Shaky Xela

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Quetzaltenango - our first week in Guatemala

Arriving at the end of the market as it was getting dark in Quetzaltenango (from hereon referred to as Xela, the commonly used abbreviation for the indigenous name for the town - Xelajú), we were fortunate to meet two very helpful and friendly people. The first was a guy who walked us over to the taxis, the second was the taxi driver who after taking us to our hostel, chatting with us on the way and pointing out the sites (such as the local brewery), shook our hands and wished us a happy trip. We then spent the night in a hostel, the name of which I forget. It was clean, run by friendly people (but sometimes left in the hands of two young boys who definetly did not know the way to the nearest shop, despite giving us directions) and not badly priced. The bed was comfy, but we were kept awake nearly all night by the sounds of explosions that continued for what seemed like hours (a few days later we found out that this was part of a religous event held by the Catholic church).

The next day we sorted out a Spanish school to study with for the week. There are tons to choose from, all offering one-on-one tuition, activities, volunteering opportunities, and many of them are run as not-for-profits, with the proceeds fully or partly going to local good causes (Xela seemed very progressive in this way, there are many good causes, organisations, volunteering opportunities and such, there was even a laundry where all of the proceeds went to local women who had suffered from domestic violence). Although there are lots of Spanish schools in Xela, it is not overly touristy, which is very refreshing, and means that you are forced to use the Spanish that you are learning!

We enrolled at a school called Celas Maya, with part of the experience being to stay with a host family. We were met later in the day by Anna-Maria and taken back to our home for the week. Anna Maria has a son called David, with her parents also in the house (Anna Maria was also the name of the mother, and terribly I have forgotten the name of the father!). They were all really lovely, talking with us, sharing their meal times with us and making us feel very welcome. Anna Maria the elder was a great cook, and we ate some lovely food. She was also very good about feeding a vegetarian, that was until the last day when she made tuna pasta. I think she noticed me look a bit worried when I sat down to this, and she explained that she had only stirred my pasta with a spoon that had tuna on (which was a big lie, as it was more tuna that it was pasta!), but I chose to eat the food rather than risk offending her. The first fish I have eaten willingly, or semi-willingly, for quite some time! And I´m sure some of you would like to know whether I enjoyed it, and while I didn´t enjoy it as such, I didn´t have any problem palating it! The room was fine and the bed comfy, and the en-suite was interesting, in that a metre to the side of the head of the bed was the toilet, with no door or even curtain. Very cosy!

We had five days of schooling in which, as English is not allowed so very rarely spoken, we did a lot of learning of Spanish! The activities arranged by our school were also really great. They ranged from an evening watching a Guatemalan film (El Norte, a film about the lure of North America to Guatemalans, for better of for worse - hunt it down and watch it if you can!) drinking the local Hot Chocolate drink, to a visit to some local hot springs. For this only Sarah and I signed up, so we set off with a friendly chap from the school, catching a mini-bus, a Chicken Bus and then a pick-up, and enjoying bathing in a very warm pool of very sweet and tangy tasting water in the countryside outside of the city.

On another night there was to be Salsa dancing lesson at a local disco, followed by a Cuban musician and his band (who featured on Buena Vista Social Club). This was a great night, despite the lessons not happening. The music was fantastic, everybody was salsa dancing incredibly talentedly, and Sarah and I dusted off our dancing shoes and tried our best to remember the moves that we learnt from our lessons in Reading before Christmas.

Our Spanish lessons were from 2 until 7 each evening, so we had time for these excursions, plus a bit of study and wandering around the city before and after. But the lessons were very tiring! It was really worth it though to improve our Spanish, and now we can arrange accomodation, order at restaurants and such with ease, and have chats with lots of local people (as long as the topic doesn´t veer off to a subject of which the nouns and verbs we are not familiar with!). While Xela wasn´t incredibly aesthetically pleasing in a traditional sense, it´s decaying grandeur gave it a magical feel.

Twice during the week we experienced earthquakes. The first happened during the night. Sarah was awake and I awoke to the sensation, but it felt comparable to the earthquake we experienced in Mexico and didn´t alarm us too much. The second happened the next day at around 9am. We were at the school, Sarah at a computer and I on the toilet! This felt a lot bigger (despite being slightly smaller on the richter scale, perhaps the epicentre was closer). From the loo it sounded as if a few coffee cups came off the tables, and there were a fair few scared squeals from the students! But there was no real danger. Apparently February is ´loco Febrero´here as the weather goes a bit nuts and earthquakes are most common. But it is better to have frequent small earthquakes than the occasional huge one!

We arranged some volunteering with another local Spanish school called El Nahual, which is a not for profit with only six students (compared with 50 at Celas Maya) that offers free education for less fortunate local children and adults that couldn´t complete their schooling for whatever reason. For two days we helped in the construction of their new school. However it was less glamorous than it sounds, for our task was to clear an area of rocks and pile them up. However we also arranged to teach English in a local primary school for after the weekend. This was fantastic fun. The public schools here are under funded, and the best teachers work in private schools where they are paid well (they are not paid well in public schools, so there are frequent strikes and the teachers that are employed are often under qualified and not hugely enthusiastic about their job). We taught a class for the 6th grade and the 4th. Both were great fun, although the kids were certainly a handful! The teachers handed over control pretty much completely, and we did our best to teach numbers and basic conversational phrases. Some kids were already quite knowledgeable, some eager to learn, and some definetly not so eager! The 4th grade children particularly enjoyed the game of bingo we played with them to help teach them numbers. We cycled to and from the school. On the way back we got a bit lost and my bike broke, but it was very much worth it! I think that the children enjoyed the lessons and will benefit from knowing some English as we can only benefit from knowing Spanish also.

On the final day of our schooling there was a meal for all the students of a local speciality, which was chicken in a tangy peanuty sauce, with spuds and corn cakes. The veggie option was the sauce without the chicken! We then received our certificates and had to make a short speech in Spanish to the teachers and all of the students! We didn´t stay too late afterwards as we had to be up very early in the morning, as we had signed up for a two day hike with an organisation named Quetzaltrekkers, staffed entirely by volunteers, with all proceeds going towards a hostel for disadvantaged kids in the area, for some were homeless and others lived too far out in the hills. So they stayed here in the week in order to attend school. They also funded schooling for particular kids, and took the children out on trips, such as taking them to the beach recently - the first time that they had ever been.

The next morning we met up with our trekking buddies, had an excellent breakfast blissfully free of eggs (banana pancakes, fruit salad and tea and coffee), loaded our backpacks with 6 litres of water, a change of clothes, rain gear, communal food (as an example, I had a big jar of peanut butter, a bag of oats, the teas, coffee and hot chocolate, spices and powdered milk, a pot of curried potato and a pot of a rice dish. Everyone else had an equivalent), a part of the tent, a sleeping bag and a rollmat, and whatever else we deemed personally necessary. Knowing that my bag with all of my things will be around 15 kilos, I estimate that our bags for this trek were almost 20 kilos, which was pretty tough when we got walking! We then set off first thing, taking a mini-bus, a Chicken bus and then a pick-up truck to the trail head, far out of town, and about 1000 metres lower (so significantly hotter, with lots and lots of bugs that are thankfully absent at the altitude typical of Xela and surrounds - 2333 metres above sea level). But I will write about the trek and everything following this in the next blog!

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Photos

View of Parque Centroamerica
From a balcony café in the centre of Xela

Parque Centroamerica
Again, from a balcony café in the centre of Xela

Aguas Amargas
The hot springs that we visited one morning

The country outside Xela
This was the view as we left Aguas Amargas

The country outside Xela 2
As we walked back to the road we passed through this large agricultural area in the valley

Our rock pile
A job well done!

Volcán Santiaguito
After alighting from the chicken bus, this was our first sight of the mighty Volcán Santiaguito

Sarah in the truck
On the way to the trail head