Oaxaca, Mexico

Our week-long trip to Oaxaca, Mexico was a welcome respite from life in Quetzaltenango, despite my fondness for our adopted city here in Guatemala. Oaxaca had all the historical and architectural appeal of Guatemala's beautiful Antigua, but with a much cleaner, livelier façade. Oaxaca is more than twice Quetzaltenango's size and "el centro" was buzzing with both tourists and locals the entire time we were there. The streets were clean and the air clear and fresh - there were no buses belching out black smoke like there are in Xela. This first picture shows a small area of a street out front of Santo Domingo, a large church in the "centro" area.

This picture shows Kira, Greg, and me in our Day of the Dead masks that we made with plaster at the Instituto Cultural where we studied Spanish all week. The Centro Cultural was beautiful, and we learned a lot about the differences in expression between Mexican and Guatemalan Spanish. We also used our masks in a small Day of the Dead parade organized by the Instituto, carving a large rectangular route out of the surrounding neighborhood with our procession of musicians, giant dancing figurines, and dozens of masked participants.

The night of October 31st we visited three different cemeteries in Oaxaca to mark the Day of the Dead. The cemeteries were filled with people in a festive vigil atmosphere, each tomb surrounded by family and covered with candles and the traditional Day of the Dead flowers. The surrounding streets were thronged with people, vendors, carnival games and rides, and the also very traditional sand portraits (click on the album link on the right-hand side of the page to check out a lot more photos). Overall it was an incredible atmosphere and I, for one, was impressed by the beautiful traditions that I was experiencing for the first time; traditions unknown in the US.








I think it was our second day in Oaxaca when we went to visit the Zapoteca ruins at Monte Alban. The impressive ruins date back to around 800B.C. We spent a few hours there being led around by a redundant tour guide who had the habit of describing something in Spanish and then reiterating the easiest of cognates in English (like "destrucción" to "destruction"), exacerbating an already tedious process. The ruins themselves were emormous and extremely impressive, and more pictures are again in my albums on Picasa (click the link on the right).

Overall, Oaxaca was amazing, and since the US dollar is worth about 12.5 Pesos, I recommend that everyone eventually visit there. At touristy spots the people usually even speak enough English that you could get by :-). I definitely plan to go back one day.

Nueva Alianza Organic Coffee Farm

A couple weeks back (yeah, I haven't been so consistent with blogging lately) we visited an organic coffee farm about 2 hours from Quetzaltenango called Nueva Alianza. The farm is run by 40 families who have worked on the farm for decades but have only recently taken control of the place themselves after their former boss barkrupted the farm. Soon they must begin paying back 1.5 million that they were loaned to form their cooperative and buy the farm, so they have been scrambling in recent years to increase production, put the organic stamp on their coffee and macadamia nuts, and improve quality (to get a better price for their product). So far, they have managed to get their macadamias to a "gourmet" rating, with the coffee one step below. Not only that, they have solicited and received grants from numerous national and international organizations that they have used to begin self-sustainable, income-producing, and non-polluting projects within the lands of the farm itself. These include water purification facilities to bottle and sell pure water, a hydroelectric power facility, a bamboo furniture-making business, and their own small biodiesel production center for the community vehicles. It's actually pretting amazing what they have invested in and how smart they have been, not only in regards to reducing their environmental impact, but in planning for their own self-sustainability in the long term.

My favorite part of the trip was our hike to the large waterfall on the farm property. We climbed way up into it and it was the most fun I had had up to that point in the trip.

Biodiesel Production

Sunset from the "Hotel Agro-Ecoturistico"

The shelling, sorting and rinsing of the coffee beans

Coffee bean vat. Bad beans float.

Me picking coffee

James and I in the big waterfall

Crazy kids!

Me, Kira

Vacation Week

We had a week off from the 12th through the 20th of September, and we all spent it traveling around to different areas in or out of the country. It's a holiday week in Guatemala because the 15th is Guatemala's Independence Day. I went and met up with my friend Jairo in Guatemala City, where we hung out with his family for a couple days. Following that, we went to Antigua, then San Pedro la Laguna, took a day trip to Panajachel on the other side of the lake, and finally returned to Guatemala City for a final day.

Ruins in Antigua

Me with the ruins

More ruins

Antigua

Central park in Antigua

Ruins

Church Gardens

Another Church in Antigua

My favorite Antigua church

Lago Atitlan

Last weekend we traveled to el Lago Atitlan. We spent a night in Panajachel on one side of the lake, then took a Barco (boat) 20 minutes across the lake to San Pedro for another night. Overall it was a great time... we shopped a bit in Pana, ate some great food, and kayaked on the lake from San Pedro. The lake is extraordinarily beautiful, and it was a wonderful, relaxing weekend.

The group of us on the shore at Panajachel

The lake and a mountain

The balcony with all the hammocks at the hotel

El Nariz de Maya (the nose of the Mayan)

Lake and mountain again

The Little Place Whose Name I Can't Remember

Our latest excursion was to the remote hamlet of A-Long-Name-I-Can't-Remember, which was located over an hour and a half outside of Huehuetenango. The ride from Huehue told the tale of the place, as all 11 of us piled into the bed of a 1980's Toyota pickup truck, and proceeded to steadily leave civilization behind: first an hour of switchback roads into mountain country (all of Guatemala is practically mountain country, but more so here), followed by a steadily narrowing gravel road that grew increasingly potholed. Eventually the telephone poles stopped appearing, and all that was left was our little truck scrabbling up and down impossibly steep inclines next to vacant, rocky hills.

We finally reached the town, which in all it's sprawling mass totaled 35 houses. Without electricity or running water, without heat during the freezing mountain nights, it was pretty much the poorest and roughest living conditions I had ever encountered. The local girls helped their mothers in the house and kitchen, while the boys played with deflated balls or hacked at random things with old and rusty machetes. (Machetes are ubiquitous here.) Everyone's lower legs, adults and children alike, sported a coating of fresh or drying mud; with only the soft earth tracks to and from their houses, and rain every day, each outdoor task was it's own obstacle course of mud. And of course, the dirt or cement floors of the houses also had their own layers and piles of fresh or dried mud.

The people seemed more or less happy in the town - some seemed thin, but the families with which we stayed seemed to eat well enough. The domestic animals, on the other hand, were all rail-thin and ribby. Even the puppies (shown below) seemed listless, tired and cold.

We were supposed to be helping them build a new schoolhouse, and we played our part, but the construction coordinator unfortunately relegated us to useless tasks meant primarily (I believe) to keep us out of the way. We basically did 3 things: moved piles of cement blocks, piles of sand, and filled in holes with dirt. The one saving grace of all that is that those were things the workers would have probably asked the community children to help with, so it was good to spare them the backbreaking and thankless part of the work.

Despite the observations and criticisms above, it was a wonderful experience for me and for all of us. To experience such a brutal life, with it's poverty and frailty so apparent, and yet to be welcomed with open arms into these people's homes, to have them feed us with the little rice and beans and eggs that they had, was an incredible feeling.

Plus, we taught the kids to play "Duck Duck Parrot" (because no one knew how to say goose), and the kids were later excitedly telling their parents about the game. So I think, all in all, we left a lasting mark on the community.

The kids playing with the piñata we brought

View toward the community from the new school site

Me petting the sad puppies in the mud

Sad puppy pile

Crystal bringing some 'hood to the shack... this was one of the best houses there

Tilapita (The Beach!)

Last weekend we took a total of 3 buses and one "lancha" (long, narrow boat) to reach the little beachside hamlet of Tilapita on the west coast of Guatemala. The whole trip took about 7 hours, and the electricity had gone out in the town by the time we got there. So we boarded and exited the lancha in the pitch dark, using our flashlights just to see a few feet in front of us. It was kind of a surreal experience, since it seemed like we were the only living beings in the entire place. All twelve of us piled into a 4-bed bungalow that night, and with the minimal light of our flashlights we built a charcoal fire to cook hot dogs and chicken on. It was a good night over all, and the warmth was a welcome change from the cold air of Quetzaltenango.

The next day we spent lounging on the beach and playing volleyball in the pool at the hotel next door. The hotel had not had any visitors for months, so they were happy to fill the pool for us and to make some money by feeding us during meal times. Some curious local children ended up hanging out with us the entire day, playing soccer and volleyball and seeming to have a great time. The oldest was 13 and the youngest was probably 5 (and some were more annoying than not), but overall they were a lot of fun. It was great swimming in the warm ocean water and body surfing in the waves. Later that night we took some cold beers and s'more fixings out to the beach, where we built a nice fire and enjoyed the night. Overall it was great, but it was nice to head back to the cool of Xela the next day after the sweltering heat we woke up to.

View to the beach from our bungalow

Path from the bungalow to the water

The bungalow

Sunset

Las Fuentes Georginas

We went up to Las Fuentes Georginas (a natural hot springs site about an hour from Xela) on a weekend overnight trip from Saturday to Sunday, and it ended up being pretty awesome, although at first I was concerned that we would not have enough to do for the entire time that we were there. I was obviously not thinking hard enough, because drinking can definitely take up a lot of time. We spent the first day in and out of the springs, drinking a few beers and enjoying the weather (no rain, shockingly). Later on we attempted (and failed disastrously) to create a charcoal fire to roast hot dogs. We ended up cooking most of them on our one tiny candle and a few small flames on pieces of wood that we added to the charcoal to try and get the damn things to light. Therefore the hot dogs were mostly lukewarm and not very satisfying. Thankfully we had enough alcohol that we didn't care all that much.

As could probably be expected, the night devolved into drinking games and a lot of laughter and shared secrets, which was fun. The best part was that the weather was good enough that the sky was clear and absolutely filled with stars. Jill was lucky enough to see a couple shooting stars, too. We braved the dark to chill in the springs again when it got cold, and then drunkenly built a blazing, cozy fire in one of the two bungalows that we had rented for the night.

View from the path at Las Fuentes

Path from our bungalows to the main hot springs pools

End of the path at the main pools

The main pool

Our two bungalows with the view

The cozy fire while we were going to sleep