Back to origins

Tomorrow is the big day when we finally head of to La Bendicion and over the next two weeks we´ll hopefully learn a lot about the locals, earth reforms, coffee productions and how to make tortillas. I´ve realised I have to think twice what I write here since our coordinator Marte checks in to the blog now and then, on the other hand, it´s been an absolute ball til now, so I´m pretty sure she can read anything I allow my parents to see! As you can see I´ve finally managed to get some photos up and running.

But, better get gumboots and a machete off Marte and then it´s about time to pack. Can´t wait to get the machete and have a play, check out the photo of Tonje Camilla further down, it was pretty fun.

Next update will be in two weeks. Until then, take care and be jealous of our little trip to Lago Atitlan, it was stunning!

Home, sweet home

Back in Xela, and it feels good! The nightlife in Panajachel was definitively overrated, but we had nice dinner at a local restaurant. And that is one thing that is absolutely amazing with this country, it is extremely cheap. A dinner is expensive if it costs $6 or NOK 30. Our three-hour bus ride to Xela this morning cost $4 or NOK 20. Calling Europe costs 20c or NOK 1 a minute. Our hotel last night cost $5 or NOK 25. It is just ridiculous, and the loan from the government definitively lasts longer than in Melbourne!

The photo is from one afternoon after Spanish school, just chilling in the city, and having an absolute ball.

Yesterday we headed off to San Pedro, a city across the lake. It was an absolutely fantastic boat trip, the sun was shining as always and the lake was just amazing with volcanoes in the background. I promise I´ll get some photos out here soon, is just that I need a cable for my camera. San Pedro was nice and small, we chilled on the beach and had lunch before heading back to the city. However the boat trip back was so different. It was rough sea (on a lake, yes), the boat was rocking like crazy, taking in wated when high waves came to close and it would have been rather scary if the scenery around was not so beautiful. We even worked out an escape route and how to save the videocamera I´ve been dragging along everywhere.

Last night it blew up to a tiny storm and we had nice dinner before heading back to our room to play cards and talk about the next few weeks at the fincas. Then this morning it was a trip to the beach before heading back to Xela on a chicken bus. And know we´ve had dinner for less than $5 (NOK 25) and are just going to relax before the upcoming coffee picking. Take care!

Chicken buses and chicks on the run

Yess!!! Vacation, finally! We had a pretty late night last night playing cards in Charlotte´s and my room, so it was pretty hard getting up at 4.15am to catch the 5am chicken bus from Todos Santos to Huehuetenango. We rocked up at the plaza just before five, but realized two people were missing and went on a frantic search around town to get them on the same bus as us. It was a bumpy ride over the mountains, but beautiful to watch the sunrise at such high altititudes.

This is Veronica and me having a pretty amazing time waiting for the boat to San Pedro.

Oh well...I should really explain the chicken bus phenomenon a bit further. It is old buses from the US, which I am guessing was bought during the 50s or 60s when car companies in the States extinguished any chance of a public transport system by buying all means of public transport and selling it off to developing countries so the Yankees all had to buy cars. Nevertheless, it means the buses now cruising Guatemalan streets are big, yellow, polluting and all display "School Bus: Adequate seating for 39 adults or 59 children." But, who can read english? How about 65-70 adults crammed together with very loud meringue music blaring from slightly too old speakers...And this is at five in the morning! But you can not say they are not efficient. The driver and his assistant know excactly where you should get off, and before you and your nine friends accompagnying you (in our case), all our ten backpacks which had travelled on the roof are on the ground before we have managed to get out of the bus at the designated stop.

We had a stopover in Xela on our way to Panachael, a city close to Lago Atitlan, but managed to lose six members of the group. We really wanted to get moving so jumped on the first bus and with very limited Spanish managed to get there, avoid annoying middle-men wanting us to stay at their hotel and got a lovely little hostel in the middle of the city. Now it´s about time for a shower and then to check out the night life in this little town, which the guide books call a "gringo magnet". Should be fun regardless. Have a lovely weekend everyone!

La Bendicion - The blessing

Another new sunny day in Todos Santos. It is like Norway during easter, hot, clear skies and absolutely beautiful. The photo is me attacking a watermelon on the roof of my house...looovely!

Anyway, some of the point of this trip is to work at plantations, and I am off to La Bendicion, which means the blessing. It is one of Kab´awil (a organisation working for the rights of Indians) oldest plantations, or fincas as they call them, and I think it will be a great experience. La Bendicion is known for its coffee, pineapples, papaya, peanuts and bananas, and we will spend the first few days of next week picking bananas. I am going to live with a single mother (unsure where the husband is) and her three children. The cool thing is that she is pretty high up in the running of Kab´awil, so could probably get some amazing stories out of her in addition to lots of information.

Yesterday we did our first interview for our documentary, Kenny, the son of my Spanish teacher, devoted Barcelona fan and with a wish to become a teacher. Andreas did the interview because of his already excisting Spanish skills, but I will definitively be able to do it myself soon, the Spanish is getting better every day. I had a chat to my Spanish teacher yesterday and it is pretty crazy how focused Norway, Australia and the West is on goods and services. I told her how much my flight ticket cost, it is about half a year salary for a Guatemalteco and I just felt kind of sick...We spend a lot of money, that is for sure...

Anyway, off to play cards on the roof of my house! And all ex-RMITers, if you read this, drop me a line on maphilaaa(at)yahoo.no and let me know how you are doing!

All Saints...

You know you are in the middle of nowhere when there is a limit of four computers with dial-up internet in a whole mountain range. At the moment our little group of 12 has moved to Todos Santos (meaning all saints) in the mountains north of Guatemala. It was an absolutely crazy ride up here. First on a chicken bus from Xela to Huehuetenango with a good 65 people on board something not fit for more than 30. Then another tiny taxibus up steep hills on one side and down steep hills on the other. The chicken bus was subject to a random police search which was pretty crazy. Armed police stopped the bus and all men and boys had to go out, got searched before they could board the bus again. Went allright, but still, not something you´ll experience in Norway or on the bus from Melbourne to Sydney.

The photo is Tonje Camilla going nuts in an old corn field with a machete. We all had a go at it, and I can promise, it was just as fun as it looks like!

We came pretty tired on Sunday night, a few people with hungovers or carsickness and we had some pizza before heading off to our hostfamilies. Charlotte and me ended up in the same family which was just great. It was one of the two Latino families in town (the rest is Maya and speak the indigenous language Mam in addition to Spanish), and with 15 people it´s just great fun.

The language school is not as coordinated as in Xela but we learn a fair bit as well, as well as going on hikes in the mountains around the village. Yesterday I had a quick brush of food poisioning. Woke up in the middle of the night feeling pretty crap, but today it´s all better.

This weekend we´ve got some time off and the plan is to head to Lago Atitlan, an area that was hit pretty bad by Stan, but hopefully some tourist dollar will aid their economy. It sounds pretty stupid maybe, but it was the case after the tsunami as well, the most important is that people dont get scared away but keep coming to the area, and Guatemala is such a beautiful country!

Next week we´re heading off to three separate fincas (plantations). Im off to La Bendicion with Morten and Tonje Camilla and the finca is famous for its coffee, pineapples and bananas, so Im pretty sure I´ll have an allright time. I´ll definitely find out lots about coffee growing here in Guatemala so I´ll keep anyone interested updated, no worries!

Take care, it´s a lovely day and since I was inside all yesterday it´s about time I got some sun and some new freckles! We´ve spent most of the mornings on our roof playing cards, and life is really not that bad.

Ciao!

Hotel Quetzales

We found a lovely little backpackerhotel yesterday, it was pretty hot walking around the city with heavy backpacks, but when I left for Guatemala I only had 12,9 kilos with me, which is quite spectacular! We went out last night and have been slightly reduced today. We went to a market and bought lots of fruit, $1 or 5 NOK for two pineapples and a watermelon, thats pretty cool!! And then they have this weirdas fruit, it is green and looks like a dried up cucumber. Then it has large green seeds inside with white fruit-stuff around, and you eat this white fruit-stuff and spit out the seed. Interesting!

We are about to get some dinner, but have a absolutely lovely weekend!

Cheers!

Did you want tortillas with that?

Hello, and wow I am sick of tortillas or what? Not because they taste so bad, because they don´t, it´s more because they have to go with every main meal. Even when the main meal consists of tortillas! Did you want tortillas with your tortillas??? The other day I had nice (however slightly overcooked) pasta and guess what the side was? Yess...tortilla!

Other than that I´ve finished my first week at Spanish school. When I came to the host family I could hardly speak a word besides thank you and si, last night I had a long discussion with my host father about the differences in Norwegian, English and Spanish. At school today we got our certificates, I´ve successfully passed level two and we had to make a speech. Like the Oscars, I had mine prepared but it was quite fun speaking to the whole school and I made my first joke in Spanish.

Tonight most of the Norwegian group is checking in to a hotel. First of all because that helps us illiminate similar situations like the one on Tuesday night, and second of all it costs no more than AU$ 6 or NOK 30 per night.

Last night we drove up the mountain side of an active vulcano, jumped in our bathers and went for a swim in a hot spring. It was absolutely awesome, 40 pluss degrees hot at some places, and so nice just to chill after a pretty long week with lots of Spanish.

Anyway, better go and find that hotel!

The rule of three

Happy Valentins Day, all! I know I´m a day late and all, but anyway...We decided to celebrate the day of love last night (actually not true, it was just a great excuse to hang out and have a few Gallos.) Before we came to Guatemala we were filled with stories of great danger, armed robberies and what worse is, so the school set up a rule saying we always have to be three together. We´ve made great fun of this little rule, pretending to find two others just to go the the bathroom or get a drink etc. However, this early morning at 1am we discovered it wasn´t such a stupid rule... Xela is a great city, but at one in the morning it´s kinda scary. We live in host families all over the city and struggled slightly to find a way so no one had to go home by themselves. I ended up going home with one of the other girls, Kristin and staying at her place. In Xela there are lots of stray dogs, which you take no notice of during the day, but when it´s dark and you are alone...not so funny! We came to her place and she struggled big time with the keys. After five minutes or so two men came up and asked whether we needed help. We did, but were also so ready to drop everything and run if they were up to no good. But, our guardian angels opened the front door and we were "safe" inside. Because the crazy killerdog of the house had woken up during our attempt to get in and went nuts, we hoped it was tied up somewhere and luckily made it to Kristin´s home. Because Guatemala is a country were tomorrow tomorrow is the general rule we had little information about our host family, and I had no way to contact them to say I wouldn´t make it home because I was all by myself. I was scared they would freak out and call the police, but when I came home at 6.30am this morning they were find with my explanation it was "muy peligrosa" (dangerous) walking home by myself.

So, a rather interesting night and day, now we´re going to have our first meeting with Kabáwil, the Mayan earth reform organisation. Take care!

Guatemalan food and climate

It´s about time I talk some more about something most people care about: yes, the weather! Because we´re up on 2000something metres it gets abosolutely freezing at night. It was my first sentence in Spanish "hay frio" (there is cold) and it really is. The wife in the hostfamily complains about the cold constantly, I don´t think she´s realized that if she actually goes outside it is boiling hot. During the first morning class it goes from jacket and scarf weather to singlet and sunnies. It jumps a good 15 degrees, I´d guess it´s high 20s when the sun is at its highest, it´s very nice.

Another very important thing in everyone´s life is of course food. We´d heard we would eat tortillas (no, not the yummy taco ones, but slightly dry and very tasteless corn or bean pancakes.) They are allright to eat sometimes when you can choose to and they have a bit of salsa on them or are spicy, however today I had my first "forced-down-tortilla" and I can honestly say, now an hour later it´s like a brick in my stomach. I better have to get used to it though, apparently it´s all they eat at the plantations we are going to work at... Other than that Guatemalan food is nice, not too spicy, but still has flavour and they eat lots of rice which is quite nice. They have tons of fruit of course being close to equator, but interestingly enough a rather tragic fruit history. American Fruit Company supported a military coup in the 50s because the newly elected president wanted to share the vast amounts of soil among the masses instead of limiting it to a few sickly wealthy companies. Bad American Fruit Company... (which now convieniently is called Chiquita, think about that next time you eat bananas!)



Oh, and yeah, this is how the washing is done: cold water and a brick sink and scrub, scrub, scrub. Sorry, mum, it is not my fault if my t-shirts aren´t white when I get home!

I´ve decided my host family is ok, although I got lost twice yesterday. The second time I saw the family´s grandson down the street and just screamed "¿Donde es mi casa?", so he showed me the way, but couldn´t stop laughing at the lack of my orientation skills.

Anyway, off to a market now with lots of food...ahh...tortilla still like brick in stomach...a Gallo a bit later maybe...?

Ahh...and yeah, it´s Valentins Day today in Guatemala (too late for all you Aussies), nevertheless, Happy Valentins Day to all of you!

Language school and host family...

Comprende? No? No entiendo? Que? eeehhh....una momento while I check the dictionary. Well well...that has bascially been my past 24 hours. Last night we were taken to our host families. Lots of other people in my group got families very close to the school, I was driven a nice hike away and introduced to my familiy. A 70 year old lady with kidney stone. How do I know this? Because fifteen minutes into my stay during dinner she gets a glass container from a box and points at her stomach. I double checked the dictionary, and yes, there in front of me were the lady´s kidneystones....eewww! She speaks no English so we have been communicating with hmms and aahhs.

This morning it was time for the first Spanish school lesson, and that has been amazing. I did not learn my teacher´s name til the last day, but the photo shows Stephanie and me discussing pastries in Spanish. She´s great and having one teacher to one student really beats any French lesson I ever had in highschool. So four and a half hours with that every day should hopefully teach me some Spanish. At the moment I´ve learned present tense of the verb "entiendo" (to understand), which then comes in handy when I want to say "I don´t understand!"

But, gotta run, I´ve got 50 lines to write.

So long.

Wow!!

Hey and hello! We arrived in Guatemala City Thursday night and since then it has been a lots of new impressions constantly! A few key words is however:

- lots of people in one car: yesterday we sat at in the back of a pick up (ute), 12 people and six inside. Then last night we went to a soccer match and were 23 people in a 8-seater taxi. Yes, it is crazy, and they drive like nuts, but it´s actually quite cool.

- food and drinks: for the past month we´ve heard that if we eat fresh fruit from the street, salad, uncooked meat, dodgy lollies and worst of all ice cream we will become sick as dogs, so at the moment we try to stick to "safe" food, being pizza and beer. The local brew, Gallo, (pronounced gAjo) is actually really nice (and this coming from me), but it beats VB (Australian beer), that´s for sure!!

- weather: it´s hot and nice. We´re up on 2600 moh on our way to Quetzaltenango (also called Xela), so we´re pretty high up in the mountains. The sun is warm during the day, but it gets pretty cold during the night.

- soccer: yes, I think I went to the coolest match ever last night! It was the local team Xelaju versus some loser other team, and the atmosphere was just spectacular. It beats Odd Grenland (local Norwegian team) and I´m pretty sure it beats the ANZAC day match in Australia too. It was just amazing and we were a big group of about 20 Norwegians screaaaaaming out cheers in Spanish. It was amazing, and as you all can see, the spirits werehigh!

Other than that it´s a very nice country. We haven´t seen lots of poor people yet, they seem happy with the little they´ve got, which I think definitively helps! We start language school tomorrow which I´m looking very much forward to, but that means I´m going to a host family by myself tonight which should be interesting. I mean last time I ended up in a host family it was brilliant, but you never know, not speaking the language at all. Nevertheless, it should be fun.

Til next time, adios!

Welcome!

Hey hello! I am not the biggest blog fan, but I've realized this is one good way to keep in touch with everyone and share some of the experiences in Guatemala, Norway, Australia and beyond with friends and foes who are not there with me.

Let me know if there's any places I need to visit!

Cheers, Maria