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Published: February 13th 2012
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The weekend is here, we slept for an extra hour today and that was great. I am looking forward to the visits to the coffee plantation and Tak Alik Abha (the Myan ruins near Xela) we leave at 9 AM and the tour is for the full day. It will be a relaxing day spent enjoying the country side and history of Guatemala. It is difficult to find the words to describe this country, its people and the contrasts between the cities and rural environments. The city of Xela is large and dirty, the people are all busy just as in any large city in the world. The roads are narrow and in constant need of repair, just up the road from our hotel there was a leak in the water mains, which for the first few days we were here there was a stream running down the road. The road was dug up for about a day and then the next morning the repair had been concreted over and a huge pile of rocks had been placed all around it to stop anyone driving it, some of the rocks are painted white which I suppose is like the pylons put
around repairs in cities in Canada and the US. Traffic on the streets begins early and carries on late into the evening; it is a busy place even on the weekends. The hotel we are staying in seems to be on a bus route as there are always beat up mini vans with route # on them running down the street full of people and the odd time you will see a chicken bus stopping (or not) and people getting on and off, sometimes they will be running along side the bus, grab hold and pull themselves onto a moving bus. It seems to foreign to us and yet it is everyday practice here in Xela.
The driver from Adrenalina tours was late picking us up by about ½ hour, but they had supplied us with an English speaking guide, although her Spanish was Castilian (from Spain) so there was a bit of difficulty there. Kimberly is Dutch and is doing an internship from a school in Holland, she arrived in Guatemala on Monday and is supposed to be working in the office but found out she was going to be our interpreter and guide that morning.
The visit to the coffee plantation was interesting and we all enjoyed the zip lining. After having read the book “I Rigoberta”, I was very interested in the finca and how it functioned. Our Spanish tour guide from the plantation was full of information and facts about the coffee, macadamia nut, avocado, and banana plants which were growing but had little to say about the conditions of the workers. He seemed to insist that the people came from a village nearby and worked 5 hour days for which they were paid the equivalent of $8 US a day. As he was talking to the group about the coffee plants I went over to what appeared to be a dorm and had a look in, the space was being used for lumber storage, but you could see the bunks where the migrant workers would stay when they were brought to pick the coffee, not quite as the guide was describing, in fact it seemed to back up the information from Rigoberta Menchu. At any rate the coffee finca was interesting and we had a great time on the zip lines. As we were running late it seemed that the visit to
Tak Alik Abah was to be cut short and we thought we would have about an hour there. The bus driver assured us that it was about 20 minutes from the plantation to the ruins and then an hour from there to home. The man could not tell the truth if his life depended on it. It was a good hour to the ruins and then we only had a 20 minute tour as the place closed, so we were only able to see a very small bit of the site. We did see the zoo of endangered species which was interesting and then saw a few of the temples before it was time to head home. At this point we were told that it was now 2 ½ hours back to our hotel, which the driver made sure it was, he drove a such a slow rate even the transport hauling tucks were passing us on the hills. The roads were not in good shape so we seemed to weave and twist about on the drive. Darkness arrived and the mountainsides sparkled with lights as we passed through the villages, it really was quite beautiful.
We
had a late dinner at a nice restaurant “Royal Paris” and then it was back to the hotel and bed.
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Janice Thomas
non-member comment
Keen eye
Nancy, You write with a keen eye to detail and sifting out the truth from the bull****. Thanks for the description of your touring day. Janice