Baseball curses, howler monkeys and evening the score with Mayan gods

Glen Arbor Sun

UTILA (Islas de la Bahia), Honduras – How he found me down here I have no idea. But I have no doubt it was he who renewed the hex.

The two Chicagoans and I were as far from Wrigleyville as possible (a sleazy sports bar in the Guatemalan highlands, in fact) to watch Game 6 of the National League Championship Series on Tuesday, October 14 – an affair that we expected would vault our beloved Cubs into the World Series for the first time since the Second World War. Everything was going according to plan: Mark Prior still on the mound with a 3-0 lead in the eighth. One out, thus five outs away from the dance.

Then disaster struck.



He didn’t look imposing, nor hell-bent on breaking our hearts. Just a short Mayan Indian with dirty jeans and an old San Diego Padres cap pulled over his greasy hair. But he walked into the bar with one out in the eighth, ordered some drink that shamans use to curse rival villages, looked me straight in the eye and tipped the cap – the logo of the team that beat us in ’84, the last time the Cubbies were on the verge of the Series with a two-game lead, and lost three straight. Then it all fell apart. Déjà vu all over again.

The foul ball that the blundering idiot in the leftfield seats prevented Moises Alou from catching; the easy groundball that ate up Alex Gonzalez; and, of course, the waters flooded the earth once again.

We knew it was over. We knew the Cubs couldn’t rebound from that demoralizing loss and take Game 7 the following night. But like widows at a funeral, witnessing the burial is an obligation.

I read Nietzsche after Game 6 and showed up the following night in an existential mood, denying curses or the presence of any supernatural forces. (BLEEP) FATALISM! GO CUBS read the napkin at our table.

But by the sixth inning the Marlins had chased Kerry Wood and we were resorting to paganism ourselves. David, Greg and I began calling friends located in all four geographical directions of Chicago, asking them each to take a shot of liquor and throw it over their right shoulder: Minneapolis, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Guatemala. We even placed shots of whiskey on the alter in front of the Mayan drinking god, Tekún.

Nothing worked. It turned out later the whiskey shots were merely water. The waitress at bar Salon Tekún was clearly in cahoots with baseball’s powers that be.

We were forced to stomach a miserable loss and an early winter. Sammy Sosa had told me, himself, in Mesa, Arizona last March that he would play in the World Series this October. But it was not meant to be. We were clearly dealing with supernatural forces here.

So I promised David and Greg, and Cubs faithful everywhere that I would travel through the Mayan world, hunt down the cause of our curse and slay the dragon before its fiery breath could speak again next summer.

The ruins at Tikal

My roommate Jessica, a Guatemalan-American, told me that Mayan gods like high places, so I should take an overnight bus north from Guatemala City into the Yucatan Peninsula and climb the pyramids at Tikal, which were built long before the white men arrived in the western hemisphere with their bats and balls and leather mitts.

But my quest nearly ended before it had begun. A near mugging in the capital’s dark, deserted streets; forced at gunpoint to eat wretched, fried Pollo Campero chicken (the pride of Guatemala, though it is an exact replica of KFC). What match was I for this dog-eat-dog mentality in a country where chaos prevails? The elections this Sunday will almost certainly result in a coup de’ etat and corpses lining the streets.

Nevertheless, I pressed onward.

A 10-hour bus ride to Flores, on beautiful Lago de Petén Itzá, another 45 minutes in a rickety pickup to the Tikal National Park, where Jessica convinced the ticket salesman that we were all native Guatemalans to avoid paying the exorbitant $6.50 “gringo” cover charge. We hired a guide who spoke moderately good English and asked him to take us to the highest pyramids in addition to giving us the regular tour. He obeyed.

But I was distracted and couldn’t concentrate enough to follow his description of Mayan astronomy. I just wanted to find Temple IV, the highest of the ruins according to the map, climb to its lofty perch and consult Hasaw Chan K’awali, the great ruler who reversed a century of subjugation in 695 AD by defeating Calakmul, the other “superpower” state to the north.

Sports writers in K’awali’s time used to refer to a curse placed on him, that is, until he won the big one and silenced the critics. I figured he could offer me a word of advice regarding the Cubs’ woes, or maybe even open his official copy of the Popul Vuh (the Mayan bible) and cross out the line that says “the baseball team from Chicago, to the north in the kingdom of the rich white man, will bestow no wine, only tears on its supporters.”

Edgar, a Red Sox fan from Rhode Island, begged to accompany me to the top of Temple IV, claiming his team was cursed as well. I figured “why not”, Mr. K’awali would be more prone to take pity on two crying, middle-class white boys than one.

At the top of the great tower of Babel we heard a great roar that shook the very foundation of the pyramid. Edgar was about to scamper back to the ground, claiming he had no love for bloodthirsty lions, but I convinced him to stay and face the challenge. We’d have to confront our nemesis with conviction to end the curses that have plagued our peoples for years.

All of a sudden half a dozen “howler” monkeys revealed themselves in the treetops below. The mother’s roar seemed to say “stay away from my babies or I’ll throw you off of this mount”, but I knew better. She was issuing a direct challenge to my quest.

Salvation

Sensing the moment of truth was near, I held my ground, thought of former Cubs great Ron Santo, who still shows up to the ballpark every day even though the gods have taken his two legs, and dropped into the third baseman’s crouch. I was ready to charge the monkey if she dropped a bunt down the line and prepared to back up and snare a fierce line drive if she swung away.

And then, just when the staredown was approaching a climax, the howler monkey took a called third strike (a Joe Borowski fastball right down the middle of the plate), quit its bellyaching and retreated, taking its miserly act back to the dugout, or a new part of the Petén jungle. Victory was mine.

I waited around for another half hour to see if Mr. K’awali would show up and confirm what I already knew to be true – the curse was now over and the Cubs were sure to reach the World Series in the near future -- but I never saw him. He must have been in Cuba, watching winter ball with a fat stogy between his lips and a little salsa princess by his side. Who could blame him.

Nevertheless, Edgar and I both agreed that our fortunes had changed. We had traveled to the Mayan Olympus, confronted the gods and their terrible beasts, and won the battle. It was time to descend back to earth and await the outcome.

My two companions and I spent a night in Livingstone, the Rastafarian outpost on Guatemala’s Caribbean coast, before I headed to Honduras, alone, to enjoy the sweet spoils of victory: six days of scubadiving off the Bay Islands (Islas de la Bahia), looking for whale sharks and exploring shipwrecks at 30 meters. In the evenings I feasted on lobster and drank Cuba Libres with other backpackers while sharing my recent tails of woe.

Gringos Who Look Like Dollar Signs: Civil war to tourism: Trekking through Guatemala

San Francisco Chronicle

San Pedro , Guatemala -- Only after we sift through a thin layer of discarded plastic bags and other household waste hugging the shore to plunge into Lago Atitlan's azure waters do we truly appreciate the grueling, yet breathtaking three-day journey we've just completed through the Guatemalan highlands.

Torrents of afternoon rain each of the last two days had dampened the spirits of 30 backpackers and dared us to long for commonplace amenities back home in our developed countries. One Israeli woman called it quits on the hike's second day and climbed into the bed of a pickup full of live chickens to continue toward Lago Atitlan, the volcanic lake, in style.

But the sacrifices are well worth it for dozens of "gringo" backpackers each week who sign up with the Quetzaltrekkers to explore the majestic volcanoes, highlands and cloud forests in an area of Central America that only 10 years ago was all but forbidden to anyone without a machete and an appetite for the bloody civil war that engulfed Guatemala for 36 years and claimed as many as 200,000 lives.

Peace accords between the highland rebels and the rightist government were reached in 1996, but the situation since then has been anything but calm. Guatemala faces a major test today when its people go to the voting booths to choose their new president in an election they hope will be free of the fraud and violence that plagued the last one, in 1999.

But the candidacy of Gen. Rios Montt, a former dictator who presided over Guatemala briefly in the early '80s during the slaughter of thousands of Mayan Indians, has overshadowed everything here this fall. Speculation is rampant among Guatemalans and international human rights organizations that El General will do anything he can to steal the election.

Such a scenario would almost certainly provoke more bloodshed and could force multinational corporations, Western aid organizations and nonprofit groups like the Quetzaltrekkers to pull out of Guatemala. As U.S. Ambassador John Hamilton said last week, "The eyes of the world are watching this election."

At first glance, the beautiful three-day hike from Quetzaltenango, where the Quetzaltrekkers are based, to Lago Atitlan -- dubbed "the most beautiful lake in the world" by Central American guidebooks -- appears tailor- made for an adventure-tourism brochure. In fact, many customers learn about the Quetzaltrekkers from guidebooks such as "Lonely Planet" or the "Rough Guides" or via the Internet, and choose to study at Spanish language schools in Quetzaltenango, known to the locals by its traditional Mayan name, Xela.

But opening gringo eyes to the natural beauties of Guatemala, or to the mass suffering endured by the indigenous peoples over the last half-century, is not the trekkers' primary aim, says Gavin Barker, a social worker from London who founded the Quetzaltrekkers in 1995. "Our sole objective is to make as much money as possible to fund our program, which aims to meet the emotional, physical and educational needs of street children, child laborers and other at-risk children in and around the Xela area," says Gavin, who has since moved on to do other community service work in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. All profit from the hikes goes toward housing and schooling street boys at la Escuela de la Calle in the economically deprived neighborhood called Las Rosas in Xela, Guatemala's second-largest city. At a centrally located dormitory, called Hogar Abierto (open home), the trekkers have sheltered as many as 50 boys between the ages of 6 and 18 over the past eight years -- boys who face such problems as substance abuse, forced labor and child prostitution.

The Quetzaltrekkers now generate a monthly income of $3,500, which comprises 80 percent of the school's total budget. Fortunes have taken off since Gavin returned in 1999 and instituted a few minor changes, such as three- month minimum commitments and small stipends for the guides. The guide with the longest current tenure is Mike, originally from Boston, who dropped his departure plans last summer and has now served nine months "only because of the kids," he says.

"No one else was here to work with them in the dorm night after night, and they need continuity. They don't bode well with new faces all the time," he says.

The trekkers have also secured the sponsorship of the outdoor apparel company North Face and the Dutch airliner KLM, among others, which have donated supplies such as backpacks and sleeping bags.

The guides are young Westerners willing to devote their lives to the organization for a matter of months. They lead hikes at any time of day or night and in any kind of weather, look after the street boys in the Hogar Abierto, and play soccer with them at the local fields on Monday evenings.

Given their difficult pasts, the boys exhibit a dog-eat-dog mentality between the goalposts, making hard tackles, throwing elbows and using the kind of language not taught in most of Xela's Spanish schools. One Monday, a boy was convinced by a trekkers guide that the word "butterfly" bore a more ominous translation in Spanish, and so he shouted it over and over again while trash-talking with his friends.

The Quetzaltrekkers offer five regular excursions in the western Guatemalan highlands: the three-day overland hike from Xela to Lago Atitlan; a two-day trip to Tajumulco volcano, the highest point in Central America; an all-night climb up Santa Maria volcano during a full moon; a two-day hike on the Santiaguito volcano; and a six-day journey to Todos Santos in the foothills of the Cuchumatanes. Prices range from $10 to $120.

The treks are breathtaking, and the money supports a good cause, but the trips are not without the potential for danger. Young women on the Atitlan hike who strayed from the larger group have been robbed by men with machetes.

On the last morning of our journey, just after watching the sun rise over the most beautiful lake in the world and mere hours before the sweet baptism we had been waiting for, our guides Gernot (Austrian) and Jonathon (Israeli) dampened the mood with a warning: "Stick together when you descend toward the lake because this is the most dangerous part of the journey. There are men with machetes who prey on tourists in these parts, and you all look like dollar signs."

Jacob Wheeler is a Michigan-based freelance writer.