San Juan del Sur

So after Granada I was only going to spend a few days at the Nicaraguan Pacific coast, a particular beach called San Juan del Sur. However, as is usually the case with me and beaches I was massively sucked in and ended up being there over a week. I stayed in a little hut, high up above the ocean where I could hear the waves (and the rainy season´s plummeting rain) crashing all over us. It was gorgeous. If a little pee-inducing.

Each day myself and Julio would relax on the main beach there... that is, until a dirt spill rendered the ocean brown, unswimmable and pretty frickin' gross. Then we took to making the trek a half hour North to a deserted few beaches called Maderas where it was completely unspoilt and seriously virgin. Nearly our own beach. We spent our time being flung about in the violent waves like children, escaping the sea every so often with enough salt water swallowed to spit out our own little ocean. Getting in touch with my inner child is so liberating and it felt incredibly self-revolutionary to discover that I still knew how to "play." On one of my favourite days we went on a fishing trip at sunset and I loved it so much. Very therapeutic and meditative and rocking gently on the waves felt so calming and natural. With my beginner´s luck, I caught six tasty fish! Was only able to keep two red snappers, which we then had cooked up for us and ate for one of the most delicious meals I´ve ever been fortunate enough to consume.

San Juan is quite ¨gringo¨, ridden with bars, shops and restaurants with dollar prices (but a bit cheaper) and american tastes. It is a lot of fun though and not as touristy as I had expected... Locals abound everywhere and mix well with the foreigners. Good community vibe as I saw in Granada. More foreigners there than usual as SURVIVOR are filming their 22nd season on one of the nearby beaches and with their 300-strong film crew, the place spilled with crew members getting drunk on their days off.

Loved San Juan, happy happy days
x

Nica Nica Nicaragua!

And finally here I am in Nicaragua, I have been here for the past two weeks now and have absolutely loved it! For many years I had dreamed of coming to the exotic and rarely mentioned country and so far it has been everything and more than I expected it to be! I began my exploration in the colonial city of Granada. I had been told in Antigua, Guatemala to expect a similar city. Although I knew this meant it would be very beautiful, I also feared that it might mean the city would be overrun with Westerners speaking English everywhere and tourist shops, tour operators, tourist prices as is Antigua. However I was delighted to discover a very different kind of colonial city. One that is more authentically Nicaraguan.

Granada is ALIVE and in the best possible way. The streets are packed with families and family businesses all constantly interacting, trading and laughing together. There seems to be a very strong sense of community. The numerous market stalls (indoor and outdoor) just outside our hostel were so colourful and bustling, with fresh smells (of both the delicious and the grim varieties) filling the Granadan air. The people look strong and resilient and I found them to be nothing but curious and friendly (if a little difficult to understand in accent.) They dress more modern than the rest of Central America and walk with a tougher swagger. I appreciated this. We spent our few days there walking about the pretty streets and visiting the Lago de Nicaragua where the city is based. Pretty vistas surround Granada - hills and volcanoes alike. There is a good sense of burgeoning art, supported by the awesome building Casa de los Tres Mundos - an arts and culture centre very much carving its way as the heart of the city.

Nearby is the town filled with famous artesania markets called Masaya. One day we took a bus there and walked around all the impressive handicrafts and creative fashions. It is a market for locals rather than tourists. Had I more space in my heaving backpack, no doubt I would have invested in the Nicaraguan produce here. Overall, I really liked Granada and it was a spectacular introduction for me to Nicaragua which is already proving to be a gritty, authentic vision of Central America.

San Salvador

Birds Eye View

Julio and I left Antigua and went to Guatemala City for our transfer to San Salvador. However in rather typical Guatemalan fashion there was hassle upon the exit of the country. When we arrived in Guatemala the Borders official ¨forgot¨ to stamp our passports and so essentially we were in the country illegally. We went to Immigration to see what could be done and were told that we could either go through official procedures and seek out a lawyer to do some paperwork for us and then wait up to three weeks (which of course, neither of us have) for the legal declaration of our arrival in Guatemala to be made so that we could leave the country (!)... OR we could pay the ¨fine¨ and leave swiftly the same day...

So we spent the night in rather grim Guatemala city, went back to Immigration the next morning and paid our BRIBE and got our stamp. Before our bus left we had time so we visited the ENORMOUS and SCARILY REAL sinkhole in the middle of the city. Cordoned off with high metal fencing, it was still very much visible and I can confidently confirm that it really is a black hole to the underground of HELL, taking buildings with it. We were in awe. But deeply troubled at the same time. How the world cannot be up in arms about this issue shocks me to the core. If this is not an indicator that we need to tune our lives into nature again then I seriously think humanity is doomed.

At the mall

...But then on to El Salvador! With the country using US dollars as currency and with my scarily diminishing funds, we resolved to not spend much time in the country and instead use it as a passage for Nicaragua... And so we only spent three nights there. Whilst I am certain that the country has more to see and do, San Salvador itself seems quite void of its own authentic culture. Ridden with shopping malls and American fastfood joints, it really is a centre of commerce, business and growing wealth. From the three days I saw it, I got the distinct impression that El Salvaor has picked itself up rather quickly despite its recent end to her civil war (1992.) No doubt that vivid memories are fresh in the peoples' psyches though and the fact that there seemed little distinct El Salvadoran tradition in the capital was likely due to the war stamping out such cultures. Although on the surface thinks seemed peachy and prosperous, I couldn't help feel sad for San Salvador for perhaps not being El Salvador but instead another generic American city.

So for the couple of days we were there, we did what San Salvador had to offer us - we ate pizza and ice-cream and watched no fewer than two Hollywood films (Robin Hood and ahem, Fame) and a stage play. Can´t remember the title but it was a highly entertaining one-man comedy about the differences between the sexes... all in Spanish. Not sure if its tribute to my improving language skills or the fact that the differences remain the same internationally and I could therefore recogise them, but I understood pretty much everything and was in hysterics throughout. San Salvador knows good theatre.

So after a few (relatively) expensive days in sexy San Salvador, it was on to Nicaragua... The colonial city of Granada to be precise.

Paz x

Spirituality in San Marcos

So after my spanish classes and volunteering in San Pedro, I went back to the lakeside town of San Marcos, still around Lago Atitlan. Since I heard about it in Mexico city, I had intended to attend a month-long course called the Moon Course at a famous Spirituality study centre called Las Piramides located in San Marcos. However as I had taken too much time with my travelling, I only had time to attend for one week. The Moon course is a course dedicated to us asking the existential questions, Why Are We Here? Who Am I? What is the Meaning of Life? What is my Purpose in Life? etc etc, questions I seem to always be preoccupied by but even more so since my near-death experience.

The course was great and located in lovely lush gardens. I stayed in a pyramid-shaped cabana there and our learning temple was also a large wooden pyramid construct. Every morning we had hatha yoga classes and then a class on metaphysics, an attempt to encourage us to flesh out existential questions of how we live our lives and what life means to us. I find metaphysics deeply invigorating and oftentimes during one day I ask myself at least one question in this vein and so the metaphysics classes were absolutely perfect for me. In the evenings we had a meditation session which I loved as I was able to get in tune with my subconscious and free my mind from its regular clutter of (often useless) thought. We discussed many topics on which I feel strongly about; about how we are all one collective infinite consciousness and how instead of believing ourselves divided we should see ourselves as One and tune in to each other and the world around us in order to effect peace and unity. We also discussed the Subconscious Mind and how it can be played with with such concepts as Astral Travelling and Lucid Dreaming. I met some great people there, Lucy from London/Sydney, Ashley from Sydney, Lux from Switzerland, Sebastian from Bath and Rebecca from San Francisco. All really great vibes and all hoping to get in tune with their spirituality.

Anyways, I ended up leaving early as certain aspects were too much for me. I am all for spirituality but I am not for spirituality that becomes almost like religion. Worshipping crystal balls and consulting Oracles is too much, even for an ¨open-minded¨ (at least I THINK I am) person like me. Plus, there were David Icke followers. And most insulting of all, the Oracle told me I needed to CONQUER LUST and have more INTEGRITY in my life. How rude! So I had to leave...

And off I went, back to the colonial city of Antigua which I enjoyed far more this time around than the last. Looking beyond its gringoicity, I was able to enjoy the beautiful ruins and cobbled streets and gorgeous setting amidst volcanoes more acutely this time. In fact, I spent a glorious day in the gardens of an abandoned, ex-covent ruins reading my book with the birds all alone. Absolutely delightful! And a couple of days later, with a farewell to Antigua my good Texan friend Julio and I took leave for our next country, El Salvador.

Volcano eruptions, tropical storms, floods, mudslides, SINKHOLES

Mudslide in San Pedro

It has been a tumultuous past couple of weeks for Guatemala. First Volcano Pacaya, near to the famous, colonial and very touristy city of Antigua unexpectedly erupted killing a journalist and another local. This spread volcanic ash throughout the country reaching Guatemala city and even as far as Lanquin, the home of Semuc Champey. Then a tropical storm hit killing 152 Guatemalans and 100 people were left missing from the landslides. From my experience this entailed three days of utterly unrelenting, heavy and cold rain. I was studying Spanish in San Pedro by Lago Atitlan at the time and can report that every street and was transformed in to a river and every back alley (for San Pedro has many) became a stream. We all spent three days completely drenched and there was no escaping the cold, wet rain. Once the rain let up, we found out that several areas of Guatemala had been affected badly. Floods were common throughout the country and particularly near the capital city where an enormous and unbelievable sinkhole opened as the floor of the city collapsed upon itselfi. Looking like a photoshopped image or indeed a black hole to the underground from a comic book adapted action hero film from Hollywood, the sinkhole has evoked strong reactions from across the globe as to how it could possibly have happened and what loopholes or shortcuts must have been exploited for the city floor to have caved in so violently.

Sinkhole in Guatemala city

More locally, around the lake, the torrential rain resulted in mudslides from the surrounding hills and volcanoes. Houses and business were destroyed as mud seaped thickly in and people were swept with the mud. Some locals suffered the impact of the mudslides more than others and in San Pedro where 25 houses were destroyed, one family were particularly torn apart. The mother and father suffered bad injuries but their young daughter was completely lost to the mudslide and was most likely swept in to the lake. Once the rain had stopped, all the local communities rushed to help. At the site of severe damage in San Pedro, local Guatemaltecas, expats and travellers alike were digging at the sight looking for the body of the girl for the past week. People have also begun digging out the mud from the houses to make them livable again. In the meantime, the displaced Guatemalans are being housed in municipal buildings, churches and schools. The local community have pulled together to provide clothes, food and other amenities for the families. It is really quite touching. Although I spoke to an English girl who has been living in San Pedro for the past two months and is one of the forerunners of the aid project and she tells me that people suspect that the officials and admin have sadly been stealing some of the donated goods from the now homeless people.

Destroyed Spanish school

In Spanish class I discussed a lot of these issues with my teacher. She is local, 24yrs old and has a wicked sense of humour. I learnt most of what I know about local Guatemalan life from my conversations with her. Her uneducated father was made to leave school at 11 by his parents to help provide for his several siblings and as such has been working in the mountain plantations (mainly the coffee fincas) his entire life. He earns, on average, between 40-45Quetzales a day (less than 4quid) and works 6days a week. Her mother spends her time doing work in the home, which is far more strenuous than it sounds. She makes fresh tortillas, salsa, refried beans everyday and cooks the meals, cleans the house and twice weekly will wash the household´s laundry by hand. This is normal life for Guatemaltecas. My teacher is educated and holds a good position for a local San Pedran as she teaches to foreigners. Also the school I was attending was a Cooperative of Spanish schools (and a bit more expensive than other schools in the area) which means that all the money goes to the teachers and their community projects, rather than to a company. The community projects involve sponsoring local poor families by providing weekly groceries, helping to build new homes for families who live in unlivable housing conditions and sponsoring physical education and art teachers for the local schools so the children can have access to a more well-rounded education than they would be able to otherwise. The school also runs a scheme where the students can volunteer at a local Home for the Handicapped which I helped out at too. I learnt however that the school´s future is being threatened as this year it has so far only been able to raise in donations a fifth of the necessary funds required to keep it open.

Mud-filled houses

San Pedro is a fun village for tourists. There is an abundance of schools, hostels, cafes, bars and other activities available for quite cheap. Plus, it is by the magnificent lago atitlan which itself is surrounded by three glorious volcanoes. However the past couple of weeks of consecutive disasters that have ridden Guatemala has overshadowed the country with not only a dark sense of foreboding but a strong and overwhelming energy that things are not quite right. If Guatemala and her people had not been so poverty-stricken to begin with, perhaps these disasters would not have blighted the country so badly. It has definitely been a strange time in my travels as now more than ever, it has been brought home to me that I am very lucky to have been born British and thereby privileged.

Delfino Cortez is a very gentle, very happy and very elderly (in his late seventies) local Guatemalteca who works in the big gardens of my spanish school for six days of the week. He does a beautiful and attentive job of the lush and grand gardens, and all of it is tended to only by himself and without help. He has the kindest face and during breaks of my classes he would seize the opportunity to speak to me and practise his little English and attempt to learn more. The first day I spoke to him he asked me if I was from the States. I told him I was from England which is even further away. He looked at me incredulously and exclaimed that it must be extremely expensive to fly over from there. I told him that I worked very hard just so I could afford it. He replied that in Guatemala everyone works very hard, every day, for most of the week but they still don´t make enough money to take the bus to the neighbouring town. He smiled and shrugged and continued tending to the jamaica rose bush... I think I wept a little inside.

Volcanic ash in Guatemala city

Peace and help for Guatemala,
A x

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

Guatever

And now here I have been in Guatemala! No time to write as I have been exceedingly busy soaking in Guatemala´s lush landscape and rich culture! My time in the country began on the island of Flores. The island is quaint and set amidst a gorgeous lake where I watched a breathtaking sunset... The clouds, the sky and the water all painted pink by the sun. Awestruck, I decided I liked Guatemala already. In Flores, I made the trip to Tikal. Possibly my last ruins-based trip, I had saved the best for last. Not only is Tikal the largest excavated Maya ruins site in the Americas but it is also set amidst dense jungle similarly to Palenque. Upon arrival, I kicked off my (oversized and stolen) flip flops and ran amok up the pyramids, through the jungle, over the limestone and scampering over the temples. I felt intoxicated by jungle fever and it felt criminal to wear shoes. I wanted to walk barefoot as the Maya once did and where the Maya once did. And the jungles were ridden with the exotic. Howler monkeys, spider monkeys, tarantulas, humming birds, parakeets, woodpeckers and a dozen other varieties of brightly feathered beings. Truly beautiful.

And so after Flores, we made our way to Lanquin for a water wonderland called Semuc Champey. In Lanquin we stayed at a pretty sweet hostel, again set amidst much flora and also by a serene river. Lanquin is mid-nowhere and Semuc Champey even more so. Here we visited Semuc Champey twice. It is hard to describe Semuc Champey... Many people attempt to do it justice by describing it as the most beautiful place on earth. A combination of rivers, waterfalls, natural pools in the middle of hills and jungle and forestry, Semuc Champey is all crystalline turquoise water and limestone rock formations. Here is what we saw from the Mirador (Look-out point) which took about 20mins of uphill, strenuous hiking to reach...

The second day that we visited Semuc Champey was indeed a BIG DAY OUT. I thought I was going to die twice that day but in between, had a flavour of heaven. On the way there, Julio and I took a collectivo, a form of transportation popular in these ends and one that I am most accustomed to. Indeed, the first time we went to Semuc and took a collectivo, they managed to squeeze eighteen people into the back of the burning hot, black pick-up. Everyone seemed perfectly comfortable except for myself and Julio. SO on our second day we attempt the same route, but this time it is a standing collectivo which means people are standing on the back of the truck. It is completely packed so they sit us on top of the driver´s cabin, where the LUGGAGE usually goes! PUTA MADRE! With no proper railings, I was being flung about with every corner taken by the collectivo and the drivers here take no care in driving slowly down those sharply rocky dirt roads. For half an hour, I thought I was going to die. And couldn´t help express so. However, when we arrived my eyes pumping with adrenaline and my heart rate unpleasantly high I soon calmed as I was greeted once again by this (and this is only one of the pools):

We spent so much time our second time in Semuc soaking in the waters and energy that we found ourselves neglected. In fact, for our last hour or so there we had the ENTIRE PARK to ourselves! It was like a movie. I was in my own paradise and it felt incredible. However, this pleasure was not consequence free... Our indulgence in this wonderland came at the price of missing the collectivo home and having to walk NINE KILOMETRES along uphill, rocky, dirtroads in the DARK!!!!... And then it began to rain. Once again, I found myself having one of those experiences that are significantly better and funnier in retrospect.

Flores and Lanquin were awesome introductions to the country of Guatemala which thus far I can conclude has not seemed to be too different from Mexico. It is nice to be back in a Spanish speaking country after Caye Caulker. And now we are in Antigua! The colonial capital of Central America and so far as I can tell, pretty streets, cute cafes, marvellous ruins, lots of churches... and ridden with tourists as a result. Tomorrow we leave for Lago Atitlan however I intend to return to Antigua (if not Xela (Quetzaltenango)) for Spanish classes after a bout of spirituality at the Lake.

Paz x