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  Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
Saturday, September 6, 2008

Guatemala!

Thanks to my terrible inefficiency and large amounts of apathy this entry and the others that will follow are on a slight delay. My intent to stay on top of it all has obviously failed miserably. However, instead of giving up on it I climb back onto the horse and continue to write meaningless rubbish about my travels. A few people (Nancy) have commented that my blog is very matter of fact and I don't really get all emo and write about my feelings. I apologies. Ok no I really don't care. I'll cry on all your shoulders next time I see you to expel all of my repressed emotions... Where was I?

Oh, that's right, Guatemala. The flight up from Panama was in extreme luxury thanks to me mistakenly booking a business class flight... it was strangely the cheapest, but I wasn't going to complain. The stop over in San Salvador, El Salvador was entertaining as I was whisked into a shop by these very friendly girls who insisted I take my hat off so they could admire my boofy hair and blue eyes. They then demanded I play them some songs on the guitar despite the fact I only know english songs and they didn't speak a word of english. The formalities over, two of the girls insisted that I call them 'mi amor' (my love) and proposed marriage a least three or four times. Seeing as my inclinations toward marrying people I've known for five minutes and my impending connecting flight meant that I (sadly) had to turn down their offers and depart the Cigar store, possibly forever.
 
Ok so the entry continued from here with amazing literary genius and highly amusing anecdotes... then the computer decided that I would take advantage of my delicate state and delete everything. Ouch. Now days on and with much procrastination achieved, I return.
 
Having left the cigar shop and my potential future wives I caught my connection and made it to Guatemala. The brand new airport greeted me with alluring odors of fresh paint and floor cleaner, an odor unfamiliar to the rest of the country. I emerged into the dense evening air and into the comfort of a tourist shuttle to the nearby Antigua, around 45 minutes from the less appealing Guatemala City with its rampant gang violence and high murder rate. Of course, true to the traditions of my travels, it was raining. Having been the epitome of organization that I am, I had obviously not booked accommodation and found the randomly picked local from the guide full. Seeing as it was raining, night time and I had spent the entire day in airports I was not going to be picky. So on the recommendation of the portly lady behind the wheel of my shuttle we knocked on a random door and an old lady - Estella - appeared and showed me to a room in her home for the absurd price of four dollars a night. Happy with this selection I threw my bags into my room and collapsed onto the bed. Moments latter she knocked on the door and offered to cook me up a late dinner for the, once again ridiculous, sum of 1 dollar. I accepted and after indulging in those rice and beans which I missed so dearly I called it a night.
 
Antigua is a beautiful colonial city with cobble stoned streets and brightly coloured Spanish styled buildings. The streets are organized and clean which puts it in the interesting position of being absolutely nothing like the rest of the country. For this reason there are an inordinate number of gringos and tourists who either live in Antigua or find themselves passing through (me included). The next few days were spent wandering the streets and updating the blog and generally just chilling out after an intense Panama experience with the American. It did however dawn on me at this point in my travels that this was the first time, since 2003 and my round the world jaunt, that I had truly been traveling alone. With this realisation came the unwelcome feeling of homesickness and a bit of loneliness. It wasn't aided by the fact that staying at Estella's house offered no social opportunities what-so-ever. With my emotional outpouring over I guess I can move on... *tear*
 
From Antigua I set off toward Quetzaltenango or ¨Xela¨ as us locals like to call it. I waited patiently on the corner in Antigua and was shortly squished onto one of the brightly painted old US school buses that make for public transport in Guatemala. These buses are affectionately referred to as ¨chicken buses¨ thanks to their frequent use in transporting chickens and other livestock often squished beneath the ample buttock of the native Mayan locals. This bus journey was a particularly poignant reminder that I was in fact back in Guatemala and not in a Switzerland or somewhere where sanity parades itself openly. I found the bus rather full... which admittedly is no miracle or abnormality. The seats which are designed to hold two little school children in the US all had three brightly dressed locals on either side. In the middle was another fortunate soul who managed to squeeze a quarter of a butt cheek onto the edges of the seats on the left and right, leaving them suspended mid air, held in place by their quarter of a butt cheek and the generally overweight Mayan women on his/her left and right squishing in like sardines. Then there remained the rest of us. Namely me and a couple of skinny farmers in cowboy hats who found ourselves standing between the mid-air-butt-cheek-sitters bags in hand and occasionally falling into the laps of the toothy smiled laps of our follow bus folk. This was how I stood for this and many other bus journeys come in Guatemala. An hour into the journey and the mighty ¨Pan-American Highway¨ turned into little more than a wide dusty race track which our bus driver used to take over petrol tankers, motorcycles and other buses... on blind corners only, of course.
 
Arriving in Xela was a relief. Five hours standing wasn't exactly the highlight of my travels so far. As I wandered the vaguely familiar streets in search of a hostel I recalled the incredible times and amazing people I had met on my last visit to this cool (temperature) mountain city. Arriving at my hostel and dumping my gear I went in search of my Spanish school - Proyecto Linguistico de Quetzaltenango - based upon my terribly unreliable memory and good vibes. After getting exceptionally lost, 40 minutes and wandering about 4km´s further than I should have I found the school, a casual 5 minute stroll from my hostel. Incidentally I would be studying in the ¨mountain school¨ which was another hour and a half from this one, but at least I knew where it was. The next day I went to the school to register and then set off to the mountain school all of my crap in tow. Arriving at the mountain school I realized that I had missed the orientation and that there was no-one there. I left my bags inside the abandoned school and wandered out into one of the three streets which comprised the little town of Santa Domingo where the school resided. I spotted a couple of tall white people... not necessarily the description of the local inhabitants... and set about catching up to them. Thankfully one of them was the schools director, a very Liverpoolian British lass who showed me to the family I would be eating with for the week. The way the school was set up meant that we lived in dorms at the actually school but went and ate meals with local families. It was an interesting concept. My family was a young couple with a gorgeous 4 year old daughter who would run out and meet me on the road, take my hand, and escort my to the house for every meal. The house itself was a one room concrete structure with a small dirt floored kitchen out the back. The father would catch a daily 4am bus with the rest of the men from the community into the nearest large town to look for work. Some days he would find it, and others not. Whether or not he was able to find work decided what, if anything, they would be eating the following day. Having language students provided additional income for the family and empowered the women who traditionally exist as the homemakers. This was an extremely positive impact of the school and something which makes one feel all warm and fuzzy about participating in. On the other hand the way in which it was set out struck me as really strange. At meal times the precession of fourteen rich white westerners would emerge from the school, walk to their family, feed and then retreat to the lair... I mean school. It made me feel a little uncomfortable. Hard to explain really.
 
My time at the mountain school was interesting. I met some amazing people in the other students, one of which being Benedict. Benno is a tall, lanky goofy kind of character who was studying up to work for a human rights organization in Guatemala city for 6 months (where he is now). We would spend a bunch of time study and eventually traveling together... he's good people... but more on that later. My teacher at the mountain school had lost his son in a terrible motorcycle accident which had also severely injured his wife also. I was his first student after two months off and as a result heard absolutely everything. While I felt bad for the guy I was there to learn Spanish and honestly, by the end of the week, I had exercised more of my counseling skills than Spanish skills. It was a bit of a disappointment. I was glad to leave.
 
I left with my mate Benedict and we made it back for the graduation in Xela. The school holds a dinner every Friday where the students provide the food and the teachers provide the drinks or the other way round. Regardless, Benno and I arrived, beer and rum in hand just in time to miss all of the often drawn out speeches and in time to drink with some of the teachers and Fidelma. Fidelma is the American co-ordianator (or something along those lines) at the school and she's pretty awesome. Over the coming weeks much time would be spent, post-graduation, drinking and dancing with Fidelma and friends.
 
Back in Xela my first week of classes were far more productive with my teacher bombarding me with more grammar in Spanish than I know in English. He was intense. He would correct every single grammatical error I made in speech which made conversation very, very difficult. Given the waste of time the week before had been and how hard I worked with him, I requested him for the following week. My days were relatively simple during these times. I lived in a cheap, cheap hostel across the road from school. I would wake, eat, study, eat and go to class. I would eat often in the markets and thankfully never suffered the gastronomic problems oft-associated with such feats. I drank a lot of coffee, partly because it was free at school, partly because it was so cold and partly to try and maintain some sort of focus on my homework and 5 hour one on one instruction.
 
At one point I got an email from Su, a girl from the US who lives in China who I had met in Xela some 5 years before. Su is one of the most giving and generous people you could ever meet. When I met her she was working in an orphanage and doing all within her power to invest money into making it a better place for the kids. The last time we had seen each other was when I left her, Chris and Hidde in a town called Coban with a beat up rental car after a life changing road trip in 2003. Randomly she was coming to Xela for a week to sort out some legal issues (to complicated to even explain) involving some of her kids from the orphanage which she continues to support financially from China. Anyway she was coming and wanted to catch up! After a series of missed calls and lost emails Su arrived with a car full of kids on a Friday and picked me up from school half way through class. She had just been on a road trip with some of her kids and was absolutely run off her feet. The next couple of hours we spent running errands around town whilst trying to be inconspicuous about our presence (for reasons which are too complicated to explain). Su had a flight the following day from Guatemala back to China via the US and had already been on the road for over 6 hours that day so I volunteered to drive her and the rental car back to Guatemala city. With a bunch of delays and problems with traffic we only actually departed the city around 7pm instead of the 4pm. No worries except the highway between Xela and Guatemala city was renowned of car-jacking and hold ups at night. That and, as usual, it was pissing down with rain. After carefully stashing that line of thought in the ¨don't want to think about it¨ bag, I took the reigns (wheel) and headed out along the highway. Su promptly fell asleep and I drove the most interesting and probably dangerous journey of my life. Screaming along at 100km/h dodging pot holes by swerving across lanes was made all the more interesting by the chicken buses and petrol tankers which would fly past me doing around 150km/h in the rain. Thankfully, all said and done, there were no car-jackings, muggings or horrific crashed and we rolled into Guatemala city around 11pm. Su woke up, took the wheel and guided us to her Guatemalan friends house in a relatively safe part of the city. There we did some long overdue catching up before ceding to fatigue and passing out around 2am.
 
The next day we ate breakfast with the family and drove on over to the airport. Su had been pulled over on her road trip earlier that week and was issued with a fine by a corrupt police officer chasing a bribe. Unfortunately she hadn't had a chance to pay the fine and so passed it on with the associated money, to me to pay for her later. No worries right. Wrong. But that's for later. Thanks to the big ass hurricane which had just devastated Cuba and was headed on up to give New Orleans another undeserved battering, Su´s flight was canceled. The lady behind the check-in counter issued a giant ´I don't give a shit´ speech complete with a big toothy ´you won't get any sympathy here´ smile as Su tried to explain her need to get anywhere in the US so as not to miss her rather expensive connection to China and back to work. A lot of fretting and $800 USD´s later and she had five minutes to run through immigration to get her flight with another airline (never fly continental). So that was the end of my very rushed, but well worth while reunion with my friend Su. Hopefully it won't be another 5 years before we meet again.
 
From Guatemala I caught that luxury little can down to Antigua to spend the weekend, considering that I really didn't need to rush all the way back to Xela in one go and it was a nice, slightly warmer, local to hang out for a few days. Cash and multa (fine) in hand I wandered over to the bank to pay the fine Su had passed on to me. The first branch didn't accept payments so I had to cross town to the main branch to pay it. No worries. Like I said... wrong. I arrive at the bank and after handing over the fine expecting a straight forward transaction, and am told that I cannot pay that fine at the bank. I questioned why and the explanation was rather strange. See the fine was issued in Chisec, a tiny little middle of nowhere town around 10 hours bus ride away. And despite the fine saying that it could be paid at Banrural (the bank) it apparently had to be paid at the Banrural in Chisec. I swore, in Spanish, a lot. This would ruin my vague travel plans to visit Mexico and some of Guatemala before leaving for Costa Rica. So I asked to speak with the manager. A long drawn out conversation with the bank manager and the result was the same. Despite the fact that it was the same bank, there was no way they were willing to even send the money by post to this stupid bank in the middle on no-where. I would have to go it myself. Damn it. Jump forward in time to a day before I was about to head to Mexico and I'm going to get money out in Xela. I decide to try one final time and walk into the bank and just play dumb (not hard, or much of an act I know). I hand over the fine and after 15 minutes and four people trying to work out why they couldn't get the fine to come up on the computer the guy shrugs his shoulders and puts out his hand. I hand over the money and he prints out a receipt. I nearly wet my pants with relief but pretended like it was nothing afraid they'd realize that no other branch would accept it and throw the money and fine back in my face. Upon emerging from those doors I did a little victory dance and damned the man... that's right, damn the man, I was free.
 
Jumping back in time I left the bank and decide it was an opportune time to drown my sorrows. So I headed to the bar at one of the hostels and promptly started enjoying some liquid gold. It was there I met a Belgian girl and a super cool Guatemalan guy who was shamelessly hitting on her. We ended up drinking quite a bit and winding up at a beetles cover show, which, admittedly wasn't all that bad. The next day we met up and this guy, in a land of absolute poverty picks us up in his brand new BMW and takes us to the gated garden of Eden community where his house was. It was gorgeous. We lazed around the pool for the day and the Belgian girls tested her wares and cooked up an amazing traditional Belgian beefy dish (yes my vegetarianism has been abandoned while traveling). So we enjoyed some great food, amazing wine and even better company. It was all a little surreal.
 
The next day I squeezed myself back between some sweaty Mayan women and the worst try hard pick pocket ever (he failed) for the journey back to Xela and to school. I arrived 10 minutes before class... but damn it I made it. The week was another relatively normal one. Except that Melton my British Jamaican friend made me drink wine almost every night after class... bastard. Ok so I may have been a willing party but whatever.
 
The weekend heralded an array of festivities with Guatemala's much revered independence day celebrations. The day started modestly enough with me meeting Melton and Benno at one of the local hangouts to have a beer and watch the craziness of the street from the luxury of a balcony overlooking the central square. Benno dragged along the father of his former host family, a taxi driver who had obviously decided to start celebrations off a little earlier in the morning. Eventually he tired of our bumbled attempts at casual conversation in Spanish and Benno walked him back to his cab to drunkenly guide it home (or into a wall?)... who knows. The festivities in the bar downstairs seemed to be well and truly underway with a chorus of drunken chanting emanating from the large arched entrance. Following the festivities down stairs it seemed that every young (more hispanic = whiter = richer) Guatemalan had decided to make Xela and this bar the spot to celebrate the independence (or perceived) of their country. It also inadvertently answered our question as to whether there were any really attractive Guatemalan girls in existence - they were all there. So we sat, liter beers in hand, and watched the frivolity carry on. This included an overweight 30-something Guatemalan in a cowboy outfit funnel half a bottle of the local firewater... nasty. As I stood, Panama hat perched upon my boofy hair, I contemplated the difference between these celebrations and those of Australia day back in the mother land. I determined that Spanish drunken shit-talking sounded far more poetic that Australian English shit-talk... that was about it. Eventually the bathroom called and I squeezed my way from the beer garden into the sweaty interior of the bar. After standing at the toilet door for what seemed like an eternity I was accosted by a young Guatemalan guy who thought that the guy in the toilets (which was actually a urinal - why close the door) must have been giving birth and that my hat was awesome (in your face Simon). After stepping over the guy guilty of making me cross my legs and squirm like a little kid, I eventually made it to the holy alter and was relieved.
 
Upon emerging from the porcelain alter I looked in vain from my hat which had, at some point in my previous conversations, ended up on the head of my new Guatemalan friend. It emerged moments later and I was dragged to a group of young Guatemalans from the city, who it turned out, had chosen to adopt me for the evening. I was glad to have been adopted as this guaranteed that I would be able to exercise my Spanish skills without the social inhibitions normally adorned by logic and good manners. After some casual conversation (all in Spanish of course) I see the funnel emerge from the crowd in the hands of my new Guatemalan friend, panama hat and all. This spelt trouble. I flatly refused as they suggested that I partake in the holy communion that was independence day inebriation. At that point it was as if the whole crowd went silent and one of the more attractive girls in the group paused, looked me up and down, and posed the question that sealed my fate... ¨¿no tienes huevos?¨ or... ¨what you don't have balls?¨. The question, posed by a girl in a highly machismo energized society and environment, spelt absolute social exile and ridicule if not met with proof of my balls and subsequent manhood. Therefore I conceded, grabbed the end of the funnel and threw out my last hope at avoiding the impending doom of the funnel... ¨no tengo mas cerveza¨ or ¨but I'm out of beer?¨ My cunning plan was immediately thwarted as another of my new friends emerged from the crowd, two liter bottles of beer in hand. After handling myself with as much man composure as I could muster I was promptly swept up with the group and we headed to another three or so bars (I think?) where I remember a bottle of vodka on the table and a lot of singing along to Spanish songs I'd never heard before. It was a great night. I saw no other whitey´s the whole night and spoke not a word of English the whole night. At some point I donated my panama hat to one of my new friends and at around 3am stumbled back to my hostel and crawled into bed. The next day was a little slow.
 
Another weekend had me venturing to Lago Atitlan a beautiful volcano rimmed lake which I had visited years ago. When last I was there the place I stayed had simple wooden huts, no electricity, no hot water and was a hippy haven where everyone ate together and sang around campfires until late in the evening. I arrived with Italia (Guatemalan) and Laura (Uruguayan) whom I´d met on the bus to find newly concreted buildings, a bar, restaurant, electricity and the works. I´d be lying if I didn´t say I was a little disappointed but hey, I´d met some cool people on the bus. On arriving I also met up with a Chilean girls I´d met in Antigua three weeks before. Also lucky was the fact that we had arrived on a Saturday just in time for the weekly cross-dressing party. So, fueled by an amazing dinner and a few ml´s of liquid courage (not that I really needed it) we dove into the room filled with dress ups. I helped adorn my new friends in masculine threads and black marker mustaches, and they squeezed me into a leopard skin dress, frilly underwear and pigtailed wig. From there we descended to the bar and danced like my frilly underwear were possessed. Myself and Italia were the hot couple with our dance moves capturing the attention of the whole bar at one point when she made a sneaky move and groped one of my sock filled bosom. It was a lot of fun. At one point the police showed up to laugh at the stupid gringos in cross dress - obviously a weekly event. I decided, that even though the police all carry shotguns which are commonly used, I would, leopard skin dress and all, get a photo with them. Proof found on facebook. The night ended somewhere around 1am when the frilly underwear began to chafe and the wig began to itch. I spent the rest of the weekend chilling out, swimming and trying (possibly in vain) to reclaim the image of manliness from my fellow hosteliers who thought that perhaps I had embraced the role too well.
 
Back in Xela classes continued and my confidence in my Spanish abilities was continually shattered by the insurmountable amount of grammar that seemed to multiply when I would take my regular coffee breaks. My teacher in my final week was the best ever. She was this tiny little Mayan women who had fought as a guerrilla soldier for 18 years in the struggle for Guatemala. Her father and brothers ¨disappeared¨ and at one point she was captured by the Mexican military, incarcerated and tortured. This was one hardcore chick. In addition she was a great Spanish teacher and I honestly believe that I learnt more in this week than I did in the cumulative weeks prior. My graduation beckoned and I had prepared nothing... no food, nor a presentation to show off my Spanish prowess. So as my ¨traditional Australian food¨ I wrapped a couple of beer bottles in labels that said ¨comida typica de Australia¨ and made a five second speech about how much I was looking forward to eating that night. Genius I know. That night heralded some amazing dancing with Fidelma and my awesome Canadian friends Alana and Tasa. At least we thought we were amazing. At some point I managed to pay that fine and I packed myself up and said adios to the fleas which a week earlier had decided to take up residence in the entire hostel. Benno and I were off to Mexico!

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