With Tropical Storm Frank threatening the Oaxacan coast, I decided to head inland to Oaxaca the city for a few days and come back after the rain. The road from Puerto Escondido to Oaxaca is one of the windiest I’ve ever been on. Almost eight hours on the road and I don’t think we travelled a straight stretch for more than half a kilometre at any one time. Oaxaca is a beautiful town which reminds me a lot of Antigua in Guatemala, although there's not as many tourists here. I was incredibly weary when I arrived and spent the first couple of days resting, doing laundry and all that stuff. My first couple of nights were very quiet but then by night three I ventured up to the roof terrace to chat to some of the other travellers – a pretty good group here.
On Thursday I took some local buses to a couple of the local villages, Teotitlan and Mitla. Teotitlan specialises in the beautiful hand woven rugs which are exported all over the world. You can just go into people's houses and watch them work on their huge looms. David who worked at the public amenities, handing out toilet paper for 2 pesos, gave me his dad's address and said I should pop in there, which I did. Dad was a cute old man who looked about 85 years old. Unfortunately I didn't have a need for a rug as much as their work was beautiful. The town of Mitla had more embroidered clothes and other bits and pieces. Both towns were pretty quiet with just the locals going about their business.
Nick turned up on Friday morning and I’d bought tickets to a Bossa Nova concert at the theatre that night. We managed to get him a ticket even though the event was sold out. It was great, a beautiful theatre, a chilled out event with some great music. On the way there we got caught up in a street parade with huge papier mache dolls with people inside them, a marching band, dancing, fireworks and a large eyeball with something about glaucoma written on it. Interesting way to raise awareness for a medical concern…
Saturday morning Sophie, Chalise, Sam and I hit the big market for a hot chocolate and tried our hardest to find the artisans who only come in on a Saturday – that was to no avail so we had a beer instead. We had some evening drinks on the rooftop terrace before venturing out to a few bars later on.
Arriving in Puerto Escondido was like arriving in Bali after escaping the Sydney winter.
I ended up spending four nights here which involved muchas fiestas – we were at the beach after all.
We had developed a tight knit group which included Lucy, Dan, Mike and Nick and over the few days we had a lot of fun together. Sipping margharitas in hammocks on the beach, swimming, surfing, gymnastics (well sort of), a pretty coastal walk, a cancelled fishing trip, card games, cooking, bars, clubs, karaoke and clothes swapping.
Monday was extremely sad when one by one, Dan, Lucy and Mike took night buses to their respective destinations. Nick and I, expecting a quiet night, ended up at a club dancing with some locals- déjà vu.
After leaving the farm and craving conversation and maybe a little bit of technology, I got to the town of Huehuetenango where I was to meet up with Lucy and we'd head to Mexico the following day. Plan was to get there, check my emails after a week's absence, eat and maybe sit somewhere and drink a beer and read a book.
Well, it turned out that Huehue had no electricity when I got there at about noon. Magda, the lovely lady who ran the glamorous Hotel Central told me it would be back on at 4pm. We ended up with power out for the entire town until around midnight so it was another very boring day for me in the hotel room reading another book. There were no bars in the town and the central park was barricaded off so I couldn't even sit in the park and read. I was so happy when Lucy arrived in the evening when I'd just returned from buying some cheap wine so we could sip that out of plastic cups by candlelight and catch up on our last week.
Next day after eight modes of transport, we crossed the border into Mexico and arrived at San Cristobal De Las Casas, a lovely colonial town in the southern state of Chiapas. It is so nice to be in Mexico where everything is a little closer to the luxuries of home and my expectations for food quality are quite high. We pottered around San Cristobal for a couple of days and met some other backpackers who were quite good fun.
San Cristobal is up in the mountains so therefore it is rather chilly and it is still the rainy season here so each afternoon there is a huge downpour where the streets become rivers. My clumsiness combined with slippery surfaces is not ideal and I am starting to develop some spectacular bruises.
Anyways, we're very excited for the beach and are heading out to Puerto Escondido on the night bus tonight!
It was starting feel like a bit of a holiday and, with Mexican beaches on the horizon, I thought it would do me good to volunteer for a week on a farm where I could do some honest work and contribute to society.
Comunidad Nueva Alianza is a community project that started out as a group of bereaved farm workers. What happened is that when the coffee prices crashed in the 1990s the workers were not paid for 18 months and ultimately the owner went broke. Obviously this couldn’t go on so the workers got together and started a lengthy legal action that resulted in the purchase of the property in 2004. There are around 300 people living here in the community and the land is divided up amongst the families – they each work their own plots. The main industry here is the production of coffee, macadamias and purified water. The community is really like a little village with a school, church, football field and shop.
I was expecting this to be a culturally enriching experience, but if I’m honest, it wasn’t really. The work I did was generally factory type labour and in that environment, you need to be on your game and you can’t stop and chat. After work was done, I came back to the hotel for lunch and then it rained for the rest of the day so everyone was holed up in their respective digs. I did however thoroughly enjoy some quiet time to read lots of books.
The first day’s work was collecting macadamias with Gladys and Arturo. After walking for about 40 minutes, we got to their plot. The job then was to collect all the macadamias that had fallen from the trees. So there we were, scurrying around the side of the soggy and slippery mountain, picking up the little green nuts off the ground. Between the three of us, we collected over 100kg in a few hours. Arturo carried about 70kg on his back, Glady’s about 35kg on hers, and me, I had about 15kg in a rice sack, slung over my shoulder like Santa Claus. I kept slipping over in all the muddy bits too, Gladys was generously blaming my shoes (my $200 trainers), while they shuffled away efficiently in their (probably) $1 thongs.
Next day I was on macadamia sorting. The days here start and finish early, in order to get everything done before the rain comes. I was on duty just after 6.30am, first at the machine that cracks open the outer husks. Not all the nuts get cracked properly so we had to pull out all the ones that had to go through again. I have never done this sort of work before and it is quite intimidating. This big machine keeps spitting these things out and you just have to keep going, don’t stop. The equipment is all very low here too and I am the tallest person by far and bending over is quite painful after a while. After breakfast, we shoveled all the finely chopped husks into bags for composting then got on to the job of sorting the good nuts from the bad. All by hand. It took a good few hours.
Day three, and Tara the Peace Corps worker thought I might want a day off but really, every other day is a day off for me at the moment so I said load me up. Luckily it was a relatively easy task of painting the toilet doors in the new part of the hotel. A nice shade of headache green. The job was made a little more tricky with unprepared surfaces, no primer and paint with a consistency of treacle. To be fair, they look awful but I’m sure another volunteer can have a go at making them look better once they dry properly.
On days four and five I helped out the girls at Agua Pura. Our job was to clean out the water bottles (the big 5 gallon ones that go on water coolers) and refill them. I seemed to prove adept at the filling station and over the course of two days I must have filled at least 300 of them. My arms were quite tired at the end of it.
There aren’t any other volunteers here besides two kids who are here for a few months as part of their schooling in agricultural and environmental studies. They have a very small English vocabulary and their Spanish is virtually impossible for me to understand. Typical teenage boys, mumbling away. They are also very shy so when we meet at meal times, we generally eat in an eerie silence, that is, after we say grace.
I have to say I am relieved to be leaving here tomorrow as I’m decidedly bored but I think it has been good to have a week of work, away from alcohol and cigarettes and to catch up on some rest. One thing about travelling like this is that you are never anywhere that is comfortable like home. There is never a big comfy couch you can curl up in with a nice hot cup of tea. After a few months on the road, you end up with a constant, nagging weariness that will only really go once you are home. I’m not complaining, but it is just one of the realities when you are sleeping in strange beds every night wondering what, or who that noise is, and waking up, doing the quick mental calculations of where you might possibly be now.
While at the farm, after work, I have been pretty much confined to my net-covered bed since the mosquitoes are unbearable and I was eaten alive the first few days. It has been good to read about a book a day but I now crave outside stimulation and conversation.
The other great thing about my week on the farm is that it has given me an insight to the type of volunteer work I would like to do (or, rather, wouldn’t like to do). It has also highlighted the realities of an aid-dependent society and I had a good conversation with Tara about that. When I was working with Gladys and Arturo, we were hauling the nuts back and I suggested they might be better off with a work horse, that way they could carry more and not kill their backs. No, she said, we need a car!
It’s funny how you get organisations requesting volunteers, and you pay for the pleasure, generally speaking. What this often means is that you’re giving someone the opportunity to take a day off. So you’re not necessarily expanding capacity, just giving someone the opportunity to have a break. Perhaps that is just as important, who really knows. At the end of the week though I feel as though I’ve done something worthwhile.
Depending on your attitude, one of the possible drawbacks of travelling around Central America is that it is not safe to venture out at night in many places. This is particularly true in capital cities. Xela however is a large university town with a diverse and safe nightlife.
On my way back from Zunil an American girl approached me in the street to hand me a flyer for a benefit they were holding that night. Something about raising money for some fair-trade textile organisation they were working with. I checked with the others when I got back and they were up for it.
After getting caught then in the storm and getting a nice hot cup of tea were were back in the dorm where Lucy thought we might warm up better with a sip of her Caldo de Frutas, some moonshine she bought at a neighbouring village a few days before. That went down nicely. So I offered to pop down to the shop and pick up a nice bottle of 12 year old rum to share. There we were in the dorm, playing musical ipods and a game of cards. The rum was finished so it was time to head off to the benefit.
We arrived to a circus styled event with a couple of girls doing a very bad karaoke version of Abba’s Mama Mia, hula hoops, and, lo and behold, a face painting station. We were in there like bees to honey and, after decorating each other, took it upon ourselves to make sure everyone had some kind of abstract art over their faces, arms and any other visible flesh. Bald heads were a bonus.
We ended up outside in the street with Ben playing the guitar that belonged to some Irish guy’s Spanish teacher, doing singalongs to Brim full of Asher, Wonderwall and many other embarrassing tunes. We even had an audience of flower children from the party up on the bridge overlooking us, with their hula hoops. Strange, but fun, evening. And, I might add, not at all authentic as far as Guatemalan culture goes – except for Pedro doing a Gypsy Kings number, that felt kind of authentic.
Next night, Lucy’s Spanish teacher’s friend (got that) was supposed to be playing in some band in the park in the early evening and had promised to dedicate a song to her. So we headed over to find (no joke) the Xela Heavy Metal Festival going on in the park. It was hilarious, all these Guatemalans decked out in faux-leather pants, with long hair, studded wrist cuffs and jackets and bad ass attitudes. One of our favourite quotes (and I apologise for the language) came from a young enthusiastic fan. He came over to us excitedly and told us that our friends wanted to “know” us – whatever that was supposed to mean. One of his cooler than ice friends came over and gave me some weird heavy metal handshake then disappeared. Then, Lucy offered him a cigarette. Here was his reaction: “No fucking way, fucking Marlboro Light, fucking great man, fucking great”.
So long story short (I’m trying) we were meant to meet our friends at one bar, ended up at another dodgy bar where Lucy was offered crack cocaine and I was chatted up by an 18 year old. We went back calling it a night when we got chatting to some Irish guys in our hostel, Paul and Killian. Incidentally, a few nights before these guys came into our room drunk at 4.30am, pretending to be ghosts – and, I had also met them a week or so beforehand in a pub in San Pedro. When the hostel bar shut we ended up at a local nightclub, La Parranda, dancing with locals and waving our glowsticks. Oh dear. This is starting to sound like Antigua all over again.
On the Saturday I met up with a local, Manuel, who I’d met the night before. He was a Spanish teacher and offered to chat with me in Spanish to help me improve. It ended up being a pleasant afternoon, sipping wine and babbling in Spanish. That night we were heading out to celebrate Lucy’s birthday. Manuel joined us and we ended up meeting up with some of his friends. Another nightclub (La Rumba) and more glowsticks. And, I also met a funny Canadian called Gavin – 68 and somehow hasn’t been able to get out of Xela for the last six months. I thought I was too old for clubbing…
Last night in Xela, Lucy’s actual birthday, and we headed out for a somewhat more sophisticated evening of dinner and a few beers with some new Spanish arrivals. Thankfully, a relatively early night.
Not one to turn a good market down, I ventured to the San Francisco El Alto Market on Friday. It has to have been, for me, the most intense market I have experienced. You don’t stroll through, you get sucked in through the vortex and there is some surreal guiding force that leads you through the streets. The entire town was a market, a maze of colours, sounds and smells. People are constantly shouldering their way past you as they try to navigate the narrow passages.
On any day, this is an exhausting experience, but with a hangover, a little more harrowing. Following is some video from the top of the market, and trust me, this is the gentle and relaxed part where the animals are. There is no way I would have been able to stand still long enough to take a picture in the other part.
Some corrections to the narration in that video, the volcano I pointed out was, in fact, Santa Maria (3772m). The highest point in Central America is Tajmulco at 4220m.
On Sunday, the last full day in Xela and Lucy’s birthday and we headed to Momostenango. This market is apparently known for its woollen blankets and ponchos. And who was I to say no to buying another blanket? That makes six now.
Momos is a somewhat more relaxed market experience than San Francisco and we were relieved to find a little van set up as a restaurant. We perched ourselves up on the stool to share a hair of the dog before venturing further. When I told the proprietress, Angelina, it was Lucy’s birthday, she joined the cheer by giving us a free bowl of noodles and chicken. How nice.
It was at that place though, after I’d just finished eating, that a swarm of bees took a distinct interest in me. It would have been hilarious had I not been so scared. Angelina was encouraging us to light cigarettes and the smoke would scare them away. I couldn’t stand still long enough to do that and was instead performing some kind of dance in the street, really just jumping and moving to keep away from them. I was imagining riding home on the chicken bus, covered in bee stings. Unfortunately my gyrations attracted a bit of an audience with a number of the locals stopping in their tracks to watch me. Finally the cigarette trick worked (for a little while) so we finished our beer and got the hell out of there.
On the Thursday, I had been up to Zunil, a nearby village in the mountains. The journey was much more exciting than the destination, even though it was a cute village nestled in between verdant mountains. On the way there, the chicken bus decided to break down on a hill. The motor was revving but the wheels just wouldn’t turn.
We all got booted off and the local Mayan ladies indicated to me that I should join the rest of them in the back of a pickup that miraculously appeared. Okay. So we bumped our way along the dirt road, trying not to fall out the back, until we got to a small town where we were yet again marched off. I paid my one and a quarter quetzals for the pleasure, wondered where the hell I was and what was going to happen next.
As luck would have it, another pickup appeared and my (now) friends smiled knowingly with a slight backwards tilt of the head, followed by a gentle nod. This was an instruction I should jump on this pickup too. So I did. Me and twelve colourfully decked out Mayan ladies, standing up on the back of a pickup (or ute as we like to say in Australia), speeding our way along winding mountain roads in the glorious sunshine. If only I could figure out the right soundtrack for this moment... The memory will have to remain in my mind as it would have been entirely inappropriate (as well as difficult) to pull out my camera and start recording.
One by one, they each got out at their various destinations until it was just me and Dolores, and she guided me across the river to Zunil.
Another terrifying (and, thus far, the most jaw-clenching) chicken bus ride out of Lake Atitlan, and I was headed for Quetzaltenango, otherwise known as Xela (pron. Shay-lah). Not an obvious abbreviation you may think but the name for Quetzaltenango in the local Mayan dialect is Xelaju, so it is an abbreviation of that. Why Guatemala persists in naming its towns with the longest names possible, and then abbreviating them, I have no idea.
Xela is the second city in Guatemala and it politely gets on with its business around you with a sense of pragmatism and pride. The people here are ever so friendly – when I got a taxi from the bus depot to town, my taxi driver, Fredy, on realising it was my first visit to Xela, started to play tour guide, pointing out the theatre, restaurants, nightclubs (I won’t be needing those, I thought…) and various other attractions.
All in all I was to spend the best part of a week in Xela and it was as varied as it was interesting. How do I group it and break it up into relevant vignettes…Okay, so a few hours after I arrived, Kathryn and Ben turned up in the dorm – they had been in my dorm the night before in San Marcos. It was good to see them and we also befriended Lucy, another pom who was in the dorm.
The first few days were pretty relaxed, Lucy had her Spanish class, Ben and Kathryn were preparing for their midnight volcano expedition, and I was bumming around, getting laundry done, picking up yet another new credit card, and wandering through the streets of Xela.
Well things have really slowed down since I got to Guatemala and I’ve spent the past week and a half at Lake Atitlan – six nights in San Pedro La Laguna and four nights at San Marcos La Laguna.
The lake itself is possibly the most beautiful in the world. At an altitude of almost 1,600 metres, the lake was formed thousands of years ago in the crater of a huge volcano. Today it is 10 miles across and surrounded by volcanoes – truly a stunning and peaceful place. The area is sparsely populated with the lake ringed by a dozen or so small villages.
Lake Atitlan has attracted tourists and hippie travellers for decades and many, after travelling for years, have decided to call this place home. There is a strong gringo presence in some of the towns, particularly Panajachel, San Pedro and San Marcos. I was only in Panajachel for 10 minutes to get off the bus and on the boat and I had some old hippie on his pushbike stop to try to get me to buy weed – as if my life would not go on without it.
San Pedro is one of the larger villages with a population of about 13,000. Not as touristy as Panajachel but still a strong gringo presence, particularly in the lower part near the lake. San Pedro offers loads of restaurants, bars and places to hang out but unless you are interested in hiking up volcanoes or kayaking, then yoga and hanging out in the thermal baths and cafes are really the best things to do here.
One day last week, I’m pleased to say, my services were required as a translator – imagine that! I was in the tour office booking a bus to the Chichicastenango markets for the following day when some gringos came in to try and rent a kayak. Things weren’t progressing between the lady and the gringos – they were all very confused - so she asked me to stay and translate. I walked home afterwards with a spring in my step! (Pero mi espanol es todavia muy malo.)
San Marcos is true hippie crystal healing land. It is just across from San Pedro but has a totally different energy. There are loads of Jesus-boys with Thai fisherman pants on and one of the things to do here is stay at a place called Los Piramides for a month or more and do courses in massage, reiki, cosmic therapy, astral travelling or any number of out-there therapies. Personally, I’m here for just a bit of yoga and chilling out.
It is rainy season so most days we get a huge downpour in the afternoon and through the night which does restrict activities. In San Marcos the paths in the village are simply dirt tracks that become slippery and full of puddles and aren’t much fun to negotiate in the dark with pouring rain.
