A Kite Trip To Guatemala and Belize

Or, Might As Well Blow Bubbles

by Elain Genser

So it was November, and cold and rainy, and totally unkiteworthy weather. The solution seemed simple to me. Run away from the depressively gray Pacific Northwest to somewhere warmer and more kite friendly! Yes, retirement DOES have some perks. LOTS of time on your hands, but unfortunately not a whole lot of money to indulge in the more exotic sun and beach places! Economics dictated that it had to be somewhere cheap and therefore I was looking at a Third World country, someplace I could settle in for a while to hopefully enjoy the sunshine, fly some kites, and pick up the local language. Guatemala seemed like a good idea at the time. The books described it as 'The Land of Eternal Spring". HAH! That's because in many parts of Guatemala, Spring never really turns into summer! And spring, in the mountainous region where I chose to live for a month, turned out to be bloody cold.

Choosing what kite to travel with is always challenging. This trip it was especially difficult, because everything I needed for two months had to fit in a backpack. In Guatemala, my transportation would be on 'chicken' buses. Chicken buses are the only way to travel in Guatemala, and for the uninformed, they are the remains of old North American yellow school buses that have been declared too decrepit or unfit for use in Canada or the U.S. and have 'retired' to Guatemala. A luggage rail is added to the top, the bus is brightly painted, and it's ready to roll. Traveling on chicken buses is always an experience. There is the driver, of course, but the most important person on the bus is the money taker-luggage handler-people compacter guy. He is responsible for compressing as many people as possible into the bus after throwing their luggage on the top. Picture 'sitting' seven across in one of these ancient vehicles, and then try to figure out where you would put your kites! I actually discovered there was a rational reason for this 'compacting'. There is no such thing as a straight road in Guatemala (it is totally mountainous). If you are NOT sitting so compacted together, you get flung around off your seat into the aisle, and you may topple into a woman holding a basket of live chickens on her head. So the kites I chose had to be small, and hardy. I chose to take a new little pocket foil, my small stunt kite and a handful of my pocket sleds for giveaways. With some judicious curving and bending they all fit in my little backpack.

I tried, I mean I really REALLY tried to fly some kites. But there is just isn't very much flat open land in Guatemala. I spent my first month in Quezaltenango, living with a local family and attending Spanish school. The city was at 3000 m, and nowhere did I find a field or open area where I could fly. And when I wasn't trying to fly, I was LOOKING for kites. I knew there was such a thing as a typical Guatemalan kite, but I had no idea where I could find some. I asked people at the school where I was studying, but they told me that after the annual November kite fete, they disappeared. All that I knew was that their kites were very large and like many South American kites, were made of tissue paper glued together in complex designs.

I came upon my first Guatemalan kites by accident. On the day I went in to the tourist bureau to get some information, I turned to leave, and spotted a huge tissue paper and bamboo kite leaning up against the wall behind a filing cabinet. There were three kites, and the information officer kindly held them for me as I photographed them. Even if they had been for sale, I would not have been able to take them home, as they were over seven feet tall, and were glued to bamboo spars.

In this mountainous heavily populated country, it was difficult to find a clear space that wasn't planted with corn. Any land that didn't have trees on it, was planted in corn. Guatemala is a very poor country, and every flat piece of arable land is cultivated. Even cleared spaces on the steep sides of mountains were planted with corn. I carried that damn little pocket kite everywhere I went, but never had a chance to fly it.

When I finished with my classes, I headed for heat on the Caribbean coast, and finally was able to at least launch my little sled kites. But I had to leave land to fly, as the coast was covered by dense jungle. So off I went by wind, sailing for a week on a 46' catamaran down the Rio Dulce river, to snorkel on the reefs of Belize, trailing my little pocket kite behind me! I didn't give up on the Tori Tako. I even carried it by Zodiac to a little island atoll we visited, but the palm trees got in the way.

I then decided, maybe I could sublimate the passion to fly by searching for and photographing some of the glorious tissue paper appliquéd Guatemalan kites. In this I was slightly more successful, finding examples in unexpected places. It became a holy grail as I searched for kite traces wherever I went. In a small village on Lake Atitlan I even recorded the remains of a kite that died on a power line, I found kites tucked behind a boom box on a weaver's loom in the mountain town of Salcaja. I even found a kite T-shirt celebrating the 100th anniversary of the annual kite festivities in the Santiago Sacatepequez graveyard every year. The shirt will be donated to the Fort Worden auction. I was amazed to find a collection of kites hung from the ceiling of a large weaving and craft cooperative in Antigua. And last, but not least...the kite skins I managed to score in a small museum for musical instruments, also in Antigua. In the museum I also found a painting of kite fliers, which of course I also bought! The museum workers thought I was a bit nuts as I went ballistic with my finds!

Well, I packed my kites at the bottom of my pack, and pretty well gave up on flying on this trip. I continued on in my search of sunshine to Caye Calker, in Belize. This is a small island in Belize's 290 km long barrier reef. There are no cars on this tiny island, only electric golf carts and bicycles. It is probably the most laid back place I have ever been in my life, and there is nothing much to do but snorkel and ..I dunno... sit around and fish, drink, read, sun and eat lobster. NO BEACHES! Just long wharves for the boats to dock at. No place to fly my damn kites. I was reaching the end of my trip. Frustration was high. On my last morning, I went wandering behind my hotel, and there it was... a rather primitive but perfectly adequate soccer field! I ran back to the hotel and dug out my kites and headed back. I had three hours before the teeny weeny plane left to take me to Belize international airport.

I rolled out the lines, and ZAP!! That little hot pink Tori Tako took right off, looping and dancing around in the sky!! It took no more than five minutes to attract an audience of local little boys, who gaped in amazement, and stared at me with pleading eyes.. I was quickly 'de-kited' and there was an ecstatic 11 year old named Malcolm having his first try at a dual line kite. He had it mastered in minutes, and he and his brother Jerome and several friends used up my three hours flying time, as I watched and chatted with grandma.

Noon came too soon, and my golf cart 'taxi' arrived to take me to the airport. Well, I left my heart in Guatemala - I plan to return next year. But I left my kite in Caye Calker!!! After packing it for two months, it found a home in Belize.