08.26.10 

By Mark Kendall

Mile: 8186 

Parramos, Chimaltenango – Yesterday was a beautiful morning, so no matter how beautiful the building and courtyard may be, in some ways it felt like a shame to spend the morning indoors in the CIRMA archives.

Despite its lack of immediate access to the sun and breeze, I was impressed by how organized and helpful folks were there. Upon entering the archive area, I was given a pair of white gloves and a pristinely-organized tupperware container filled with small white envelopes. Each envelope was a small bundle of newspaper clippings, organized by subject and/or theme. Please tell me there wasn't someone that did all of this work overnight!

At first the space had that feeling of a library where way too much strictly cerebral activity is going on. But, after a while, I heard a few Beatles cover songs (instrumental Latin versions) playing in the background. Every once in a while one of the archivists would whistle along, which helped to lighten the mood. Over a thousand clippings later, I walked out with photocopies of few things that will hopefully be of some use in a historical montage of some sort.

After CIRMA we headed towards the bus terminal in hopes that we could hop a ride into the mountains and walk around along some of the more picturesque roads to film buses driving through them. We boarded the bus to Chimaltenango, but before taking off from the bus terminal it looked like there were some serious rains coming from the direction in which we were headed. So, within one minute of hopping on, we hopped off.

Today was beautiful and we had much better luck. I shot a bit in the bus terminal before taking off – mostly detail shots of all the diverse decorations and paint jobs on the buses parked there – and then we hopped on the bus to Chimaltenango, hopping off at the second stop just after climbing a large hill upon entering the small town of Parramos.

We walked down the mountain towards a lookout point that faced a long windy road that hugged the side of an adjacent mountain and overlooked the valley below. From afar you could see buses trudging up the hill, clouds of dust trailing behind them. There were a couple great views along the walk that provided enough variety in the shots for it to feel as though we covered a lot of ground.

Lots of folks honked and waved as they drove past, and the construction workers that were helping to flatten the half of the road that was not yet paved were curious about what we were doing. While shooting, we gave them the short version of the story. But, as we headed down the last part of the hill we saw them sitting and breaking for lunch, so we went over and introduced ourselves. They invited us to a homemade chicken taco as they sat roadside, so we talked for a bit and had the beginnings of a late lunch.

We wrapped well before dinner and will have plenty of time to get some rest before another trip into the capital tomorrow.