Poco a poco

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Which means ´little by little´. A phrase often used around here when discussing learning Spanish, understanding the country and climbing volcanoes. Each of these things takes time and effort but little by little you make progress and suddenly realise that you are getting somewhere.

So, I think I left you on a Friday evening at the end of a busy week at school? Saturday morning the alarm went off at 5am and we were out the door by 5.30am for yet another volcano hike. This time it was Santa Maria, the large volcano in some of the pictures already on the blog, which is only half an hour from the city. It was still dark when we started the climb but the day soon dawned as we gradually made our way up. Santa Maria is approx 3,700m high and we were starting from around 2,300 so had a pretty serious climb ahead of us to a height which is sufficient to cause difficulty breathing. As it began to get lighter other people started coming up behind us, mostly Guatemaltecos (people from Guatemala), many of the women in traditional dress and often only wearing sandals or flip flops. Some were even carrying babies or dragging small children making us feel pretty pathetic as we puffed our way up the ever steeper path. As we climbed the views over the city and surrounding hills opened up motivating us to keep going. In total it took us about 3.5 hours to get to the top where we had fantastic views in all directions. To the west are two more volcanoes including Tajamulco, the highest mountain in Central America (unfortunately probably not on our list as it involves an overnight, very cold stay on the top and I think I´m just not up to carrying that much stuff), and to the East are 3 more near Lago Atitlan. Just below Santa Maria is Santiaguito which is effectively the release valve for Santa Maria and has regular eruptions every day. We could see the crater surrounded by mounds of grey ash and hardening lava and, a little in the distance, the remains of a town called Palmar which was completely destroyed by a lava flow from Santiaguito during the 1990s. A new town, Palmar Nueva, has been built a bit further away but apparently people still want to move back to the old location, despite the danger!

Of course by the time we reached the top there were quite a number of people already there. However, it turned out that they were largely 2 evangelical groups who, as we hauled our way up the last few steps, were praying, chanting and singing very loudly. It seems that these groups use naturally spectacular places to worship and give thanks to God but it was quite surreal to sit watching clouds rolling in across the surrounding mountains with a background hum of voices asking for strength and forgiveness from God.

And the clouds did roll in. We were pleased that we had started so early as, by about half an hour after reaching the top, Santiaguito had disappeared and the other volcanoes were gradually being covered. The view down to Xela was also becoming very hazy and, after about an hour, much of the view had disappeared and we started on our descent. This proved to be much more painful and difficult that going up, particularly for me, as my legs, knees, hips just couldn´t deal with the endless pounding. I got slower and slower and at one point felt I was not going to be able to make it as every step was agony. But make it I did after a couple of hours - never was I so glad to see a flat road!

The afternoon was spent recovering and we were persuaded by other students from the school to join them at a football match in the evening. Before I get lots of responses commenting on the fact that I hate the sport and never watch it at home, first realise that it only costs about 3 pounds here to watch the local team, there was a big group going and it´s a very interesting cultural experience(!). In fact I didn´t really watch that much of the game but it was fun to be there with a big group of people and we also bumped into Hugh´s current and my ex- Spanish teacher with her family. The crowd supporting Xela were very vocal and there were fireworks and brass bands playing throughout the game. Luckily Xela won so everyone was in a good mood but it was a little disturbing when we realised that riot police were guarding the game officials when they left the pitch!

Sunday morning we awoke to no electricity which turned out to be affecting much of the town. We´re actually quite surprised that this is the first time this has happened as electricity and water can be pretty unreliable. At the school we have had a number of days when there has been no water for a number of hours in the middle of the day without any obvious reason. Can you imagine if they turned off the water at a school in the UK without warning!? But it´s a very good reminder that the commodities that we are used to using every day and expect to always be there are in fact very precious and we should be very grateful for them. Our plans for doing lots of Spanish were thrown a bit by the power cut as there´s not too much natural light in the apartment so we had quite a lazy day and luckily had power back on mid-afternoon so we didn´t have to use the candles I´d managed to find (the last few left!) in the little supermarket down the road (most other shops are closed on Sunday).

And then it was Monday again and a 6.30am alarm. Lessons continued with the same teachers as the week before and it got more and more complicated for both of us but I do feel I´m making progress (until I´m put in a classroom with small children and can´t think of what to say to them when they´re standing on the chairs and pulling things off the wall!). I only had one lesson with the children this week on Monday afternoon but they were not on their best behaviour and Rachel had to send one out to see the co-ordinator and take all of them outside the room for a talking to. They only seem to listen when we read them part of a story in Spanish at the end of the class. We´ve discovered that many of them would like to read books but have little access to them and there are not so many children´s books in Spanish in the school. We´re therefore going to try to collect some books from local families that have finished with them and try to raise some funds to buy some more (all contributions welcome).

Yesterday we had another writing group which I enjoyed very much and has made me think about starting writing again though I´m not sure where the spare time will come from at the moment!

Unfortunately Hugh caught 'man flu' again this week so missed out on salsa classes and was not up to helping on the construction project but has managed his lessons. I went to salsa which was fun and on Thursday we watched a documentary about Fidel - appropriate given the recent news from Cuba. It was very interesting if rather biased towards Fidel although that makes a change from the news we usually receive about Cuba. It´s interesting talking to the Spanish teachers in particular here who generally see Cuba as a pretty successful country with much better education and health care than they have access to in Guatemala.

On Friday after lunch in school we said goodbye to Kate, the volunteer co-ordinator, who was going travelling for a week and will not be back before we leave. We were both working in the garden in the afternoon trying to do a repair job on the fence which is currently too battered to keep out dogs and cows that try to eat the stuff that´s been planted.

On Friday night Hugh and I had a curry (seems to be a bit of a food theme at the moment!) in supposedly the best Indian restaurant in Guatemala and then met some of the others for a drink. We left the young ones to go off dancing at around 11pm - the end of another exhausting week!

It´s hard to believe we only have one more week left here (and a very busy one at that!) before packing up and setting off again to be nomads for a while. I think both of us are quite torn between wanting to stay longer and not wanting to miss out on the many things we want to do in Central America because we have no idea when we might be able to come back. Even with a year there´s not enough time to do all the things we would like to!

Responses to the blog seem very quiet (& there don´t even seem to be that many readers) so hope you are all ok out there? We do occasionally talk about the things from home that we miss which, apart from the obvious decent chocolate and a proper duvet, are mainly our home and friends and family so don´t forget all about us cos we will be coming back!

Lots of love

S + H xx


I also forgot in the last blog to tell you about our earthquake! Apparently it was centred somewhere in Oaxaca in Mexico but measured 6.4 on the Richter scale so was quite big. I was just in the bedroom in the apartment early in the morning and thought that it was a very large lorry passing but as the water on the bedside table started to swirl around I realised that it was a bit more than that. Hugh was in the shower and didn´t feel it, but for a brief moment I was pretty scared.

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Comments

[jonathan]

People Are So Fickle
Hardly anyone reads my blog now. In fact 90% of the count is me clicking on it to check whether anyone has read it! Rest assured that I continue to read yours. However, you could be getting a low hit count because you have an e-mail reminder thingy. Every time you update your blog I get an e-mail telling me you've done it - so I don't need to check every day for new posts. Am back in Swansea at the moment (refurb starts on Monday - nervous? Me? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...) J x

[anonymous]

You may have heard by now about the earthquake we had here on Weds night! I slept through it completely. My mum who lives about 50 miles from Market Rasen, the epicentre, woke up and decided she'd been dreaming about being on a ship in a storm! Sarah H.