From Antigua to Lago Atitlan...

Beautiful but plastic Antigua

Ask most travellers who have "done" Guatemala what they think of the old colonial city of Antigua and they will all coo that it is pretty, fun and that they stayed there longer than expected. I simply cannot work my head around this!!! For me it was overrun with tourists, the English language written and spoken everywhere, more expensive and just NOT AT ALL Guatemala!! We stayed two nights and then went on to Lago Atitlan, a place where I have really enjoyed calling home for the past week or so!

Julio, Melanie and myself chicken bus rided it to Panajachel, the main bus stop around the lake. Four buses/near-death experiences later and we made it! Albeit not without feeling exceptionally queasy. We took a boat to our first village around the lake, Santa Cruz and stayed in a popular hostel there... La Iguana Perdida. It isn't hard to see why. Luckily we made it for their Saturday Night Cross-dressing Party of dancing on tables, happy hour drinks, men with breasts, women with a swagger, the limbo, music chairs and other fun party delights! Here we met some fantabulous people... Robert the American doctor from Ohio, Jess the sweet Australian and a few more. The next two days in Santa Cruz were spent kayaking and playing boardgames... The rain proving relentless.

Me & Melanie on chicken bus

From here Julio, Jess and myself took a boat across the lake to the peaceful San Marcos where I will be starting my Meditative Retreat later this week. It is small, hippie and "holistic" all over. We hiked around the village, searching in vain for a mysterious "waterfall" but had to return before the rain. And it rained and rained... And the power went out! We had a quiet night here staying in our cute pyramid-shaped rooms at the hostel and slept to the sound of the rainpour...

The next day we zipped over to San Pedro, the most notorious of the villages around the lake. We are staying in a hostel with phenomenal views of the lake, such an intense pleasure to wake up to. After a couple of days familiarising ourselves with the bigger lake town, partying a little, eating a lot, walking some, having fallen in love with this make-shift only midly touristy town, I signed up for Spanish classes at the Cooperativa of Guatemalan Spanish Teachers and began volunteering at the local Home for the Handicapped. More reflections on these to come...

View of Lago Atitlan from San Pedro, here is the Indian's Nose hill

Love and very poorly kisses,
Anetta x

I effing love Mexico

My bed

And I have known this all along but Zipolite just hammered this home for me! After making peace with Mazunte I continued on with my travels and went to the next Oaxacan beach, Zipolite. Zipolite is quite sceney and known for its hippies, raves and nudity. I always thought I was a fairly liberal person but seeing numerous wangs of varied description dangling all over a beach, for me, is quite undesirable. Shocked by the sight at first, I felt a little bit sick. However after some time you become quite immune to the goolies littering the beach and particularly because the majority of naked bodies strolling about belonged to the 50+, I began to think GOOD ON THEM! Indeed on my last day, I joined the masses albeit on a secluded part of the beach, free from other people and I must declare that it felt so... natural. Perhaps we should all be naked all the time?

My bathroom

My last day in Zipolite, despite experiencing a gigantic cockroach scurrying over my feet in the shower (a complaint to which the hostel owner responded affectionately ¨aaah a cucuracha! hahahahaha!¨ as if I should have felt delighted), was one of my favourite days in Mexico yet. That evening I chilled on the beach with a 29yr old Mexican artesan and a 19yr old Mexican truck driver. We sat near to a beachside bar that was playing Cuban music and both Mexicans instinctively rose and began dancing so naturally and rhythmically to the music as though they were made to dance. The artesan, Victor, then pulled me up to dance with him and naturally, I failed to emulate the simple yet perfect rhythm of his dancing feet. I was so clumsy and awkward it was excrutiating! And I always thought I was an excellent dancer...

My view

But this is something that I have noted time and time again! People do not exaggerate in the slightest when they talk of Latin blood and how the salsa rhythm is intrinsically a part of what it means to be Mexican. I am overwhelmingly jealous about this and always have to resort to my knees-up-slow-walking-dubstep dance or indeed one of my more ridiculous routines. My favourite part about this is the wild abandon with which Mexicans dance! There is no awkwardness, feelings of shame, pretentiousness, self-consciousness etc. It is simply a case of, this music is great - I´m going to move to it! I couldn´t imagine being with a British artesan and truck driver and having the same experience.

Mexican drummers

Similarly, I love how in touch with spirituality and the universe Mexicans seem to me. Well at least the majority of those whom I have encountered. In the same evening, my company were both discussing the constellations of the stars and the infinity of the universe from both their own and ancient Mayan perspectives. My night was iced with walking along the beach and kicking at the sand to reveal glowing plankton (I think this is what it is called in English? My friends called it ´planton´ in spanish) in the sand. There were so many! Just glittering all over the beach. I felt like I was walking in the starry sky...

I love Mexico
xxxxxxxxxxxxx

New me

Puerto Escondido

Has absolutely SUCKED ME IN. Intended to stay 3 days, been here 9 days already. I am staying at Punta Zicatela, the quietest beach. I am living in a fabulous Hostel (a la casa) which has the coolest vibe and I´m with an awesome, fun, interesting and warm group of people. We all have gelled so well together and will swim, walk along the beach, cook, party and just chill together. We have all stayed longer than intended. Tyler, the Canadian that runs the place contributes massively to the vibe here. Chilled, interesting, positive, intelligent and with a big big heart, he sets the tone and people struggle to leave. I am moving on next to Mazunte, the place of hippies, with 3 other girls from my hostel. Really love it here, will be very hard to leave.

times they are a-changing

I repeat myself when I say that I don´t know what it is about Cathedrals but they strike me so deeply with their enormity and overwhelming sense of harmony that I always feel so insignifant and humbled and silenced (which takes a lot.) The cathedral in Morelia had no less an effect upon me. I was there on Monday and the meaning of the cathedrals really grabbed every breathing particle that makes up ´Anetta´ and inspired my very core, even rendering me emotional. It was intense. I was so awe-struck and deeply contemplative when sitting in there that I even got caught up in midday mass without even realising, until the Priest was standing at the front speaking in low biblical Spanish tones and I realised that every Mexican around me had stood in respect. I snuck out swiftly.

But the Cathedral´s impact, to me, is representative of how I wish to try and live my life. Aware of my contextualisation within lifetimes of history, culture, conflict, religion, philosophy and not taking it for granted.

Jacky & Yvonne

Today is my last full day in the Bosque. I will miss it dearly but having lived in this peaceful eco village for a month, I know that it is definitely time for me to move on... I am embarking on the next chapter of my latin american travels. Exceedingly nervous and exceedingly excited! I will begin tomorrow in Morelia, a colonial city about an hour away from Patzcuaro (journey time from the Bosque of course is 4hours!) Here I spent last weekend with the wonderful Brothers Woodward (Steven and Charles) from Denver, Colorado. They finished their 2-week stint in the Bosque and were continuing on with their adventures - cycling through Mexico - so I followed them to enjoy my days off and had a thoroughly entertaining ¨weekend.´´ We walked around the stunning Centro Historico and I introduced the brothers to my meditative habit of contextualising myself within every new experience to ensure I adequately live in each moment and savour every bit of my life. They called me a New Age Hippie which is laughable but I must admit that I am finding myself increasingly spiritual these days. I am just realising more and more how much incredible beauty there is to our very existence and it means a lot to me to attempt to appreciate that as much as possible.

Goodbye Bosque!

Filming in the Bosque has been fun and liberating. I have had deadlines but not the same money/ permissions/ crew restrictions as I do in London so it has never felt tedious or overly limited. Three short films/¨vlogs¨ later and I am very proud to have been able to document my first month in Mexico and have an enduring record of my time spent in the Bosque. I have conducted several interviews with volunteers here and one of my favourite questions is ´´Have you learnt anything from this experience?¨ I enjoy asking this question as answers are always extremely varied as there is just a multitude of personalities that make up the volunteer team. It is such an open question that it is interpreted to mean social, personal, environmental lessons. For me it means all as I feel the experience has enrichened me in all the above ways.

I have become more conscious of my impact on the planet. I have learned to ´listen to the land´ and my newfound mantra ´the forest is my friend.´ I have become more self sufficient and independent. I have learned how good it feels to eat healthily three times a day for a month. I have learned how good it feels to constantly be among the trees and to live in nature. I have learned many things about myself - that I am a bit more of an attention seeker than I would previously admit. That I LOVE getting to really know people and can grow attachments easily and quickly. That I still continue to judge people too fast, despite me thinking that I had grown out of this. That quiet people DOES NOT MEAN boring people! That I like to always be involved but it is probably better for me to not always be! That I enjoy working alone. That I do not enjoy playing alone. That I need my time to sit aside and reflect in my own calm. That I don´t need to party to have fun. That sitting around a fire with a book on Sufism can be just as pleasurable. That I actually love talking to people who are completely different from me and am keenly interested in other ways of living. That I enjoy being me without makeup! I am finally used to my own face :)

I am so excited about the next chapter of my travels... It is going to be very different without my safety blanket of the Bosque to go back to after a weekend´s trip away and the familiar faces all around me and a bedroom. I´ll miss the composting toilets - there´s no feeling like crapping in the great outdoors. I´ll miss the amazing food, hopefully I´ll continue these eating habits and not succumb to the quesadillas and tacos! But most importantly, hopefully I´ll keep up my newfound kinship with nature and continue to appreciate its importance in my life, for my strength of mind and body and for feeding my soul.

Peace out,
Anetta x

ps - I ain´t a hippie

mighty mighty torros

Janitzio island, Patzcuaro

So Friday the sun came out and changed the face of everything... the forest AND my mood! So after work on Sunday, I went with a bunch of other volunteers to the nearby magical town of Patzcuaro where we ate a shitload of cheese-based food, drank tequilas and squished 6 of us into a hostel room. On Monday we visited the teeny tiny adorable island of Janitzio in the middle of the stunningly massive Lake Patzcuaro. Growing out of the top of the island stands a proud imitation of the statue of liberty, the Jose Maria Morelos - a great hero of Mexico´s independence. We visited all the tiny little craft shops ascending the island and then ascended the statue ourselves. This gave Yvonne and myself the strangest cramp ever to be experienced. A sign of unfitness? I certainly hope not. That evening we said a sad goodbye to Genevieve, one of my favourite people I´ve met so far. A strong, fierce and fiery chica from California but with Native American blood in her, Gen lives and breathes eco systems. Initially the two of us seemed incompatible as friends - she was shocked that I didn´t know you could get callouses on your hands (from using tools apparently) and I was similarly shocked that someone would choose to NOT shave their armpits. However, once we were able to laugh at our striking lifestyle differences we were able to laugh about nearly everything else and now I dearly miss her already. We also shared a mutual appreciation for booze and occasionally obnoxious behaviour which helped.

The next two days were two of my favourite spent in Mexico yet and another Bosque-r named Yvonne played a large part in that. Yvonne is a 32yr-old investment banker from London but has a severe case of hippie-at-heart syndrome. On Tuesday the two of us went to the charming town with the wholly satisfying name of Tzintzuntzan, dragging Jacky the Canadian in tow. Tzintzuntzan had a fiesta going on all day that apparently began at 4am! It was just like a summer fete back in England with the bunting and families and craft stalls and food. Except somehow 900% more colourful! It was so much fun and we left giggly and smug... Although not as smug as the next day, whereby we went to an authentic Mexican Bull Riding competition! This was at a bull ring, again in Tzintzuntzan (a town made of hours of fun), teeming with Mexican families and smelling of Macho men and of course, tequila. It was JUST LIKE something you´d see in the movies. Big muscly Mexican men jumping on raging torros which fling them wildly around the ring until they eventually get thrown (rather violently) off to the song of the ´bandas´ playing excitable music and the delight of the thrilled audience.

Yvonne and I could not stop beaming our English smugness at having found out about this exclusively Mexican event and having witnessed such a cultural delicacy of local entertainment. Truly brilliant! However, after this fun we had to part ways with Yvonne as she boarded a bus to Morelia to continue with her own travels to Belize. I really miss Yvonne too - an inspiring, intelligent, energetic and really fun girl with a big heart. She was like another big sister! I look forward to dinners at hers in Balham when I´m back in London and visiting her at her dress stall at the Upmarket in Brick Lane.

And so now I feel lost once more! I seriously do not like saying goodbye and Jacky keeps making fun of me for taking it personally when people leave the Bosque and for feeling like they´re leaving me! But i can´t help it! Also, the rain is supposed to make a lasting appearance from tomorrow and we all know how i feel about that. An amazing last few days though to keep me smiling for a while...

Muchos love xxx

Rain

SO rainy, so wet, so cold, so grey. Is this England??!!! I don´t feel like I´m in Mexico right now!! May have to move to the coast sharpish... I miss central heating. Is that bad? Possibly the antithesis of the attitude one is supposed to take when staying in an eco village! Ah well, i never claimed to be a perfect little hippie. Must make a short out here. Filmmaking makes me happy!

Imbalanced vibes

Laundry at the Bosque

SO forgive me for talking like a hippy but my harmonies have been strangely imbalanced the last couple of days... I have had a great time, but some things have just seemed a bit off. Today is a good example! The weather has been insanely weird and temperamental. Usually the days here are gorgeous, with hot sun and a cooling breeze and the nights absolutely freezing. However, last night was surprisingly warm! So I should have known that today would be super cold! I was working outside too so I couldn't feel my feet and ended up putting on 3 pairs of socks haha. This made me feel very pissed off and grumpy as I don't take to the cold that well but then as soon as lunch was served I felt SO HAPPY as there was sun AND humous!! Haha a bit schiz?! Although again, right now I am feeling horribly weird again as I'm too bloody FULL! Haha I just ate the most delicious lunch of freshly-made humous, vegetables and tortilla wraps. I went a little crazy and ate too much but only to make up for the horribly cold morning I had... Everything is imbalanced!

SO on Thursday I got the best news ever! It was my second day of work and Brian and I discussed me making a weekly vlog for the Bosque as my work service here. I am absolutely THRILLED!!!! Whilst I enjoy the outdoorsy work as it is so new to me and not stuff that I'd EVER normally do or will probably do again, I am so glad that I get to keep up my filmmaking and hone my skills here. Plus, I get to film on Brian's HD camera and edit on Adobe Premiere so it should be good for me to learn and feel comfortable with both. So for the past three days I have been filming everything I can - the different work tasks we do and all the fun we have! This has included so far cob-building, wood chopping, meditation, a chainsaw workshop, interviews with volunteers... I think I've enjoyed filming the various vistas here the most as it really is quite stunning in the forest when the sun is out... Today I began editing my footage which hasn't been as difficult as I thought it'd be, turns out editing software is all very similar. It feels quite good to be 'on it' again in the same way I am in London. To feel productive and in control of my own projects. I'm a laidback person but I need to feel that I am actively contributing to my own development at all times haha. The physical labour does help but the filming is easily more satisfying for me.

Rose painting

I have helped with a bit of cob-building alongside the film work though which has been really cool. The new cabanas here are being made from eco-friendly 'cob', a mix of water, sawdust, pine needles and earth. So yesterday and today, we've been smoothing the floor of one of the new cabanas with finely ground cob mix. Yesterday, Judith and I laid it all down and today all of us volunteers went barefoot and smoothed the mix out across the floor of the cabana. At first I was filming but it looked so much fun that I decided to join in... and MASSIVELY regretted it!!! It was so effing cold!!! My toes were freezing!

Chicken coup

We finish work at 2pm everyday here and then all sit down to a huge lunch together. After this we are free to do whatever we want and this is my favourite time of the day, between 2-7.30pm (when dinner is served) as I always feel so happy, chilled and peaceful. Particularly when the sun is out! Sometimes I'll hang out with the other volunteers (sometimes getting drunk early if someone has alcohol haha), but mostly I prefer to spend this time alone just lying in my favourite hammock reading (currently Sophie's World - am I a cliche?!) or writing whatever inspires me or wandering around the acres of forest here. After dinner, all of us hang out together either by the fire in the Casita or outside by a fire. Last night was one of my favourite nights here, we all hung out by a fire at The View (the best part of the forest) drinking local wine and playing guitar.

Genevieve working hard

I cannot believe I've been here a week already! Time goes by so strangely here... The week has gone so quick but at the same time, I feel very settled here like I've been here longer. I know that the vibe will change after this weekend though as many volunteers are leaving... Alejandra (the super lovely 20yr-old from Mexico City), Little Brian (a 33yr-old English lit graduate/ fisherman/ girls' favourite haha from US), Aaron (a 24yr-old absolutely mental biking-around-latin-america seasonal firefighter from Canada) and sweet sweet Shaya (22 from Israel.) I am most upset about Shaya as we get on very well and have SO MUCH FUN together and she was going to stay longer but then decided she wanted to see more of Mexico but only has a month left so she's going earlier than expected. She's my favourite here as there's just no bullshit with her and she doesn't pretend to be someone she's not and she never follows the crowd but is always her own person and she's really freakin cool! I plan to see her again in my travels and we have talked about potentially travelling Belize together. Hope to meet Aaron again sometime later as he is travelling some more and is really funny and bizarre company! We are having a couple more volunteers arrive next week but I am still sad as the dynamic will definitely change. That doesn't mean to say it won't still be fun, just different!

Anyways gotta go, am visiting Eronga with Shaya... Wanna buy some booze for tonight as it is her last! Hopefully next time I write I will feel more in sync with my own rhythms or whatever... Think some sun will help enormously!

xxx