Stories

Chorro de Humo and the Gentleman

What follows is a brief retelling of a long story. It came to my ears from a Guatemalan caballero, a true gentleman, gracious, attentive, multilingual and worldly. He had a grin like the Cheshire Cat, an insane laugh, and was prone to verbosity when it came to the topic of himself. He was from money, his family large scale coffee growers, but he gave it all up for a life of adventure. He became obsessed in all things Mayan. To describe him as an amateur archaeologist would be inaccurate. He hob knobbed with academics and world renown Mayanists and had acquired some degree of regard. He knew about all aspects of Mayan culture; architecture, agriculture, fine arts etc. and was free with the sharing. But being a gentleman doesn’t mean one can’t have a foot in different worlds. There very often is a fine line between right and wrong, truth and fiction and what gentleman, or any one for that matter, hasn’t straddled those lines.

The depth of the gentleman’s knowledge was due to large measure by the fact that he had explored Mayan archaeological sites large and small, significant and inconsequential, close at hand as well as buried deep in the El Peten jungle for over 25 years. It was during one of these trips that he discovered a man sick and dying in the jungle and he saved his life.

The man’s name was Chorro de Humo and he was a saqueador, a grave robber specializing in Mayan archaeological sites. He rolled his own cigars, long and fat. He chain smoked these nasty buggers and that is how he got his name, or actually, his nick name. Spanish speaking friends tell me that a loose translation of “Chorro de Humo” was something like smoke stack.

Chorro de Humo and the gentleman came at Mayan archaeology from completely opposite directions but saving a man’s life can change the way brain neurons line up and fire. A looter and an archaeologist, connected. Friendship mucking with that ethical line in the sand.

Looters dig straight line narrow tunnels into rocky piles of rubble covered with snarling jungle. The average Joe wouldn’t know they were looking at an ancient building. The tunnel at some point turns into a crawl space and with luck, eventually a chamber. Here they find finely painted porcelain quality ceramics, jade jewelry and other valuable artifacts. The work is dangerous. The gentleman once found the body of a looter, sitting, his face all disfigured. The building had collapsed on his head and he had been able to work himself free of the rubble but the damage had been done. He had pulled himself to sitting, sat there, and bled to death.
The robbers are only interested in objects they can wrap in palm leaves and carry out. Unmovable murals, frescoes, paintings on the walls are of no value to them. Not so, and to the contrary, for archaeologists. Frescoes, murals tell stories, inform, are highly prized and rare because they are so vulnerable to the heat and humidity of the jungle. Good quality, intact murals are almost non existent. These are the treasures that every archaeologists longs to put their name on.

It was during a casual conversation over some drinks that Chorro de Humo mentioned a site with paintings. The thought of it made every cell in the gentleman’ s body somersault but Chorro de Humo was not forthcoming. Years and many conversations later, now old and in declining health, he agreed to disclose the location of the site with the paintings. The gentleman activated, hired his jungle guide and contacted a world renown Mayanist and the 3 of them set out to meet with Chorro de Humo. Days later when they arrived at his house they encountered women dressed in black and mourning. Tragically and suddenly, Chorro de Humo was dead.

The story gets a little foggy at this point but essentially the decision was made to go with the information they had. They poked and explored, for maybe days, and eventually found themselves in an archaeological site when it began to rain. Seeking cover they entered a tunnel and because the tunnel was low and small they were forced to lie on their backs. What they eyeballed above their faces was the oldest and by far the best preserved Mayan murals ever seen by modern man. Detail, colors, an invaluable historical treasure incredibly preserved and intact. The discovery turned the Mayan archaeology world on its head.

The gentleman tells the world, the archaeologist follows academic protocol to report the find and a big tug of war over bragging rights follows. But what about Chorro de Humo, that cigar smoking, grave robbing, temple wrecking, son of a gun? Right or wrong, good or bad, it is a tight rope walk, without him those murals would still be moldering away, undiscovered, one of the most precious, gorgeous pieces of pre-Colombian fine art ever, alone and unseen.

There is a photo of myself and a guy I barely knew.  It could be called a photo portrait. A friend was responsible. He was throwing a big party.  From the outside of his house he was photographing the party inside, each photo framed by an open rectangular window. Spontaneously, from inside, the guy I barely knew and I stuck our heads side by side, almost touching, into the open window  and said “you want a photo, come and get it”. Our faces framed and 2 feet from the camera lens, the shutter clicked. We had buddied up a bit.

That photo came to mind while eating in a restaurant in Mazunte, more to the point it was the owner of the joint that provoked the recollection. Macho, nothing friendly about him, no smiles, no customer interaction, hires babes to wait on tables, and along with his two well trained German shepherds, he always has a few underlings at his elbow fetching him things, sucking up.

Every time I see this guy the same thoughts make their way in.  This guy could could hurt someone, this guy might have hurt someone, or at some point in his life was willing to do bad things for the right price. I don’t really know what a cartel vibe is but this could be it.

There was a night when a number of people were waiting for a table and, I will call him The Dark One, cleared the largest table in the joint, so he and his buddies could drink beer, play poker and smoke pot.

I was sitting right behind him the night of the poker game, I could have reached out and touched him. I was rooting for him to win, no need for trouble.  We hadn’t buddied up but it was up close and personal enough.

I hope I’m wrong about this guy because I missed by a mile with my portrait buddy. A few years after the photo, he stalked and brutally murdered his ex-girlfriend. He’s behind bars. I had that one all wrong.  I would love to be wrong again.

The setting is a well designed bungalow in a rural area just outside a small Mexican beach town. The bungalow has sliding folding walls on two sides so it can be wide open with a view to the ocean or closed up like a conventional room.  

Imagine, you and the one you love are returning along the dirt lane to the bungalow by flashlight after a splendid evening out.  There awaits a stone patio with comfortable chairs, cups of mezcal,  a moon orange and setting and a star loaded sky. The air temperature is perfect, shirt, no shirt, not important, an ocean breeze. Quiet.

Before sitting, you offer to go and open the bungalow and allow the ocean air in the room. You unlock the door,  flip on the light and what you see causes you to catch your breathe and fall back. In front of you, in every square inch of the room, highlighted against the white walls, white bedding and soft tones of the floor are thousands of large, black ants.   A huge swat team focused, intent.  Different units with different tasks. A long line of ants like a thick rope entering the bungalow making their way in and out of closets with shirts, underwear and personal belongings, a unit of ants spreading all over the bed, investigating sheets, pillows, mattress, climbing up and into the mosquitero, a systematic pattern of single scouting ants geometrically spread out on the floor, walls and ceiling, up and down the legs of table, chairs.  Everything exposed, literally nothing untouched, no signs of it ending, the room overtaken.

The Quiz

After taking a deep breath, what do you do?

1. Go to the caretakers cabana and say “what the hell do we do”?
2. Tell your loved one what you witnessed and that you have it under control and launch a counter attack with a herbal pesticide.
3. Say nothing, Do nothing,, drink the mezcal, chat and enjoy the night sky.
4. Go to the internet and type in something intelligent and follow instructions.
5. Freak out and move out.
6. Boil water and let them have it..

The correct answer, of course, is #3.  This is a swat team deployed by the Master Ant, they received a bad tip, no wrong doing on anyone’s part, no cookies, no crumbs.

The stone patio is the place to be, sip some mezcal, do it right with salt, chili peppers, and ground worm larvae, compare notes about the dinner, lean back, look up, take in the night sky brilliant and loaded.  Then return to the room,  no trace of an ant, nothing, like it never happened.  The bungalow is ready for the night to continue..

There are those that would argue that fast foods are quasi foods a few chemical steps removed from being plastic or even poison and that the careful, conscious preparation of comestibles is by far preferred. With a few exceptions I am a member of that club.  Take for example hallucinogenic preparations known to be used by the ancient Maya.

Unquestionably complex and varied, they used carefully prepared concoctions of datura and alcohol, mixtures using fermented bark, recipes with psychoactive mushrooms and even potions with powerful alkaloids from the glands of Bufo Marinus, the Wad Frog, to induce hallucinatory experiences.

How archaeologists know these recipes is another question but take the Wad Frog/alkaloids potion as an example. The gist of the preparation goes something like this. The frogs are submerged in a bath of H2O, with water lily pads and other botanical agents. This produces a release of hallucinatory alkaloids from the frogs gland into the liquid. This liquid is then placed in an enema sack or clyster. Ancient paintings depict the anal delivery of the psychoactive potion via these enema sacks or clysters. 

Terrance McKenna, the psychonaut and ethnobotanist would have us believe that psychedelic mushrooms were introduced to planet earth when their spores fell to earth from outer space.  This apparently occurred many centuries ago and why, after the arrival of the Spanish, with their beasts of burden a new variety of hallucinatory mushrooms were found growing in the dung heaps of horses and mules.  One such variety is known as “Pajaritos”. They are a tiny, delicate, white stemmed  tu-tued skirted mushroom. A jungle guide, who no doubt was speaking from experience,  informed me that simply ingesting 4 or 5 of these skirted babies would be sufficient to duplicate the objectives of the ancient ceremonial Mayan Vision Quest.  

I really have have no intentions but if my goal was to commune with the Serpent God of Mayan cosmology, scale his back, reach the Sun, and get back to the Beginning, I’m not going the enema route, I’m gonna grab some Pajaritos, the fast food path.                                

There is a rock out cropping on the Mazunte beach.  When the tide is in and one is  walking from Rinconcito, the swimming beach, to the main beach it is necessary to climb up and around the outcropping to get back on the sand.  We had watched the sunset from Punta Cometa, eaten, and in the dark were rounding this out cropping  headed for Einsteins, for music and fun,  at the other end of the beach. As we made our way around the corner we could see 5  men dressed in dark military style clothing.  We couldn’t tell who they were but we knew it wasn’t. good.  There was no turning back.

They immediately surrounded us, forming a circle. They were the Policia Nacional and armed with assault rifles. One spoke English. They wanted to know where we were from, what we were doing, where we were going,  where we were staying. They asked to see my backpack.  I dutifully  followed instructions, the only option.  I  showed them the big pocket and there was only a water bottle.  The smaller pocket had binoculars in a case.  They made me take them out and they looked in the case.  The smallest pocket had my camera in a colorful Guatemalan purse, a jack knife, pen, nothing of interest to them.. They searched Mary Kaye, respectably.

The Gods of Punta Cometa were with us, they didn’t ask us to empty our pockets or search our clothing. They  were serious and professional and we were not pure.

 

 The beach named Mermejita is probably just shy of a mile in length.  It makes for a nice walk and  because it is unprotected from the blazing hot sun seeing another human is unusual.  At the far end is a crude and small house made of stone with a palapa roof.  It is tucked into the side of a hill.  Surrounded by scrub and trees it’s hard to get close.  It looks unlived in but once a couple of years ago I came down on it from the hill above and I saw an elderly Mexican man with a wide brimmed hat sweeping the yard with a crude long handled broom made of a stick and bundled tree branches. 

 There was no snooping around on this day and just as I started the return journey a humpback whale breached.  As I walked the whale was off my right shoulder.  If my arm were 200 yards long I could have reached out and touched it without creating any angle.   For the moment we were moving in parallel.  It surfaced again, dove and was gone.

 This seemed to present itself as an opportunity for layman research.  The average speed of an ambulating human being is 2-3 mph.  I knew that if I kept my eyes peeled on the ocean there was a possibility that I could see the same whale breach again, determine its position relative to me and roughly calculate his/her speed. 

 Normally staying focused for long periods of time is not something I find easy but the ocean has a way of changing that.  The angle of a beach has to be dealt with but sand is for the most part predictable and forgiving and looking out at the Pacific while walking is an easy proposition and the visual possibilities a million fold. 

 Most of the time when a whale dives it stays down for a while and travels.  I knew I would be lucky to see it again but 20 minutes later it reappeared.  It breached and was only slightly ahead of me, still pretty much off my right shoulder. I did the calculations and was feeling very self satisfied until the best realization emerged.  I had just taken a walk with a whale. 

 We sit with suitcases and day packs in the waiting area. The bus for Palenque leaves in an hour.  Presently, a man enters the area. For some reason we both watch him.  He looks and moves weirdly and emits a vibe that stirs the central nervous system in the wrong kind of way.  He walks past us, looks at Mary Kaye a little too long and sits a few seats away.  My mind says, “probably no big deal but keep him on the radar.”  Waiting, we space in and space out, share an observation here or there, wait some more until we hear this guy talking loudly on his cellphone. Long winded and annoying he manages to up the ante. With a loud hack and smack he heaves a wad of phlegm on the floor in front of him. Moments later, he repeats.

 It reminded me of an experience I had a long time ago.  It was in Popayan, Colombia.  Late in the day I had entered a large, beautiful, colonial cathedral.   It was silent and completely empty.  After some time an old man, a campesino, dressed in his work clothes, entered and sat and then kneeled not far from me.  I could see his feet, he had no shoes and probably never did, judging by the depth of the ravines in the thick calloused feet. There was a wordless story in those feet, no telling, straight to the heart.  He got off his knees, sat a bit and upon standing he too delivered a huge gob onto one of the flagstone slabs from which the church floor was made.

 Like roadkill in the distance, the phlegm on the floor of the bus station caught my curiosity. Walking past it on my way to the bus, I decided to look. Lodged in the center of the glob of phlegm, like the yoke of an egg was a huge hunk of coagulated blood.  Abruptly, my curiosity disappeared and my disgust turned to concern.  We climbed on our bus, my concern short-lived.  Palenque was 2 hours away and the next morning we would be in the magnificent Mayan ruins set in the jungle of Chiapas, Mexico.  Perhaps, in retrospect, and especially considering that this was a vacation, it was best to consider the red glob of egg yolk as a bit of foreshadowing.  Maya……..blood rituals……. that’s not a huge stretch.

Ishmael A

Ishmael is the night watchman at the hotel.  He comes at sunset and leaves at sunrise.   Last year he got fired. The owner can be difficult.  This year he’s back.  Sometimes at night his wife takes the steep walk up the driveway with one of his grandkids, bringing him a plate of food wrapped in a towel. They meet at the gate and sometimes she stays while he eats.  She never smiles. 

Every night Mary Kaye and I give him a report on whale sightings and bug him  with questions about marine life and town history. He probably doesn’t understand much of what we are saying but that doesn’t seem to matter, the same could be said of us. Lately we have been spraying his feet with insect repellant.  Mary Kaye has been telling him it is all natural.  I don’t think Ishmael gives a hoot but he likes the stuff.  When we leave we are going to give it to him. We think of him as a revered elder even  though, my guess is, we have him by a few years.   

For most of  his adult life he worked in the local slaughter house butchering sea turtles. At the peak of the “harvest” the water in the bay at Mazunte was red with turtle blood. The Mexican government made an agreement with an international wildlife group, the slaughter house was closed and funding for a turtle museum and tourism development was made available. The ocean property that the slaughter house was on was parceled out and numbered, a lottery formed and the workers picked numbers and were awarded parcels as compensation for losing their jobs. Ishmael harvested his share.

Ishmael B

Ishmael’s wife has a small restaurant on the main street of Mazunte.  It isn’t very busy and I get the feeling she likes it that way.  A few years ago one of Ishmael’s daughter started talking about opening up her own restaurant.  So she did, right next door to her mother’s.  They built a small cement building with a palapa roof and equipped it. It took some money. 

Can you imagine entering a bank in the states and asking for a business loan?  And when asked for your business plan you told the loan officer you wanted to open up a restaurant so you could be close to your mother, same menu, same prices, same everything and exactly adjacent.  I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that.  But in fact, I very much doubt there ever was a meeting with a bank about a loan. No need, don’t judge a book by its cover,  My bet is Ishmael’s pockets are deep.

   

The dirt road is steep and deeply rutted and It’s hard to believe that a taxi would agree to navigate it, but after a couple of slow going miles and at the bottom there is a surprisingly beautiful little hotel and restaurant and an even more beautiful swimming beach named La Boquilla..It is very low key never more than a dozen people hanging out. While munching on some guacamole and hydrating with some watermelon aguas de frutas I admired a handsome Mexican couple who appeared to be in their forties.  They stopped in the restaurant and sampled some mezcal before having a cold drink and a shot delivered to them on the beach.  She bikinied and beautiful, he handsome and fit, they were lovey-dovey.

 After a very long and mindless bob in the ocean things turned serious.  Four local boys, none of them more than 15 years old, had been hanging out under a makeshift palapa near the beach.  Three of the boys left urging the fourth to join them but he refused.  He was sitting on a small rock in a shallow area of the bay with his head in his arms.  He appeared to be pouting.  With his friends gone the kid entered the water and it became obvious he didn’t know how to swim.  The handsome couple, Mary Kaye and I were watching and quickly developed a state of concern.  I walked into the water near him to help.  The picture was now clear, he was drunk.  His friends returned, pulled him from the water only to have him crawl back in.  Frustrated and drunk themselves they left him a second time.  The handsome guy and myself tried urging him out of the water but he wouldn’t cooperate instead crawling back into the surf, thrashing as if swimming and at times floating face down for way too long.   The beautiful woman pleaded with him but the kid wasn’t a little looped he was suffering from severe alcohol poisoning and way beyond the normal means of communicating.  Eventually the handsome guy and myself had had too much and we grabbed him by his armpits and pulled him out of the ocean.  We dragged him up the steep beach, his heels leaving a two-track sand record of the pull and far enough from the water’s edge that he couldn’t crawl back.  He went totally limp and for a minute I thought he was dead but I could feel a steady pulse.  We turned him on his side so that if, or more likely when, he started puking he wouldn’t choke on his vomit.  I put a sandal under the side of his head for elevation and to keep his face out of the sand.  His friends returned, they were in various degrees of sloppy drunkenness but were now more attentive.

 We had arranged with a cabbie to pick us up, it was the only way back to the paved road.  He had arrived and was waving at the far end of the beach.  We left the kids and got our stuff together.  We made eye contact with the handsome ones and nonverbally shared more concern.  We checked with the boys.  The kid was on his knees his forehead buried in the beach, sandy globs of phlegmy drool dangling from his mouth, refusing to release, and drop.  It was time to suffer.  With nothing more to do on our part we left.  There were a variety of effusive and intoxicated appreciations shouted our way but we just walked away without looking back.  I was going to remember the afternoon but I doubt the drunken kid would. 

The Mayan ruins of Tonina are 20 minutes from the city of Ocosingo. The setting is beautiful, the temples and buildings well excavated and there are very few restrictions, free to climb on and over everything and explore.  Having the place to ourselves, we were the only visitors that day, made everything all the better.

Returning to Ocosingo we waited for a colectivo. It arrived, a 1960’s Volkswagen Microbus, stick shift. Only a couple of passengers, lots of legroom. The breeze from the open windows was fresh and perfect. The ride went through a lush valley of fertile Mexican farmland and large cattle ranches. 

Approaching Ocosingo the trip took an interesting turn. There was a large group of kids and adults at the side of the road across from a school building. The driver of the colectivo stopped.  It took a bit of time and arranging as every one was loaded. When it was done the ambiance of the trip took a dramatic turn which called for a head count.  It wasn’t the easiest task but I swear to its accuracy. I counted and recounted.  There were now 26 humans of various shapes and sizes in the Micro Bus. 

This was nothing.  I recall a very slow12 hour trip by train as it wound and climbed from sea level in Northern Chile into the mountains of Bolivia. The train car so packed there wasn’t any additional space and people still pushing their way on.  My seat along with dozens of others was the filthy floor, so tightly packed that one had to sit upright, my back resting against the back of someone else.  Hygienically frightening.  Sometimes a poor sense of smell is a virtue.  There wasn’t much Spanish spoken, my fellow passengers of an impoverished indigenous stock, the women in hoop skirts, colorful embroidered blouses, fedoras for headwear, cheeks red from years in the high altitude sun. No eye contact.  As the train wound and climbed, good fortune was on my side.  Helpless and unable to shift positions much less move I could see trails of  urine as it ran my way, diverted and absorbed by luggage and clothing.   

Perhaps someone in an indigenous household in the mountains of Bolivia is recounting a similar event.  This, no doubt, is a common tale.