Blogs from Volcán Santa María, Western Highlands, Guatemala, Central America Caribbean

Hola erstmal. Sprachschule ist kurz gesagt cool aber anstrengen. Muss noch viel lernen aber es ist schon eine kleine Verbesserung erkennbar. Xela wird von Tag zu Tag cooler. Hat viele Parks, kleine Restaurantes und Bars und vor allem gibts hier richtigen Kaffee....sonst hats bisher immer nur Instant-Bruehe gegeben. Schon komisch, im Land wo der Kaffee waechst trinkt man Instant-Coffee weil der meiste Kaffee nach Europa verkauft wird....bei den Fruechten ebenfalls, waehrend es hier gerade Probleme wegen einer schwachen Ernte und dadurch entstehnde Hungersnot gibt werden Obst und Gemuese exportiert.....gibt einen ein bisschen zu denken. Naja zu was anderen Am Freitag ist Edguardo wieder nach Xela gekommen und wir haben auch gleich einen mords "ziaga" gemacht. Waren alle voll wie die Russen und Edguardo hat auch bei unserer Familie gepennt weil er nicht mehr nach Hause gefunden ... read more

Xela (sh-ela) is at around 2200m and gets very chilly at night. The big draw that brought us to Xela was to hike up the dormant volcano Santa Maria which stands at just over 3700m and peer down upon the active volcano Santiaguito (2500m) to watch its hourly eruptions. Eduardo was our man to lead this compelling adventure. Apparently he’s a famous character as he was proudly telling us of the personal mention he gets in the tours section of the Guatemalan Lonely Planet. It was a convenient 5am start as Eduardo and his wife Marta also ran the hostel that we were staying in so we just rolled out of bed into the back of their 4-by-4. We were joined by Peter a forty something German who was in his third year of an eight ... read more

Quetzaltenango, 07-02-1990. A taxi got us to the foot hills of the Santa Maria Volcan. We had a quick look at The pueblecito called Almolonga which was inhabited by indigenous people, their women still wearing colorful indian clothing, their men the more tradional cowboy stuff with huge sombreros. The hike up to the Santa Maria Volcan top was great but tiresome and took us most of the day. Some local families beat us to it and were already waiting up there with water and food. They seemed to have gone up there to pray to one of their deities, we decided not to ask. We were supposed to have a date tonight with Anne and Sue - we met them some weeks ago in Mexico - but opted to relax instead in our very special bar ... read more

so on friday i leave for Colomba where i will have probably limited internet access, so the next time i'll be able to post won't be until i'm in el salvador. It's crazy to think i'm 1/3 done with my semester abroad. My group and I took part in a Mayan Ceremony on tuesday which was fairly interesting. Later we found out what our Mayan symbols were. I'm not entirely sure what to make out of all of it. I was only able to understand bits and pieces but apparently my metal is silver, i have headaches daily and cramps once a month. i sincerely hope that i misunderstood that last part. Had i known that i had to pay to recieve this bizarre information, i probably would've passed on it. Our final class here in ... read more

Okay, let’s see what has happened so far. We left Guatemala City at around 8:30 on Wednesday and got in to Xela around 1:30 or so. We had lunch here and had a little bit of class with our country coordinator. We went out to the markets and split into groups to buy food, clothes, school supplies, and medical supplies with 25 quetzales each. Apparently 25 quetzales is the average daily income for rural Guatemalans. I’m not sure what that translates into for dollars, but I think it’s really really not much. So I was in the group that was to get medical supplies, so we went to a pharmacy and struck up a conversation with the druggist and with 25 quetzales, we couldn’t get much. A bottle of pepto bismal was 32 quetzales and Tylenol ... read more