Two weeks after ChiChi I toke a further three-day break, this time in Xela. A little deflated from poor quality, disorganised, incorrect and unstructured teaching, I've decided to return to private study and maybe resume somewhere else in a few months time, only when I'm confident about the standard of teaching. Still keen to teach English, and realising there was plenty of interest in San Pedro, myself and the boss of my Spanish School have joined together to offer an English teaching programme as part of the school, hence why it's only a break. A windy roads links San Pedro and [View Full Entry]

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As a break from Spanish lessons in San Pedro I decided to take a couple of excursions. First off I climbed to the peak of the hill that towers above San Juan. I started early that morning. Walking along the road between San Pedro and San Juan several guides offered up their services while older men armed with machetes ventured off in search of firewood. The morning light and low lying mist created a beautiful vista over the lake, showing it at it´s best and most peaceful. San Juan lacks much of obvious and immediate interest in comparison to it´s neighbours, [View Full Entry]

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The day after visiting Santiago Atitlan I continued my mental rest this time with some physical exercise which required little thought - tackling San Pedro Volcän. At 3020m high this would be probably the highest altitude I have climbed to, although starting at just under 2000m made the task seem a lot easier. A hefty entry fee of Q100 (about US$13, less for locals) was necessary with a rather unusual arrangement of being the same price with or without a guide - this basically being to encourage employment, by subsidising this, to strongly encourage people to take a guide (also for [View Full Entry]

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I finished my last article a little puzzled about the attitude of many a traveller with some more thought, and help from a book, I have come up with a way to shed a bit of light of this. A few defintions and terms are necessary first. I´m going to borrow the terms from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance. A simplistic breaking down of human understanding gives two types: Classical and Romantic. Classical being ´primarily one of underlying form´, this basically means seeing things as part of structure where logic rules and things are restricted. And with Romantic being [View Full Entry]

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....I mentioned to her my idea of volunteering, she dismissively responded saying she saw much volunteering and much charity given but little changing. I explained that it´s small potatoes for what is given with one hand and grab back twice over through the near-hidden means of business and economics. This isn´t to say that it isn´t worth doing the forementioned, and the very fact many people think like this is part of the problem. For example it´s lots of singular votes which makes up an election. But this is little different. The whole development iss [View Full Entry]

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Guatemalan history and the recent, lengthy, civil war is in large a story of perscution, racism, injustice and war. Many of it´s fellow Central American countries have suffered from the same fate. Following on from a previous point, this this is the reason why some indigenous people (mostly men) don´t wear the traditional dress, to avoid persecution. It´s typical in Guatemalan society for the men to do the work outside of the home environment and ,as a result, they put themselves in the front line, identifying themselves as supporters of the rebels forces from the civil war (mostly indigeno [View Full Entry]

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... overshadowing the flaws in his thinking and his lack of actual achievements. A man to be liked more than admired, he fought with passion and was honest towards his own short-comings but has more fame than his 'achievements' deserve. A theme consistent in Latin American where the people are fond of lifting people to God like status, untouchable by criticism. In many ways they become a symbol for a idea, a movement. Maintaining the myth of perfection is useful in bringing a face or a name to cause or [View Full Entry]

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Admittably I've plopped this in my current location bit although much of this relates to Chiapas, Mexico. A book I'm reading at the moment has captured my political, philosphical and moral imagination and I feel I need to write about it here. The Zaptistatas are named after Emiliana Zapata, a prominient figure in the 1910 revolution in bringing rights to indigenous people after hundreds of years of abuse. This period was many a subject of a Diego Riviera Mural (see Mexico City bit). He suceeded in creating some land reforms, which have since been recinded in order to allow NAFTA (North [View Full Entry]

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After a day and a half of frustrating travel, due to many reasons, I arrived in San Pedro La Laguna via a overnight stop in Guatemala City. Within about ten minutes of arrival a guy had lead me to a hotel and language school and I had parted with money to both. Language schools are amazingly cheap here, with 20hrs lessons 1-1, accomodation and food setting you back only about US$90. The general consesus among travellers is that the standard of teaching is not hot, but for what I wanted (a lot of conservational practice) this is not too important and [View Full Entry]

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On arrival in Livingstone, on first sight there seemed few of the Garifunas about which were meant to populate the town. In one of those typical tourist type ways, development gives you some of the services you want but by doing so removes what you came to see. There´s is no real reason why this has to be the case but through rampant Capitalism and lack of sustainable development this is often the case. It´s the eternal search of many a backpacker to find the place of great interest, largelly unspoit which isn´t virtually impossible to reach or overly expensive. More [View Full Entry]

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