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Published: February 21st 2006
Día de los something-or-other, Xela.
Christmas goes on for weeks and weeks in Guatemala with different festivals for virtually every different day. If they're not burning rubbish on their doorsteps (La Quema del Diablo, 6th Dec) or parading a nativity scene through town from one doorstep to another (nightly, 16th - 24th Dec) they might be dressing their kids up as adults and showing them off in the main square...Errr, October 13th? So first its two weeks, then four and now, well who would ever have predicted this, eh? Perhaps its time to start thinking about making lots of New Year’s resolutions I’ve no intention of ever keeping.
I managed to leave my diary somewhere in Antigua so I've given up on that one. Means I can hardly remember what I've been up to though so I'd best start making things up....
NOW! So after all of Mexico - or at least the 3%!o(MISSING)r so that I must have seen - I had to take a boat and a couple of buses to make my way into
Guatemala. Here's a beautiful but poor country with an unimaginably turbulent past, culminating in some 36 years of civil war (which only ended with 1996’s peace accords) by which time around 200,000 people had been killed ands more than five times that many left homeless.
Much of the north of the country is covered by dense jungle while to the west the highlands hold thirty volcanoes rising up to 14,000 feet, many of which are amongst the most active in the world. Mind you, that’s what happens if you
San Maricos, Lago de Atitlán after Stan.
So much of this town was destroyed, from the houses to the shops to the sports field. Terrible, and it'll be a long time in the reconstruction, too. go and build a country where three fat, techtonic plates meet.
My first stop here was
Flores an overpriced dull island of a town in a lake with little to offer apart from tours to the many ancient ruins in the jungles, of which Tikal is faraway the most awesome and famous.
I joined a few girls on a three day jungle trek to
Tikal which was cool. We saw lots of deadly snakes, a batcave emptying one evening, lots of interesting plants and lquite a few howler monkeys. The hike was nothing like it used to be in Boy Scouts, rah! (“Hello, it bob-a-job week, Sir. Perhaps I can clean your toilet with my own toothbrush for your small change, dyb dyb dob.”) We had horses carrying all our equipment, three almost child-sized indigenous guides putting up our hammocks, cooking our meals and even trying to wash up for us afterwards.
Arriving at Tikal was cool. Its built deep into the jungle and many of its temples rise above the canopy so you have some incredible views from scurrying up them. Its supposed to be an amazing place to watch the sunrise from. (Travelling's rubbish, see
The first family I stayed with in Xela.
Guy thought he was really funny. "What friut's this?" I asked. "Papaya... y mañana, Mama-ya". I told him that the number nought said "Nice belt" to the number eight so doubtless he thinks I'm a nob, too. what I have to do to pass the time these days? Find new and exciting places to watch the sunrises from.)
Anyway, starting to tire of temples a little now, we decided to make a brief detour to
Belize. Belize actually used to be part of Honduras until 1859 when its president gave it to Britain for a road between Belize City and Guatemala City... that was never built! That’s got to be better than a great British road running £10bn overbudget, three years late and crumbling to shit whenever it stops raining.
The first things I noticed about the country were that there were far fewer guns than in Mexico and Guatemala and that all the money has a picture of Queen Elizabeth (still the Head Of State since independence in 1980) not looking a day over forty.
After a visit to Belize 'City' (pop: 50,000) we went down to the southern town of
Dangriga for their annual Garífuna Settlement Day celebrations - probably the biggest celebration in the Belizean calendar. A day long mixture of drinking and dancing to reggae which marks the day - November 19th - in 1832 when the Garífuna (descendents of
Luis, my teacher.
Got on well with this guy. Although obviously being an English teacher I reckoned I knew it all already and that we could all benefit from the odd technique tweaking here and there.
Anyway, this gives you a nice chance to admire my Barnet. Told you it was sick and wrong. African slaves and Island Caribs) fled the Honduran civil war and settled here. Hurricane Gamma had been expected to to ride right over Belize at this time but diverted towards the Caribbean at the last minute resulting in 24 hours of torrential rain. Even the self-proclaimed Punta King couldn’t teach me to shake my arse quite like a local but the festival was thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless!
Five nights later and I was back in Guatemala and making my way south to
Antigua. This place was the capital until a huge fuck-off earthquake wrecked the place in 1773. Its a beautiful beautiful colonial city though at the same time its hellishly expensive and quite honestly you can barely see the locals for the tourists. I quite happily entertained myself there for a few days, mooching with the best of them. One morning climbing Pacaya, an active volcano about an hour south of the city. Its last major eruption was in 1998 and its due another one any time soon. It was cool at the top. Very hot and stinky from the sulphur fumes which had coated the surrounding rocks bright yellow.
Another five nights later and I was ready
Los Vahos, Xela.
Steam baths, fed by all the geothermic nonsense under everyone's feet. Hot hot hot. to leave. Next up was a stop off at
Lago de Atitlán, a deep 50 square mile lake formed in a sunken volcano cone and surrounded by small villages and big volcanoes. (OK, volcanoes starting to go the same way as temples now. Getting a little bit bored of them)
On my way there by chickenbus - former repainted US school buses so nicknamed after their liberal bring-on-any-livestock-you-fancy approach they’ve adopted - some cheeky begger managed to half inch my wallet and a bit of cash. But, get this... the joke was on him though as all my cards were in my moneybelt!!! Besides I always give myself a pat on the back each time all of my money goes directly to the locals...
I spent five nights by the lake, visiting the towns of
Panajachel,
San Pedro and
San Marcos which was quite dull all in all. Lots of stoned travellers doign nothing. Actually, San Marcos was interesting to see as the entire town had been completely destroyed by Hurricane Stan, so we spent the day going around and talking to the locals about it. I wouldn't know where to start re-building the place but I hope
Bacon and Pastry.
The two Danish girls I've been travelling with for the last few weeks. This is after two hours on the top deck of a boat in a storm on our way into Honduras, which I'll tell you about later. they have it done one day.
Continuing further west I went to Guatemala's second city,
Quetzaltenango (referred to by everyone as Xela - "
shay-lah", its Quiché Maya name) to enrol at a Spanish school for a few weeks. It was a nice city with a friendly feel to it (although at 7,700ft it was pretty cold at night). After a couple of nights staying at Casa de Las Amigas hostel, an entirely forgettable experience involving a few thousand rules, a militant Gestapo cleaning lady and a bar of soap, the people I'd been travelling with moved on and I found a school I liked the look of and moved in with some random family. I'd been looking forward to spending Christmas with a local family although the house was freezing, dark and without any TV or newspapers to practise with. And no-one was ever in, either, except the mum of the family who'd pop in to cook me up plate after plate of rice beans and eggs to munch my way through. Lovely lady, but denser than Barry White's shit on Boxing Day. After a couple of weeks I switched families, ending up with one with some cute little kids to play with and a mother with a penchante for poisoning me with raw chicken.
Due to the huge amount of geothermal activity going on there's quite a lot of cool stuff to see here (until you get sick of it all); natural saunas, erupting volcanoes, blah blah. Best thing I did here though was a full-moon night nike up Santa Maria. We left at around midnight, reaching the summit (12,400ft) at about 5:30 to witness the sunrise in the most unimaginably beuatiful setting. Looking around for miles and miles in all directions on towns and cities nestled between volcanoes and beneath pockets of cloud with nearby eruptions of smoke and ash from the most active volcanoes as the sun turned the sky bright orange and red colours. All in all it was a nice time for my last camera battery to die, so I can't show you any pictures until I get emailed some from the other people on the hike!
I also got my hair cut here. Shitting myself about the standard of barber's in the third world, I located the most expensive salon in the whole city and plumped for the most expensive haircut on the menu. Result? I'm an entire week's Guatemalan minimum wage worse off and my entire head looks like a big fucking stripey mushroom. Haha, what have I learned about being vain, huh?
The Spanish school was really useful. 25 1-on-1 lessons a week right up until Christmas. I was going to write this entry in Spanish actually, just for a bit of extra homework, but look at it! Huge and dull, and I've only got another eight months here. And I'd say my Spanish is now at the standard where I can understand drunk tramps with as little as three-and-a-half teeth so I'm certainly improving.
The run-up to Christmas was nice. Kids soaking up the true meaning of the festival by throwing unbelievably large fireworks at each others' heads and an even higher-than-average incidence of car crashes. Families share a meal at midnight on Christmas Eve (I shovelled my raw chicken tamales into a serviette when no-one was looking) then take it easy on Christmas Day. Got to speak to my (real) family, who all seemed chuffed to receive a surprise box of third world junk I'd sent them from Belize a few weeks earlier, then just went out and sat drinking with the other students in the sun for the day.
Right that's it. I simply can't be bothered to write any more. Be sure to check this blog again in about four months' time as by then I'm sure I'll be itching to write something great on it. And as if you've read it all anyway, it just goes on and on and on and on and....
Anyway, hope you had a nice Christmas, and make sure you have a nice New Year. (its really already mid-January but I'm pretending I wrote this a while back. I'm so clever!!!)
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ali
non-member comment
mushroom head
i like your haircut