Central America 2000 - Evil saints and sunrises
From Worldtraveller
After two days we were sufficiently restored to leave the hammocks and get on our way again. Our next point of call was to be Santiago Atitlán, another lakeside town. There are two more volcanoes not far from Santiago, but if I'm honest we had no intention of climbing them. When I go back, perhaps...
No, our main reason for coming here was to visit the shrine of Maximón. Maximón is a Mayan saint, revered in Santiago but reviled in other lakeside villages. He wears western clothes, drinks whiskey and smokes cigars, and grants prayers for revenge. He is believed to be a bizarre fusion of ancient Mayan deities, Judas Iscariot and Pedro de Alvarado, the conquistador of Guatemala. He is represented in his shrine by an intricately carved wooden effigy, and resides in a different house every year. Finding him is simple - simply say 'Maximón?' to a passing child and straight away they will set off through the back streets to the shrine of Maximón. We did just this, and were swiftly conveyed to his presence. We paid the small toll required to see him, and went inside.
Having visited Maximón, we were done with Lago de Atitlán. It was time to head off to our next objective, the city of Quezaltenango. We had an awesome boat ride back across the lake, sitting on the roof of the boat, basking in the sunshine and surroundings, before once again braving the bus system. After four separate bus journeys and a narrow escape from getting a bus to Guatemala City (the passengers are more honest than the drivers, thankfully), we arrived in Quezaltenango, known to its Mayan inhabitants as Xela.
At an elevation of 2330m, Xela is noticeably colder than Atitlán and Antigua. It was near here that the decisive battle in the conquest of Guatemala was fought in 1524, and the city was founded on the site of the capital of the K'iché Maya. You would have no idea of this if the guidebooks didn't tell you, because today Xela is a very modern city. It seems very different from the rest of Guatemala, with incredibly friendly people and a chilly climate. It is surrounded by many very traditional mountain towns, and on our first day there we visited one of these, Zunil.
We had intended to go to the famous markets at Chichicastenango, but when we got to the bus stop we couldn't find any buses at all going there. We looked and looked, but were defeated, and, eager to go somewhere, got a bus to Zunil, a place about which we knew nothing, but which fortunately turned out to be very interesting. Like Santiago Atitlán, it has its own resident evil saint, San Simón, as well as a fine old church in the main square, a small but impressive handicrafts co-operative and a dramatic setting surrounded by towering hills.
After sampling all of Zunil's other attractions, we went to visit the shrine of San Simón. It was a very different experience to Maximón's shrine. Where everyone visiting and looking after Maximón had seemed to be having fun, and the whole thing seemed to be thought of as a bit of a laugh, San Simón was dead serious and quite scary. We were ushered into his presence, and found him sitting in a chair wearing shades, a bandana and a cowboy hat. The room was filled with hundreds of candles, and there was some serious worship going on. San Simón is actually an old shop dummy, which you might have thought would make it a bit difficult to believe in him, but people clearly did, and very seriously. There was a constant stream of worshippers, who would come in, cross themselves before San Simón, touch him and stroke him, talk to him, in some cases for half an hour or more, feed him Vodka and cigarettes, and light candles before him. The feeding of the vodka was a weird ritual - San Simón was tilted back in his chair, and the Vodka poured into his mouth. Meanwhile, the last offering of vodka had trickled down to his feet and collected there, and was poured out into a bowl when he was tilted back.
It was fascinating and surreal to watch the goings on at the shrine of San Simón, a strikingly visible fusion of ancient Mayan beliefs and Catholicism. But having seen two evil saints in two days, we decided we were getting too much religion, and we decided to climb up Volcán Santamaria the next day, and camp at the top.
