Quetzaltenango
GUATEMALA
4 Weeks, 3 Hurricanes, 2 Students, 1 Birthday
By LYNDI
Saturday, May 17, 2008
When Aaron and I first thought up our hair-brained scheme to quit our jobs and go traveling, learning Spanish was a must-do. After traveling through Honduras and Guatemala for a month and a half, that “must do” could not have been more clear. Aaron’s high school Spanish was enough for us to just barely get by, but then sometimes I would screw everything up by trying to help out. In fact, we decided we’d do a whole month of Spanish school after visiting a bus terminal – a guy was trying to sell us tickets to our destination and instead of telling him that we already had tickets, I kept repeating that “we can taco”. He did end up walking away confusedly – thus fulfilling my intention – but it was clear that there was a lot of work to do…
We both had heard good things about Guatemala’s second largest city Quetzaltenango (known locally by it’s Mayan name “Xela” or “Shay-Lah”… thank goodness…). So, obviously, it’s a big city with plenty to do on the evenings and weekends, but is about 5,000 times cleaner and safer than Guatemala City, and not nearly as touristy as Antigua. Xela is situated in the highlands of Guatemala and thus has a cool, temperate climate year round. We thought. More on that later.
After a ten hour bus ride and a 1 hour wait on the side of the road after our bus broke down, we arrived in Xela around 10pm on a Friday night. We had timed our arrival into Xela so that we could spend one day just looking around at language schools and doing some research on what exactly we wanted before classes were to start on Monday. Nowhere in this train of thought did “Gee, maybe all the schools are booked for the upcoming week if we only give them a one day notice” come up. We only encountered a few schools that were sold out, and we really went against our standard practice of finding the cheapest option in existence and then choosing the next cheapest, and went with a school that had availability for the upcoming Monday, as well a pretty good reputation – Celas Maya Spanish School. It wasn’t the cheapest place in town, but it did look like the best.
On Sunday we moved in with our Guatemalan family, the Ovalles. They have the standard Latin American set up of three generations living under one roof. Lily and Ronny run the place, their two grown children live with them, along with their daughter’s husband and 3 children, including a one month old baby. With the addition of two gringos and their live-in Mayan housekeeper Juanita, it made for a pretty full house.
Our family was absolutely wonderful during the entire stay (well, minus the 27 year old son that was often caught walking around in his whitey-tighties). We felt like we were at home from the moment we arrived, and for better or worse, they didn’t speak any English to us the entire time. It was time for our brains to turn it up to 11.
And so, for the next 4 weeks, our lives became somewhat normal again. Well, if you can count living with a random Guatemalan family whose mom is deathly afraid of midgets (and who, by the way, stands no higher than 5’1″ herself) and a full grown son who talks so fast and high-pitched that it constantly sounds like he’s on rewind “normal”. Lily or Juanita would have breakfast on the table every morning at 7:15, class started at 8 and went until 1, we would go back to our house for lunch, then do homework or take a nap for awhile, then go back into the city for one of Celas Maya’s organized activities or to meet with fellow classmates over a beer or two. Dinner time was around 7:30, and bedtime was usually 10:30 or so.
Class was pretty intense. You sit with your teacher and have one-on-one instruction for 5 hours. Needless to say, you learn a lot really fast. The only problem is my brain capacity. The more I learn, the more I forget. It can only hold so much information, so when something new goes in, something else has to come out. And it sure as hell isn’t going to be Saved by the Bell trivia or the secret code to the beginning of the game Contra! Therefore, easy Spanish – or even English words – are sometimes sacrificed.
Since the weekdays are really busy and wearying, weekends are the time to relax. Xela is situated in a pretty mountainous region, so there are always plenty of options for hiking and exploring nearby. However, on one of our first weekends in town, instead of exploring nature – we headed straight for the best waterpark I’ve ever visited – Xocomil. Xocomil is equivalent to any Wet n’ Wild or Six Flags Water park in the States… just without those pesky safety laws. No, I’m joking. Everything was, of course, very safe, but I just don’t see many parks in the US trying to get away with some of these rides. Aaron and I met up with 3 friends from Celas Maya on Sunday morning and took buses towards the coast for our waterpark destination. For only $12, we all had the time of our lives. We did the normal slides, the enclosed slides, the speed slides, the completely dark slides, and everything else in between. And you can pick up speed on some of those. Around 2pm, the rainclouds started to move in, so we decided that we would all try just a few more before heading home. The most appealing was a giant slide with a raft for 5 or 6 people to descend on together. When our turn came up, it just so happened that we were given the most ratty, taped together, flattened tube we’d ever seen. It also just so happened, that the less air in the tube, the faster and higher you go. So as we were going around the turns, our tube actually went completely vertical and the top went over the top of the slide. With nothing secure to hold onto, I fell directly on the girl across from me, and then spent the rest of the ride in the middle in the fetal position, just waiting for our tube to go over the side of the slide and for me to die. However, it didn’t and I didn’t. But that was enough to get us packing for home.
All this time that we’d been in Xela, Aaron’s 30th birthday had been at the back of my mind. As June 1st rapidly approached, I was trying desperately to figure out how to make a memorable birthday for him in a foreign country where I don’t really speak the language and I don’t really know where anything is. Luckily, Aaron decided that it would be fun to hike up to the highest point in Central America for his birthday, which took a lot of the “memorable” pressure off me since the excursion would surely take care of that. So we both signed up with a local trekking company called Quetzaltrekkers. This trekking company came highly recommended, and they 100% fund a couple local charities. Besides that, they also allow you to borrow all of their great donated gear from REI, so we were in.
We set off for Tajumulco at 4:45am on Saturday morning, May 31st. There were about 13 other hikers and 4 guides, with all of the water, gear, and food equally distributed. Now, I use the terms “equally distributed” lightly. People were randomly selected to carry different items up the mountain for the group. Some people had to carry pots, some had to carry bags of pasta – Aaron and I each had to carry up a tent. And those suckers are heavy. At any rate, we took a few different chicken buses to the start of the trail in northern Guatemala – close to the Mexico border. As we began our ascent, we all remarked on how lucky we were that Hurricane Alma had finally passed the region. She had completely flooded parts of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and completely soaked us to and from school every day, but at least she was gone for our steep hike up Tajumulco. Little did we know that Hurricane Arturro was right around the corner…
Tajumulco’s peak stands at 4,220m (or 13,845 ft). I’m not sure exactly from what elevation the trailhead started, but the entire trek up was only about 6km. Up. But, the weather was perfect – cool and misty, but dry. We took a break every 45 minutes or so to rest our shoulders and our legs, and we admittedly went quite slow due to the extra gear and altitude. By 4pm on Saturday, we had reached basecamp (at 4,015m) and began setting up our tents and kitchen areas. No sooner had we gotten everything set up when the rains began. It wasn’t pouring, but it was coming down at a good rate, so we all huddled underneath tarps or in tents for warmth. We had a nice pasta meal for dinner, then everyone called it a night around 8:30pm. Not a lot of partying goes on at 13,000ft in rain and 15 degrees fahrenheit.
But it was a good thing we went to bed early, because Aaron was woken up on his 30th birthday at the rude hour of 3:30am so we could be at the summit for sunrise. The hike from basecamp to the summit was even more difficult and steeper than the previous day – and in pitch black. We all carried flashlights or headlamps, water, and our sleeping bags since waiting for the sunrise at the summit was sure to be a near-freezing event. We made it to the top around 4:45am and huddled close together for the clouds to part and the majestic sunrise to appear so that Aaron could bring in his 3rd decade in a big way. So we waited. And waited. And, thanks to our friend Arturro, waited for nothing. There was a brief 5 minutes or so where you could see over the entire valley floor, but no sunrise whatsoever. Oh well. So we descended to basecamp for some much needed hot oatmeal and started packing up to begin our descent.
It didn’t take long for the rain to begin. And before we knew it, it was coming down hard. The descent was a long, wet, cold, slippery, steep, and altogether a bit miserable 3 1/2 hours. I was soon to learn that falling on your butt was not the worst part – that came when you tried to stand up but had zero grip, no one nearby, and a 30lb backpack trying to roll you over all the while kicking up mud all over yourself. Good thing I have no pride.
When we got to the bottom, we were all absolutely soaked and really, really tired. The hike up Tajumulco had been straining enough, but the hike down was unforgiving on already-weary muscles. But we had a huge lunch waiting for us at a little restaurant at the roadside, and then we were on our way home.
Earlier in the week, I had purchased a Chicken Little pinata and some candies and left it with Lily so that when Aaron and I got home, we could have a mini fiesta. After the best hot showers we’ve ever had, we came into the living room to find a little “Feliz Compleaños Aharon!” poster hung on the wall (it’s the thought – not the spelling – that counts). Chicken Little was waiting in the garage along with the entire family, so as soon as Aaron put on his blindfold, the game was on. The young kids Mario and Sofie loved it, and I’m pretty sure the grandpa Ronny was just as big of a fan. No one had much luck busting open Chicken Little until Alejandro came up to bat (Mario and Sofie’s dad who used to play minor league ball for the Mariners). After Chicken Little’s head was bashed in and the candy had spilled all over, Lily brought out the tostadas and coffee and Aaron finally got a nice, relaxing, and memorable birthday. We went out that night and met up with some fellow hikers and classmates for a few drinks, but overall it was a pretty tame night after our enormous undertaking from earlier in the day.
And now, after nearly four weeks of intensive Spanish courses, our stay in Xela is dwindling. We got one more hurricane earlier this week, and there’s rumors of yet another brewing off the Pacific coast, but hopefully we’ll be gone before it hits. With all the pouring rain we’ve encountered in Xela, we both met the problem of not having enough clothes. Everything we wore promptly got soaking wet, and in our cold, damp house, took it’s own sweet time to dry. Aaron and I are both hoping that our classmates and teachers didn’t notice that we wore the same thing for about four days in a row. And no, I’m not exaggerating.
