Under The Ten

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Having now spent a full day getting thoroughly lost in Quetzaltenango, I feel I am qualified to call it Xela and write opinions of it. In St Petersburg, the guide book said that all locals affectionately called the city Peter, but I got the feeling that calling it that as a visitor would be looked on a lot like being introduced to the Queen and calling her Lizzy. Not so with Xela. Xela comes from the Maya name Xelajú, meaning under the ten, refering to the surrounding mountains. I´m not sure if there are actually ten of these - there seem to be many more, encircling the city in a hazy, wooded cuddle. I like it here. The town is quite quiet - on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is Cairo and 10 is Copenhagen on a damp Thursday afternoon, it ranks a mere three or four, though you have to be careful crossing roads as both cars and motorbikes move very fast and take the attitude "Quick! I´ll get past that pedestrian before they get too far across the road!"

The streets in the centre are largely cobbled with black, squares stones and edged by thin, raised pavements. These are somethimes as much as three feet above the surface of the road, with random steps up and down, missing paving stones and occasional areas that steeply slope or have disintegrated into rubble. I have to say, it makes walking around like you know exactly where you are and what you´re doing somewhat harder when every time you try to read a road sign, you trip up. The buildings are generally pleasant, but old. Most of them would have been built after the 1902 earthquake and they are now looking faded. There are some lovely wrought iron covers over some of the windows, though. In a lot of places walls are marked with graffiti, though much likie in Brighton this is mostly political, artistic or both. "Más poesía, menos policía" anyone? The corner of the block the Hostal is on is graced by a particularly spectacular mural of a Quetzal.

Started the day with a desayuno típico, which is the Maya answer to the full English. Fried eggs and a slightly dodgy sausage are the common denominator, then for toast we have a thick corn tortilla, for baked beans, a thick black bean paste, and for fried tomatoes or mushrooms, fried banana. The only thing you could vaguely link to bacon is a rectangle of soft white cheese tasting a lot like a very strong feta. I have to say, I prefer bacon, but otherwise the típico wins hands down, particularly as it starts with a bowl of mosh (like a very glutinous chai latte) and ends with biscuit the length of my handspan. The weak filter coffee it´s served with can´t really compete with tea though.

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Comments

[Ros]

Moshi monsters?
I think we need to know more about this mosh stuff. Is it a kind of porridge?

[Messages to my Mother from Guatemala]

Yes it is a kind of porridge, but the bowl I had was more like a smooth, gloopy liquid. It's really tasty, creamy with just a little spicing. I don´t know how else to describe it, but I´ll definitely be having it again.

[Messages to my Mother from Guatemala]

Typo...
I made a little mistake, I meant to say that if Cairo is 10 and Copenhagen is 1, Xela is 3, not the other way round. It's quite a quiet town really, they just seem to struggle with concepts like pedestrian crossings and helmets on motorbikes.