Xela, Week 3 and Counting

We wanted to send a short update to let everyone know how we doing in Xela (pictures updated!). We are currently in the middle of our third week here and we are still loving the city and the surrounding areas. The first week we were here we stayed at the local cultural center/hostel and spent our time hiking, hunting for a good coffee shop, and signing up for Spanish classes. Last week we started our Spanish courses at a small non-profit school. All of the proceeds go to a scholarship fund that supports single mothers and helps them send their children to school. We were really sold on the school, especially once we met the two women who started it and are currently running the school. They are also single mothers and have a real passion to help their community in this area. They were very flexible allowing us to visit with our host family before moving in. They have also followed up with us through the past two weeks to make sure we have enjoyed our experience with the school and our family.

Against her previous inclination, Kendra has actually enjoyed Spanish school, at least a little. Originally thinking that she would complete only 1 week, she decided to continue on to a 2nd with Rich. Some have doubted how much work Kendra and her teacher actually do as they can be heard giggling throughout most of the morning sessions. Rich has been able to work with a different teacher each of the past two weeks and another for the next week, as he has enjoyed learning different aspects of Spanish from each. Now wielding the power of past-tense peterite and imperfect verbs, he has let Spanish get to his head and has decided to take a 3rd week of classes, pushing us into the 4th week here.

In addition to learning a meeger amount of common Spanish phrases, Kendra has been spending her afternoons learning how to weave on a backloom. Trama Textiles is a co-op of women weavers from all over Guatemala. They have come together as the quality of their trade has significantly declined in the last 10 years, as has their ability to feed their families from the profits. This co-op promotes better weaving practices and sells the high quality goods at a fair price. Part of the funding for this non-profit comes from fees they collect at their weaving school. We use the term weaving school very lightly as it is mostly composed of traditional Guatemalan women weaving and a few tourists who come and go each day working on their projects. Kendra picked the second most involved project at a total of 25 hours (mostly because she could not understand in Spanish what the 30 hour project entailed). All said and done, we will have a slightly misshaped, but made with love, table runner with some basic embroidery. If only we had a table...

The stay with the family has also been good. The family seems to be extremely busy as they have two teenagers, one adult daughter in med school, two young Guatemalan students boarding there, 15-20 birds, an aluminum business in their courtyard, a wedding cake business, a smoothie and pastry stand, and church obligations that take them out of the house 3 days a week. The stay there has also been a good reminder to both of us of some of the cultural differences that exists, mainly along gender lines and the concept of time (Dinner´s at ¨6¨? Good, we will be back from studying Spanish in time to eat at 9). However, as challenging as it can be to suddenly find yourself in the middle of an already complete, functioning family, it can also be rewarding, such as when Kendra finally manages to get a coherent sentence out in Spanish during dinner, or when the mother of the family takes extra time in the morning to make banana licuados with the pancakes for breakfast (think banana milkshake, with, is that chocolate?...yummm). All around, the family isn´t that different than our families. They have their quirks and their routine, but they do love and care for each other, as much as they scream at each other across the house for someone get the ringing phone.

Holy Volcano Hiking Batman!

Hola! Hay mas fotos (there are more pictures... check it out).

Since Antigua we´ve sort of fallen in love with a place called Xela, it´s a medium-sized city (big by Guatemalan standards) in the highlands. We´ve been here over a week and don´t plan on leaving for another couple. We have been taking spanish school and living with a host family too... there are a lot fewer tourists than in Antigua and a lot more culture, but more on all this later.

One big reason people like us get ¨stuck¨ in Xela is because of its great setting in the western highlands of Guatemala. At about 2200 meters (that´s around 7500 feet kids), Xela is set beautifully in the mountains where the weather is great and there are tons of hiking opportunities. In 10 days we´ve already managed to take 2 opportunities to hike. We did a self-guided half-day hike to a big volcanic rock field called La Muela (¨The Molar¨), but our highlight of the last week was definitely our 2nd major hike of the trip: Volcan Tajumulco!

Central America is famous for its volcanoes, and the Tajumulco is the highest volcano in Central America at 4222 meters or just under 14,000 feet. That´s pretty damn high actually... some problems with clouds and altitude were sure to occur. Regardless, we arranged to go with a tour company called Queztaltrekkers who supplied us with cold weather gear, tents, sleeping pads, water, and food. Tajumulco is a 2 day hike with 1 night camping on the mountain about 600 feet from the summit, so you need to carry everything you need to camp (in cold weather) and drink and eat. If you´re Rich, you need to carry Kendra´s heavy, bulky fleece sleeping bag liner to keep Kendra warm and thus happy on the cold mountain top.

On Saturday morning, we woke up at the wonderful hour of 4:00am to meet up with our group at 4:45. We caught a pickup truck to the bus station, a chicken bus, another chicken bus, and after 4 hours and a portion of rice and beans and fried plantains later we were at the trailhead with our super heavy packs. We walked about 30 minutes up a cobble stone street where eventually the trail left the road and headed into the woods and up, very very up. The hike started at about 3500 meters and for Kendra, and for a lot of others in the group, the altitude began to have an effect immediately. In fact, one girl in our group got sick and had to leave after only abou 10 minutes.

But because we are awesome, we persevered. Despite the altitude and the extremely cloudy weather, we hiked a solid 3 or 4 hours to our campsite, stopping for a delicious lunch prepared by the guides of PBJ´s, rice salad, cole slaw, chips and guacamole. The hike was foggy but the fog created a beautiful misty setting as we hiked through open fields and big trees on the side of the volcano. The trees on Tajumulco grow at the highest altitude of any trees in the world... so technically, they are not the tallest, but they are the highest trees in the world.

When we arrived at camp, we setup our tents and a makeshift kitchen. Because of the clouds we had to forgo heading to the summit that evening to watch the sunset. That was not such an upsetting situation for a number of people, because it was rainy and wet and we all had to get used to the thin air at the high altitude. We spent the afternoon and evening cooking a spaghetti dinner, chasing cows out of our campsite, and hanging out with the fun group of people we were hiking with. We all went to bed very early a bit damp, cold, tired.

The next morning we got up at 3:30am... yes, in the morning. It was pitch black when we hiked the final hour to the summit, we had to use our headlamps and flashlights which was a funky experience. Kendra was having a tough time with the thin air and the weather was still really cloudy so we were worried we wouldn´t have a great view of the sunrise which was supposed to be the highlight of the trip. We got to the summit just as the first light started to appear... and for the first and only time of the entire weekend, the clouds parted and we spent an hour at the summit watching an incredible sunrise over the top of the first cloudline which was far below us.

The views were amazing, it´s the top of a mountain after all, and it was worth all the bad weather and thin air we battled. After sunrise, we hiked back down an incredible ridge from the summit to the campsite. It was really cool to see what we hiked because we hadn´t seen it on the way up in the blackness. We had breakfast and hot drinks with our group, packed up camp, and headed back down. The hike down was beautiful too, through grassy fields and beautiful fields of purple flowers in the foggy woods. Very cool.

¨Hike the Highest Volcano in Central America¨ is officially off our to do list...

Antigua

We have finally been able to catch up with our blog posts; and
although many have you have already seen some of the pictures, we have
added a few more today. The map is updated too! We have also added a ¨Permacation Counter¨ to keep track of how long we´ve been away from home.


During the past week,
we have been staying in Antigua. It is a small city of about 30,000
that is an hour outside of Guatemala City. The city is situated at the
feet of a ring of volcanoes, one of which, Pacaya, recently erupted damaging
some nearby villages and halted our plans to roast marshmallows over
the open lava (literally, this is a tour option available until last
week). The city itself is really beautiful featuring Baroque
architecture, quite unusual for the rest of Guatemala. The city is
also home to many foreigners and reminds us a lot of San Cristobal in
Mexico. There is any interesting mix of local and foreign influences,
creating a very unique experience.

Originally we wanted to both experience the town and also hike two of
the volcanoes. The eruption of one of the volcanoes and the mudslides
following heavy rains forced us to forgo our plans for the time being.
The road to one of the volcanoes opened up two days ago, but we were
unable to find others to join us on the hike in order to meet the
minimum group number. So, for the time being, we put hiking on the
back burner and enjoyed the local cafes and the enormous market. We
were also able to spend two days helping out in one of the nearby
towns which had been damaged heavily from mudslides during the
season´s first tropical storm. After the second day, however, we were
unable to return as poor water conditions in the town were leading to
breakouts of infectious deceases, some of which the US hasn´t seen in
some time.


This week has been a very relaxing, enjoyable time. While Rich has
been putting the Atoll (corn drink) woman´s child through school with
his frequent visits to her stand outside the church (does anyone
really need to have 3 Atolls in one day?), Kendra has decided that her
favorite Guatemalan dish is Chinese Chow Mein. She feels that as long as it is
sold in the market by a woman in traditional clothes, no one can make
fun of her for it. Rich has also spent most of the week reeling from
his constant caffeine high from the significant Guatemalan coffee
supply, and Kendra has caught up on some of her shopping.


Tomorrow we will be leaving Antigua and heading up to Xela. Xela is
supposed to be built in a similar style to Antigua, but it is a little
less visited by foreign tourists and a little cheaper. The areas
around Xela have not been as damaged as here and we have already
planned a hike next weekend to the top of Tajumulco, the tallest peak
in Guatemala, with some friends who are already in the area. We hope
to stay in Xela for a while taking Spanish classes, and maybe a
weaving class (Kendra of course). Prayers have already been sent up to
the NHL playoff gods that some bartender in Xela will be a hockey
fan... where are the Canadian expats when we need them?

Tropical Storm Blackhawk

Hey hey, Rich´s pics are all up to date.

We are currently in Antigua, but before coming to Antigua, we spent 5 nights in Guatemala City. Guatemala City is not touristy--it has a poor reputation for safety and is often skipped through by travelers. Luckily, a friend of ours had a vacant apartment in ¨Guate¨ that was generously offered to us for free. It is in the city´s wealthiest, and safest, neighborhood (we didn´t feel unsafe for a singe moment). We decided to take advantage of the chance to have our own space, a kitchen, and a break from the constant travel we had been doing the past few weeks.

Unfortunately, 2 of the days we spent sick from some sort of food poisoning. But when we were well, we were the witness of some entertaining weather. One day, we woke up to find what looked like asphalt all over the sidewalks. As we walked a few blocks from the apartment, we realized that the asphalt had been sprayed literally everywhere. That´s because it wasn´t asphalt, it was volcanic ash from a volcano that had erupted some miles away and had rained down all over the city that night. There was literally a half inch of ash covering everything, and we had no idea there had been an eruption! People spent the next few days sweeping up ash from everything. This is what happens when you have no TV, no radio, no computer, and no phone... interesting weather phenomena go unnoticed. Which leads us to our funny story.

Our last day in Guatemala City, we woke up and it was pouring rain, just absolutely pouring. We know it´s the beginning of rainy season here, so we took no notice and just pegged it as an incliment day. We took our time and got ready to go out, we were willing to brave the heavy rains to get out of the apartment having been couped up sick the past 2 or 3 days. We went out, raincoats on, and took a taxi to visit some sites. Through the entire day, it rained buckets constantly. Rainy season, of course. We visited the city´s main square and got really wet but were happy to be out.

That night was game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals and we took note of 3 or 4 potential sports bars where we could watch the game. After our visit to the city center, we relaxed for a bit and dried off. While inside, we noticed it was starting to rain even harder, which was ridiculous because it was really raining! We mean, very serious rain all day with no letup.


But this was the Stanley Cup Finals and we had been inside for 3 days. We were determined to go out. So we got back out there. At this point, it´s pouring buckets and there are rivers running down the street. Cars are stalling in the streets. We began having serious doubts about travelling in Central America during the rainy season, but we were determined to persevere and watch the game. This is when things got fun.

When we got to the first sports bar, they had power, but the cable was out. We tried another a 10 minute walk away in the pouring rain. They had cable, but the power had just gone out. After waiting 30 minutes for the power to come back on, we thought we would try going back to the first bar to see if the cable was back in action. We again walked 10 minutes through the absolutel downpour and when we got to the bar, their power was out too! We´ve now missed about 1 hour of gametime, soaking wet, and without a lot of options.

We thought we would again try the 2nd bar, to see if their power was back. Literally the second we walked up to it the power clicked back on! It was glorious! We rushed into the bar, took a seat, took off our soaking shoes and raincoats and settled up. Then they fired up the satellite. Every channel worked... except for one... the hockey game. There is not enough vulgarity in the english language to express our reaction to this development. Soaking wet, exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and now over an hour of gametime missed.

We had one other option... the Mariott a 15 minute walk away through the monsoon. We strapped our boots on and sucked it up and went for it. When we walked in the front door, we realized this was a business-center Mariott. There were marble floors, men in suits, and a martini bar with a piano concierta. Meanwhile, we were soaked and dripping all over the immaculate marble floors. We were making quite a scene, but were kindly escorted by security to the sports bar in the back... where they didn´t have the game.

Dejected and with personal morale at an all time low, with the rain still pouring and pouring, we had a decision to make. Go home, tired, hungry, and hockeyless, or just go out and have some food. We decided to go back to the original bar we tried. Even if there was no cable, they were supposed to have good food. We took a taxi instead of walking.

When we got there, it was as if we came upon a CocaCola machine in the desert. The lights were on, the televisions were on, and - wait for it - there was the game on the huge screen in the center! We (literally) ran upstairs arms in the air to the table that seemed to have a heavenly light shining down upon it directly across from the game. It couldn´t have been better timing either... the 3rd period was about to start and the game was still tied, so therefore still interesting. We ordered wings, pizza, and beer and gorged ourselves as we watched the Hawks win Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

The next day, we arrived in Antigua, and the rain had stopped. We saw a sign on a cafe from the day before that said the following: ¨Closed for Tropical Storm.¨ We had no idea that we had been walking the previous day through Tropical Storm Agatha. Our thoughts that that rain was just typical rainy season were just plain silly... we had been walking 2 hours in a near-hurricane to watch Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals. That, our friends, is dedication.

The tropical storm was not just a funny story for us, it also was very tragic in some parts of Guatemala. Mudslides in particular have destroyed some parts of some communities. After realizing what happened and arriving in Antigua, we spent 2 days volunteering in nearby Ciudad Vieja to help the community recover from their landslide. You can look at the pictures now, and we´ll talk more about that and Antigua in our next post.