Xela

Saturday turned out to be a day for an adventure. I´ve been spending my time tooling around San Pedro and was ready to explore. I have been told there are so many great cities around that all deserve to be seen and explored. After some discussion with two friends from the cooperativa, Jane and Jay, we decided to head west. Which was good for me because I plan on heading East when I disembark from San Pedro to close out my travels in Honduras. So with a Guatemala Lonely Planet Book (thanks David), my spanish dictionary, water, snacks and a camera we hoped on a Chicken Bus for a two and a half hour ride to Quetzaltenango, also known as Xela (Shea-La). Climbing up through the volcanoes and moutainous terrain alotted for some great vistas of the lake below. As we approached each turn the bus would sound a loud horn to warm approaching vehicles that we were about to make a wide turn around a tight corner on a narrow road. I think i´ve mentioned before that Jay is doing this trip on his motorcycle and he mentioned coming down this road was a pretty intense experience. It´s great fun riding on the bus and talking with locals or the best I can with my spanish. They are generally happy to chat and are patient as I try to come up with a word to replace one I can´t come up with in spanish or as I try to conjugate the verbs to not sound completely incompetent.

Through my travels and generally in life I have come to the realization that I am not great with navigating unknown territory. Though I had studied throughoughly the lonely planet guide on Xela and had a general idea of what I wanted to see, once I stepped off the bus the map became almost useless. But the taxis are cheap and with us being there for only a few hours we wanted to make the most of our time there.

The main allure to visit Xela was the architecture and museums around the central park. A beautiful scare located across town. I can´t say there was any one thing that really blew my mind, but it´s always fun to explore a new town. And by explore of course I mean wondering around lost and ultimatly asking directions about five times to finally arrive at our destination. I was pretty bummed to find the Natural History Museum was closed on weekends. So we found a nice place to get some food and walked about the town taking in the statues, churches, and other beautifully created buildings that litter the town. Jane did find a bookstore and purchased a copy of Harry Potter in spanish...better to translate and read this than a workbook she says.

Four hours later we had made our way back to the bus depot and found our bus back to San Pedro. I use the word bus depot loosely as it´s basically a really wide road packed with chicken buses. Each bus has a sign and a man leaning out the side yelling out it´s final destination. Being the end of the day and many people were making the journey home we found ourselves packed into the bus to the point that to reach into my pocket to get the fair I had to disloacate my arm. Next to me on the ride home was a little girl sitting on the lap of her mother, next to four other people stretched across the isle. The little girl´s hands were stained black, maybe some type of a die and I sensed that had spent the day working very hard as they struggled to stay upright as they continued to nod off. At one point the little girl was laying across my lap so I let her sleep and thought about the challenges associated with the lives the people of this country live. After the mother and daughter had gotten off the bus I started chatting with a 26 year old guy that was coming back from Xela where he has guitar lessons every Saturday. He has been working hard for years and saving to buy his guitar and take lessons. It´s great to see how someone´s drive can push them so far.

Today, Sunday, was a day to relax and sleep in. Sunday´s seem to be the most tranquil day of the week here as many families spend the day together going to church and walking about the town. I woke up at about 1030 to find Jay sitting next to the bathroom door and looking pretty bad. He had a woken up at 330 in the morn and had been back and forth to the bathroom all night. I hated it for him, but at the same time was thankful we weren´t having to take turns destroying the bathroom. Many thanks to Lissa for recommending the Probiotics. Every morning I take one pill that contains about 25 million little micro organisms that help fight off the bad bacteria that can be introduced into your stomach through food and water. Not holding my breathe but so far so good.