Like a Local?

Guess who’s a lazy blogger???

This guy.

I can not believe I’ve been away for over a month. The time is flying, and things are only going to be happening even faster.

In an effort to rid our bodies of the endless amount of black sand that has been turning up days after our departure from Monterrico, we journeyed back into the mountains to a town that has not gotten much praise from us in the past: Antigua. With over four weeks of seasoning to help us realize how we like to travel, our super brief stay in the city was actually enjoyable. I was able to pick up a new digital camera (since my discovery that my $100 waterproof camera was…shockingly…not waterproof) and some freshly baked banana bread for our journey into the mountains surrounding the backside of Antigua.

Earth Lodge: Agua on the left, Acatenango on the right.

Hopping in the back of a pickup truck, our driver wound us through the tight dirt roads past the Cruz outlook over Antigua, to the small villages that are hidden amongst the green trees of the hills. After a fairly bumpy, 20-minute long ride, our driver dropped us off at a village’s pila or station where the women do the daily cleaning of clothes and dishes. Not knowing where we were headed exactly, the driver motioned that we make a left after the community wash tub. A left we made and we found ourselves walking down a steep, dirt trail through a thicket of avocado trees.

After a few minutes the thicket opened up to not only a gorgeous view of Vulcáns Agua, Fuego, and our beloved Acatenango, but also a series of adobe and wood huts and living areas for the hostel/living community of Earth Lodge. Our stay was met with friendly faces, fantastic food, and some pretty stunning sights. The founders of Earth Lodge also run a pretty nifty non-profit called Las Manos de Christine, that helps teach, give supplies and pretty much supports a school in the village where the lodge is located. I was lucky enough to be able to check out the school and help out with some arts and crafts during the kids’ English class.

Beautiful Lake Atitlan

From Earth Lodge, we returned to Antigua to give Sir Harvey Melbourne Barnes, III a proper birthday. We had a lot of friends in town and I do believe Harvey’s inability to remember many details from the night only solidifies the fact that we knew how to show him a good time.

From Antigua, we joined some of our Habitat friends and took a shuttle up to Panajachel, which is a town I wasn’t that impressed with on the coast of Lake Atitlan. When driving down into Pana from the surrounding mountains, some clouds clouded our view, but driving down into clouds was certainly a neat feeling. We spent a night in Pana, had our fair share of fun, embarked on a boat in the morning to spend a day on the lake with about 25 of our closest friend, and enjoyed that as well.

After the double decker boat fun, we docked in San Pedro, one of the cooler towns we’ve been in. Situated on the lake with a fairly diverse group of habitants and visitors, the town reminded me a lot of the jewel of California—Santa Cruz. Laid back, good food, good drinks, good music, and slightly seedy, we had a pretty good time seeing some live music (Dr. Sativo again) and enjoying the nightlife and the hotel’s hammocks on Sunday. Along with Dr. Sativo, we saw a group from Guatemala City called Bacteria Sound System that absolutely blew the house down. While I’m not fluent in Spanish, I met some dready English speakers from the capital that were willing to explain much of the message to me. Essentially it was pretty neat to experience some really really really good hip hop that transcends much of the popular shit coming out of the States these days. Essentially using hip hop not only as a very real art form but also a method of motivating the social conciousness of the country in a direction other than violence and the drug war, was a really neat thing to be apart of. As with any group, when you are in the crowd and they are bringing an intense energy that takes over the people, it’s an amazing feeling. But after all that, we feelt the most exhausted that we have been in weeks, and we hopped on a chicken bus to embarked on the three hour bus ride back to Xela.

Bacteria Sound System

When we decided to return to Xela, I didn’t want to make the same mistake that I did last time I was here and do very little with my time, so I decided to participate in some Spanish language classes and a home-stay with a local Guatemalan family. The school is only a few houses down from Jamil’s apartment and my family is only half a block away, so it’s nice to be in the same neighborhood but to experience it in a slightly different way.

My host-mother Doña Miriam, is a fantastically patient woman who lives with her son, her daughter, her son-in-law and four-year-old granddaughter (who is an absolute delight to have around). There are also two other renters in the house—a local woman and a twenty-something Aussie guy who also studies at the school with me. Thankfully Doña Miriam is a wonderful cook, and I’m pretty lucky to be getting not only a bed (as I was sleeping on the floor at Jamil’s) and a fluent person to converse with, but also three warm, home cooked meals—something that Jamil didn’t include in our housing contract...for some reason.

The House Courtyard

I’ll be going to school everyday this week from 8am to 1pm and being back in school is certainly a change of pace in my life. Old nightmares of being up late studying have been haunting my sleeps, but my teacher, Mario, is not one to put pressure on his students. A native Guatemalan, Mario has lived all over Central America doing various jobs other than teach Spanish. The one on one style of teaching certainly beats out all my past struggles of learning a different language, and certainly being in a Spanish speaking country, forcing myself to learn the language helps with my retention. Fully knowing the benefits of learning the language has helped my drive, and it is pretty remarkable how much more I feel I have learned and retained (especially since Mario and I talked for 30 minutes today about bears—all in Spanish). Also being an older man (in contrast to the rest of the twenty-something teachers), Mario is able to provide a lot of insight into the changes and challenges of living in Guatemala over the years. Today we talked quite a bit about his ten years of living in Guatemala during their 36 year civil war (a war that only ended in 1996) and the decisions his family made during the time to move out of the country to places like Mexico and southern Texas. Enough words can’t be said about the value of giving an ear in a place like Guatemala.

Sadly Harvey leaves the country tomorrow, but I still am planning on staying. I have class through Monday and am planning on catching a shuttle up to Chiapas, Mexico to visit San Cristobol de las Casas. I’m pretty excited to not only make the trip that the original three of us planned on taking so early in our travels but had to delay, but also being able to see how my Spanish lessons hold up in the real world. Depending on if I have time, I’ve been throwing out the idea of taking more lessons (whether it’s language, cooking, dancing, or music) while in Chiapas. I really have a vague idea of what to expect on my travels up north, but the region has such an amazingly rich story, I’m getting really excited to experience the people, landscape and culture.




It's crazy to think that just over a month ago I never spoke a word to this guy. We've been through so many good times down here... Going to miss having him around. This is a great video of him passing some time at Earth Lodge. He's gotten amazing since I took this.