Xela Who? - Quetzaltenango and back to school

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Hablo espanol?

After finally dragging ourselves away from San Cristobal we head for the Mexican Guatemalan border of La Mesilla, well know as a narcotics route (we found out latter 17 people were killed the week we crossed the border). So at La Mesilla, there is no-one to give us an exit stamp, even though we ask everyone, so there's little to do but walk across the invisible line,(which is actually a chaotic market, full of stalls and tuk tuks, change some money with the dodgy money changers and get on an old American Scvhool bus for an 8hr journey. Squashed between a mother and three children on one-side and an old man on the other (on a seat designed for two american school children!) and again travelling in the countryside at night-time (nightmare) Then we were asked to change bus and deep breath in put on an even more crowded bus, standing for 2hrs.

Arriving in Quetzaltenango aka. Xela at 10.30pm, we crash in a hostel and the next day bump into our now good friends Benj and Arlene from New Zealand who are off to the mountains an hour or so from Xela near Colomba to study Spanish. Hmm we though what a good idea and joined them!
We stayed in a purpose built school in a community where every breakfast and evening we went alone to a familly's house in the community to eat food and attempt to speak spanish. A little scary and a bit too overwhelming for us beginners. Marcel got lucky, his familly were the local bakers, Karen survived on potatoes, pasta and tortilla's for a week. It was a big culture shock to see how this Guatemalan community lived. We had discussions with the women about domestic violence and 'drinking away' all your wages on payday. I came away feeling I had learnt something but it was not all positive. (oh yeah and I picked up a nice parasitic friend at the school too, her name was Giardia)
The local area is full of coffee plantations (fincas) and while at the school we visited one of them, workers and their famillies live in houses owned by the finca and most of the familly work for the finca. Pay is bad: at around 2.50 pounds UK per 50kg sack of coffee picked. Very sobbering.
Whilst at the school we took a 2hr pick-up journey back to Xela to see the Semi finals of the Guatemalan FA cup, which was bonkers, Fireworks galore, armed riot police escorting the referee on and off the pitch. Luckily for us Xela Ju the local team won and it was all up beat, as the week before, they lost and a full scale riot errupted!!

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Photos

Class room before lessons
Called a ranchita

He baad!!
On a walk around the coffee finca

Where they clean the coffee fruit
and remove outer shell - some say outside is used for Nescafe.

Lupita has a birthday
The local kids go mad smashing up the place (well spongebob mostly)

Stand in front of blue wall...
and let me take a picture

Wandering in the countryside
Before it got dark of course.

Coldsore has gone now
Thanks god, it was massive and lasted for ages.

Jorge and Gompa at the waterfall
With the ubiquitous machette everyone carries around.