So I slept in Saturday morning, arising at a luxurious 8:30am, and stepped out my door to greet the weekend. I had slept through breakfast, so I slathered peanut butter and honey on some tortillas. Thus fortified, I decided I would swim across the lake to Flores. I'm not big fan of swimming long distances, so I took my time, and it was wonderful. There's nothing like floating (almost) effortlessly in the middle of a lake, watching one lazy cloud hover above you. By the time I got to Flores, it was hot and I was a little tired. I caught a lancha back to San Miguel do get some reading done.
And so, at 11am I found myself sprawled in my hammock, a sweaty hand drooping over the edge to drop my dimestore Nostromo paperback to the floor. It was 39 degrees Celsius and still. For those of you not on board with the whole Celsius thing, that's outrageously hot. I melted in my hammock for a while, praying for a breeze, and then jumped back in the lake. Simply because it took a lot of time, and didn't involve sweating, I swam back to Flores. After 15 minutes of baking on the dock, having failed to finish my coconut ice before it melted all over my hands, I headed back. As I approached the San Miguel shore, I saw that my entire family had taken to the water in all manner of floatation devices. There was an alligator, an elephant, a dolphin, and a wedge of styrofoam. Happy to not be sweating, we all floated in the middle until, exhausted by treading, I had to return to shore.
Even the pig was hot.
The heat continued into sunday (and now that I've checked the weather, promises to continue all week). There was a family reunion in San Benito that afternoon, and I had been invited along with my family. I'll never pass up a chance to see how different places party, so I was onboard. We took a lancha around Flores to the opposite shore, and all the ladies did their nails on the way over.
After a short walk, we arrived at the field. There were two huge tents covering tables, an auxiliary grilling tent, and a stage, equipped with imposing speakers. I was pleased to see that I recognized many people seated in our immediate vicinity. We were a minority of the 200+ guestlist, but I had people to chat with and ask questions. The grilling tent began to expel prodigious amounts of carne, tortillas and cervezas. I hadn't seen anyone in my family drink yet, but they follow the Guatemalan tradition of drinking heavily when they do. I passed a table with 6 guys and around 50 empty beer bottles.
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Half of the speaker array - and there were girls dancing on tables as well!
The band cranked the speakers up to "non-consensual", and took it (and my hearing) away. There was dancing and cheering and periodic speeches. The band ran through their traditional set and started playing looney-tunes songs and other bits of americana. My favorite was their straight-count version of "In the Mood", played without any hint of a swing beat. At one point, they blew the power, and for a blessed 3 minutes they were playing at normal dinner-music levels, but some clever mechanic got the generator up and running again, and I headed for the grill tent.
The Tun family getting down and my Iraqi friend at the grill.
Walking around with my camera gave people an explanation as to why a gringo was wandering around this family gathering. There were several people who had been hired to record the event (one had a full-sized TV camera!), and I think they just assumed I was part of the film crew. At one point I was called over to the grill to take a picture of an uncle and the chefs, and we started chatting. All three of the chefs were Middle Eastern, from Iraq, Syria and Jordan. They were less interested in discussing any of the geopolitics that interest me than in getting me to have another beer, and try this slice of meat. Since everything else I'd had from their grill had been delicious, I took it, bit into it, and then noticed they were all looking at me. "What is it?" I asked, resisting the urge to spit it out. "Finish it" they responded. "Riiiight... no I'd rather know what it is right now". They were all eating it as well, so I figured it was something traditional (re: not poisonous) they expected would shock the sheltered pallet of an American. Willing to play the game, I took another bite, and tried to guess what it was. It had a weird gamey flavor that was vaguely familiar, which was very odd, since I've never (to my knowledge) tried grilled horse penis before. I try to accept potentially weird new foods for what they taste like, not where they come from, and though this honestly didn't taste bad, my stomach did a quick turn when they told me what it was, and I ditched the rest of it as soon as I left the tent. At least they gave me a fresh beer to wash it down with...
Grilled slice of horse dong.
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