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Published: October 16th 2005
October 10, 2005 (Seattle-Tacoma International Airport):
Shannon here. Sean and I leave for Guatemala tonight on a red-eye flight to Houston, then on to Guatemala City. We’re sitting in the airport at Sea-Tac as I write. I can’t say that I really feel all that nervous; perhaps maybe a little anxious about finding a place to sleep once we reach Guatemala City. For those that are not aware, Hurricane Stan caused some pretty severe landslides in Guatemala - in one case burying an entire village. Sean and I aren’t really sure what impact that will have on the places we intended to go - the news reports are saying that there are thousands of displaced people. So we’re not exactly sure what we’ll be flying into. All told, though, Sean and I are pretty sick of hurricanes and the resulting disasters they cause. Disaster seems to be following us these days…
Sean and I finally finished packing today. We both weighed our packs after we finished - 32 pounds. That’s 7 pounds more than I had hoped to be carrying. I suppose there are a few things in there that could be considered extras, but not much. And our
backpacks are only about ¾ full! When I told my mom I was over my self-imposed weight limit, she helpfully suggested that I just transfer one of my items into Sean’s backpack every day until I thought it was light enough, but somehow I don’t think I’ll get away with that, no matter how cute I think I am. But I suppose that this is one of the advantages of making a shorter trip before Christmas - it gives us some time to iron out the kinks and to figure out what we really need before the year-long trip in 2006.
October 12, 2005 (Antigua, Guatemala):
Shannon: Sean and I arrived in Guatemala City yesterday without incident, though a little tired. Our first order of business - send some stuff home! We had both wanted to be “lean and mean” on this trip, and once we arrived at the Guatemala City airport we both realized that we had been kidding ourselves about our 32 pound backpacks. It’s not that we can’t carry them, but we’re certainly not lean and mean with them on. In contrast, as we waited for our bags to arrive on the baggage carousel,
we watched another backpacker with a smaller bag effortlessly claim his backpack and dash off. We knew then that we wanted to lighten our loads. Upon arrival at our hostel, we both combed through our bags looking for “extras”. Some of the inexpensive things we just threw out; the rest we set aside and will ship home as soon as we can.
Yesterday we spent a bit of time wandering around Zona 1 of Guatemala City, which is a fairly ugly, dirty city. I can’t say that we weren’t warned, though - our Lonely Planet guidebook listed “Leaving” as one of the “Top 5” things to do in Guatemala City. We might have skipped the city altogether, but we hadn’t been sure what the situation would be like in Guatemala due to the landslides, so we thought staying in Guatemala City overnight would be a good idea. It turns out that Antigua (where we were planning to go first) has been unaffected by the disaster, so we caught a bus here this morning. The improvement in locales is refreshing - where Guatemala City sprawled endlessly in a stream of drab concrete buildings and ugly strip malls, Antigua is much
smaller and composed entirely of cobblestone streets and more architecturally interesting buildings. Today Sean and I wandered through the market, looking at the handicrafts and things for sale, and then wandered through town looking at the shops. The weather is very pleasant - perhaps 70 degrees - and Guatemala is living up to its nickname “Land of Eternal Spring”.
Tomorrow Sean and I will be checking out language schools (we are both going to be taking Spanish lessons - Sean to refresh his Spanish and me to learn the basics). I am looking forward to starting lessons. Right now I have to rely heavily on Sean to translate everything, whether it is just a sign that I see in a shop or trying to order a meal. Sean’s Spanish is fairly good, and while he doesn’t always catch everything people are saying, he can navigate through conversations fairly well. For me, though, the few words of Spanish that I know are not enough to have a conversation or even comprehend what people are asking me. I can sometimes tell what is going on by the context of the conversation, hand gestures or by picking out a few words, but
invariably I ask Sean “what were they saying..” as we walk away. I would like to interact with people myself, though, so even if it’s a rudimentary conversation I’m looking forward to earning a little independence through language lessons. Plus, it will be nice to be back on a bit of a schedule. Neither Sean nor I have been on any semblance of a schedule since Hurricane Katrina and, though it’s nice for a while, I think it will feel good to have more of a “purpose” to our days.
October 14, 2005 (Antigua, Guatemala):
Sean: When I last wrote, Shan and I were finishing up the most wonderful weeks spent with our families. It had been too long since we’d been able to do that for any length, usually we are limited to grabbing a few days around Christmas and, if lucky, sneak in a few more with random visits throughout the year. This time though, we were afforded the luxury of not having to return to anything. Needless to say, it was definitely difficult to finally say “adios” to all those we love and head out for the unknown. We’ve been planning this trip for
so long that the sheer momentum of it has forced us along whether we felt comfortable with it or not. But I must say that after Dad and Lin dropped us off at Seattle-Tacoma International, there was a very strong pull to give them a ring so that we could go back to traveling around the country, indefinitely visiting with all of you.
But then this tale would be ending here, and nobody wants that, least of all Shannon and I. So I’m sitting here, pounding out this missive on the laptop, propped up in our bed at a little hostel in Antigua, Guatemala. The mountain breezes are blowing in the room cooling off what was a warm day and I’m truly excited to be finally writing about our travels instead of writing about plans for our future travels.
Antigua is a very touristy town. With 75 Spanish Language schools, the beautiful architecture, and the excellent weather there really is no reason not to visit…except for all the tourists. It’s not that bad in comparison to other places we’ve visited and we knew what we were getting into before we came (thinking that this would be a good
segue into the long journey we were making, dipping the little toe into the big pool, so to speak), but we’re definitely not the first “gringoes” to venture into town.
After a couple days wandering around the city and getting our bearings we finally booked ourselves into a language school. We visited five of them (you know we couldn’t have just picked one at random; lots of research had to be done) before we settled on a small school with only 10 teachers, all certified with some official sounding papers. The main tenets of all the schools here are that you get one-on-one instruction and the option of staying with a host family (I stayed with a family in Mexico when I studied there and had a fairly positive experience, so Shannon and I are going to set up with one here as well). The prices here are very cheap - for a week’s instruction (4 hours per day) and living with a family (3 meals per day, except Sundays) the cost is $130 dollars per student. Not bad. Of course, even with such a poor country, being in Tourist Central means that unless you watch out, you could
easily pay quite a bit for everything else.
Thankfully, my Spanish is pretty good. Even after all these years of nary a “Como esta?” or “hola” being spoken, I’ve moved fairly fluidly into the language and I feel quite comfortable speaking in long diatribes to whomever will listen. Usually I’m just bending the ear of the poor street vendor who wants nothing more from me than a few Quetzals for her blankets (seriously though, the people are extremely nice; very quick with a smile and a kind word). With my language skills though, we’ve really been able to find some out of the way places to eat. It’s gotten so bad that I’ll scoff at having to pay three dollars per person for lunch. What an outrage!
October 15, 2005 (Antigua, Guatemala):
Shannon here. For those that don’t particularly want to read about the negative side of traveling - those who like their stories rosy and happy - please skip to the next paragraph. (For those who continue reading, I dedicate this paragraph to you, Mark Sisti, whom we promised to report the good
and the bad.) Day 5 of our adventure and I am unhappy
to report that I have the first case of travelers’ diarrhea. Not a pretty thing to report, but it goes with the territory. For the record, though, I think it’s a little unfair that it’s happening to me, and not to Sean (isn’t love grand?). For those that are unaware, Sean eats like a goat. Meaning he eats everything, without fear, without trepidation. As an example, this morning we toured a macadamia plantation. Without hesitation, the first thing Sean did when we got there was to pick a nut up off the ground, crack open the outer shell with his teeth, and eat it. He did the same thing with a coffee bean as we were walking to the plantation. Now, I’m fair at identifying crops, and I was pretty sure they were coffee beans, but to Sean - no worries - he’ll put anything in his mouth that he even thinks
could be edible. I’m the one carefully brushing my teeth each night with bottled water, looking at the cleanliness of the places we eat, wondering whether things have been cooked enough - and my husband’s “you gotta live a little” attitude is apparently standing him in good stead.
You can see why I might think it’s a bit unfair that
I’m the one spending the afternoon in the hostel, not feeling like venturing too far afield. I suppose the upside of this is that at least we’re staying in a nice place ($16/night - we could have gone cheaper ($12/night) but right now I’m thinking the extra $4 was worth it.) It’s a small family-run hostel with a nice little courtyard and 8 very clean rooms (each with private bath). A good little hideaway when you’re not feeling your best…
More about the macadamia plantation - it is called Valhalla Experimental Station and it’s located about 11km outside Antigua. Sean and I thought it would be nice to get a little exercise and walk there today (this is before I began feeling under the weather). The goal of this plantation is to teach local Guatemalans a form of sustainable agriculture. Rather than use the slash-and-burn model of farming, macadamia farming is eco-friendly (trees absorb 63 cubic feet of carbon dioxide every day), requires no pesticides (trees are naturally fairly impervious to insects and disease), does not deplete the soil, and produces a low-maintenance/high yield crop (each tree produces roughly 500 lbs of nuts throughout the year). Any local who wishes to learn macadamia farming is given a certain number of trees to plant and the technical expertise for growing them in return for his/her labor for a period of time. It seemed to be a great model for farming.
Love to all…
Sean:
I had to append this entry by including a bit concerning the last picture. I’m here to tell all of you who never thought you could successfully marry the two worlds of shower heads and residential electricity. Fear not, friends, because as you can see, the Guatemalans have successfully figured out a way to make these previously thought disparate worlds come together. They have figured out a way to bring the water heating process to the individual and not deal with the bulky and energy inefficient centralized heaters that we have back home. Sounds good, but is it really that special? If you’re concerned about water and energy conservation this is a great idea because the beauty of this device is that it is impossible to have BOTH hot water AND something akin to water pressure. While the water “flow” is a comfortable temperature, you really have to be patient with what I like to call “the suggestion of a shower”.
The real surprise comes when you have what happened this evening as I was letting the drip…drip…drip of water “cascade” down my arm and I accidentally touched the shower head. I’d like to come up with some witty analogy to describe the feeling of 110 volts skipping through the soft tissues of my body and how I felt afterward but I’m sure you’re probably thinking, “C’mon, Sean, I’ve touched a live wire it’s really not that bad.” But I challenge you to try it while standing naked…in a poorly draining shower stall...in a third world country. Nothing quite gets your attention like that, let me just emphatically assure you.
It still sucked that second time when I did it on purpose.
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Dear Old Dad
non-member comment
Great pics - Great stories
If this is any indication of what's in store for us virtual voyagers, keep it coming. Great job to you both. The pictures are incredible. Sorry to hear about Shannon's distress. Love to you both. Love, D.O.D. and Lin