Xela

El Quetzal, by far the best of three schools I attended in Guatemala with only 4 students it was very personal. With great activities, excellent teachers and an onto it director. It highlighted the advantages of small scale operations.

My introduction to Xela was some what ummm difficult, strange or challenging! Getting there involved two over stuffed chicken busses (I was so happy that someone actually had chickens on one) and a shuttle bus, actually a van they manage to shove 20 people into, I am too tall to enjoy any comfort traveling this way, after an hour with my ear pressed the roof of the van the relief of arriving was like being let out of a torture chamber.

Then I discovered Amebas! It kind of felt like have great abdominals but caused by a gaseous stomach, I am interested to see if I now hold the record for the most burps in a day. Amebas are a strange way to make friends, anything in common works it seems, it also seems everyone in this town has had or has these stomach rumbling bugs. Everyone has some advice or remedy ranging from starvation to alcohol poisoning. I choose to go to a doctor, after a week of probiotics, no booze and heaps of yogurts I returned to eating dodgy street food. No drinking is hard when socializing and caused difficulties when I was at a bar and not willing to drink beer with some locals.

From drugs to drunks, which is worse cheap booze or drugs? The local rum is some what of an icon; Quetzalteca Especial may have potential as an alternative to fossil fuels at only a few dollars a liter. With liquor this cheap and potent it isn’t surprising to see numerous borrachos passed out on the streets at all hours of the day. It is easy to understand this escapism behavior when I think about the barely existent prospects of the desperately poor people here. Life is so hard with little hope of hard work bringing much improvement. Saving money is tough, my teacher had a job offer in Latvia and needed to save enough for a ticket, his strategy was to eat only one meal a day, and I am astounded when I am able to eat for under 2 dollars at a restaurant. Five weeks of typical Guatemalan eating and I felt slightly malnourished but mainly craved fresh vegetables that didn’t have all the goodness and texture boiled out of them, a quick trip to the market, an hour in the kitchen and it felt great only having one starch on my plate.

Oh I forgot to mention that I encountered three storms and it rained constantly for my first week turning the roads into rivers!

Drugs are available here too but the type of tourist is slightly more interested in studying Spanish and volunteering than indulging in illicit substances.

http://www.entremundos.org/ is the biggest organizer of volunteer projects but many others are also doing some good work. The most interesting projects I found were recycling initiatives one involving filling plastic bottles with rubbish and using then as building materials. Another project in Zunil is trying to change the local’s habit of dumping rubbish into the river by reestablishing a once successful composting project that failed because of its success. It started making money, that caused infighting and it fell over. There must be forms of monetary incentives to encourage recycling, something like the returning of glass bottles. For composting the suppliers of raw materials could receive credits for compost for each kilo of organic matter supplied effectively turning the collection of organic waste into a form of income.