Location

Xela, view from El Baúl

Xela (pronounced “shella”), officially Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second city and capital of the defunct “sixth state of the highlands”. Xela was our first stop in Guatemala, following several recommendations. We stayed for twelve days.

Chicken bus blues...

Xela feels like a real place, as opposed to a show put on for the tourists. There is a sizable population of gringos to be sure, but the vast majority of passersby are quetzalteco locals, and they have better stuff to do than chase after travellers to try and sell them necklaces or tours. They will usually take time to greet a stranger on the street, though. The city is safe, fun to walk around, and surrounded by some amazing highland scenery. On the down side, it’s rather polluted, and the weather tends to alternate between “quite cold” and “quite wet”.

Language

Xela, from the garden at El Portal

We signed up for Spanish classes, like just about every other traveller to Guatemala. You can study Spanish anywhere, but Guatemala is a centre for Spanish teaching and learning, mainly because classes here are really cheap. We studied at an institution called El Portal, staying with a lovely local family and receiving private tutoring for five hours a day.

With our hosts Esperanza and Gerrardo

Afternoons were spent exploring the region or tracking down the best coffee, chocolate, and pastries in town. Xela does lose some of its authenticity when you step into downtown delis or entertainment spots, but you won’t hear the quetzaltecos complaining about the abundance of fair-trade coffee and organic sandwiches. There’s no shortage of deep-fried tostadas and other street food, either.

On the trail to Laguna Chicabal

You can learn a lot of Spanish in a week. By now we are somewhat able to engage in small talk, rather than just ask for directions and order food. Interesting words we learned include the verb comerse, meaning “to eat oneself” (used for nail biters) and anteojos (eyeglasses, sounds like Antiochus). Dana complained about the excessive complexity of the word entonces (English: so; French: donc; Hebrew: az). The lovely pidgin expression “Yalla, let’s vamos” was an instant hit.

Since time is short and the travel bug is biting, we decided not to stay on, but may yet sign up again someplace else if the opportunity presents itself.

Expedition

Early morning, Santa Maria volcano

The Central America trip was supposed to be about palm-fringed beaches, hikes in the jungle and plenty of tropical fish and fruit. So why are we cowering in a tent nearly 4,000 meters above sea level, bundled up in borrowed down jackets and praying that the lightning storm would pass without turning our pathetic encampment into a pile of charred debris?

Santa Maria casts a triangular shadow over its surrounds

An interesting question, but let’s start at the beginning. Santa Maria is a huge volcanic cone towering over Xela. In 1902, after centuries of silence, it erupted big time, showering the city with ash and killing over 5,000 people. The mayor tried to minimize damage to the city’s reputation by hiding the catastrophe from the rest of the world, which of course only made matters worse. How he expected to pull this off when the ash cloud reached as far away as northern California is not clear. Anyway, following the eruption the volcanic hot spot moved to a newborn mountain called Santiaguito, which has been spewing ash and lava ever since. Santa Maria now sits on a huge empty caldera and is expected to eventually collapse, but that might take some time – a year, a hundred years, ten thousand years, it’s hard to say.

Starting out

We went up Santa Maria with a group organized by Quetzaltrekkers, a nonprofit that raises money for street children. Eleven of us boarded the chicken bus around noon for the short ride to the trailhead, then followed the route up the volcano, stopping to say hi to villagers who were coming down the mountain loaded with firewood for sale. Heavy packs and thin air made for slow going, but by late afternoon everyone was at the top (which is the single flat spot on the mountain), trying to catch glimpses of scenery through the cloud cover.

Before the storm

The peak and its surroundings were a veritable garbage dump. So depressing. We collected some garbage on the way down, but it’s a drop in the bucket (or a grain of sand, to use the more optimistic Spanish expression). We shared the peak with a Guatemalan family on a camping trip, a dog called Galletas (Cookies) who frequently escorts groups up and down the mountain, and a team of local youths who had no tents or sleeping bags, but did have some tarps, a number of machetes that they used to chop down an entire tree for firewood, and a large quantity of gasoline.

The Santiaguito show

Dinner was interrupted by pouring rain and rolling thunder, sending most people into their tents, except for a couple who decided not to care. The prudent thing to do given the lighting storm was to evacuate the peak and retreat into the trees, but in the cold and rain this option seemed even less appealing than getting struck by lighting. So we stayed, and reflected on how our “training” with the Varsity Outdoor Club helps deal with such situations with a lot more humour than we would have had otherwise. Everyone survived the storm, as well as the second one that followed later that night. The local kids also weathered the storm well despite their encampment turning into a large mud pool.

The breakfast show

By 2 a.m. the skies had cleared, and the two of us ventured out of the tent to watch Santiaguito put on its show. From the peak of Santa Maria you can see about half of Guatemala, from the Pacific coast almost to the capital, and it’s easy to understand why Santiaguito is considered one of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes. Every few minutes the mountain would rumble, whistle like a kettle, then explode with lava and huge clouds of ash. A few hours later the whole troop was up to watch the sunrise, the volcano, and the gradual unveiling of the landscape around. In the distance we could see a second puff of ash rising over Fuego, another of Guatemala’s three active volcanoes.

Eventually we tore ourselves from the site and returned to the city in time to clean up and eat a very late lunch, before hitting the pub scene to watch the Superbowl. For once, downtown Xela was completely overrun with gringos – few of whom had any interest in American football, but it was as good an excuse to get wasted as any.

Celebration

Fiesta of the Virgen de Candelaria

Just one festival this time – the celebration of the Virgen de Candelaria, in the village of San Juan Ostuncalco. Mountains of loudspeakers were set up in two locations in the village square, apparently by adherents of the “no such thing as too much bass” school of sound design. The noise was deafening. One location hosted an amusing dance by figures in over-the-top gladiator outfits and monster masks. We kept expecting Xena the Warrior Princess to make an appearance. The other stage was placed directly outside the entrance to the church, and featured traditional music that could have been pleasant if not for that disastrous bass. The scene inside the church was actually quite profound, with candles everywhere and long lines of people waiting to make an offering to the image of the Virgin Mary.

Religion

Fuentes Georginas

It’s interesting to see what passes for Christianity in the Mayan villages. Catholicism is already one of the more colourful denominations, but its Mayan interpretation is not something the Pope would likely recognize or condone. Religious icons span everything from mainstream saints to fantastic underworld creatures. On Santa Maria, live chickens are brought to the summit and sacrificed in a makeshift altar. These altars are everywhere – we also saw them at Laguna Chicabal, where flowers and other offerings are placed daily by the water, and at Fuentes Georginas, where the ritual is followed by a relaxing bath in the hot springs. Sure beats Sunday school!

More photos from Xela here.

Hello from Xela, Guatemala! This second and final Mexican installment covers our all-too-brief visit to the state of Chiapas.

Zapatismo

The cathedral in San Cristobal de las Casas

In prehistoric times before broadband internet, my grandfather would pass me his copy of Time magazine every week and I would read the thing from cover to cover. Because of this, Chiapas was one of the few places in Mexico that I was aware of prior to this trip.

In 1994 a young ideologue known as Sub-Comandante Marcos led an armed uprising of indigenous farmers in Chiapas against the Mexican government. The Zapatista insurgency was quickly put down, but the social problems that gave rise to it never went away, and neither did the Zapatistas. These days, the organization known as EZLN seems to encompass everything from social activists in the cities to armed bandits in the jungle.

Tierradentro, a Zapatista restaurant in San Cristobal

Our own encounters with the Zapatistas were completely benign. Their political wing operates freely, and EZLN-branded souvenirs are everywhere, with Che Guevara’s portrait often pasted next to the masked figure of Sub-Comandante Marcos for good measure. A Zapatista-affiliated “cultural center” in San Cristobal doubles as a very handy restaurant.

We did take some precautions to avoid running into the other aspect of the movement. The green hills around San Cristobal were practically screaming to be climbed, but we couldn’t find anyone in the city who thought this would be a good idea. A few people who ventured out there either got lost or got robbed, and guided trips from the city tend to stay on the routes connecting different settlements rather than head for the peaks. The hiking plan was thus grudgingly abandoned, to be picked up again when the odds are more in our favour.

Festival Season

Traditional dress in Zinacantan

By sheer luck, we arrived in Chiapas during peak festival season. Latin America is very serious about its festivals: typically, every village will have its own fiesta, its own customs, and its own unique dress. We visited two events, both taking place as part of the festival of San Sebastian. In Zinacantan, everyone was out on the street in their traditional costume (worn even when there’s no festival on), a blue-and-purple embroidered garment with or without tassels attached. A sort of street parade was taking place: first it was cowboys riding horses at top speed back and forth, miraculously managing to avoid trampling over any of the children. This was followed by a group of villagers dressed up as jaguars and other creatures, marching backwards (for some reason) through the street, banging drums and mimicking animal calls.

Parachicos and viajeros

That event was relatively tame compared to the situation in Chiapa de Corzo the following day. The parachicos tradition commemorates a time following the Spanish conquest when indigenous men were forbidden from entering the cities, occasionally managing to sneak in by dressing up as women. The tradition involves villagers dressing up in colorful tunics, blond helmet-shaped wigs, and full face masks, marching through the streets with noisemakers and gladly posing for pictures with the hordes of mostly domestic tourists who flock to see the event. Eventually all the parachicos attempt to fit into the local church simultaneously for a religious-service-come-dance-extravaganza.

Hats off to the Chiapanecos for putting on one hell of a show.

Basura

Cañon del Sumidero

Basura – Spanish for “garbage” – is one of the first words we learned, due to its frequent appearance on trash cans and on highway signs imploring people not to throw their refuse out the window. The signs aren’t working. The amount of wayside garbage in some places is staggering – easily worse than anything in Israel, and approaching the regrettable situation we witnessed in Romania.

So much floating garbage...

In an ironic twist, the prime natural attraction that draws tourists to the state of Chiapas is also a focal point for garbage. The Cañon del Sumidero is a beautiful sight, so long as you only gaze upward from the water at the kilometer-high cliffs above. At water level, it might as well be a repository for empty beverage containers. The configration of water currents in the area ensures that floating garbage from Chiapas and parts of Guatemala arrives at the Cañon del Sumidero and stays there, overwhelming the government’s permanent cleaning operation. Our guide explained that the only solution to the problem is to change people’s attitudes. Or at least that’s what we think he said – he was speaking in Spanish, and our listening comprehension skills are very rudimentary.

Palenque

Temple of the Sun, Palenque

Palenque is a beautifully restored Maya city surrounded by thick jungle, with an interesting museum and trails in the forest. A small settlement near the ruins (just a group of lodges, really) called El Panchan draws the alternative crowd like a magnet. El Panchan is a good place to enjoy the sights and sounds of the jungle, but it was somewhat too small and quiet for us – not exactly a happening place, so we moved on after just one night. Perhaps we’d appreciate the place more had we not turned down the offer to buy LSD from the guy standing near the gate. As we later learned, there are also psychoactive mushrooms to be had in Palenque, and they are said to be some of the best on the market.

Trip Aids

The office at Margarita and Ed's, El Panchan

This is our first time traveling with a Footprint guidebook (the Central America Handbook 2011 edition). Normally we are Rough Guide types, falling back on Lonely Planet when no Rough Guide is available. The Handbook is a compact, hardcover package with flimsy pages and somewhat more detail than the competition, but it is organized in an strange manner, and occasionally not organized at all. For some reason the editors chose to separate the descriptive sections from the “listings”, so to answer the question “do I want to visit this place and if so how do I get there” you need to flip back and forth between two locations in the book. They are also rather stingy with maps, choosing instead to spend their real estate on free-text descriptions of relationships that a small map would make abundantly clear. A characteristic passage reads:

The Pan-American Highway heads west out of the capital passing through Chimaltenango and on to Los Encuentros where it turns north for Chichicastenango, Santa Cruz del Quiche, Nebaj and the Ixil Triangle, and south for Solola and the Lake Atitlan region. It continues to the western highland region of Quetzaltenango, Totonicapan, Huehuetenango and the Cuchumatanes Mountains.

Agua Azul

There are also occasional typos, sites of interest appearing only in the “getting around by bicycle” section, local words used without explanation (such as “zocalo” and “huipiles”), and other glitches. We picked up an abandoned copy of the 2010 Lonely Planet Guide in Isla Mujeres, for use when the Handbook’s prose becomes too obscure.

Another travel aid we used is a set of audio lessons in Spanish. We started going through them prior to the start of the trip, but didn’t get very far. The vocabulary is apparently tuned for romantic encounters, focusing on statements such as “let’s go have a beer, I’ll pay” and “my husband isn’t here, we have one hour”.

More Chiapas photos here.

Next report: ground-level Guatemala.

Hola a todos!

A first update from Central America, covering the Yucatan peninsula and concerned mostly with food.

Our Route (the boring stuff)

Tulum

We landed in Cancun after a 24-hour bus-and-plane ordeal (including a drenching walk through downtown Seattle), and immediately boarded the ferry to Isla Mujeres. We spent two nights in Isla, two in Tulum, two in Valladolid, and four in Mérida before taking the night bus southwest to Palenque.

Maya Ruins

The Classic Maya clearly didn’t have the interest of tourists in mind when constructing their cities. They built scores of different sites, in highly inaccessible places, and gave them names such as Dzibilchaltun, Chunhuhub, and Kohunlich.

Ruins of Tulum

Ready for some snorkel action

Sticking to locations that we’re somewhat able to pronounce, we visited Tulum, Chichen Itza, Ek’ Balam, and Palenque. The former two are saturated with tourists, and for good reason. Tulum sits on a cliff overlooking a magnificent Caribbean beach. All the structures are roped off, so swimming in the sea was probably the highlight of that particular visit.

Chichen Itza - pyramid of Kukulcán

Chichen Itza has an eminently photogenic giant pyramid that appears on every other T-shirt sold in Cancun. But what the photos cannot show is the amazing acoustic design of the site: face the pyramid and clap your hands, and the resulting echo sounds like a bird’s call (a quetzal, to be exact). The site also includes a ball court – another acoustic marvel – where elite players would compete in a game somewhat similar to basketball. At the end of the game, the captain of the winning team was sacrificed to the gods. The Mayans sure knew how to motivate their professional athletes.

Ruins of Ek' Balam

Ek’ Balam is another ruin, which relatively few people bother to visit. As in most smaller sites, visitors are free to clamber over the pyramids and other structures to their heart’s content. Palenque, surrounded by jungle and well out of range for package tourists, is a real gem, but it’s not strictly speaking in the Yucatan and therefore doesn’t belong in this report.

Drinking Coconut price index

More snorkel fun in Grand Cenote

Grand Cenote (near Tulum): 30 pesos

Ek’ Balam: 20 pesos

Progreso (beach town north of Mérida): 20 pesos

Oxkutzcab (farm town south of Mérida): asking price was 6 pesos, but the transaction was complicated by the vendor’s shaky grasp of basic mathematics. He handed us 37 pesos change from a 50 peso bill, and when we protested he examined the coins, thought about it some, and gave us another 10 peso coin. We gave him back two pesos and departed, leaving the confused entrepreneur to try and figure out what just happened.

Tortillaland

Cheapo salbutes at the food court in Valladolid

In 2010, UNESCO added traditional Mexican cooking to its list of “Intangible Cultural Heritage”. You could argue that all of Mexican cuisine is a collection of variants of one single dish, but wow, is that dish ever tasty. We’re finally able to explain the difference between tacos, enchiladas, fajitas and tortillas. Still not sure about sopes vs. tacos, though.

Fresh fruit paleta, Progreso beach

The Yucatan region has its own variations on the main theme. We especially liked their salbutes, but the panuches weren’t bad either. We signed up for a cooking lesson in Mérida, learning how to make sopa de lima and pollo pibil. It was delicious, but not likely to become a house staple, since some ingredients are hard to acquire outside Yucatan.

Roasting banana leaves for pollo pibil

Other observations regarding Mexican food: much of their diet seems to consist of snacking, which may explain why body shapes tend to range from robust to obese. Drinks are loaded with sugar, particularly local favourites horchata (rice flour and coconut, pretty good) and jamaica (hibiscus tea, pretty bad). Fried cow udder is quite tasty. Mérida has a large enough Lebanese diaspora that some of their food has been adopted by the natives, with street vendors selling kibbe stuffed with spicy coleslaw. Some of the local beer is quite drinkable (Negra Modelo in particular).

Hawkers

Cenote Zaci, Valladolid

“Merengue merengue!” cries the hawker walking back and forth on the beach in Progreso. Mexicans naturally love meringue, essentially pure puffed sugar. The next hawker tried to sell us a hammock (hamaca), but hammocks vary widely in quality and thus not a good choice for an impulse buy. He then offered to sell us cigars instead. That didn’t fly either.

Grid Cities

Dana and Yaqing in downtown Valladolid

Yucatan’s main settlements, Mérida and Valladolid, are arranged in massive grids. So is Vancouver, but whereas we find Vancouver very easy to navigate, Mérida and Valladolid can be disorienting and vaguely claustrophobic. Back-to-back building facades line the streets, all roughly the same height and with very few obvious landmarks. Streets are numbered, with even numbers running north-south and odd numbers running east-west.

Downtown Mérida at night

Navigation woes aside, both towns are quite appealing, with the sometimes-crumbling facades giving way to beautiful inner courtyards if you bother to peek inside. Mérida is a city a million strong and drawing new foreign settlers by the boatload. Valladolid is like a smaller, more relaxed Mérida, with a cenote (swimming hole) bang in the centre of town. It’s still a bit of a backwater: when we asked a local in Tulum what’s the best way to get to Valladolid, his answer was – “drunk and destitute”.

More photos from Yucatan here.

Next update: Zapatista sympathizers and bizarro-world village festivals in Chiapas.