Look here, they caught a duck for us to see, they say they are skittish, they bite, and it turns out this place here is the village's jail. I saw... I saw my doll, broken into seven pieces. Let's try it, let's give it a shot. Nothing has ever been said about Costa Rica, gentlemen. As you can see, he is praying... she is crying... and that's normal to see here, from what I've been told. In fact, this can be tested. We're going to taste this salt, which looks like a rock. Welcome to a Mayan home, we'll live with a Mayan family. Let's go in so you can see what this place is like, Friends, we're going to show these Salvadorans how to make a corn dough tortilla. This is a fine lunch, gentlemen, let's toast. when you drink a little coke in a glass, it means you're having a fancy lunch. And now, never seen before, we're going to have the opportunity to drive a tuktuk. Good morning, afternoon or evening, but I hope you're doing great, friends. In the previous video, we explored Mayan culture. A video that, initially, was going to be a single special on Mayan life, but we ended up filming too much and missed out. This culture is incredible, it's impressive. So this will be the second part, following the previous video. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you go watch it. I'll leave it in the description. With that said, without further ado, let's begin with the second part of the super interesting life of the Mayans in Guatemala, we are in Río Jordán village, which is an indigenous village. This entire place is inhabited by indigenous people. In Guatemala, there are 22 groups of Mayan indigenous people, and the one we are in right now is the Maya-Mam indigenous group. That's like a subdivision, I'd say, to explain it somehow. As you can see, life here is pretty simple, they live off agriculture. They're just starting to explore tourism because they have so much potential. You've already seen the beautiful cenotes here. In this village, we found something very interesting, and as I understand, a few minutes from here is Mexico. If we cross that chain over there, which of course we'll cross soon, we'll arrive at some huts or something... let's go see what we find. here you can see they really live in a very simple way. The houses here are still made of adobe. That there is a completely adobe house. Its coating is falling off, and you can see the mud, gentlemen, we also found super friendly people here, just like I told you, they are part of the Mam and they allowed us to film a bit of how they live here. We found something very interesting. What you're seeing here is a temascal, and it's how people here bathe with hot water, it's basically like a sauna. I've never seen one but we're about to. This is the structure. The top is made of wood, it seems to have clay in the middle, that material they build with. this is stone, and this is a little place where you have to bend over to get in. Apparently, you sit in there. I'll turn on a light to see if we can get a better view. You enter, sit on those planks over there, I imagine also to raise your feet so they don't get dirty on the floor, and you put wood in here. In this place, you put wood and heat a pot of water. So, while the pot of water heats up, it fills this with steam and turns into a sauna. You take the hot water from the pot to bathe. So, it's a hot bath and sauna at the same time. The temascal is over here. I don't know if that's a dressing room or something. Here they have chickens, which is common in this area. Over there is the little ranch, the house where they live. Check out this one here, this is an adobe house. Here they still build adobe houses and live this way. The houses are made of this material. Look at this one here, it's huge. I don't know if you'll appreciate it the same on camera, but it's really, really big. And everything is made with this material. Also, the beams, the posts, and the ceiling are made of wood, as you can see. Over here they have this "ditch", so to speak, but look at the clear water flowing through it. In fact, some ducks were swimming here just now, and they have crops in front. In this area, they still farm and have animals. That's the main activity here. In fact, they hardly have any tourism. They're just starting to discover those things. They have corn planted over there, and further away the corn is taller. In other places, I saw they had peanuts, which is the plant peanuts come from. I don't know if it's also part of the business, but I saw people selling wood, literally selling handfuls of wood. Look here, they caught a duck for us to see. They say they are skittish, do they bite? They don't bite? They're skittish, they don't let you grab them, but once you catch them, they like being petted, right? What's your name? What? Marvin Jeremías. Your duck is lovely, Marvin! Goodbye. I don't know if I can film around here, but I want to show you something very interesting. This place is governed by local authorities. They have their own authorities, I assume they choose them in the community. Here decisions are always made as a community. Everyone has to agree and they live very differently from how we're used to. And this place here turns out to be the village's jail. It's this small two-story building. There are bathrooms on the side, I don't know if they're for the prisoners, I guess so. And inside it's like 2x2 meters or 2x1 meter. It's really small. They have only two cells and they're empty, which means the people here behave well. But the decision to put someone in this jail is made collectively. I guess they gather to see what happened, what they did, and let's get out of here quickly before they lock us up. We're in Llano de Coyote, which belongs to Guacatán de Huehuetenango. This is a much more remote, much more forgotten area. In fact, you can see that people live in adobe houses here. And we're being told that they mainly sell firewood. As you can see in the background, there are a lot of firewood stands. Darn, I did the math and it turns out cooking with firewood is expensive. Surprisingly, it would be more expensive than cooking with electricity, for example. The firewood loads they sell cost 35 quetzals. We're told they last about two days for a family. So, monthly it's approximately 525 quetzals. That's about 75 dollars, around 40,000 colones a month, just for the firewood, which is the raw material for cooking. Of course, the people from this place bring their own wood, they bring it from the mountain, so they save that expense. But if they wanted to buy, it would be very expensive. I even read somewhere, I don't know how true this data I'm going to give you is because it's brutal... I read that approximately 50% of Guatemala's population still uses firewood for cooking, obviously mainly in rural areas where the energy situation is difficult, where they are very, very remote. But 50% seems like an exorbitant number, it would be around 10 million people, since the total population of this country is 20 million. So, I don't know, verify in the comments if this data is real, but I imagine that a large percentage still uses firewood for cooking. Here in this village, we're being hosted by Julio, who I have to say we found by the side of the road, it wasn't planned at all, and the people here are super friendly. Thank you very much, Julio, for hosting us. And he's going to make us chop wood to see if these little arms can handle splitting one of those logs, because that's another hard part of this job. What we have here is ocote, it's the root of a tree, from what I'm told it's like pine, and this is what's used to kind of light the other firewood. This is flammable, so it's like what we know as "kindling", what we use to start the initial fire. So, tell me, the Guatemalans who are watching right now, have you used this to start a campfire or a barbecue? Hey, this fact, they're even telling me they sell this in Walmart here in Guatemala, to show you how important this is. Julio was telling me that in this area they don't have drinking water. The water here is well water. Ladies and gentlemen, that's what we need to do. There, as you see Julio, go ahead, Julio, so the gang here can see. I saw... I saw my doll and it's shattered into seven pieces. Let’s give it a try, let’s test. Nothing has ever been said about Costa Rica, gentlemen, first you have to break it there. This is not a little log, this is a trunk, it’s very heavy. It might weigh eight kilos perhaps. We place it there first. How do you hold it, Julio, so I don’t break my hand? Like this? Like this. Ok, I don’t know why but I think I won’t even hit it... So useless! Almost, almost, gentlemen. Don’t come near me or it will kick you. Come on, Costa Rica, representing. It only removed the bark just took off a splinter, I think after splitting 10 of these, I'll die But it's hard having to hit it and lift it and hit it again Imagine everything they have split so far, gentlemen, now we grab it like Thor and... Let’s see, well, as Araña from Salvador says, nobody has said. See the one Soya is holding? Pick one for me. We’re going to pick one for Soyacity. Costa Rica versus El Salvador. Vote, cast your votes in the comments. There you have it Soya. Let me move far away because I don’t trust much. Let’s see... Don’t be a weakling Soyacity! 1 to 0, gentlemen, 1 to 0. We’re winning. Better leave it like that Soya, that's it, one more, and I’ll leave you be. Come on Soya! Come on! Do you want one? Do you want one? All of this behind me is the town of Zacapulas, We continue the same in Mayan towns and I want to show you something very interesting that happens in this town. It turns out that nearby there’s a river called Río Negro, and beyond that river I’ve been told that near here in the community, on the other side, there’s a place where water with salt comes out from the ground, imagine! And from there they extract black salt. This here looks like a stone, basically, as the lady who very kindly received us here was telling me. In fact, the people here are super friendly, I’ve told you. Thank you very much for having us. She was telling me that they extract that water that comes with salt and cook it for 12 hours in a pot, and you get this that you see here, which looks like a black stone, but this is salt, in fact, this can be tasted. Let’s taste the salt from this that looks like a stone. Indeed, friends, it’s salty and has a taste. I couldn’t describe it to you, but it does have its little flavor. I imagine it must make the food tasty, right? It must give a special flavor. And that which looks like a stone they also grind and sell it as the salt we know, finely powdered. These are the little bags you see here. At this moment, we are at Cerro Bosque La Calera, it’s a giant hill filled with vines. We are here because there’s no better place to discuss this topic which is about Mayan religion, their beliefs. Because it turns out that this hill is sacred, Mayans come here. But it has been becoming sacred in general. I was told that now even pastors come here, Mormons, Catholics, Evangelicals, Mayans come to practice rituals. In fact, upon entering this hill we met a Mayan girl who was doing penance, apparently, they come on their knees from somewhere and climb this hill on their knees. I imagine these are like offerings in exchange for forgiveness of sins or in exchange for the granting of certain favors. Hello, good, how are you? They bring flowers, what beautiful flowers! I had never seen flowers like this. What do you use these flowers for? For petitions. For petitions? Ah, for blessings. And what do they do? Do they place them here, on a tree? Down there under a tree. And in return what do they do? Do they make a petition? Could I do it? Yes? So, I can buy a bouquet and place it here too. Are you K'iche' Mayans? Ah, Evangelicals! They pray to God, to the God of the Bible. How interesting! What beautiful flowers! What they do, do they tie it to the trees? They place the whole bouquet one by one. Thank you very much, thank you very much. May it go very well for you, may what you ask for be granted. For instance, here we seem to find an evangelical pastor and a person doing penance. As you can see, he’s praying... she’s crying... and that's normal to see here, from what I’ve been told. Now, the matter of Mayan beliefs is quite complex. Obviously, they, 3,000 years ago, which is more or less when Mayan history begins, had completely different beliefs. They believed in their gods, in the sun, in water, even in a fertility god. They had the god of corn and different gods they worshiped, to whom they performed rituals, ceremonies, etcetera, etcetera. But after the conquest, when the Spaniards arrived and imposed Catholicism everywhere, they accepted it outright, they accepted it because it was either accept or die, basically. But they continued practicing their customs in silence, hidden. But not all, there were those who did start to convert to Christ, there were those who stayed in their old customs. So, currently, what is found here about Mayan belief and religion is syncretism, basically a mix of the two. That means, for example, that they believe in God, they believe in the God of the Bible and pray to him and ask him and so on, but they also pray to their gods and perform their rituals for rain to fall on their crops, for example. That's more or less where the Mayan beliefs stand today. We are arriving at Uspantan, this behind me is the Arch of San Miguel, it's the entrance to the town, and we came to this place to see something very interesting. We are going to spend time with a Mayan family, we were already welcomed by Doña Julia, whom I'll introduce to you shortly. We are walking towards her house. But before, upon arriving at this place, I began to hear something I had never heard before, and I think it's something that is not often discussed in Guatemala and Central America in general. In Guatemala, a civil war that lasted 36 years ended in the year 1990, which means, relatively recently, And in that war thousands of innocent people died, thousands of indigenous people too, people who had nothing to do with the conflict because the guerrilla came to infiltrate here in the wooded area, and what was here were indigenous people. So, there were missions, it is said, I don’t know, tell me in the comments, it is said that they entered the forests and swept everything, everything there was: chickens, dogs, people, children, they left nothing. So, it is an area that was heavily impacted by that event. Friends, now, here Doña Julia opened the doors of her house to us, thank you very much for having us. And precisely related to what I was telling you just now, chatting for a while with Julia, she was telling me that she worked 13 years in the barracks feeding people in the army's kitchen during this armed conflict that occurred, which lasted about 36 years, right Julia? What was that job like? 13 years and then in Guate, Yes, the company where I was is Cobra, So, well, that is related to what I was telling you before. But now we are going to leave the war and that ugly episode aside to explore Doña Julia’s house that she opened to us. We're going to have a delicious lunch around here and we're going to see Julia's house, which, by the way, is quite low, as you can see. Here comes Doña Julia, and the house is adapted to Julia's size. So, we almost don't hit our heads on the ceiling. Initially, the idea was to stay in this area because it's between the Cobán and Kiché route, it's the route we're passing through, and we're going to sleep here. I'm going to show you right now, here you can stay at Doña Julia's house, here you have the contact of "Authentic Guatemala" that organizes whatever you need. But we won’t be able to because of time constraints. A downpour caught us while we were at Laguna Brava and it shook everything up, but we are still going to explore this place. And also important to mention that now we are of the same family, as you can see, Doña Julia and I can perfectly pass as family. Doña Julia, here I am imitating the dye of Doña Julia. Now, without further ado, welcome to a Maya house. We are going to live with a Maya family. Let's go in so you can see what this place is like. Right at the entrance, we find that the house has a dirt floor and it’s tiny, as I was telling you. It's quite low. We're going to go through here and you'll see that if I don't duck, I hit my head. Here is Manuela, who prepared the food we are going to eat now that they are here. Just look at this beauty, gentlemen. Just look, this is a beef soup, right? And you have no idea how this smells. We're going there now over here, this we have here is the kitchen. This is how they cook, in fact, throughout this video I've been mentioning that kitchens here in this area are all wood-fired, and indeed, look here is a stove. Here is where you insert the wood, and right now you see it dry white because they are going to prepare tortillas, is that right? It's because they are going to make tortillas. So, they put this powder, they put this here, which is lime, just like in Nicoya, Costa Rica. How interesting! Here, in fact, we have the dough for the tortillas we are going to eat now. This is pure corn, it's not Maseca. This is pure corn. Also, something that cannot be missing in the Maya diet and in no Maya house, are the tortillas, of course. Here are hot tortillas and they are kept in a cloth, always, to keep them warm. How delicious! I am already dreaming of that lunch. What they are doing here is the process to make chili, to make chimol. First they are going to put that chili there to dry, to toast. We're going to grab one for you to see. This is the chili, as you can see, it's a chili that is already dry, but there they are going to toast it. This dry chili that I was touching is so powerful that just the dust that came out from somewhere got to me. But well, let's continue, here to this side, is an addition, this is a new addition, Julia is telling us, because here, if you manage to see, we come from the kitchen, which is an addition. What we are going to see now was the original kitchen this part here as you can see is made of adobe we are going to see it inside and this extension that was done is made of cement Doña Julia was telling us that, to be able to make this part of cement, she worked for many years going to Guatemala, she caught a bus here, like six hours on the road to Guatemala, she went every week, worked, saved, and with all she saved recently, made this extra. And so, here is where you can come to sleep, if you wish to come to sleep, and we have certification that the beds are good. There you have Soya doing the test, Definitely. continuing through here, Here, simply, they added the beds, the rooms, and this is what was the kitchen before, as you can see, there's just a little light. All around here is adobe, and here are beds. Above is a storage room that, when it's the corn season, they use it to store corn. This that you have here in front is the traditional house, this is the house that was here from the beginning, as I told you. Now an addition in cement was made. The lives of these people are changing, fortunately, but this adobe house was the original house. And something very characteristic of the indigenous people in general, recently, in fact, I was mentioning in a video, is that they use the bathroom outside the house. What you see here is a latrine, that's what the bathroom is called. I don't know if you had ever seen these types of bathrooms, but they are bathrooms that are outside the house and basically it's like an outhouse, I think we know it in Costa Rica. It's simply a hole where you come to do your needs. There’s nowhere to flush, there's absolutely nothing, you simply do your needs, clean up and off you go. Indeed, this addition that was made in cement, was thinking at some point to make a second floor. Look, they left the terrace ready there, You don’t know how happy it makes me to see that they went from the adobe house, to now already building the cement house. Friends, here we are going to show these Salvadorans how a dough tortilla is made How is it going to be if in Costa Rica they don't eat tortillas? Let them say and all the Costa Rican people in the comments if we eat or do not eat tortillas. First they make a ball of dough, then we start flattening it, and this is the style, folks. We keep flattening it until it gets thin. We are going to make it small this time because we don't want it to fall apart. Ok, we have it there, it already has a cute shape. I didn't smash it because I don't have a place to put it, but now that the colleagues here already saw how to make the tortilla, did you learn? You grab it, come here to the stove area, grab it and release it, and there it is, folks. do you think that will work? I have to tell you it was a lie, I was improvising. I don't know if this is going to work by the face the lady made, I don't think so, but the show looked nice, a round of applause for that, ladies and gentlemen, we are here ready to have lunch. Look at this beauty, for God's sake, look how delicious. Here we have the beef broth plate, here is Mr. Soya already digging in. This is a fine lunch, gentlemen, let's toast. When you drink Coca-cola in a glass it's because you're having a fine lunch, also as I showed you earlier, here of course we have little tortillas and there are the ones we made just now, they are coming out. Of course, mine is the best, it's the one that looks the best, that one's mine, Friends, so here we are going to try the beef broth, look at this beauty, how delicious, for God's sake. This is what we know in Costa Rica as a pot of meat, this broth is delicious, friends, as I told you, Julito is a tuk tuk driver. I have to say something before doing this tour, and it's that Julito is 11 years old, he doesn't have permission to drive the tuk tuk, but in this area, it's the reality here, it's what there is and also, he does it willingly, he loves driving this little cart, he goes everywhere here, but he can only go on this side up, to the village, because down there there are police, they can catch him, right Julito? They caught me twice, they caught you twice? ah, aren't you scared? So, as I tell you with this video, I don't want to promote child labor at all or doing things that go against the law, but this is what happens here and I want to show you, so we're going to be careful to take a little tour around the village doing what Julito does every day. We are going to go for a ride to see Friends! It turns out we are running out of gasoline. What's happening? We need to refuel urgently. By the way, something that seems very curious to me is that Julito goes around calm and free here, and brings his sisters along. That tells me that this is a very safe place, for people to let the kids go around like this on the street, it must be very safe, and that must be related to what I was telling you, that you don't even see tourists here. This is a completely local place, almost 99% 100% indigenous. We arrived just in time to refuel. Hello! How much shall we put in, Julito? 10? Is that okay, with 10? Or 20? Let's put 20 so the tank is full. Put 20, please. And now, never seen before, at this moment we are going to have the opportunity to drive the tuk-tuk. And Julito is going to teach us how to start it. How is it, Julito? What do you have to do? First, you press the clutch, just like a motorcycle? Ok, careful, the car is going backwards. Ah, there's the brake. What now? It's in neutral. Oh look, it starts with a lever. Is that the handbrake? Now, so the ignition process is as follows, We turn the key to start. It's in neutral. Here are the gears, so you can see how it's driven. The gears are shifted here downward. You put in first, second, third, and so on, and so on. It goes up to fourth this little thing. The gas is this one we have here. It's gas just like a motorcycle. And to start it we're going to press the clutch and move this lever upwards. You have to release the clutch. Now we could start it, Julito had to come and help me. Ok, now. So, we press the clutch. The first is put in like this. Now we put in first and it goes just like a motorcycle. We accelerate, release the brake. Now yes! Off we go! Now just accelerate. Now press the clutch and brake. I've got it under control. I have to say that you have to pay a lot of attention You have to be well centered on the street because if it leans a bit I feel it's going to tip over. Is that right, Julito? If it leans a bit to one side, we'll tip over. And the steering wheel has to be turned carefully I think I scared Julito because he already asked for it. We're going to give him control. Ready, Julito? Let's go! Julito, do you do this every day? Yes. Friends, so here finally this super video ends, which took us like 4 or 5 days to film. Really, if you like this kind of content, give it a lot of love to be able to bring you more content of this kind. Thanks to Julito, really, what a driver. And at 11 years old he already works more than me. And a message I want to give you is to come and support these kinds of projects and, in general, come to know these remote areas, these forgotten areas of this beautiful country and the countries where you live, because I am sure that in your countries, for example, in Costa Rica, there are also remote areas where responsible tourism, like what we are doing here with Authentic Guatemala, will support in a positive way. Coming to support, for example, this project will allow Julito to go back to school and lead a normal child life studying and the rest. Right, Julito? You're going back to school, right? You're going to keep studying, right? There you have it, friends. So I hope you enjoyed this video as much as I did. Don't forget to subscribe, share it if you liked it, and see you in the next video. And pure life!
