the seventh seal

Some photos from southern Mexico... read more

Religion is big in central America, very big. So it came as no surprise that a event like Easter (for christianity based faiths) would be a big event. The week leading up to Easter Sunday is called Semana Santa, are many places here celebrate it. The biggest celebrations are in Antigua where hotels are booked up well in advance. Subsquently I went to Santiago Atitlan for Good Friday where I was told they also go fairly crazy. I arrived fairly early in the day and made my way up to the centre of town, I realised I had possibly arrived a little too early as the alfombras (carpets) were in their infancy. A large square around the central church was marked off. This was followed be someone marking a chalk outline of the different images on ... read more

With my brother arriving from the UK just a couple of days previously, I decided to make my long-awaited visit to Antigua after dealing with visa formalities in the capital to extend my stay. Antigua is well-known as a beautiful colonial style city with a large junk of tourists lining the streets. Because of it's reputation it was in many ways everything I expected, which basically means it is unlike anyway else in Guatemala. Antigua has a monopoly on attractive buildings, churches, streets and restaurants. It also has higher prices and a more westernised feel to it. I felt I could happily live there for some time, possibly teaching English with plenty of the comforts of home nearby. But somehow this isn't real Guatemala for me, being so unrepresentive of the rest of the country despite ... read more

With my girlfriend finally granted some time off work we somehow decided upon doing a mad trip to Antigua, Volcan Pacaya and Guatemala City: all in the one day. We had to start early, and early in this case meant rising at 2:30am for the 3am Chicken bus. This bounced along uneven roads for a couple of hours as I drifted in and out of conciousness. We changed buses...somewhere... to get to Antigua (Maggie was doing the navigating). Feeling fairly nautious and exhausted the prospect of climbing a Volcanoe wasn't seeming as exciting as it did the previous day. The attractive streets of Antigua woke me up somewhat despite seeing them through my contact lense-less eyes. A cup of tea helped. Being 7am in the morning we had arrived a tad too early to gather any ... read more

A few days ago I had two interesting discussions, both, coincedentally, with Dutch Girls about voluntary work and development projects. I explained how I was trying to get going an English school with the idea of passing on the reins once it had got going and eventually trying to move the idea onwards and upwards. I have encountered more problems than I had anticipated, mainly a mixture of the Mañana culture of the people and unreliability of my partner in business. The first Dutch girl saw the benefit of what I was trying to do, but generally had a negative attitude towards development seeing it as a no-win situation with regards to setting up workable schemes. In her view, on one side you have western people running things for locals leathered with difficulties because of cultural ... read more