When you travel in Latin America, especially if you are not
a luxury traveler, you gotta leave the little girl pants at home. No, I am not
going to talk about travel clothes again (did that here). I am talking about
realizing that you are going to come across things that are very different,
perhaps seemingly avoid-worthy as you traverse the region, so you just have to deal with these things. This has been
discussed in previous blog posts (see here, and here, and also here), but I am going to address
it again, on a smaller scale.
I briefly mentioned the rain in Xela, Guatemala in a previous post
(check it out here), and that although it was the dry season while I was there, when it rained,
it rained a lot. Buckets. Cats and dogs. Insert other incomprehensible English
colloquialism here.
On one such a day, I had to get back to work after lunch. It
was raining relatively hard, but I had my rain jacket and an umbrella. I took
my usual route and when I got to the strange street (mentioned in this post here; I am
posting the photo again below), there wasn’t just a wet road and some puddles. There was
a waterfall. A dirty, fast moving waterfall. I was getting wet despite my wet
weather gear, but this was going to soak my shoes. And socks. And perhaps all
52 bones in my two feet. More importantly, I was going to fall on my ass.
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I stood there, underneath my umbrella, for at least ten minutes, pondering what to do. I didn’t know another route. All routes I took
led to the waterfall street. I could go back to the house, call my boss, and
tell him I couldn’t get back to the office. I didn’t really want to do that.
But I didn’t want to get washed away either.
As I was thinking, observing, brainstorming to find a way to get down this
crazy hill, two old ladies walked by and just stepped down the waterfall. Zippity-doo, down they went. Just
like that. Like they had done it a thousand times, knew where to step without
losing a shoe, and it was no big deal. That is all it took to snap me out of my
caution-addled thoughts and get down the waterfall. If two little old ladies could do it, so could I! I tried to step where they
did, and guess what! I didn’t fall or get washed away. I got incredibly
wet, but I already was incredibly wet.
What is the point of this story?
If you don’t know where to turn, follow your elders, as they
are wise to the ways of the river.
Or:
Standing around thinking too much will get you nothing but wet.
Or:
Don’t be such a chicken – put on your big girl pants
and just go!
