Guatemala - Jan & Feb 2009

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Here's a selection of my photos of my 3 weeks of travelling in Guatemala in January. It's too long ago to remember everything so there are only photos. Sorry!

Here's a link to a recent article about Guatemala in the Telegraph which will hopefull whet your appetite to want to come one day!: Guatemala

I have been back in Xela (where I was studying before Christmas) for 3 weeks now and I am very much enjoying being here again. Instead of studying at a language school and living with a family I am studying privately for 3 hours in the afternoon and living with some Guatemalans who I know (including my Salsa Teacher, Siomara).

It is very different this time, instead of having 3 meals a day provided for me I am having to fend for myself, shopping at the local market and in the local shops. I am not a particularly good cook in the UK (I think I know how to cook about 3 dishes from scratch!), let alone here when much of the food is very different, but there is a great little market just up the road and every couple of days I have a wander around selecting fresh fruit and vegetables and usually getting a pound of chicken, which is hacked off a whole (dead, obviously!) chicken for me.

The benefit of living with Siomora (I can say 'living with' in English, I have to carefully change it in Spanish to 'living in the same house as' , in case anybody gets the wrong idea, as they invariably do!) is that I am getting free group salsa lessons every day. I am really enjoying dancing salsa when I am out in the evening (although hating to dance to anything else still!) and I am normally itching to get onto the dance floor. The next step in class is to go back to basics and work on moving my hips better!

My Spanish is improving, but still along way from where I would like it to be. It is more that fine for travelling and I can have good conversations people who know me, but this next step is to be able to better converse with strangers and be able to understand when Guatemalans are talking (sixteen to the dozen!) to each other! The benefit of not studying at the school is that I am not talking English straight after class or at break time, although when I am socialising in the evening I tend to be speaking English.

The next part of my journey begins in a little under 2 weeks when I fly to Montevideo, Uruguay. The plan is to be there for 5 or 6 days and do some sight seeing and take some surfing lessons. I will then take a ferry across the Rio Grande to Buenos Aires, Argentina, spend a few days there before starting a 5 week overland tour down to Tierra del Fuega in the far south before heading up to Santiago, Chile. After that I am not sure but I will start to head north and I would like to think that my travel plans could bring me back to Xela later in the year.

Stay in touch!

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Photos

Tapado...
... a stew made from fish, shrimp, shell fish, crab and coconut milk

Livingstone
A taste of the Carribbean in Guatemala!

Finca Paraiso
a hot waterfall!

Volcan Pacaya
Red hot lava

Volcan Pacaya
Red hot lava

Comments

[Simon]

Hi
Lago Atitlan looks stunning mate.