I spent the month of January in Guatemala travelling around and spending a good chunk of time at Eco-Escuela de Español. I managed to convince three friends to join me for the trip: Josh (SJU/Bemidji), Shane & Kayla (Bemidji). I should really make a point of putting thoughts down immediately after returning, but I’ll to my best to give a brief synopsis of our trip:
We landed in Guatemala City from our respective flights and, on the advice of Shane’s sister and former Guatemala peace corper, we immediately hopped a cab to Antigua. We spent the first few days wandering Antigua, a cute town but pretty touristy. We went on a day-long excursion to climb a volcano and ended up just feet from flowing lava. Amazing! After having our fill of Antigua, we grabbed a night bus to the town of Flores in the northern province of Peten. After a full day in Flores we caught our boat across lake Peten Itza to the smaller town of San Andres, where our school was located.
Our time spent in San Andres was great. We each lived with host families and met with private Spanish instructors for four hours per day. I lived with Nidia and her family (see picture) and studied with a great instructor named Elga. Neither of them spoke English, so it was great opportunity to work on developing speaking skills. During the afternoons, we usually had some activities planned with the school: meeting a local witch doctor (of sorts), fishing (and catching our bait), drinking at the director’s “cantina”, swimming in the lake. San Andres was, as Shane called it, “a very pleasant sh**hole”. It was an endearing town, with steep-hill roads, pigs, chickens, “chicken busses” and feral dogs everywhere. The people were friendly and everything was ridiculously inexpensive. Good times. I’d like to go back.
One of the most memorable places we visited during a weekend break from school was Tikal, the largest of the mayan city ruins. It’s an amazing place. We just happened to visit on day preceding a full moon. A guard sparked a conversation with us and, through awkward broken Spanish, we managed to bribe him enough to allow us to stay past 6pm park closing. We stayed until about 9pm and had the entire Mayan city to ourselves and watch the moon rise from one of the famous giant towers. It was amazing.
After a few weeks at the eco-escuela we headed out for a week or so of travelling. Our first stop was the town of Lanquin, or at least it was supposed to be. We ran into some trouble with our chartered bus driver refusing to go farther than Coban (about 2 hours shy of our destination). While it was pretty frustrating, it was, retrospectively, pretty cool to see all of us arguing and comprehending responses in Spanish. I’ve got a long way to go, but it was a nice way to start.
After finally arriving in Lanquin we found a great place to stay under thatch roof in the mountains on a river with amazing food… $5 a night. We stayed there for a number of days. It was a crazy series of 2 or 3 days that lends itself to a list explanation more than a narrative:
-Traveled into the rainforest in the back of a cattle-hauling pickup
-Giant rope swing into murky tropical river
-tubed down said river
-jumped off a 30-40 foot bridge into said river
-explored a cave by candlelight in waste to neck-deep water
-jumped off a cliff in the dark of the cave
-hiked up a mountain to overlook Semuc Champey (see picture)
-Went swimming in Semuc Champey, one of the most gorgeous places I’ve ever seen
-wood-fired sauna
-Watched Obama’s inauguration speech under a thatched roof building, overdubbed in Spanish
-Stayed late in a cave to be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of bats flying out.
-ate way too much.
After Lanquinn, Josh and I returned to Antigua a few days prior to our return flight. We spent the last two days wandering around, visiting a coffee plantation and an organic macadamia nut farm.
Great month.
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