March 14th, 2007, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

We arrived in Quetzaltenango two days ago, so that we could go to Spanish language school here. This is the second largest city in Guatemala and if you can´t handle the official tongue twisting name, its nickname is Xela. It is a great place! We decided not to opt for the home stay option, but rather are staying in a modest downtown hotel. I have had two days of lessons and my head is exploding with verbs. Tommy is having some quiet time for now, needing to de-stress after the drive here. I walk back and forth to school (about a half hour each way), getting my morning coffee at McDonalds (the only coffee place open at 7:00 am). I get back to the hotel about 1:30 and then Tommy and I join forces to explore our neighborhood. TwoBaby holds down the fort at the hotel, waiting for us to bring him treats.

Our previous post left us in Flores, from which we drove south down the middle of the country. From Flores we went to Coban, where we stayed at a great little B&B and ate an upscale dinner in their restaurant. The next night we stayed in a funny little motel near Salama which had a pool, noise all night and a horrible restaurant. While we were looking for our night spot, we stopped at a restaurant to ask if we could camp in his parking lot. He looked at us, and then said ¨Cobras!" Tommy starting shouting, ¨Cobras! There aren´t any cobras here!¨ Finally, the man pointed us down the road, suggesting that we could find something further along. About a half hour later it dawned on us that he was saying ¨cobrar¨, meaning that he wanted payment for letting us camp in his secure grounds. Ah yes, a good lesson which we used the next night when we camped in a restaurant parking lot nere Tecpan.

From there we went to an official campground in Panachel, near Lago de Aitlan. This is a lake, formed by a collapsed volcano and surrounded by at least three other volcanos. It was completely magical! Our campground is owned and run by a transplanted Texan who smokes the truth every morning. Panchel itself is kind of a hippy, touristy, very comfortable small town on the lake, and one takes tuk tuks everywhere for a cost of 5 quetzals per person, point to point. A tuk tuk is a small vehicle, with probably a motorcyle engine and a small seat in the back for passengers. Panachel is at the base of a very, very, very scary mountain road. My eyes were closed most of the time as we travelled down the road.

After two days in Panachel, we drove here. All 96 kilometers took 5 hours! Most of this was on the Pan American Highway, which we had joined just east of Guatemala City. This highway is positively the worst piece of highway extant. It goes up and down mountains, with trucks crowding every lane, whether or not they have the power to get up the mountains or the brakes to get down safely. The highway has road works, road works, road works, announced or not. Everyone is passing everyone, particularly on blind curves. You get so that you are certain the next one will be a head on collision; strange that we never saw one! There are pedestrians everywhere. There are vendors of foods and trinkets as you wait in line for a road work stoppage. The entire highway is completely and utterly accident potential, and without a break or rest stop. Tommy drove the entire way, and I am grateful that he could handle it (I couldn´t).

Here are some phrases to capture our impressions so far: incredible mountain scenery, particularly in the north central part of the country; moutainsides with small farming plots and corn growing up the mountain sides; pedestrians everywhere carrying their loads (food, firewood, animals) either balanced on their heads or their backs), short-bed pickup trucks with metal structures welded shoulder high so that about 15 to 20 people can stand in the back; guns, guns, guns slung around most men´s backs; wonderful tourist police in their black and gold pickup trucks, keeping the roads safe for us; hundreds of minibuses (9 to 12 passenger vans) doing the town to town transportation runs; pink Eveready signs painted on lots and lots of houses along the road; fabulous fruit drinks (watermelon included); old US school buses, some still yellow and many painted terrific colors, particularly those known as the ¨chicken buses¨ (the most basic and local of the bus system); and color, color, color everywhere! The indigenous women wear the most beautiful woven outfits, and they have the blackest longest hair you have ever seen.

The Guatemalans smile a lot. When they do, you see that most of their teeth (particularly the front ones) are outlined in gold. And wasn´t Tommy the lucky one: one of his gold inlays popped out (not the one you fixed, George) and he went to a dentist yesterday. This cost a mere 50 quetzals (about $6.50 US). We´ll see how long the repair lasts!

We have seen two funeral processions. In the first one, the coffin was in the back of a pickup truck and every conceivable kind of vehicle was in the procession (including a tractor). We saw the second procession here in Xela, as we were trying to navigate our way to the school. The procession was on foot, blocking the entire main street for miles and miles. Colorful, though.

As we left Panachel, we stopped to fill up with gas. The minimart at the gas station also sold dried cat food, the first we have seen since we left the US. We gratefully purchased a couple of bags although TwoBaby has been pretty happy about his non-dried food diet of fresh chicken and fish. We were able to find cat litter in Belize so loaded up on the stuff there.

Very few people here speak English but one phrase is always in English: car wash. There are lots and lots of car washes. We used one in the north of Guatemala to wash off our Belize road dust (extreme). It took two people 40 minutes to get the van clean. The cost was 25 quetzals (about $3.00 US). Hard to believe, isn´t it?

Everything is very cheap here. We delight in our dinners for less than $20.00US, including the sauce. Our hotel (but keep in mind that it is very basic) is only about $20.00 US a night. The fresh fruit is everywhere, and you can get four or five watermelon slices for about $0.50US. We don´t mean to dwell on the cost of living here. It is a pretty special place, as well!

Hasta la vista!