Xela: the novel

So yeah not sure how long this post is going to go, mainly depends on 3 factors, computer battery, wordyness, and attention span.

Anyway, this weekend was probably the best I’ve had here in Guatemala thus far. Thursday night I was walking (I do a lot of that there) to pick up my laundry when I ran into Rachel, who I keep running into at various things and we started to talk. As it turns out she was also headed to Xela (pronounced SHAY-LUH for those of yall still trying to figure out what sound x and e make together.) I hadn’t really made any plans because most everything I found seemed a little bit on the steep side but I didn’t want to take a camioneta a.k.a. chicken bus by myself because it gets confusing sometimes. We talked about what we were doing, and then she invited me to come with her and one of her friends from the Peace Corps who has been in Guatemala for just under 2 years.

Friday

I met up with Rachel and we headed to Solola to meet up with Christine, Rachel’s peace corps friend. As it turns out we had to take four different buses to get to Xela, pana to solola, solola to los encuentros, los encuentros to cuatro caminos, and then cuatro caminos to Quetzaltenango (xela). For those of you who don’t know, the camionetas are sort of like overdecorated, undersized, overpacked school buses. Some of them aren’t even overdecorated, still sporting their original school district’s location and bus number (and painted the same obnoxious yellow.) Others have all sorts of decals and ornaments painted in all parts of them. But no matter how cool or uncool they look, riding them is the real adventure. The 3^rd bus was really interesting because it was kind of packed when we first got in, so much so that we had to hop though the back door as the driver was kind of sort of pulling away, I then ended up standing for 30 minutes or so with one leg jammed between a large sack of carrots and the other in between an indigenous woman’s leg and a seat, while holding on to the bars above me to keep from losing balance. It was kind of nuts. It got better whenever we hit a popular stop and a bunch of people got off, or at least enough for us to score parts of seats. Where I was there was not a fully open seat, but two 6 inch spaces on each side of the aisle on which I could fit onto both of and have a pretty comfy little space to sit.

Fast forward a few hours

As soon as we got to Xela, it started raining for a good couple of hours. Luckily, we got out of it by dropping our stuff at the hostel and jumping a microbus (kind of like your mom’s minivan, only with a few more seats and more head room) and went to one of the best chinese places I’ve been anywhere, and I got truly full for the first time in 3 weeks, not the kind of full where youre just content, but the kind of full where you cannot eat anymore. The girls have a few errands to run so we head over to the mall there. It was a real mall, only about half the size of most. They run their errands and then we decided to see a movie. Unfortunately Rachel didn’t know spanish so we kind of had to go see some chick flick about ghosts and ex girlfriends. Would have been really boring, but about a third of the way through, the power died due to the storm going on outside. Everywhere else in the mall had power except for the movie theater. They gave us a rain stamp that said we could come back and see it anytime, but we werent going to be in Xela for long so we waited it out…for three hours. It ended up that the movie kind of sucked, but it was really cool talking with Christine about what she does with the peace corps and all of the really cool stuff she’s done here in Guatemala.

Fast forward to 11:00 PM ish

I watched people in what was supposed to be Salsa night do nothing but dance to Reggaton(think rap in spanish with a little more latin feel, same sort of dancing) that was really interesting. Really hot and really loud. A little bit of salsa came on and so Christine danced some and then we headed back, it was kind of late.

Saturday

Wow this is a long post….

Woke up Saturday and had breakfast on the parque central in Xela right before I met up with Julia, a girl who translated for the second HoH group and was cool enough to want to give me a tour of Xela. We did a lot of walking and talking, all in spanish, I was tired by the end of the day. We checked out a couple of art exhibits and wanted to see some other stuff too, but it seemed like everywhere we went everything was closed =/. We hooked up with her nephew, Paulo, who is a few years younger than me and walked around some more. Finally we found where the local graffiti artists were doing some stuff around a tattoo parlor. That was really cool to watch the process of everything get painted and such.

Fast forward a little more…

So one of my entire purposes for going to Xela was to see transformers, and we did. It was in Spanish so I had to work to keep up. I thought it was pretty good, but it didn’t quite keep up with the first one, but I guess that’s what you get with sequels. The good thing is that movies here are even cheaper than back in the States, like $3 for the nighttime shows, $2 for the matinees. Tried out the Pollo Campero, (read: Fried chicken fast food style) and it was delish. Almost gave Chicken Express a run for its money. Headed back to the hostel and chilled for the rest of the night.

Today

Kind of slept in to make up for the lack of sleep Friday night. Paid for my room, which only cost like $8 for the two nights and left, I was pretty psyched about that. I then spent like 30 minutes waiting for a green bus to come, I finally got fed up and walked to a park where supposedly there were microbuses that went to the bus terminal every 5 minutes. Just as I get there, guess what rolls up behind me? Hint: its big, green, and I waited on it for 30 minutes. I was kind of pissed.

Jump to bus terminal

Turns out the bus terminal also doubles as the local market, a very very large, complex local market. I did my usual thing and asked around for directions to where the actual bus terminal was, and as usual, I got a bad set of directions that turned out good anyway. I got sent towards the athletics complex, where I happened to know there was a small climbing wall, I figured that since I had already walked down there, I should definitely check it out. I talked to the nice man with the shot gun and he let me take a peak. Luckily it was closed so there really wasn’t much I could do with it. It was the same kind of high quailty I was expecting from a guatemalan climbing wall, 45 feet of modular plywood angles, old holds, poorly taped routes, and old fouton matresses for crashpads. Its probably better that I didn’t climb it. I left the wall remembering how good the wall looked, one of those things where the longer you don’t have it, the lower your standards will go. I then stumbled my way into the bus terminal and found a bus that was direct xela to los encuentros, cutting my return trip by a bus. Got back to pana just fine. Did a little reading for my extended essay and then went to Solomans Porch.

Back to the grind tomorrow.

And I barely have any battery left on the computer now…

And definitely didnt think my attention span would last to 1400 words.

More later, people.

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