The ferry between San Pedro La Laguna,
Guatemala and Santiago Atitlan hugs the shore as it rounds the point where Volcan
San Pedro divides the lands on which rest the two communities. There’s a fine sandy beach on that point
with a rickety dock where small boats can tie up. The beach is about an hour’s walk on a lovely footpath from the
town of San Pedro.
On the way to Santiago one day, there
was a well-built man, probably in his twenties, with longish dark hair standing
up to his waist in the water by the dock.
On casual inspection, I took him for one of the local fishermen. As the ferry chugged by, he turned slowly
and began to walk through the water toward the beach. As the level of the water fell lower and lower around his hips,
it became quite apparent that he had not made any provision for the sake of
modesty. The dozens of passengers were
treated to the clear view of his bare backside as he strode slowly out of the
water.
The Guatemalan man next to me turned
and looked disbelievingly at me. I just
shook my head a bit and smiled. The man
next to me then turned back and pantomimed the motions of shooting a video of
the scene and looked back at me to get my reaction to his little joke.
When the ferry returned an hour or two
later, the nude man was still there.
Some kayakers were paddling up to the beach at the time, too, and other
people were going about their business in the general area of the dock. The nude man was lying on his stomach on the
beach sunning his backside. He looked
around to see that the ferry was passing, and decided it was time to get up and
walk languidly back to tickle his toes a while in the cool water.
This display of full frontal nudity
was too much for some of the men on the ferry to endure in silence. They let out long, loud, derisive
whistles. The nude man was apparently
unmoved by their expressions of anger and contempt. The women all stared stonily straight ahead, showing their
children to do the same.
I described the scene later to my
friend Pedro. His face fairly burned with shame when I said that since the man
was dark, I had taken him for a Guatemalan.
Pedro said he thought the man must have been driven crazy by marijuana
to have done such a thing. I said on
reflection, he must have been a tourist, for tourists always imagine that in
other lands it will be acceptable for them to do all the things they would like
to do but cannot do at home.