So after four hours of Spanish classes at the school Corazon Maya, Raquel and I helped the family we’re staying with deliver chocolate to a buyer across the lake in a town called Panajachel (it can also be seen in the map further below). The family we’re staying with makes 16 different flavors of chocolate bars from all natural organic ingredients. The drool is rolling off my bottom lip right now just thinking about trying another.
The process starts with Diego, the father of the house, getting up at the crack of dawn to catch a bus to Chela, a city a couple hours away. There he buys cacao beans and blocks of panela (brown sugar cane), which he brings back by bus to San Pedro. Chocolate is made with an ample amount of these two ingredients. Over the years Diego has fine-tuned a unique creation process. First, the cacao beans are roasted over an open fire and las cascaras (shells) are removed by dropping batches of the roasted cacao onto a piece of sheet metal that lies below on the ground (the shells blow off in the wind when repeatedly dropped from about 5 feet up). After the shells are removed from the cacao beans are taken to the molino (mill), where they are ground into a thick paste.
The next main ingredient, panela (brown sugar cane), comes in blocks about half the size of a lunchbox. These are cut down with big knives into a more manageable consistency which is then melted down over an open fire into a liquid syrup. When the ground cacao returns from the molino, it is poured into the panela and stirred by hand until the right consistency is achieved. The combination of these two ingredients results in a pure dark chocolate and I can honestly say that I’ve never tasted anything quite like it... rich, sweet, and extremely capable of breaking a number of sweet-toothed people out there.
Now, because this chocolate is so potent, only a small amount is set aside as a special batch that will actually be made into bars with the label puro or pure. The rest goes through a process of adding milk and another special ingredient - which a will leave out of this blog to keep safe la receta (recipe) of the master chef Diego (I’ve also left out a couple smaller parts of the baking process). Several times, Diego shared parts of the story of his chocolate making venture with me. Including how he goes through the process of choosing the right cacao beans by tasting them first, how he perfected the receta through trial and error, and how he once almost sold his receta to a Panamanian cacao farmer. Over 11 years, Diego has gone from 4 to 16 flavors and his product is the one and only patented chocolate in Guatemala.
So with 800 bars, Diego’s wife Angela, sons Julio and Odvan, as well as Raquel hopped in a small van to get to the dock in San Pedro, where we caught a small boat which took about a half an hour to get to Panajachel. When we left the dock in Panajachel Angela tried to pay the regular price of 15 Quetzales for each of us, but the boat captain insisted that Rae and I had to pay 25 Quetzales because we were extranjeros/foreigners. This really upset the family (and me, cause I’m so cheap), but I told Agela afterwards it was ok and that we were cool with paying extra.
This seemingly simple encounter wore on me though afterwards for another reason. It wasn’t really cause I had to come up with extra money (1 dollar = about 8 quetzales). I realized that what really bugged me was that Rae and I were seen and treated as being different from the rest of the family even though we were beginning to see ourselves as helping out just like everyone else. I’m steady learning that despite my Spanish getting better it’ll never be good enough to separate me from a certain type of “otherness” that comes with being an outsider. Even those who might have mastered the language perfect here are still labelled as different. Though I don’t like it, I’m coming to accept it.
Here, it’s somewhat more tough to acclimate even with Spanish because Tzu’tujil culture (what we call Maya) is still so strong. The language is the first one spoken in the house and people use it when they don’t want to be understood by outsiders who know Spanish well. I know of only one French women in the town who’s mastered it, but she was still described to me as the French lady who lives here by a couple people.
Still, the Hernandez family has made us feel so welcome and has been so hospitable to Rae and me. Maybe that’s what hurt both the family and us when we were charged extra for the ferry. Diego, Angela, and their kids are treating us as siblings in the family and a bond has been created in only a couple of short weeks. Though I’m reluctant to call people I’m staying with my mother, father, or siblings (you seem to be encouraged to this with home-stays) I really do feel like a part of the family. As usual I tend to avoid the touristy places and people, and try not to speak english, so this helps. I’ve spoken a bit more english with Rae along for this trip (cause she didn’t speak any Spanish when she got here). However, I think it’s the strong bond Rae and me have, which mirrors those of the family here, that has made the transition seem so seamless. Who knows...?
Wow, I’ve rambled on a bit here, so I’ll wrap it up. After dropping off the 800 piece order in Panajachel we grabbed lunch in the local market and walked back to the dock. At the dock there were a group of tourists were getting into the same boat as us. Some of the girls in the group became upset because the conductors couldn’t get all their friends in the same boat. They started complaining in another language (not Spanish, but I will leave the country unnamed) and I was quickly reminded that even though we were paying the same to get back to San Pedro, there was something that separated Rae and me from these obnoxious extranjeros.
We got back to San Pedro worn out and drained. The next day we caught another one of Julio’s fútbol game (we lost 0-2). Still, we had a good time there with Odvan and the two Nicolas’ (neighbor kids who are always around the house to play, go swimming, eat, etc.). Rae mentioned to me that going to Julio’s games were a lot like going to our actual brother or sister’s sporting events in the states. I had already been thinking the same and readily agreed.
The last full day in San Padro was memorable for a number of reasons. After classes we went to the la playa within walking distance of the house, where people play, bathe, and wash clothes. When the wind is up the water is a bit murky, but it didn’t really didn’t matter yesterday. We were in good company with the kids... Odvan, Nico (Pancho or El Presidente), Marcos (Cush) and his sister Chusita. We swam, goofed around, took pics, I fell in a hole. Fue un tiemp genial para todos.
There were many times like this with various groups of people over the past few weeks, but I don’t always have the camera around to snap away cause it either feels uncomfortable or contrived. I hate being the tourist. At first I didn’t bring the camera to la playa yesterday, but after we arrived I realized that I would want to keep memories of that day. While the others played I snuck back to the house and got the camera. When I got back everyone was laughing and joking as usual. The kids actually snapped a good amount of these pics. And we got some of all of us on auto-timer as well.
