Two thumbs up for Xela

(That's Quetzaltenango to you)

On the way to Xela, I sat next to two very interesting people: first, an old man who lived in Santiago de Atitlán (across the lake from Pana, where I was originally) and hires women to make jewelry and keychains for export to the US. He was very pro-US: "mejor en Estados Unidos, mejor desarollo para Guatemala." Second, a young guy who works for the Ministry of Education monitoring schools. He drives around to all the schools in the small towns and makes sure that they're actually having classes ("The teachers sometimes decide on Wednesday that that's enough classes, and they don't give any on Thursday and Friday.") He was returning to his village for 15 days of vacation since they've closed the schools due to the swine flu scare. He invited me to go up and go hiking with him, which I probably would have done if I had more time as he was interesting and non-creepy, but the thought of a few extra hours on a bus with all the rest of the bussing I have to do wasn't terribly appealing.

As I stepped out of the bus in Xela, a single raindrop fell. It was soon an enormous storm, and I ducked into the huge, mazelike market along with several hundred other people who had the same idea of avoiding the rainstorm. It was pretty incredible- in short order, I was completely lost, but my two backpacks and I remained dry.


The first night I stayed in a quirky Spanish school, and unfortunately got the one bed in the place that was almost literally a board with one or two blankets for padding. But it had wifi! After a night spent on the board listening to drunken Guatemalans blunder in and out of the adjoining bathroom, I moved to a much nicer B&B that Ryan had recommended.


I then attended a nonprofit breakfast held by an American man and his Guatemalan wife in this beautiful garden:



Afterwards, a girl from the breakfast and I hiked above town to the "Cristo Viene" church.


We ran into a local woman with her five children, who were picking cherries. The kids were very interested in us (especially after I got them some cherries that were out of their reach.) This little girl is named Nancy Paolo. In the second photo, the oldest boy is up in the tree. The mother was only 24.





It was really nice above the city- cornfields, grass, and a shrine with some sort of praying figure.