Xela

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.