Conquering El Baul

Sarah is a softly spoken, petite 50 year old with a British accent, but she hasn’t been living there for years. In fact she has been travelling, almost constantly, for over a decade. She has lived with a tribe in Malaysia, trekked most of the world’s adventure spots, climbed some of the highest mountains and lived in Mexico, Australia, Cuba and the United States. She is also passionate about salsa dancing.

I am listening to her speaking about one of her mountain ascents. She is describing the exhilaration you feel as you are rewarded with a stunning view after a hard climb, and the camaraderie you share with fellow travellers, and there is a part of me that envies her. Then I am reminded of the reality (freezing cold, long periods without proper showers, sharing confined spaces, carrying heavy packs, limited food options) and my envy quickly dissipates. Beside I have my own mountains to climb.

I set off early for what I think is short walk to El Baul, a nearby hill which I have been told has a good view of Xela and decide to practice my Spanish. Ola! Que tenga buen dia (hi hope you have a good day) I call out to people that I pass, and most seem delighted and respond enthusiastically Gracias, tambien or ugulamente. Thanks, the same to you.

As I climb higher the air becomes cleaner and soon I am walking among tall pines and looking down to the vast sprawl that is Xela. It is Sunday so there are more church bells ringing than usual and more fireworks. (by now I am used to them going off every day early in the morning and late and night and don’t jump thinking it is gun fire!). Soon all I can hear is the occasional car horn, the rumble of distant traffic, the odd cock crowing and dog barking and my footfall on the pathway.

I am starting Escuela de Espanol (Spanish school) tomorrow morning at 8am. I have committed to 5 hours a day for one week and I want to make the best of the opportunity and focus on vocabulary that will be helpful/useful when I am at the Red Cross. So I prepare some phrases and questions for my teacher in the morning. I am due to meet the staff at Red Cross tomorrow afternoon and hang out at the clinic they run and perhaps even speak with any willing stressed patients or volunteers, so my Spanish will need to be much better than it is right now. Some days I can barely get a word out and others I can converse with relative ease. There must be a lot of activity in my neural networks connected to language learning at the moment!  

I stop to look at the view down below and try to pick out the main square and I notice I am out of breath. The climb is higher and further than I thought but I am enjoying being out in nature again and feeling my heart beating in my chest. Although she is only a small mountain, she is making me work. I suspect that’s the beauty of climbing any mountain.  The more you get to know it, the more it reveals itself to you and the higher you climb the more clearly you can see the world around you and yourself.   

Hasta luego

Mon x

I met this mum and her daughter at their small kiosk on top of the hill

more election slogans

leaving the city behind

El Baul is part of a national park -the flora and fauna is protected

I bought some freshly squeezed orange juice and peanuts from this family

Sunday church service Xela

cathedral and parque central from El Baul

nearing the top

Chicken Bus to market...

art work at Cafe Red one of many small community action groups in Xela

San Francisco El Alto is a small town about 17 kms away from Xela, whose Friday market is, according to my lonely planet guide at least, “the biggest and most authentic in the country”, so I decided to take a chicken bus for the hour and a half trip and check it out for myself.

I did 2 things right today. I left all important documents other then 1 credit card behind and I put my money pouch in the centre of my back pack. I did 2.5 things wrong. I didn’t keep the back pack entirely to the front of me while I was walking through the crowded market and I didn’t bring any food with me on the trip.

The first mistake resulted in my backpack being slashed with a knife, and the second meant I ate some really awful greasy food –the least problematic I could find- potato chips- and so hot that hopefully any bugs would have been cremated! I just hope I don’t pay for it later. Luckily I noticed the gaping knife hole before everything fell or was taken out of my backpack, but distracted (the other half a mistake), while trying to find another bag and needing to pee and eat I lost my reading glasses. Luckily I have a “back up”, “back up” pair, (my first already lost in a b and b near Rome train station) until I can get another pair made.

The chicken bus experience was very entertaining. It was a great, cheap way to travel, but I would only recommend it for a short distance. The salsa music was a bonus and as the old school bus chugged up a hill overlooking Xela, for the first time the air was relatively clean and the view was wonderful.

The driver and his 2 helpers who jump on and off the bus calling out the destination and trying to entice customers are expert observers, noticing the most ambiguous gestures as a possible fare. I watch in awe as a slight slowing down of an oncoming car is rightly interpreted as a sign of intent, and a few moments later a whole family and luggage are safely aboard.

The boys keep up a constant banter, trying to second guess where the best fares will be and trying to stay one step ahead of their competitors who are following closely behind. The bus travels at only 2 speeds, breakneck and stopped, often waiting for up to 10 minutes at an intersection for a connecting bus that could bring new customers. Enterprising vendors of nuts, fruit or cold drinks are allowed to board the bus at these stops, the driver being rewarded with something for free for each sale. One man boards and gives an impassioned speech about the virtues of ginkgo biloba. He is selling this “genuine Chinese wonder drug” which is good for everything from arthritis to zest for 20 quetzals about 2 dollars for a bottle. He keeps up his speech for a good 20 minutes and eventually the ginkgo biloba wears off and he sits down for a rest!

The market in San Francisco is huge (although from memory Bangkok’s famous weekend market is probably bigger). It stretches across the whole small town, every street crammed full of people and produce, a colourful and physical assault on the senses. Old men bent over with enormous loads on their backs inch their way through the throngs, mothers with one child slung behind them, a basket on their head, and another child following behind, old women sitting among their produce measuring customer orders expertly in old hand weights, hawkers in their sing song voices describing the value and cost effectiveness of their wares, and at each corner, as far as I can see more of the same; fruit, eggs, vegetables, fabrics, clothes, shoes and household products of every description.

I make my way to the church where I have read that for a small tip you can climb to the top of the roof for a great view. A courtyard to one side of the church has a “candle room”, a kind of glass gazebo where people burn candles and pray. One voice stands out from the others chanting their prayers out loud. A young Mayan woman on her knees sobbing with grief, her young child dead. I feel like an intruder, even though I am so far away, her pain and loss is raw and palpable.

   

Later I climb the spiral staircase to the bells and the roof. I sit for a while, removed from the activity below and look out across the village to the hills and Xela in the distance.

It is good to have perspective again.

Hasta luego

Mon x

woman weighing local produce

handmade fabric for sale

lots of food stuff too

people come from all the surrounding areas for the Friday market

this young guy was waiting patiently for his next customer

view from the church roof

just a part of the market

I loved sitting up on the roof on my own

courtyard next door -small building is the candle room

butcher shop

Quetzaltenango...or Xela for short

View of Xela from nearby hill

candidates of upcoming elections advertising

B and B San Bartolome

Cruz Roja (Red Cross) Xela

walking towards Parque Central with Cathedral as land mark

no traffic but it is 6am

Cathedral in main square

no clocks work in Guatemala. This one is stuck at 12

there's a lawyer and public notary on every street, still not sure why

Graffiti, part of the landscape

Even at 6am in the highlands of Guatemala, the smell of fuel is thick in the air and it burns my lungs. I am exploring Zone 1 around the Central Parque and getting my bearings on my first morning in Xela.

I arrived yesterday after a 4 and a half hour journey by “normal” bus from Guatemala City. I am still keen to have a “chicken bus” experience, but not when I have my luggage as well!

The bus drops me off at a depot nowhere near the city centre but I am told it will be easy to get a taxi. 30 minutes later I am still waiting, trying not to breathe as the slow moving traffic continues to belch clouds of black smoke into the street. Eventually I get a lift to the Parque Central (where else) with a work colleague of one of the other passengers and try to find my accommodation which is supposed to be a short walk away in 2 Avenida (second avenue).

After dragging my suitcase down a number of rough cobblestone streets and being given some wrong information I work out that my B and B is still 10 blocks away, but because it is middle of the day and I have been sitting down for ages I decide to keep walking.

B and B San Bartolome is basic but comfortable and Anabella, the gracious owner and her friendly staff are helpful and it is total language immersion as they speak no English. Armed with a map, I go off to explore and manage to find some cheese and yoghurt and a small supermarket.

I am caught in a heavy downpour without an umbrella (this is the normal afternoon weather pattern for winter here I am told) so decide to try to find a café I have read about as I am hungry. Café Cuartito is a funky little place hidden in a street just off the main square. I order some food and try to read an article in Spanish that Anabella has given me about her work with battered women. It is hard going and I ask a woman sitting next to me for the use of her dictionary. Cazzie is an Australian teacher who is travelling and working in Guatemala for 6 months. She would like to eventually get a job here in a school but for now her goal is to improve her Spanish skills. I arrange to meet her at her school later where she will introduce me to another friend who likes salsa dancing.

In my room at about 8.30pm with my hot water bottle (it is cold and still raining) I wonder what the next few weeks will bring. I have plans to speak to the Red Cross tomorrow and a member of the Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala city has offered to meet me in a few days. I also have a contact from Anabella and numerous agencies in town who offer voluntary work opportunities. I am not sure whether to enroll in a Spanish course or just muddle along and try to do some voluntary work and learn as I go. I fall asleep with the sound of rain pounding on the roof.

I wake up to the sound of dogs barking.

It is only 3am but dozing is the only possibility now as the barking continues without respite. Malnourished dogs are a common sight here. At 6 I get up and go for a walk. Many people are already out and about and the Xela is waking up. I notice that in almost every street is a sign advertising abogado y notario (layer and public notary) and wonder why so many are needed in such a small place.

I find the Red Cross and then the Red Café where I have been told I might get some information about work possibilities. I walk past Mayan women in their distinct skirts and shirts and people going to work. I watch street vendors setting up and shoe shiners with their first customers and I do my qigong in the central parque in front of a still asleep homeless man.

I don’t know why, but today I feel homesick.

I miss clean air and clean beaches and being able to go to the shop and find what you need. I miss my friends and my family and familiar food and routines and places.

I am sick of pollution and politics and poverty and of showering in tiny bathrooms with unreliable water and living out of a suitcase and struggling to find something to eat that is nutritious and won’t make me sick and remembering to bring a tissue with me to the toilet, and then throwing that soiled tissue into a bin (you can’t even throw toilet paper into the toilet in Guatemala) and most of all I am sick of having to think ahead, to the next form of transport and the next destination and finding accommodation and “being careful” because people care about me and are worried.

I know a lot of people would love to swap places with me right now, but travelling, like all things, involves moments of frustration as well as joy.

So…I allow the energy of this moment to seep in without trying to change it or deny it…and like all things it passes, besides it helps to remember that it is my choice to be here.

Later I meet up with Cazzie and she takes me to a tiny hole in the wall where the owner makes delicious toasted sandwiches with fresh cheese, tomato and basil…and with a belly full of fresh food and good company all is right with the world again.

Hasta luego

Mon x

Adios Antigua

Just around the corner from my accommodation I spot a tiny little place that advertises salsa lessons. I pop in to ask about the possibility of having a “practice” class. Andres is happy to oblige and so at 10am this morning I turn up. He tells me he teaches LA style, not Cuban, so I am keen to see how I go after all this time.

He is a tiny, strong man and within minutes has me twirling around the dance floor. A few times I get it very wrong, but we do it again and his encouraging “eso” inspires me to keep going. The best thing about it is that I am soon sweating profusely and having a great fun work out! It’s only later that he tells me that he is the Guatemalan salsa champion! 

An hour just disappears and I walk out on a high. "See you at Sala tonight" he says "or maybe Xela". Sounds good to me.

Monday 25^th July I think.

It’s my last morning in Antigua. I am off to Guatemala City again overnight, before heading to Xela tomorrow. Antigua has been a lovely experience. Its charm and relative safety have made it a place where I could relax for a few days. Yesterday I wandered around the Central Parque area where locals were enjoying their Sunday with food stalls, music and markets and a political rally! I had a relaxing day. (a massage at the Mayan spa and macadamia cream pie and latte at Café Condesa, and later a beer and yarn on the rooftop of our posada with Russ, a fellow Aussie from Queensland)

Russ, is quintessentially Australian, a “strine” talking larrikin with tatts, a past and a big heart. He is a surprisingly gentle man who has taken off on his own for 6 months and has had some adventures. Unlike some ethnocentric Australians I have met, he has embraced being out of his comfort zone and engaged with the locals with respect and friendship. He accompanies me to Sala later and we watch the amazing salsa dancers before heading back to our Posada.

One of the joys of travelling is that you spend time with people you may not otherwise have ever met, as they are not part of your usual social network. I’m glad I spent some time with Russ. He challenged some of my preconceptions and prejudices and reminded me once again that we human beings are very simple and very complex beings.

Hasta luego

Mon x      

Antigua ruins

artwork on every wall

weekend artisan market

political rally

locals enjoying Sunday at Parque central

entertainment

what a happy chap

photo of a photo

Antigua

Antigua is a world away from Guatemala City, although only a short distance from the capital.

Its unassuming pretty pastel coloured buildings hide gracious dwellings and tranquil, flower-filled courtyards.

My little posada is a gem, and my room, which opens out into a pretty courtyard is comfortable and peaceful. 

I spend a few hours exploring the cobblestone streets around the parque central and have dinner in a cosy taverna, with good food and good wine.

Antigua is a tourist town and it is not hard to see why. It is full of art galleries and jade shops, small boutiques and cafes and on every street a Spanish school, offering voluntary work opportunities, excursions and salsa dancing. In spite of the tourists and modern day feel, it retains its character and charm and is a place I could easily spend time in and around.

I am looking for an opportunity to practice my dancing and have been told about a place called Sala, which has a live salsa band, so after checking with the staff at the posada that it is safe to walk around on my own at night in the area I am going (there have been some attacks on tourists in Guatemala and Antigua lately) I head out for dinner and hopefully a dance.

I find a cosy taverna with good food and wine and then at about 10 I head off to Sala.

Although I don’t find it easy going into a bar or club at night on my own (am I wrong in thinking it is easier for men?) I order a drink and imagine I am just waiting for a friend. Perhaps it is my second drink, perhaps this time I am more determined –on a couple of other occasions in Hong Kong and England I have left after one drink-perhaps it is the sound of the music that starts and fills me up, but this time I stay. Soon the dance floor is filled and everyone is moving in time to the music. I find myself moving too, Elizabetta’s voice echoing in my brain, my hips, shoulders and “torax” remembering. A guy asks me to dance and without thinking, I do, the energy of the crowd and the music envelops me and it is fun. The guy tries to talk to me, but I can’t hear him above the music, so I just smile and keep dancing. After a couple of songs I have had enough, so I thank him and leave. I am still dancing as I walk out the door.

Hasta luego

Mon x

      

Wait there's more...

sunrise at Antigua

Guide explaining how burning rocks and lava destroyed local houses last year

it's pretty hot in the steam

cathedral sans roof

partially restored

small staircase leads underground to where Mayan rituals still performed

artwork at Casa Santo Domingo hotel

courtyard at Hotel Posada La Merced outside my room

Cathedral lit up at night

Sunrise this morning 5.45 am