Le Club (and other snippets from Guatemala)

My 5 days in Guatemala flew by. Of course I had known that 5 days isn´t nearly long enough to "do" a country like Guatemala, but I figured that something was better than nothing, and certainly I wasn´t going to pass up the chance to visit Josie and her parents outside of the States...

Josie´s dad was presenting a paper he wrote on Miguel Asturias (a Guatemalan writer) at the 5th Feria del Libro (a book festival for the whole country). He spoke on the first day that I was there, and the rest of that day was full of books. There were hundreds of vendors and organizations with book tents set up, I´ve never seen so many books! We also heard some other presenters talk about some really interesting books and poems, I took notes so I have some ideas for what books to read next.

We also went on some organized tours to Antigua, Chichicastenango, and Panajachel (on Lake Atitlan). These places were all amazing and deserved much more time than I was able to spend there. Overall I feel like this trip to Guatemala served as a teaser, to make sure that I go back for a longer time at some point... (ah, the travel "to do" list just continues to grow...)

So here´s the title story. Josie and I were determined to go out dancing, and we were getting thwarted left and right. I got in on Sunday, and the whole city felt like it was shut down (never mind that we were all tired from travels). We soon discovered that our hotel wasn´t really in a "going out" district, but that it had a bar and a separate "disco club" that were open Weds thru Saturday. On Wednesday night we went to the downstairs night club to participate in free dance lessons (salsa), which were supposed to be followed by just open dancing, but everyone went home directly after the classes ended.

Feeling a bit defeated, we made our way down the hallway to our room on the 10th floor. We heard loud music and looked out the window, to a bright pink neon sign advertising "Le Club." It was very encouraging, having this dance club right around the corner from our hotel! So we rallied ourselves, got all gussied up, convinced Josie´s mom that we would be careful, and we ventured out.

We made it to the door, and at the entrance a surly bouncer says that we couldn´t go in, we needed a caballero (gentleman) in order to go inside. I was very surprised and frustrated that machismo was going to keep us from finally dancing, and I asked (a bit peeved), if he seriously meant that we couldn´t go in unless we had a guy with us?! And it was repeated, that was the rule. So we started to walk away, feeling thwarted again, and that´s when we started to notice a few other details... The full marquis (underneath Le Club said "show internacional", and there were only men going in, many coming out of shiny black cars with tinted windows. On the other side of the bouncer, there was a "security guard" holding a large gun (I´m no gun expert, but it was definitely NOT something legal in the US!!)... So we made our way back to the hotel, sorry we couldn´t go out dancing, but sure that Le Club wasn´t exactly where we wanted to be dancing... (someone at the hotel confirmed that Le Club is a strip club!)