i will be as brief as possible. this is how:
on the first morning it greeted me with a dreamy half-cloudcover -- the volcanoes were dressed in swirling nebulous tutus...i couldn't tell if i was awake yet because the water was so still it looked like a mister-clean-yellow linoleum floor and it begged me to slide across in my socks. i think i realized i was awake when a pair of lanchas criss-crossed past santa cruz la laguna and left an X of wakes -- and there i was, on the roomy and hammocked patio of la iguana perdida, that legendary little hotel where everyone meets everyone meets everyone on the lake.
the bar staff were cheeky and vibrant and fragile at once, a motley international bunch from england, canada, sweden. they played loud music, dressed up like a parade of glittered trannies and strippers on saturday nights, ate little more than fried egg sandwiches and candy bars, and slept piled four or five high on the iguana's secret sofas...none of them came to the lake with the intention to stay. the day after christmas they moved me in to one of a handful of unkempt staff quarters. unofficially named "funzie town" by the previous crew, i shared my room with two favorites, a pair of nineteen-year-old lambs who i have come to adore like only a big sister missing her baby brother can. amber, from canada, who instantly reminded me of lindsay in her demure wit, effortless stylishness and doodling talent. and petter, from sweden, who drenched my heart with his tender nature the moment i met him -- a lanky, long-haired blond who, with his single white cotton school bag slung over his shoulder and his honest, gentle, uncarved-block nature, would have fit in nicely here in 1969.
the work is easy and the payoff grand, at least for a weary traveler like myself, for whom a homecooked meal prepared with veggies and love is hard to come across. check-ins, check-outs, stocking the bar, taking orders, making ice, tallying tabs, calculating bills, painting signs, lighting lanterns, serving dinner, shooting the shit with guests and eating, eating, eating. enormous sandwiches on bread baked every morning by the chicas, the iguana's beautiful and constantly giggling staff of twelve young mayan women, who laugh at, but never complain about our food requests...the sandwiches...piled high with avocado, tomato, black beans, yellow cheese, eggs any style, salsa verde, mustard, onion, hummus, anything we can find in the fridge or elsewhere. at night, dinner is huge. fresh salads and baked vegetables, soup, garlic bread, eggplant moussaka, beet burgers, pizza, cake, coffee, and beer after beer after beer, until we close the bar and scurry, barefoot, down the dark rocky path to hedge's dock, rip off our clothes and jump with a mad, moonlit look in our eyes into the quiet and ever patient lake.
this breed of brute debauchery continues, without me realizing it, for three weeks. in this span i have made dear friends from all over the world with whom i have cruised the lake with, stayed up late in the sauna recalling our hippie upbringings, traded clothes and books, played get-up-and-shout drinking games on the patio, laughing until it hurts, until dawn breaks and the volcanoes' silhouettes emerge, just barely, like sleeping parents...and for this short time only, we rule the lake like a bunch of pajama-clad, infantile royalty who call the shots, smell like the lake, and never, ever want to leave.
when petter left funzie town he gifted me his cozy boys' pajama bottoms because he knew i loved them dearly. amber will stick around until her replacement credit card arrives in the mail, and we are currently training two fresh young recruits to take over. if it meant that things could be like they were for the first three weeks, i'd probably stay. but these are the type of things that are best left short and dreamlike, snapshots like a lake-view, remembered best by the lost toothbrush, dirty fingernails and bruised shins.
