allowed myself to take in some of the interesting things along the trail.  For example, a lovely little nest with two fledglings that Artur pointed out:

At one point, the strangest thing appeared – it looked for all the world to be dozens and dozens of dismembered bird or dragon feet scattered along the trail:

Absolutely stunning, these are parts of the flowers of the canac tree.  Each radiant red claw foot striped with bright yellow pollen is actually the inner part of a larger flower:

Around 8:30 or so, Artur peeled off to the left, heading toward his work site – he’s not a boat-builder but rather is in the business of carving boards out of enormous cypress trees to sell as construction materials down in town.  This was about the time that, to my chagrin, we started heading down…steeply down.  We had indeed summited the first mountain (an ancient volcano known by a Mayan name that sounds like PAH-KEE-SEES, meaning the place of cypress trees), had followed a cloudy saddle to another mountain (Cerro de Burro), and were now going down the other side.  This descent would continue for the next 45 minutes, getting progressively steeper and steeper and the trail less and less defined

Along the way, we came across evidence of the kind of work that goes on in this remote place.

Above: For scale, that’s a canac flower sitting on the stump.

Above: That’s not a horse hitching post.  That’s a cargo “table” for

supporting very heavy loads of wood off the ground long enough

for the men who work up here to strap them to their backs

(and foreheads) for the long hike out.

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Finally, at 9:15 on the dot, exactly two hours from our dismount from the flete, we arrived at Mapash’s solitary work site high up on the slope of Cerro de Burro.

End of Part 1