Journey to the Bottom of the World

Back to School

The atmosphere at the border of Guatemala in the town of La Mesilla, was a little more interesting than the large, toll-booth-looking post on the border of Mexico and Arizona.  The process itself had a couple of additional steps as well.  To start, I had to export myself and the motorcycle at the Mexican aduana, located about 4km from Guatemalan border.  From there, I proceeded through the 4kms of no-man's-land to La Mesilla.  I call it a no-man's-land because in those 4km you aren't offically checked into any country.  Arriving at the crossing in La Mesilla was like arriving in the middle of a congested, pedestrianized marketplace, complete with about 50 vendors lining either side of the one-lane road to the border.  I slowly plowed my way through the pedestrian traffic that completely surrounded me, and eventually came up behind two cars that were awaiting fumigation at the point that actually marks the border.  The fee for the motorcycle's mandatory fumigation, along with the importation fee must be paid for in Guatemalan Quetzales.  No need to worry though, money changers lurking around the fumigation station are more than eager to help you with any of your currency needs.  Not knowing how much the whole process would cost me, I changed about $80 USD worth of Mexican Pesos to Quetzales. The exchange rate was actually more favorable than I expected it to be, considering the money changers have a monopoly on the market there. 

Once the bike was fumigated, I was able to pull into a less congested parking area in front of the Guatemalan Aduana.  I took off my helmet and removed my earplugs, and breathed a sigh of relief to be out of the chaotic mass of people.  Bad idea.  My my ears almost started bleeding once they were no longer sheltered from the horrendous voice of a man singing into an impressively loud sound system across the street.  I use the term 'singing' loosely, because the only thing that qualified it as singing was that there was music, and that he was not merely talking the words.  I can´t begin to imagine working in that area and having to endure that torture all day and everyday.  I entered the first office and the man´s voice reverberated off the walls of the office; the open doorway doing little to dampen the horror.  I thought I could sense a bit of agony in the people sitting behind the counter, so I offered a ¨Buenos Dias¨ and then commented in Spanish and with a smile that the guy in the street wasn´t the best vocalist.  The lady didn´t find my attempt at sarcasm in Spanish humorous, and quickly pointed out that he was with a church group.  Feeling like I had inadvertently desecrated a sacred shrine, I refrained from making any other heathenish comments and began explaining why I was visiting Guatemala and for how long I would like to stay.  At that point I thought for sure that she'd get the last laugh and hand me a 7 day visa, but to my surprise, she stamped my passport and granted me 90 days.

I thanked the woman and made my way to the barred window of the building next door.  I now had to complete the next batch of paperwork to import the bike.  While I was in the first office, there had been a changing-of-the-guard of some sort across the street, and the "Guatemalan Idol" runner-up was replaced by a girl who was no more than 6 years old.  Her voice was equally bad, if not worse, but the energy with which she screamed and marched back and forth on her makeshift stage, was hard not to look at.  As I completed the paperwork, I couldn´t help but glance over my shoulder stare at the spectacle across the street.  The girl was starting to attract quite the crowd of onlookers who seemed to be enjoying the show, so maybe I´m the one with the bad taste in music.  I received a 40 day pass for the bike, the most days allowed for a vehicle, and was assured that I could return to any border crossing to have it renewed for another 40 days.  With my paperwork complete, I couldn´t get my earplugs fitted and my helmet on soon enough.  I hopped on the bike, took in the sites and sounds of La Mesilla one last time, and then set off on the Pan-American Highway to the city of Quetzaltenango.

I arrived in Quetzalenango (Xela), on Saturday afternoon, and on Monday morning I enrolled in a language school.  The school set me up with a host family that lives two blocks from the school.  I have my own room in their apartment, and the mother cooks me three meals a day.  I´ve really enjoyed living with the family, and I get to practice my Spanish out of class with a very patient audience.  They have two kids: Michele who´s three years old, and Daniel who will be one in August.  I think Michele has taken a bit of a liking to me, and on the first day she told me a very exciting and animated story; of which I understood nothing...not even a word.  I just smiled, nodded, and said the occasional ¨Si¨ to let her know that I was intrigued with her story.   

Classes have been a lot of fun, although after five hours of one-on-one tutoring, my mind is completely spent.  Not a word of English is spoken, so it is quite exhausting to have to think through every word that I say.  After my first week, I feel that I´ve learned a lot, but I have a long ways to go.  As with everything in life, I want to speak it perfectly and I want to speak it perfectly now, so I often need to take a step back and remind myself that I´m not going to be fluent in a language after only one week.  It´s just incredibly frustrating to want to say something simple, and not be able to find the words to say it.  The school itself is really small, with only four students in the morning classes and four in the afternoon.  It´s located out of the city center and in the subburbs, so I can walk around all day and never see another tourist.  Xela is far from a charming city, but I like the feel of it nonetheless. 

I don´t think I´ll have too much exciting news to report in the next couple of weeks, but I´ll still try to post something in a week or two.  On a different note, the camera I bought for this trip is basically shot.  The LCD screen was damaged and no longer works, so I can no longer frame photos or use any of the functions (timer, flash, etc).  It doesn´t have a traditional viewfinder either.  Cameras are prohibitively expensive here, and importing one was going to be equally costly.  My girlfriend will be visiting me in a couple of months, so I´ll be able to get my hands on another camera in Costa Rica.  I´ll do my best with what I have for now, but if you notice a sharp drop in the number and quality of the photos I post, it´s not because I´ve become blind or developed vertigo.

¡Hasta Luego!

In Guatemala, Anything's Possible!

Ever have an electrical fire spark-off six inches from your face?  Yes?  Well, have you ever had it happen while you were taking a shower? Me neither; until a week ago. After a long, wet, and cold ride back to my host-family's home from San Pedro, I was enjoying a nice hot shower made possible by one of the electrical shower-heads that are so popular throughout Central America.   I’m a little tall for Guatemala, so I have to crouch down to get under most shower heads, but a warm shower is refreshing none-the-less.  Suddenly, I heard a loud pop and and a burst of sparks flew from the shower head.  Before I could actually comprehend what was going on, my natural instinct had me back-stepping through the curtain, and searching for dry ground.  Thankfully, it was a curtain and not a glass door.  Just moments after the first arc had sparked inches from my face, I was out of the shower, covered in suds, and watching as the wires caught fire. The breaker in the bathroom didn’t trip, and the wires arced for at least eight seconds before the house’s main breaker tripped.  In the words that my host-mom shared with me on this and several other occasions, ¨In Guatemala, anything´s possible!¨.

My friend Ryan and I had always joked about the jerry-rigged water-heater/shower-heads in Costa Rica, and now I know that our suspicions were well founded. As you can see from the photo, the wires running to the unit are merely twisted together and sometimes wrapped with tape. The ground wire is usually snipped and left hanging, but in this rare instance it was actually taped to the pipe. I don’t know much about electricity, but I know that grounds are good. I can’t say whether the extra effort the plumber/electrician put into setting this one up saved me from becoming a human ground, but it couldn’t have hurt any.  I know it´s not the most exciting story, but I´ve taken on student life again, so even the little things are exciting!

I´ve been studying pretty hard the last three weeks, and my brain is thoroughly exhausted for most of the day.  Classes run from 8:00AM to 1:00PM, Monday through Friday, and on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I´ve taken on teaching English to some local elementary school kids.  I´m not sure how much my efforts help or hinder them, but I´d like to think that my pathetic attempt at teaching is better than nothing.  It´s actually a lot of fun, but extremely difficult.  Even simple concepts like "to be" or "to want" branch off into complex tenses and sentences that we thinking nothing of when we speak.

 

Guatemala, well from what I´ve seen in Xela, certainly has a certain edge to it that I didn´t feel in Mexico.  On my first night here, I was in a bar/club with my friend Franco, who I originally met in Zacatecas, when it was raided by 15 assault-rifle-toting officers that could have passed for a SWAT team.  The bar was open 45 minutes past the national closing time of 1:00AM, so that´s how they do last call around here.  Deciding to call it a night, we made our way out the door, and the streets had a really unsettling feel to them.  The level of drunkenness displayed by 99% of the local men on the street rivaled anything I´ve ever seen at any college party.  Seconds after being in the street, I saw a car slam into the side of a building, then come inches from running over a couple walking on the sidewalk as it tried to speed away.  Not long after that, I had a local guy come up to me and basically beg for a fight, which I wanted no part of.  That was my first and only late-night experience in the city and I´m content with that.  But on a day to day basis, one can´t help but notice that half of all stores and every delivery truck, regardless of whether it´s delivering potato chips or electronics, has at least one shotgun-weilding and bullet-proof-vest-wearing security guard.  With that being said, I still feel perfectly safe walking around the city during the day.

The first family I was living with didn´t work out as well as I had originally thought it would.  To steal the words of my friend Grace, "I hadn´t realized I signed up for a two week course in contraception!"  The one-year-old had lungs that rivaled both of the performers at the border in La Mesilla.  I honestly don´t know how something so small can make so much noise and at such a high pitch.  I can understand a kid crying after they've banged their head etc., but this kid screamed (not cried) when he was hungry, tired, happy, sad, or didn´t have someone´s undivided attention.  The father was out of town for the two weeks, so the kid had plenty of time without undivided attention.  I did my best to hibernate in my room with earplugs installed as much as possible, but the thin door and my earplugs were no match.  After two weeks, I couldn´t take it anymore, and I was getting tired of having to be in my room all the time, so I asked the school to place me with a new family.

 

The new family is great.  The youngest son is 26, and he only screams when he is hungry or tired.  The mother cooks incredible meals that keep me looking forward to what we´ll be eating next.  On top of that, they basically force feed me until I´m no longer physically capable of swallowing anymore.  They told me that they like seeing how much their guests can eat.  In hindsight, I wish I asked to move a long time ago.  Not only is the food incredible, but I get to hear and speak a lot more Spanish since I´m not hiding in my room all day and night.  Although, I think I'd have a bit of a weight problem if I started living there two weeks ago.  There is a catch though, and it's a big one.  They have two roosters that live no more than twenty feet from where I lay my head, and there's not even a pane of glass between us.  4:00AM wake-ups have become the norm, and after the half-hour long alarm clock subsides, I´m shooting 1 for 4 on falling back to sleep.  I never new this, but roosters have a snooze feature that makes them continue to make noise every 30 minutes or so, even after first light.  Between this post and the last, it must sound like I have some personal issues with noise, but I swear I'm not exaggerating any of these events even the slightest bit.  Aside from the screaming child, and the two roosters that look tastier by the day, the home-stays have been a great experience, and both families welcomed me as a member of their family.

 

Last weekend I had to get away from the screamer so I took a weekend trip to Lake Atitlan, and spent two nights in the lakeside town of San Pedro.  Most of the ride there, and all of the ride back, was foggy and rainy, but that´s to be expected in the afternoon during the rainy season.  The lake was beautiful, and it´s another one of the many places that photos don´t give justice to.  On the way there I missed the turnoff from the Pan American Highway, and I stopped at a gas station to ask for directions.  There, I met an incredibly friendly couple who I spoke with for over a half-hour. (Another reason to not use a GPS unless absolutely needed)   Earlier that day I was wondering how much I had learned over the last two weeks, but I walked away from the conversation pleased with my progress.

 

On the topic of language, I had my first dream in Spanish this week.  I can´t remember what it was about, but I can remember my tutor appearing out of nowhere and correcting my conjugation of the verb ¨tomar¨.  Even with all of the progress that´s been made, I´ve decided to get back on the road this Sunday.  Three weeks of study is short of my original 1-2 month estimate, but I feel it's time to move on.  I may pick up the books again in another lugar, but I need a change of scenery for the time being.  I'm not much of a city person to begin with, and Xela is far from a charming and active city that I could get used to.  Since I'm not in the city center, everything closes around 7:00PM, and cab-rides to and from the center on a daily basis is not in my budget.  It was a good place to study for a couple weeks, but the mountains are calling my name and my motorcycle is getting lonely.

I'm not sure where the next couple weeks will take me, but I'm heading north from here into the highlands, and making my way east.  After only three weeks of having a routine, I can't help but have a smile on my face at the thought of not knowing where I'll be and/or what I'll be doing this time next week!

Until next time!

 

In Guatemala, Anything's Possible...Twice!

I had another close call today.  Not on the road, or with bandits, but in the shower.  Yup, the shower...again.  The State Department's travel advisories don't warn against the dangers lurking inside your hotel room.  I arrived at a hotel in Huehuetanango earlier this afternoon, and while taking a shower my head bumped into the shower head.  This time I was genuinely electrocuted, as in my jaw involuntarily clenched shut, and I involuntarily grimaced aloud, unable to move for a few moments.  The breaker didn't pop either, so I think it was my only body weight that separated me from the shower head.  I could feel the current go through the back of my head and down my spine to my feet.  I've never had my whole body so incapacitated like that before.Scary as hell to say the least.   My head still feels a little weird.  Although there were no flames this time, the whole situation was 1000x worse.  As I mentioned before, I don't know much about electricity, but I truly feel that I could have died today.  Needless to say, I've sworn off hot showers indefinitely.