Travel

I’ve had a few days to settle in to Xela now, so here’s some info about life here. Xela is Guatemala’s second biggest city, but it is a distant second to Guatemala City, with only 120,000 residents. It has several universities, so it is rumored to have the benefits of a university town. I did notice a flyer for a tofu store last night, so I guess that’s one of the benefits (?) of a university town. However, it is still a big city, which turned out to be a real shock to my system. I knew it was a city when I decided to come here, but I didn’t realize how accustomed I had become to rural Guatemala. The city is dirty and noisy and drove me crazy for the first little bit. I might still flee. ...

This morning I arrived in Xela, and have found my Spanish school, and the house where I will be staying. It is not as opulent as my last house, but mi madre seems much more communicative, so hopefully I’ll feel a little more at home here, and a little less like a foreigner. As an aside, I found my school despite the best efforts of the Lonely Planet cartographers to leave me baffled on a street corner in Xela the rest of my life. New travel tip: use the addresses, not the dots on the maps. Apparently the dots are added to the map by a blind left handed dart thrower. ...

Some more random observations about Guatemala… Guns People say Americans are crazy gun toting cowbows, but the real Americans who love their guns are the Central Americans of Guatemala. I have never seen so many guns as I have here. That includes growing up in a working class, rural city in the US. You see guns on the belts of police, and there are an average number of police here by US standards. But that’s just the beginning… lots of stores hire private security guards, and they are almost without exception armed. Every bank has an armed guard quickly questioning every person who wants to come through the door (one bank had a man-trap too, which is a pair of doors forming a vestibule, wired so that only one can be open at a time). Probably 70% of the delivery trucks have an armed security guard literally riding shotgun. When the truck stops, the guard gets out and watches the truck while the driver makes the delivery of Coca-Cola or whatever. ...

I got to Antigual yesterday afternoon after a long bus ride most of the way aross Guatemala. From Puerto Barrios to Guatemala City it was pretty comfortable. We were on a Mercedes bus which dated to the 80’s, judging by the decor. I invented another of my somewhat random travel tips. (You might remember the last one: when out of ideas on how to solve a problem, sit down and wait for something good to happen.) This tip is simpler: always sit on the side of the bus where a thief will pick up your luggage from. Here in Guatemala it is the right side, because they only load and unload it from that side. Then you can watch whenever bags come and go and see if any look a little too familiar. As it turns out, I need not have worried because they issued actual bag tags, and the guy actually checked the number before giving me my pack! That doesn’t even happen in Amerian airports! ...

I made it out of Livingston this morning with no problems. My plan to stiff the hotel worked perfectly. I feel about this bad (fingers really close together), but I’m certain the hotel lady will find a way to get the money out of the guy. He eats at her house all the time. In fact, he did while he was scamming me, which is part of why I fell for it. Afterall, if the nice lady in the hotel feeds him, he’s got to be a good guy, right? ...

I’m in Livingston, a weird little leftover from the past. Here, a bunch of black people who speak Spanish live without any roads to the mainland. Their food is very different than mainland Guatemala, and they sprinkle Carribean slang into the middle of their Spanish. Kind of strange. Also, there are more hustlers here, and they are very good. So good in fact, I got cheated out of a tour this morning. Luckily I still had time to get signed up for another tour and take that. I have a plan to get almost all the money back that the guy nailed me for. He is in cahoots with the place I’m staying. I have not yet paid for the last night in the hotel, and it so happens the hotel price is just a few quezales less than the amount he cheated me out of. So I plan to stiff the hotel and leave a note telling them to get their money from him. The worst that happens is that the hotel lady calls the police on me, to whom I can explain that she helped her friend steal from me. Should be interesting. I’ll tell you how it turns out, as long as there is Internet access in the Livingston jail. ...

I’ve had a lot of time to think, and wanted to put down some of the stuff I came up with in the last few weeks. Here’s a rather disorganized ramble of stuff. Guatemaltan Engineering Guatemalan engineering is remarkably similar to Senegalese engineering. I think this stems from a basic prinicple at work in poor places, which is do it just well enough to get the job done, and cheaply as the job will tolerate. This is a common reaction sharp humans have all over the world, but in less developed economies, the handicraft of the clever engineers is somehow more on display. ...

After three weeks in San Andrés, I have decided to move on. A different crowd has moved into the city (I’m one of the old hands now!) and though some things are better, it feels like the right time to move on. The new crowd is a 40 person group from TrekForce.org.uk. They have had a 2 month adventure in Belize, and are now here for 4 weeks learning Spanish. There are four of them staying with my family, so it is easy to slack off and speak English instead of Spanish. In fact, it is required right now, because they don’t speak a word. Some are learning faster than others, but as 18 year old British youth, they don’t have very broad horizons and are taking a while to catch on to Spanish. ...

I have been off the radar for a while. The reason why is that the Internet is a 30 minute boat ride away, or a 1 hour bus ride. So I don’t get over here to Flores to send out updates very often. When I do, the unreliable power system has been foiling me. Last time I was in Flores, I hardly had enough time with power on to get critical stuff like bills taken care of. Then the power inside the Internet cafe failed, partially. During this week’s visit, we have already had two city-wide power outages, so I am going to be saving this early and often! ...

Some answers to questions I have gotten… Yes, mom, I am drinking plenty of water. The water system in San Andrés apparently used to be unreliable, but seems to work fine now. However, it is untreated water, and used for everything but drinking. Drinking water is delivered by the aqua pura man every morning (unless mi madre yells manaña out the door to him). I have no idea how much it costs, or when he gets paid. I suppose it is weekly or something. Drinking water is readily available at the school and at home, and I drink about a liter and a half every day, including several glases at dinner. Sometimes mi madre serves heavily diluted pineapple juice instead of the fruit punch they call fresca. It tastes great! ...