"Plastic plastic every where nor any drop to..." oh, wait, Coleridge was talking about sea water, not plastic, right? Last weekend, Richard and I went to Monterrico on the Pacific coast of Guatemala and there was plenty of sea water there, too. While we were not interested in drinking it, we did wish we could have swum in it, but alas, the surf there is VERY strong with an undertow that could probably pull an army tank into the water. So we settled on wetting our feet and then swimming in the pool at our hotel when we got too hot (I am very tan now:)). But I digress. (More on Monterrico in the next post).

Last year when I was here, I met a guy who was doing graduate-level work in Germany studying plastic (Hi, Max!). I can't remember a whole lot about what he told me, but one thing did kind of stick: the trick now is not so much in creating more plastic, as it is in finding better ways to use the plastic we have already created (so sorry, Max, if I have misrepresented what you explained to me). I remember, too, trying to explain that scene from The Graduate wherein the new college grad Benjamin (the character played by a very young Dustin Hoffman) receives the sage, one word advice from one of his father's cronies: "Plastic." I guess you had to be there. I don't think Max was able to see the humor in a 1960's movie about the disaffection that intimately nuzzled the neck of a generation old enough to include his elderly aunts and uncles, if not quite his grandparents.

But yeah, plastic.

As I said, plastic, plastic everywhere. This country relies on plastic in oh so many forms. Ask for a packet of gum and you get a sheet of plastic-lined foil with individual pieces of gum secure in little bubbles of plastic. No Wrigley's foiled-wrapped sticks of gum here. Every little purchase at the grocery store, the mercado, or even the little tiendas that line the streets is handed over in plastic bags (no, "Paper or plastic?" here). They have them in many sizes, from the size of the afore-mentioned packet of gum on up to big enough to carry groceries. This is, after all, a VERY wet country. Gum that is not so packaged is unchewable after a matter of hours because it is inextricably stuck to the foil wrapper. Purchases that are not carried away in plastic bags are likely to be soaked from the frequent yet oddly unpredictable rain. The bags are thin--there are no Target-strength bolsas--and given to tearing easily, but they are nonetheless very valuable. Trash baskets (yes, I do mean the ones next to the toilet for you-know-what, as well as the ones for regular trash) are lined with the bags and get changed pretty much on a daily basis. Figuring out why the one in the bathroom gets changed regularly isn't too hard; the others get changed because, should there be any food waste in them, an infinite number of little teeny tiny ants swarm to carry bits of food back to wherever they hang out when they are not marching around the room.

Another very common use of plastic has to do with the street vendors. Every day, Mayans cart their goods to the streets of Antigua in order to hopefully earn enough money to make the effort of creating and carrying worth it. Many vendors have little wooden stalls where they carefully arrange their merchandise; sheets of plastic are carefully rolled up like theater curtains, ready to drop at the first hint of water. There is one mercado where merchants lay huge sheets of plastic right on the street and arrange their stuff in equal artistry. Piles of incredible hand-loomed fabrics, jewelry made of jade and silver, wooden flutes and bowls--all painted in the vibrancy of the Guatemalan spectrum--cover the plastic, and there the merchants sit, exclaiming "?Que buscas?" (what are you looking for?) and, "un buen precio para ti," ( a good price for you) over and over again to anyone who even slows in step, let alone makes eye contact. And then the rain starts. Out come more plastic sheets, some large enough to cover small swimming pools, and the carefully arranged treasures are covered, unmolested. Then the rain stops, and off goes the plastic. And then the rain resumes, and again plastic is unfurled. I am not sure how many times a day this pattern is repeated during the rainy season. But I do think that plastic has allowed these people a better opportunity to make money.

Plastic furniture is also every where. I am sitting in a green plastic chair right now while Richard sits a few feet away in one studying Spanish with his teacher, David. Many of the smaller restaurants and most of the language schools (tons of them!!!) have the same chairs as well as matching tables (although the tables here at the school are of rough-hewn wood). The mercado is filled with cheap plastic toys and hair trinkets--kind of like at one of those horrible things called "dollar stores." Food stalls of course hand out flimsy, incompetent plastic forks with meals piled onto styrofoam plates. Plastic is cheap and lightweight (if not always durable), and thus fills needs and makes life easier in many ways. Even the Antigua gym, where I go every morning to sweat--oh, wait, I sweat here all the time. Why do I go to the gym again?!?--anyway, the gym has a beautiful, wooden floor laid over what was once a courtyard and is ceilinged (neologism:)) by a huge tarp. The tarp is patched with duct tape and is also very leaky, so the floor is most often covered with, yep, one of those huuuuge sheets of plastic.

And then, of course, there are the water bottles.

As any northern traveler who ventures to the southern parts of the world knows, drinking water down here is Not a Good Idea. Some people blame the local food for traveler's diarrhea, and others blame mysterious, "foreign" viruses, but most often the reality is that a water-borne bacteria that we do not have in northern water messes with our alimentary systems, as we have no natural means of dealing with it. I wrote about my own intimate, dark-of-night relationship the toilet that didn't flush two years ago. Gross. And thank goodness for Cipro. Of course, most travelers do their homework and know not to drink the water. (Even though somehow some of us still get hit hard, no matter how diligent we are when brushing our teeth or keeping our mouths closed in the shower:(.) So "agua pura" is sold everywhere, absolutely everywhere. Here in Antigua, precautions are taken: restaurants that exist on the tourists' money know to make ice and licuados (the most incredibly delectable drink of fresh pureed fruits--kind of like slushies but ohmygod so much better!) with purified water, and they wash the veggies in it, as well; homestays have water filters attached to their faucets, as does the kitchen here at Centro Linguisto where I study and live. But travelers are often a wary breed, so even while we in the States are weaning ourselves of the ridiculous habit of buying plastic bottles of water at extortionary sums, in Central America, bottled water is a still-booming business. And also necessary. Outside of Antigua and other very popular tourist centers, the water served in public is not very carefully monitored. Just ask my friend Jason who spent a weekend at a hospital somewhere near Lake Atitlan, and then spent the rest of 2010 trying to rid himself of the water-borne parasite that settled comfortably in his body. Again, gross.

In short, plastic is now essential here in Guatemala. The main industry--tourism--is dependent on keeping things dry, keeping travelers safe. Plastic provides shelter and protection to people and things.

Troubling, though, is that, while plastic things are often vulnerable, plastic itself seems to hang around forever. Like I said, plastic plastic everywhere.

Richard leaves very early Sunday morning. We have had a really good time crawling around Antigua and going to the beach. My plan is to write more about Monterrico, as well as our trip to Ciudad Vieja where Richard got to meet our 3 ahijados ("godchildren") and the rest of the kids at Nuestro Futuro, on Sunday. Pictures included:).

Paz a todos!
Jali