Gnarled, quinoa-stained fingers reach towards us from behind an intricately-carved and eminently-Intragrammable mahogany doorway, and then the yoga pants-clad creature claws its way towards us.
Eyes rolling within its peeling skull, tongue flapping in its mouth like a dying fish, the hippy shuffles forth, muttering obscenities about ayahuasca and the patriarchy. The stench – an acrid mixture of blueberry vape smoke and unwashed armpits – is enough make me gag.
All seems lost, until the ghoul pauses momentarily to perform a short TikTok dance to strains of Paint the Town Red by Doja Cat, giving Bigella time to throw a sourdough oregano-and-onion scroll in the opposite direction, providing a brief chance to escape down the twisted, claustrophobic alleyways of San Marco La Laguna.
Bursting, gasping from the cluster of tourist shops and spiritual healing clinics, the Guatemalan jewel of Lake Atitlán opens up before us in all its splendour, the cerulean waters giving way to the towering Volcán San Pedro. A brief moment of contemplation gives way to terror as a bearded freak, rainbow-hued pantaloons flapping in the breeze as he twirls an ornate firestick, attempts to recruit us into his percussion troupe.
“Get in the boat!” I scream to Bigella. “And watch out for the stream of sewage! It would really mess up your handcrafted boots if you stepped in that!”
Fearlessly, I grab the beardy weirdy by the JBL speaker hanging around his neck and flip him off the pier, then plunge into the boat, resurfacing between a bloated middle-aged couple from Wisconsin and a sunburnt German tourist who moistly introduces himself as Günter. The boat sets off across the lake towards a clutch of brightly-painted buildings in the distance.
“Bigs,” gasps Bigella, her billowing breast giving away the fact that she finally sees me as the action hero the world knows me as. “I now understand why you warn people never to visit a place without a Big Thing.”
“Fortunately, Bigella,” I say with a splash of my trademark winning smile, “we’re on our way to San Pedro La Laguna, home of the legendary La Mano Verde.”
A Big Hand for the Little Lady
Breathing in the crisp mountain air, I gesture towards the ramshackle concrete village that races up the incline behind me. Colourful flags flap from haphazardly hoisted lines. Mayan women, each four-foot tall and five-foot wide, sashay through the buzzing traffic, baskets perched on heads, their ornate purple-and-gold tunics gleaming in the sunshine. Mercifully, there is nary an unwashed hippy in sight.
“See, Bigella,” I croon, “there’s a calmness, a serenity that cloaks any place that houses a Big Thing. It’s as if –”
I’m rudely cut off by half-a-dozen drunken British tourists with matching vomit stains down their shirts, marching past chanting bawdry soccer anthems. Not one to put up with such uncouth behaviour, I pluck off my bright pink sunglasses and give them a really stern look as if to say, ‘wind your necks in’ – enough to quieten them down and hopefully give them something to think about as they nurse their ill-gotten hangovers.
“As I was saying, it’s as if Big Things are the answer to all life’s problems. A few more of them and we’d have world peace, an end to the housing crisis and people could finally appreciate the works of Taylor Swift without looking at them through the lens of her business acumen. Anyway, let’s head up to La Mano Verde. Toodle-pip!”
San Pedro is a swarm of contradictions, where ancient cultures clash with Guatemala’s nascent tourism industry. Asian fusion restaurants in one street, starving children in the next. Motorbikes spew black smoke as they criss-cross the cobblestone streets, whilst street dogs and touts and lunatics meld together.
One can easily become discombobulated amidst the maze of festively-painted streets, but I’m a world traveller so, after a short detour in the wrong direction, I allow Bigella to bundle me into a tuk-tuk, and soon we’re hurtling up the side of the volcano, dodging pot holes and chickens, heading into the heaving bosom of the jungle.
He’s Got the Whole Universe in this Hand
Until recently untouched by the hand of man, the vista from Mirador Nido del Colibrí (The Hummingbird’s Lunch, for those uncultured swine who are bereft of an understanding of Español) is enough to fill one’s soul to the point of bursting.
Volcanoes scratch at the sky. Impenetrable forests wrestle with the brutal concrete of San Pedro. It’s an ancient land, a rugged land, a splendid land rich in treasures that will charm even the most world-weary adventurer. We drink it in, Bigella and I, reflecting upon the twisting, turning journey that brought us here. A journey that would crush the spirits of lesser people.
The majesty is only slightly dampened by the portly chap behind me who keeps poking me with his selfie stick to move further up in the line for a photo with La Mano Verde. Chill out, Francisco!
Forty-five long minutes later – enough time for us to admire the lookout’s other attractions, such as a set of butterfly wings and a cutout of a bird – it is the turn of Bigella and I to step sanctimoniously out onto the massive mitten. A lifetime spent scouring the planet for the most bodacious Bigs has carried me towards this moment and, as I pass the wrist, I am overwhelmed by emotion. It is all too much and, reduced to a blubbering mess, I collapse upon the vast emerald palm, my body shaking with the grandeur of it all.
If Bigella is repulsed by my very public breakdown, she doesn’t show it. She simply trots off to the tuk-tuk and races back to town, probably to tell her girlfriends about how ruggedly masculine I am.
Finally pulling myself together after my existential crisis, I press my ruddy cheeks to La Mano Verde and listen to his spiritual essence. He speaks to me, telling me stories dating back millennia, to the dawn of the Bigs, that open up windows into my soul. The universe changes, morphing into something new and strange and wonderful. The manic words of the hippies, once so vulgar and contrived, find clarity within my bended mind.
I have, after eons in the darkness, achieved Big-lightenment.
And then Francisco goes and pulls me from my metaphysical odyssey, sending me plummeting back to Earth and deep within a pit of despair, by poking me with that dang selfie stick again.
I hope your photo was worth it, Frank!
