Spanish and People

With all of the fun excursions I’ve been taking the time to have while in Guatemala, I’ve received a few emails asking if I’ve even been succeeding in learning Spanish (which was, after all, my motive for going to Central America in the first place). Well, my Spanish learning went very well – largely, I believe, in thanks to the syntactical similarities of the Spanish language to French, and thanks to my acute auditory learning skills, honed from spending the last two years learning the orally communicated local languages of Togo. By the end of my first week, I was able to understand the gist of stories my host mom would tell me over meals. By the end of my second week I was able to respond to such stories, ask questions about them, and hold basic conversations with people in the streets. And by the end of my fourth week, I felt comfortable navigating the city on my own, and my school assessed my level of Spanish to be at the intermediate level. Personally I think that was a very generous estimation, but I certainly feel as if I gained a good grasp of the basics of the language – enough, at least, to allow me to continue to learn at a fairly rapid rate if I have continued exposure to the language. In this sense, I definitely feel as if the trip was a success. I have to say... it felt pretty good to be able to explain a whole customs form to a Spanish speaker who didn't speak a lick of English on the airplane back to the States!

I am also grateful for this trip for the very dear friends I made while on it. As I mentioned in a previous entry, one of my favorite parts of traveling is meeting people from all over the world. On this particular trip to Guatemala, my closest friends ended up being from countries including Guatemala, Germany, Belgium, England, Norway, and Canada. How neat to leave a foreign country with invitations to visit other ones!
My dear Spanish teacher, Amanda
My good friend from Germany, Sanne, with whom I went on most of my hikes
My friends from Belgium
My good friends from Norway - who I will be meeting up with in New York next week - and then maybe in Norway in January!
Me and my kids at the orphanage for children affected by cerebral palsy, where I volunteered
My host mom, Chiqui, and her granddaughter Sophie

In sum, I had a fantastic month. Now I just have to figure out when I can travel next! I’m thinking Haiti....

Easter week and Pacaya Volcano

When I first planned my trip to Guatemala, I chose to travel in the month of April because it was the last free month I had available to do so before starting school. Little did I know that April is the best possible month to be in Antigua – not just for its ideal weather at this time of year (sunny and warm and just before rainy season starts), but because Antigua is the center of the biggest Easter celebration in the country. Unlike the one-day celebrations that go on in the States, Easter is celebrated over the course of several weeks, most notably by the collective creation of alfombras and organization of street parades. Beginning in April, Antiguans are out on the cobblestone streets early on Sunday mornings creating elaborately designed “carpets” (or alfombras) made from colored sawdust or assembled flowers, plants, fruits and vegetables. People spend hours painstakingly laboring over the impeccable details of these ornate carpets, ultimately creating beautiful masterpieces only for them to be destroyed in minutes when the parades of purple clad men and women carrying outrageously heavy platforms bearing statues of Biblical figures involved in the story of Christ’s crucifixion trample over them. It is an extraordinarily big affair – the drama of it all being reinforced with the sound of blaring horns and deep bass drums that reverberate through the streets at all hours of the day and night. With Catholicism being the overwhelmingly dominant religious affiliation in the region, floods of people from abroad and neighboring countries including El Salvador and Honduras join Guatemalans to pack the streets of Antigua to watch these processions making movement through the streets nearly impossible. It was truly neat that I was coincidentally able to be around at the peak of this culturally unique celebration!












I have not been able to be home (much less even in the same country) to celebrate Easter Sunday with family for the last 3 years. But I always try to do something fun the day of to make up for the longing from that absence. This year I decided to climb Pacaya Volcano, which is one of Guatemala’s active volcanoes that erupted last May. Compared to Acetanango, this volcano was much easier to climb, taking only about an hour and a half to get to the top. Because it’s an active volcano, the terrain was slightly different as well; the summit was bereft of verdant life and made me feel like I was on the moon with the fog of the clouds drifting over its crusty, hardened lava rocks. We found some vents that opened up into the earth and which were emitting such hot blasts of air that we were able to roast marshmallows in the heat, and when we placed sticks across the vents, they ignited in flames. There was also a cave that hollowed into the belly of the volcano whose rock walls were hot to the touch and whose temperature resembled that of a sauna. The fog on the volcano cleared out a bit just at sunset enough to see Pacaya’s ever-smoking crater, and we descended the volcano in the dark under the stars.

Kayaking and Hiking at Lake Atitlan

Lake Atitlan is considered one of the must-see sights in Guatemala. Surrounded by several volcanoes, the lake was formed by a volcanic eruption ages ago and has a depth of over 300 meters. Lacking an outlet for water, the run-off from the surrounding mountains and volcanoes collects in the lake and varies its depth drastically over a short period of time. Occasionally, local earthquakes have opened cracks that have served as drains, but these outlets have later been shifted closed by subsequent tremors. Overall, it is said that the water level of the lake has risen about 40 feet in the last 50 years.

Lake Atitlan is about a 3-hour drive via shuttle from Antigua. Four other companions and myself piled into a van Wednesday afternoon around lunchtime and slowly weaved through the crowds that characteristically populate Antigua during Semana Santa (Easter week) into neighboring cities where we ran into just as much excitement with political rallies (given the impending presidential election) and even a murder scene in the middle of the street, with the victim still laying on the ground surrounded by swarming police and onlookers. We finally left the cities to enter the mountains, speeding along barrier-less roads that hugged the slopes and, marked with “dangerous curve” signs, curved left and right so drastically that it was hard to keep track of which direction we heading in. The mountains were truly awe-inspiring, jutting up into the clouds and yet apparently having no slope too steep to be feasibly farmed by the locals.

Once we arrived at Panajachel, a famous lake-side town sickeningly saturated with both Guatemalan and foreign tourists, we found a little motorized transport boat, sloshing with water that had collected in its plastic interior, to take us across the lake to Santa Cruz where we were staying in a eco-friendly lodge for the night. I loved this lodge (called Iguana Perdida) – which had open-air, tree-house style dormitory beds, and which provided us with a hearty family-style dinner of homemade vegetarian curry, spinach soup, fresh-baked bread, and carrot-pineapple cake, served around big tables that allowed us to interact with the other guests. I had a really lovely conversation with a couple from New Zealand who were traveling around Central America and had literally been to nearly every other country in the world over the course of the last several years. Talking with them got my gears going about thinking of all the places I’d still like to visit…

Purely by coincidence, I also ran into my friend, Abby, from high school who has been serving in the Peace Corps in Guatemala, and who was vacationing at the same lodge with another Peace Corps volunteer friend of hers for the night. It was fun to chat with them, and while we were doing so, a whole swarm of Peace Corps volunteers from Honduras came in – the subsequent conversation proving that, no matter the country, PCVs can instantly relate given our experiences in the program.

The evening we arrived was unfortunately rainy, but by 6AM the next morning, the clouds had cleared enough to allow for a pleasant 2-hour sea-kayaking trip across the calm morning lake (fortunately not sunny enough to remind me of the fact that my 80-cent Togo sunglasses, in bad timing, had finally met their demise the night prior). Kayaking was so fun! I wish we had had more time for it, but we stopped around 9:30AM at another tranquil spot along the lake to eat at another eco-friendly joint (called MoonFish) that provided food made with locally-grown, organic ingredients. I had a wonderful breakfast of made-from-scratch whole-wheat pancakes with yogurt, papaya, pineapple, and locally harvested honey along with freshly-squeezed orange juice – all for a price of less than 5 dollars.




After breakfast (ignoring the 30 minute waiting rule), we scaled along the rocks neighboring the breakfast joint to find a spot to dip into the deep-turquoise colored waters before the incoming clouds made it too chilly to swim. We found a platform that had been set up high on the rocks to allow for a 25 to 30-foot high jump into the waters below – which just one other person from my group and myself decided to try. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I did it twice.


After drying off, we embarked on what ended up being a 3-hour hike along the elevated mountainside path that provided a scenic view of the lake below. By this point, the clouds characterizing the start of rainy season had unfortunately billowed in, preventing us from having as spectacular of a view – but perhaps it was a blessing in disguise in its service in shielding us from the hot sun. We got back to our lodge by mid-afternoon, in time to catch a boat then shuttle back to Antigua by evening. Not a bad way to spend the day!

Climbing Acatenango Volcano

This last weekend I decided to climb Acatenango Volcano – one of the highest peaks in Guatemala, towering over Antigua at a height of 3,976 meters (13,041 feet). I went through a travel agency with a very international group that consisted of a couple plus another young lady from Norway, a couple from Australia, two people from Belgium, one from Germany, two from England, and myself plus the guide from the United States. Everyone in the group was in their late teens to mid-twenties so it was a really energetic and fun group.

On Friday evening we all packed our huge hiking backpacks with warm clothes, tents, sleeping bags and food in preparation for an early departure the next morning. Saturday morning we met at 6AM and, after a drive to the base of the volcano, started climbing at 8:30.

While I have hiked quite a bit in my day, this was probably one of the more challenging hikes I’ve ever done because of its a) duration, b) altitude, and c) incredibly difficult terrain; we were hiking very steep trails of loose pebbles, sand, and volcanic ash, which required extraordinary effort and the use of sturdy hiking sticks to keep from slipping and falling (although we all inevitably did so multiple times over the course of the hike). As the altitude increased, the going got slower and a few members of my group started struggling with altitude sickness (characterized by dizziness, severe heart-pounding and headaches) in addition to exacerbated conditions of gastrointestinal problems, dehydration, and nausea. Being both my mother’s daughter and an experienced Peace Corps volunteer well accustomed to the arrival of unexpected ailments, I had come well prepared with pain medication, pepto-bismol, oral rehydration salts, and Immodium which were passed out and received with great appreciation as they helped recuperate many members of the group and allowed us to keep moving.

We first hiked through steep farmland before entering the “cloud forest” – an incredibly lush jungle of plants that are watered simply from the constant presence of clouds that linger at that altitude. While it was a refreshing break from the upward trek in the sun, the downward trek through it the next day was quite difficult as the trails of loose ground interwoven with roots caused many a fall and twisted several ankles. We proceeded in both directions with caution as the area is notorious for hiding local robbers who often rob trekking groups at gunpoint. For this reason we had paid extra to have two armed police officers hike with us and luckily had no problem at all.

Continuing upwards, the next terrain we encountered was the area of high alpine forest that took us above the clouds into thinner air. It was much colder at this height and the wind was gusting especially hard that day, so we had to start bundling up in our hats and down jackets.

The closer we got to the peak, the worse the weather became, and our guide ultimately made the decision to make camp in the shelter of one side of the volcano instead of in the crater on top, where we had originally intended to camp. By the time we arrived at this destination around 4PM, the temperature had dropped significantly and a very dense fog had descended on our campsite – preventing us from being able to see any more than 10 meters in all directions around us. We were all bundled up in hats, down jackets, fleece, and as many layers as we could find to keep warm, although we were all still freezing as we set up the tents and heated up a pre-prepared dinner of curry. Our faces and clothes were streaked and matted with black volcanic dust and, lacking soap and water, we ate our curry with absolutely filthy hands as we had no other choice. We were in our tents and bundled in our sleeping bags to go to sleep by 7PM.

The next morning we were up at 4AM to head up to the peak. At first we were nervous because there was still quite a bit of fog around our campsite, but as the sun began to rise, the fog grew thinner. As we hiked towards the crater, we emerged from the clouds to a gorgeous sunrise that illuminated the cumulonimbus clouds below and took my breath away. When we finally got to the top we were all absolutely exhilarated. Acatenango is a dormant volcano that overlooks the neighboring active Fuego Volcano; we sat on the ridge of Acatenango's crater, bracing ourselves against the fierce wind but bathing in the sunlight from the rising sun, watching the smoke pour out of Fuego and getting a thrill out of its eruptions, which occurred several times an hour. As a challenge, I ran the 900 meters around Acatenango’s crater, and because I didn’t faint or stop (despite the difficulty with the altitude) I was awarded a t-shirt for the feat. It was an awesome, awesome morning and an incredibly rewarding finale to a tough climb. Definitely one of the best hikes I’ve ever done!

Monterrico Beach

There is something about…

Traveling on a bus so old that the roar of its engine is deafening and the scrap remains of its seats need to be held together with packaging tape; the windows being down and the hot air whipping my hair off my dust and sweat-matted face; rumbling along dirt roads so bumpy I’m out of my seat more than I’m in it; speeding past fields that gleam under that blazing sun….

There’s something about that situation that just invigorates me. In these moments, I literally cannot keep a smile off my face and I am purely and completely content.

Such was the scene I found myself in this weekend when I decided to go down south to Monterrico beach (on the Pacific Ocean) with two other students from my language school – one guy from London, one girl from Germany, and both of whom I’d only met one day prior. One thing I absolutely love about traveling is that I meet so many people from all over the world and all with such interesting stories; you make friends instantly with total strangers, and everyone is game to organize a spontaneous trip.

As it works in most third world countries, there are usually two ways to get to a tourist-y place. One way is to pay an exorbitant fee for an air-conditioned vehicle that will grant you your own seat and give you a fairly comfortable ride in a reasonable amount of time to your destination. The second way is to pay about half that price to take all day to get to where you’re going while riding with all the other locals in a vehicle that is likely to break down on the way and give you a sore body either from the fact that you’re sitting on a metal spring that has torn through the disintegrating seat or from the fact that you’re sharing a what would normally be one seat with another person, an infant, and an animal of sorts.

Guess which way I prefer?

The thing is, in my opinion, it’s truly much more interesting and fun to take a trip on which you’re uncomfortable and have no idea what will happen on the way. In Guatemala, the best way to allow for this opportunity is to take the camionetas, which are old American school buses painted psychadellic colors (they literally look like hippie buses) and more commonly referred to as “chicken buses” – Don’t ask me why. Chicken buses roar along the streets of Guatemala, releasing an outrageous amount of exhaust, blasting music and screeching to a stop to pick up the passengers on the side of the road who they manage not to hit and who then cram into the bus either sitting 3-4 to a seat (if they’re lucky) or otherwise standing squashed in the aisle while the bus driver’s second in command miraculously finds room to squeeze through to collect fares.

Having missed the 5:30AM bus that would take us directly to Monterrico, Oliver and Sanne and I managed to find a bus that was just headed in the right direction. From there, we hopped (or squeezed is the better way to put it) from bus to bus in the major cities until, after a total of 4 camionetas, we made it to our destination by late afternoon. We found a hostel right on the beach for the equivalent of only 5 dollars a person for the night. We quickly changed into our swimsuits for a quick dip into the warm Pacific before sunset. While we were out there, there was a period of commotion when some locals discovered a dead, three-foot long sea tortoise that had washed up on shore; the whole scene drew a huge crowd as they dug a hole to bury it in the black [volcanic ash] sand for which Monterrico is famous. The poor thing...

After a cheap seafood dinner and some relaxation time in the hostel’s hammocks along the beach, we called it an early night to wake up in time for our scheduled 5 AM mangroves tour. After brushing my teeth in the public bathrooms, I came back to our room to find Sanne, who had been trying to tuck in her mosquito net, holding up her mattress with one hand extended as far away from her as possible. There was a scorpion in her bed. Oliver was equally freaked out, so Yours Truly (who happens to be experienced in this specific type of murder, thanks to my days in Togo during its dry season) picked up my shower sandal and stomped it to death (it took several stomps). I was so glad it hadn’t stung Sanne!

The night was quite warm, but I slept soundly with the exception of waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of thunder from the violent storm going on outside and water dripping on my face from the rain coming through the hole in the roof above me. I just pulled the sheet over my head and went back to sleep, waking up again at 5 feeling rested. Sanne and Oliver, however, had barely slept because they’d suffered too much from the heat. I honestly didn’t think it had been bad at all… but I guess it just goes to show how used to it I’ve become from my Africa days. We were glad we even had a place to stay because we later found out that, with the large number of Easter season Guatemalan tourists, there weren’t enough hotels to room everybody, so people slept on the beach – until they were chased off by the storm.

Quite honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from the mangroves tour; I had done a similar thing in Ghana, where the tour guide sold it to us promising us views of wild animals – and then all we ended up seeing was birds. I suppose the tour would have been interesting if I was a bird watcher, but otherwise it was nothing more than a peaceful ride in a gondola – if you could forget that you were paying double the cost of your hostel for the tour. Still, the tour guide was very nice, and I was much happier to overpay him than I was to overpay the Ghanaian tour guides, who had dropped my friend’s camera case in the water, nearly overturned us, and then asked us why we didn’t tip more.

I spent the early morning writing letters and postcards in one of the hammocks next to another hammock-dweller from Germany who told me his whole life was a vacation – a guy about my age who had blond dredlocks that went down to his lower back, was wearing Aladdin-like pants, and who smoked an entire pack of cigarettes in the time we were both there before proceeding to do yoga sun salutations on the beach.

We spent the latter part of the morning and early afternoon swimming and lying on the beach before we caught the camioneta headed back to Antigua. I really enjoyed the ride home (for the reasons listed above)… I think it was actually my favorite part of the whole trip. Being reminded of similar journeys in Togo, I felt right at home and perfectly content.

First couple days in Antigua

First of all, for all of you who deemed it my due time to have a bad airplane experience after having won the airplane seat lottery twice now, you may be happy to know that on my flight from Miami to Guatemala, I was seated next to a rather large Guatemalan man who took the liberty of taking over our shared arm rest and then some, snored quite heavily in his sleep, and unabashedly passed musical gas at will. Thankfully it was only a 3 hour flight.

I arrived in Guatemala City Sunday night at about 7:15 PM but by the time I got through Immigration and Customs it was closer to 8:30. Outside the airport, there was a large crowd of people waiting behind gates for the arrivals, but my driver was holding a big sign with my name on it so I spotted him without a problem. Samuel was a full head shorter than me, but he marched up to me boldly with rosy cheeks and a big smile and firmly shook my hand before taking my bag and loading it in the van.

Samuel sped through the streets in the white van, gregariously chatting in what was quite good English, not nearly as phased as I was by the fact that we nearly sideswiped and rear-ended multiple cars several times and almost had a head-on collision with a school bus that was coming down the wrong way on a one-way street. I distracted myself by taking advantage of the absence of a communication barrier to ask several questions including how to go about exchanging money, what the dangerous areas of the city are, and how cell phone credit works in this country. As we left Guatemala City, the paved roads curved up a mountain, then descended until we slowed down and turned onto a cobblestone road, at which point Samuel turned to me and said, “Kristina, Bienvenidos a Antigua”.

Antigua is much smaller than I expected. Its roads are entirely made up of cobblestone and run perpendicular and parallel to each other, which would make the city easy to navigate were it not for the fact that the houses that line the streets all look completely the same. The prominent landmarks are the large cathedrals that dot the city as well as the large inactive volcano and big hill on either side of Antigua.

My host mother’s name is Lesbia, though she prefers to go by Chiqui. She met me at the door with her 7 year-old granddaughter, Sophie, by her side, who was jumping up and down, clapping her hands and nearly bursting with excitement. When Samuel warned my family right before leaving that I spoke no Spanish, Sophie’s face fell and she protested, “Nada?”. But it didn’t stop her from testing my basic Spanish as she clung to my side while I drank water at the kitchen table asking me my name and age in a mix of Spanish and the little English that she’s learning in school. Chiqui is a very beautiful woman in her 50’s – very clearly habituated to the presence of foreigners in her house. In fact, the next day I discovered that there’s a Canadian girl named Olivia staying at the house until tomorrow, when she’s going back home. With the lack of Spanish skills to clarify, I actually thought she was Chiqui’s daughter for a time because since the moment I met her she was moping around the house, whining and holding a compress to her mouth. It was only when I discovered that she speaks French that I was able to find out that she’s suffering extreme pain from what seems to be a case of gingivitis that has caused her whole mouth to become inflamed. She just wanders around the house crying and saying she wants to die while Chiqui patiently heats compresses for her (which I’m not sure is helping). It’s quite the interesting situation. Chiqui is a good cook and we communicate via a mix of Spanish, her broken English, and sign language. She is incredibly sensitive to my needs and very respectful of my space. She’s always smiling too. I can’t wait until I can better communicate with her.

La Union Spanish School is located about 5 blocks from my house - an easy walk. The staff members are all incredibly nice and greeted me the first day with big smiles and a willingness to help with any of my problems. They make me feel very much at home. My language teacher for this week is named Amanda. She’s a stout woman with a big smile who speaks very little English and has no problem jabbering away to me in Spanish as if I understand everything she says. We hit it off right away though, and she seemed quite pleased at my first day’s efforts and applauded my accent with relief; apparently she had a Korean student last week who had struggled quite a bit and had really required a bit of extra effort and patience on her part. I’m honestly grateful though for my background in French as I’m not sure I’d be doing as well if not for the similarities in words and grammar.

During our break, Amanda helped me find the bank and buy credit for my phone (which had been donated to me by a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer back in Togo who happened to have it and was happy to give it to me when she learned that I was anticipating going to Guatemala). Though the walk to the central park to get to these places couldn’t have taken more than 15 minutes, it nearly winded Amanda; her cheeks flushed red and she carried her notebook on her head to shield her sweating face from the sun, saying over and over again, Que calor (“What heat!”). Still, she was more than willing to pleasantly help me out with all my errands. Honestly, the temperature feels nice to me! Maybe I’ve lived in Africa too long…

On Monday afternoon I was able to meet up with my dear friend Rosangela, who used to be a coworker of mine when I worked in the Physical Therapy clinic in Salt Lake City back in 2007-2008. She’s Guatemalan and has been living in Antigua for the last 2 years so it was fun to have her show me around the places that she now knows so well. We chatted in Antigua’s central park, visited her Mom’s craft booth in the artisan market (where she so generously gave me a beautiful scarf as a welcome present), walked around to see some of the city’s ruins, and had some pie and coffee at a corner pastry shop. It’s going to be really nice to have a close friend like her here…. especially someone who knows the area and language so well.

It’s absolutely wonderful to be living a slower-pace lifestyle again. I’m loving the 8 hours of sleep I can get and the lazy mornings with all the doors of the house open, letting in the morning sunlight and breeze. It’s liberating to be free from the attachment to internet and cell phone (since I don’t have the same access to them). And I love the loose time schedules and the freedom to meander around and how people take time to greet each other on the street and catch up instead of a quick “hello-goodbye”. So many similarities to my previous life in Togo… Truly a relaxing atmosphere.