Back to school

Learning spanish had me split down the middle for the first couple of days. On the one hand it was fun to be learning something new but on the other I hated being so bad at it, and learning from 8am - 1pm was a serious shock to the system! Even more so for Chris who hadn't had a full morning of lessons since A-Levels (Lawyers are such slackers at uni)!

After a week I was tempted to move on but Chris persuaded me to stay another week. I was really glad he did and by the end of the second week I wanted to stay a third. I think three weeks was an ideal time length in the end. Enough time to grasp the basic past, present, future and conditional tenses, and a decent vocab base (at least on paper!) without brain overload. Any longer and I think we would have needed a week off inbetween, if only to recap and revise what we'd learnt.

I thought we'd have so much time to see Xela (the town) and the surrounding area but with study, homework (it really was like going back to school) and a few activities here and there we barely had time to do anything. On our second day we went to Los Cumbres, a natural eco-sauna in the mountains. It was so nice and relaxing, a beautiful setting too. (I can´t post any photos at the moment as they´re on the other camera and the computer/camera link isn't playing ball.) On Wednesday, we went to a salsa class. Chris chickened out at the last minute but I had a go with some others from the school. Great fun! I'd like to have some proper lessons later on.

It feels so long ago now but that weekend it was Christmas. Christmas Eve is the bigger day for them. The school put on a lunch for all the students and teachers with traditional Guatemalan Christmas food - tamales. Tamales, at least the ones we had, consist of a banana leaf with masa (tasted a bit like polenta to me, google says it's either rice or corn based), a piece of chicken, peppers, currents/raisins and prunes, sprinkled with some red coloured seasoning (going by wiki this was tomato and achiote (annato seed)...whatever that is!). We also had their take on mulled wine with lots of fruit, sprinkled with coconut and topped up with rum. I have to be honest, neither the food nor the drink was my kind of thing but that's not really surprising given how fussy I can be.

In the evening, we got a taste of another side to Guatemalan Christmas, the mental side! We met some other students in the central park and wandered around the Christmas market. (Again photos stuck on the camera!) They were selling biscuits, sweets, ponche de leche (eggnog), toys, tat,...and tonnes of fireworks, which parents were then happy for their four/five year old children to light in the street! One kid was looking at the rocket tip as he was lighting the end! Cringing to watch!! When midnight came along, it sounded like a war zone.

On Christmas Day, Chris & I spent 3+ hours in the kitchen cooking Christmas dinner but it was definitely worth it, even if I do say so myself. Roast chicken, stuffing, bread sauce, roast potatoes, carrots, brocolli, green beans and pigs in blankets.....so good! And most importantly we had the all important leftovers for Boxing Day We may have gone a little overboard on the junk food as well with chocolate, marshmallows, cake, jelly, toffees and a stocking of sweets each but hey, it was Christmas!

Christmas dinner, presentation isn't everything

Week two of school, we visited the cemetery on the Monday.

Xela Cemetery

Then I visited a smaller local town/village called Zunil on the Tuesday. As we arrived, there were women washing their clothes in the river and stunning views up and down the valley. We went up into the village to visit a weaving cooperative and one of the oldest baroc churches in Guatemala but the most remarkable event of the trip was visiting San Simón. San Simón is a local saint of sorts. Someone from my school told me that he's based on Simon Peter from the Bible but personally I couldn't see the connection! I really want to post a picture but again it's stuck on the camera, argh! I will do later though. He's a mannequin dressed as a cowboy, smoking a cigar with a gun in his hand and apparently has a love of rum and cigar offerings. We had to pay extra to take pictures but I couldn't not, it was so bizarre!

We started the New Year off by climbing the tallest mountain in Central America - Volcan Tajumulco. I found out just how unfit I really am and Chris found out how hard he could push himself with a cold. But it was all worth it...just!

Off we went, the summit not even in sight!

Here´s our first shot - it looks miles away!!! ...because it is

Can I not just stay here?

It started getting steeper!

It didn´t look any closer by lunchtime

...but at least we were above the clouds

We reached a camping ground an hour short of the summit in time to set up camp and climb a smaller peak to watch the sun before it set.

We look on top of the world, in reality we're still looking up at the summit

As the sun went down

We raced the sun to get down the slope before it set

The stars were fabulous at night. We could see loads of constellations and Chris & I saw a shooting star After a cold night's sleep(ish), we ascended the final stage in the dark at about 5am. This last bit was really steep and tough going with only torchlight. Things were made even more interesting by the fact we were trying to carry our sleeping bags around us, battling against the wind. The views down into the valley of local, and distant, towns at night were beautiful though. By this time we couldn't see many stars, just the odd planet.

We reached the summit in good time to watch the sun rise. It was ridiculously cold up there though! Hot chocolate was very welcome but still didn't make much difference to the cold. The views were stunning though, even if we had lost all feeling in our hands and feet and the sunrise was definitely worth the wait. There were some Guatemalans up the top at as well but they seemed to be more interested in watching us than the sunrise! You could see the stretch of the volcanic ridge, as well as the pacific and Mexico in different directions.

Sunrise from the highest point in Central America

It was breathtaking in real life

The photos don't do it justice

Just after sunrise

Through the mists

The descent to camp was a battle against an even stronger wind. We traversed the crater before descending the other side of the volcano. At points it was pretty narrow and my sleeping bag just seemed to be acting as a parachute! We all made it down in one piece though. When we descended the rest of the volcano after breakfast it was almost a bit depressing how quickly we did it. What took us half an hour to ascend the day before took five minutes to descend! It was a killer on the knees though; we were all feeling the effects for a couple of days after.

For our final week of studying, I had afternoon lessons as a large group of american students started at the school and that was the only way to keep my teacher. With Chris in the mornings and me in the afternoons we didn't get to do much else last week but we were both fairly tired from the hike anyway. We finally left Xela on Tuesday (11th) for Panajachel...