Xela and the end!

So here I am, over 9 months on from the beginning and under one month from the end. All the t-shirts I started my journey with either contain holes or are stained, my mp3 player ceases to function as the headphone jack broke off in the socket, my glasses now have only one temple to keep them on and I have been through 5 hats and 5 pairs of sunglasses. By the time I come home I will have traveled countless thousands of miles and gone through 12 countries. It feels like time has sped by and yet I can look back and be amazed by how much I have done and how many incredible experiences I have had.

As you can see my blog has a gaping hole of 5 months but I just haven't had the time to keep it going. If there was one thing I should have brought with me it is a Notebook PC.

Since I last updated this blog I have traveled through Chile with the highlight being the 5 day 'W' Trek alongside glaciers and harsh, beautiful terrain in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine , Buenos Aires and the waterfalls of Iguazu Falls (an undoubted natural wonder of the world) where I traveled with Simon for two weeks, a month of checking out very cool Brazil and spending 8 days of it with my parents in Rio and Salvador, a great 3 weeks in Colombia traveling with Gris from Bogota to the heat, humidity and beauty of the Carribean coast, a flight to Panama City and Central America, making some great friends and chilling with surfers on the Panamanian Pacific Coast, celebrating my birthday in style on the beautiful tropical island of Isla Colon in Bocas del Torro (still Panama), high adrenaline zip lining across 1km lines above a jungle canopy in Monteverde (Costa Rica), Ometepe the island of two volcanoes in Nicaragua, a day of Mayan ruins in Copan (Honduras) and finally reaching my current destination of Xela (actually named Quetzaltenango), Guatemala. Phew!

It is because of Xela that I had to write what is my final blog entry. I came here in a real need of a rest and a new challenge. It had been over 5 months since I had spent more than a week in any location (the last was a month in Cochabamba, learning Spanish and living with a family) and the constant travel from place to place had really got to me. I came to Latin America looking not just to be a tourist but to really experience different cultures, what it's like to live here and have a positive impact through volunteering. I had not done any volunteering since my first destination of Huaraz, Peru where I had a great time helping to teach English schools. The problem with Latin America is that there is just too much to see!

So how did I come to Xela? I found out there were lots of volunteer opportunities in Guatemala and a chance conversation in Panama with someone who had been volunteering in Xela led me here. I was suprised by just how many opportunities there are to volunteer. Someone told me the other day that there are over 10,000 non profit organisations operating in Guatemala alone! After a little searching a place called El Nahual Community Center stood out to me (click HERE to view the website). A couple of phone calls to Bryan (a Brit, and the coordinator at El Nahual) whilst I was in Nicaragua and a date was decided, a host family arranged and I was making my way towards Guatemala and Xela.

Xela times

As soon as I arrived Xela felt like a breath of fresh air but also like I had a done a full circle in my travels. Xela is a hark back to the beginning of my travels and Huaraz. Like Huaraz Xela is at a high altitude (2,300m compared to Huarez's 3000m), the white moutain peak views are replaced by hilly green hills and volcanoes and it's buildings and the countless small tiendas (shops) on each street are also very reminiscent. It may be similar to my beginnings but I know I am a different person to the one that first started.

Volunteering

El Nahual is a really fun place to be studying and volunteering. I have been taking Spanish lessons four days of the week and four hours a day, teaching English at external schools Tuesday to Thursday, taking a free salsa lesson on Thursdays and much more. Every Friday there is a community lunch that the Spanish teachers and students make together. It is always themed and the first time it was cheese! I made a dish called Chilaquiles which are cheese folded inside corn tortillas dipped in whipped egg and then fried. Add a spicy tomato source and it's rico (delicious)!

The cheese meal

There are three external schools I have been teaching at. I teach in the mornings for 2 one hour lessons on Tuesday - Thursday and have two one hour classes on Thursday afternoon. Unlike Huaraz where I was assisting teaching, I am THE teacher (sometimes alongside another volunteer)! It's actually quite fun teaching classes and not too unnerving to enter the environment. The hard thing is coming up with ideas to teach. I cannot go into a class without a good idea of what I am going to teach beforehand. The ages of the classes vary from 8-15 years and there can be as many as 35 students in one class. The schools are all very basic and the teachers give a mix of support. Some will stay in the class room with you and tell kids to calm down, whilst others will leave you to the ensuing mayhem. I gave a couple of my classes a test on my final day with them and found out just how little they had taken in. I realised that a long time is needed on just one subject in order to make sure that they have learnt words and can spell them properly. It is tricky though, when not all the kids bring in notebooks and others just don't pay attention.

Grade 4 in La Cuchilla

I really enjoyed working in an organisation as small as El Nahual as it gave me the chance to have a real impact. The teaching side of the organisation has been a little run down due to the fact that there has not been a specific teaching coordinator for a while. I saw that there were plenty of ways we could improve the coordination of volunteers and teaching we give. I chaired a meeting with the other volunteers and we thought up a series of things we could do. I spent a lot of time organising the vast amount of past work volunteers had created in to usable folders. Along with a curriculum and activity sheets Lindsey (another volunteer) had created I was able to put together a package of things that would enable a new volunteer coming in to the organisation to see where each class was at with its progress and continue on. In some ways I have found the organising and coordinating aspects of my time more interesting than the teaching. In the future I think I would like to spend 6 months volunteering on one project as it is very difficult to make a significant difference in such a small time as one month.

Food

Food is pretty basic in Guatemala. The base food is corn tortillas, there isn't a street that doesn't contain a shop that makes and sells them. Frijoles, a purple bean that is turned in to a paste has to come next. This is closely followed by platanos, a form of banana which is generally fried and served with the said frijoles and tortillas. Eggs are pretty popular too. I am generally served these things either for breakfast or dinner most days of the week. Lunch is the main meal of the day and this is always different and contains meat.

Guatemala

In Xela the people are very friendly and I feel comlpetely safe. However, Guatemala has some serious problems. Corruption is widespread and journalists face being attacked for reporting on the issue. I read in Entremundos (a volunteer run newspaper for volunteers) that 98% of crimes committed in Guatemala go unpunished! Effectively there is no justice system. There are actually more private security guards than police in the country. They are all armed and every bank and large shop has them. Being next to Mexico isn't a help as problems exist in border areas with narco traffickers and drugs gangs (Click HERE for more info). Funnily enough the most popular TV novela (soap opera) is called La Reina Del Sur and is based on the life of a female Mexican drug lord!

Compared to most, my family live very well. Families are very large in Guatemala and members tend to stick together in order to support each other. In my house about 12 family members all live together. The house is huge so there isn't a problem with space. I have my own bedroom, which, is bigger than almost any you will find in the UK. The mum (and Gran) of the family runs the show and stays at home to look after the kids and prepare meals for everyone while the rest of the family are at work. To help there is a maid who also prepares the meals and does other housework. I don't know how much they pay her but I think a lot of Guatemalans especially in more rural areas live off just $2 a day. There is some extreme poverty in the country and it is no suprise that people from Guatemala and other Central Armerican countries seek illegal work in the United States. I watched a film about people trying to get illegaly to the United States and they have to endure a terrible journey especially in Mexico. Immigrants will be beaten and robbed by police, attacked by gangs and maimed trying to jump on to goods trains. Central American history is as fascinating it is tragic. Guatemala has a terrible legacy of poverty left by dictatorships and civil war, a lot of which have been caused by US interventionism. I really want to read a lot more about it when I return home.

Still it is not all gloom, the people I meet are upbeat and hardworking. The whole country are fanatical about football and the fact that Guatemala recently qualified for the Fifa U20 World Cup (the first time Guatemala have qualified for any world football tournament) was BIG news. Despite losing 5-1, 5-0 to Nigeria and someone else they did beat Croatia 1-0 and progress in the tournament! I went to watch the local team Xelaju play and it was a lot of fun. The game did turn sour towards the end and fans started throwing anything they could find at the opposition! They drew 2-2.

Weekend manoeuvres 

Mystic image - Lake Chicabal

There is a lot to see in the area around Xela and I have been taking advantage of my weekends to enjoy it. On my first full weekend I went to visit Laguna Chicabal a sacred Myan lake that is situated in a volcano crater. Myan's still make up a large percentage of the population of Guatemala and are the indigenous descendents of the ancient civilisation. There are an innumerable number of different groups of Myans and most have seperate languages to each other. The way they dress is also very different with elaborately woven bright coloured dresses for the woman. Apparently they are very expensive and I would assume hand made. The Myan traditions make up a large part of Guatemalan culture and its heritage. Their religion is Cristian but like in Peru with the Incas it is a mix of Christian and Myan beliefs. Lake Chicabal is about an altitude of 3000m and is a good hike to get to. Mist hangs over the lake and occasionally drifts away leaving views across the mysterious lake. Ceremonies still take place there and crosses of various styles are dotted around the lake. It is a completely silent place and along with the mist it really does have a mystic feel.

On top of the skies - Volcan Tajamulco 


The weekend after I went to climb Volcan Tajumulco, which, is the highest point in Central America. I went with Quetzaltrekkers, an organisation run by volunteers and whose profits go towards funding a school for street kids. A group of 23 of us set of at 5am on Saturday to climb the 1000 meters to the base camp, where we would camp for the night. I had not done any trekking for a while and not to the altitude we were at for a very long time. The volcano was steep but we all made it to base camp in around 3 hours or so. The walk up the volcano was very beautiful. It is not active any more and it is covered in ferns and a lush carpet of grass and wild flowers. The volcano was covered in mist and pretty cold. We settled down for the night and tried to get some sleep before the 3.30am wake up and hike up the final 200m to the summit. Wrapped up and with sleeping bags in our backpacks we hiked in the dark up the winding slope. Below us, between the trails of clouds you could make out the lights of a city and above was a star studded sky. Once at the top and after a few photos we huddled up in our sleeping bags ready for sunrise. The sight did not dissapoint, rays of sun shot through the cloud cover opening up a vast landscape with views of distant volcanoes. It was a very beautiful and the walk down was just as pretty. 

The wild carpet

On my final weekend all of the volunteers from El Nahual and the coordinator Bryan took a weekend trip to Antigua, the colonial jewel of Guatemala. As people say, this is not the real Guatemala. Streets are clean and well maintained and the centre is pure colonial achitecture. Shop sign are limited to flat signs in the exterior in order to keep fit with the rest of the buildings. Understandably it is a tourist hub but it also fills up on weekends with wealthier Guatemalans making the one hour trip from the capital Guate. Antigua is one of the prettiest colonial towns I have seen in all of my travels and Saturday night was danced away to Latin and electronic beats. 

Chicken bus experience

My blog would not be complete without mentioning the ubiquitous chicken bus. Those yellow American school buses from the Simpsons don't finish their lives in the United States, they get exported to Central America. There they are transformed in to multi coloured machines and become the workhorses of travel. The buses then generally follow the 'use until collapse' route of Bolivia. They are very cheap to use but there are never enough of them and thus follows the 'rack 'em n stack 'em' chicken experience. It is normal to squeeze 3 people on to two seats and have the isle jammed with standing passengers. You wouldn't believe how many people you can actually fit in one. The drivers are just as suicidal (if not more so) as any other Latin American road user, and, given the state of Guatemalan roads (sometimes vehicles have to move into on-coming traffic lanes) it can make for a nerve racking experience. The other unfortunate thing is the fumes that belch out of the side of the bus from the exhaust. A person peacefully walking along a pavement in Xela can easily find themselves consumed in a black cloud of smoke from a passing bus.

Back of a stacked chicken bus, Terminal Minerva

And finally...

All of this inevitably leads me to the end of my travels. I now have two weeks left to see the rest of Guatemala and some of Mexico before arriving in Mexico City for the flight home on August 27th. I have some amazing sites still to see including the incredible Mayan ruins of Tikal and Chichenitza. I do feel I could stay on in Xela and continue my Spanish studies but I am also looking forward to home. I will miss the rhythms of a Latin American dance floor, the sites and feels of such hugely diverse landscapes and climates, the thrill of adventure, and meeting people from so many different backgrounds and countries. On the other hand I cannot wait to see all of you again, enjoy some home comforts and get back to good old England. I also want to continue learning Spanish when I return.

It's impossible to sum up how all the experiences I have had have changed me but I can say that I have had the most incredible and unique 10 months of my life. This may sound cheesy but I feel I will come back home a better, more knowledgable, more relaxed and confident version of me. If I could offer anyone some advice it would be to travel. Travel, travel, travel, and do it as soon as you can. Never will you have as much freedom to do what ever you want, be able to see just how many incredible things the world has to offer, meet so many interesting people and become as aware of yourself. I know my trip is not what everyone would choose to do or could do but there are so many cheap and easy ways to see the world. I would recommend volunteering as one of the best ways of traveling and experiencing another culture as well as making a difference.

Well that's it, I hope you have enjoyed reading my blogs as much as I have enjoyed writing them. I really look forward to seeing you all again soon. Farewell from Latin America.


Chris