We’ve been travelling for 6 months now. Before we left we reckoned that we had about enough money to travel for 2 years – that makes us more or less ¼ of the way through our journey already! We had big plans when we left New Zealand, we’d travel for a year through Latin America and another year through Africa. Upon spending 3 months in our first country, Mexico, we mentally recalculated and decided maybe it would just be Latin America these two years. Latin America (as we’re travelling it) is comprised of 21 countries, and we also plan to go to Cuba and some other Caribbean Islands, oh, and we’re currently on country 3. This will all work out right??
As we meet up with other travellers and watch them speed through the continent, suddenly popping up in Colombia when they were in Costa Rica 2 weeks ago we realise we are happy with our pace. We have met people from every walk of life, had experiences that required commitments of us and that we would not exchange for yet another whirlwind city stop, and have made friends from all around the world. And where are we now?
This is Lago Atitlan in Guatemala. Somehow we’ve found ourselves working at a hostel in one of the small towns, San Marcos, for the past month. Not a bad view to wake up to every morning really.
The work is a good call for the wallet and we’ve made some incredible friends. On the other hand, San Marcos is hippie central, not just world conscious vegan type hippie-dom; crystal waving, tarot card reading hippies. Now for the most part everyone is riding the harmless and happy, weed-fuelled peace and love train but after having to withstand the death-like screams of a Mexican girl we forcibly dragged into an ambulance after she had been left in bed for 3 days by a “healer” who told her she had broken her leg, refused to x-ray it, manipulated the bones (doing more damage than the original break) and refused to come back and see her because she made too much noise we firmly decided that true hippies are not for us. Every time Mikey hears the word chakra his gag reflex goes into overdrive.
But look how pretty it is!
San Marcos has a deeper, darker undertone too, one not a lot of foreigners seem to pick up on no matter how in tune with the universe they may be. San Marcos, a lot like Guatemala is a very divided place, in San Marcos this division is between locals and foreigners. Now this sort of comes with the territory when travelling, clearly we are different and we don’t belong where we are. Sometimes this causes hostility, usually just curiosity, and occasionally extreme acts of friendliness. When travelling throughout Mexico and Belize however, wherever we went be it somewhere to eat or a tourist activity there was always a mix of locals and non-locals. In San Marcos (and much of the places in Guatemala where tourists frequent i.e. the really beautiful interesting ones) no locals can be seen in unless they’re cleaning or cooking. Seriously. Menus and entertainment are in English (despite the large amount of Latin American travellers), people talk in English, and prices are just completely inaccessible to the local people. Here the only locals we see at the restaurants (who aren’t cooking) are the kids standing outside staring at us eating a piece of pie that costs a days wages. Foreigners have bought up all the prime real estate to make hostels and hippie farms and the locals are making do with what is left. It doesn’t make for comfortable travel nor what we were aiming for when we left home.
We have been trying to make local friends but another barrier is that, not only is our Spanish pretty rough but often it is not their first language. Many indigenous people of Guatemala speak a Mayan language as their first language, not just one dialect however, there are 21 recognised Mayan languages in Guatemala and probably more. It’s quite fascinating how small a distance the languages cover, for example there are several around the lake. One local was explaining to us that many people cannot even speak with others in nearby villages due to the differences. Imagine not being able to communicate with people whose village you can see across the lake from your house! Now imagine the impact on these people when a whole bunch of foreigners come in, buy up the land, bring in more and more foreigners to speak a bunch of new languages and run a world that basically excludes the locals except as servants. There’s an air of resentment in San Marcos which is hard to ignore (oh, unless apparently your head is too far up your ass from all that yoga) which to be honest is pretty understandable. We shouldn’t paint a truly bad picture of the foreigners however, many are here to work with the locals and are doing their best with this and some have done some genuine good in helping locals develop their own projects.
On the whole, as long as we don’t think too hard and try to just be open and friendly to everyone, we’re enjoying our time in spiritual (for a price) San Marcos. It’s a gorgeous place, there’s tons of amazing and interesting people, and we’re actually making money – a good thing since we’re looking at being in Guatemala for at least another 6 weeks…and we have 18+ more countries to go. Then Africa.
The disconnect appears to be somewhat representative of Guatemalan interactions. Guatemala has a highly complex history that we cannot begin to go into in this blog but the marks that it has left on its people can be seen, not just in the poverty and social problems but also in the relations between the people. One local we chatted with in Antigua explained to us the many Guatemalans do not feel as if they are part of a cohesive nation the way persons from other countries do, for example if they meet another Guatemalan overseas they may even go to lengths to ignore each other. As we said, Guatemala has a large Mayan population and the peoples of different areas have different languages. In terms of maintaining individuals cultures this is wonderful but in terms of cohesion and communication it presents challenges. It certainly makes for a fascinating if not always comfortable travelling experience. Guatemala is an incredibly gorgeous country however so lets take a break from the waffle to enjoy some of the beauty of this divided nation.
Just standing on some lava on top of a volcano.
Ok, so this is where this blog entry got up to a month ago before our computer had a small meltdown. To follow was going to be some other blather about being travellers but since we’ve now moved on from the lake it will be replaced by continued blather about the intricacies of travelling Guatemala. After we left the lake we hit the oh so touristy but gorgeously worth it Semuc Champey.
This continued the local/non-local divide. It reached a point where whenever a local approached you you knew, even if they were friendly and chatty that at some point you were going to be asked to buy some form of weaving/bracelet/foodstuff. At this point couchsurfing hadn’t returned us any hits, we’d had difficulty striking up conversation with people and we had not made a single Guatemalan friend. At Semuc we reluctantly joined a tour group to see the sights because that’s how it’s set up here, you can do some things solo but others you can’t unless you pay for the guide and take the tour. Now overall the tour was worth it, crawling/swimming through water filled caves with only candles to light the way (surprisingly no photos of that), river tubing, and seeing beautiful Semuc Champey itself all made for an incredible day.
After Semuc we were ready to leave the tourist places and hit some “real” Guatemala and so we headed up into the highlands. Everything started to change once we hit the mountains, people were friendly and inviting, we got smiles when we walked along the street. Finally we felt like we were discovering Guatemala and her people, and we loved it! Sure we still had occasional uncomfortable interactions, for example when going to a village that got very few visitors and having our friendly greetings met with glares by the women, not comfortable but maybe understandable. In a country where you scrape for every cent people who swan the world just for the fun of it must be completely incomprehensible. What we found in general however was a poor but proud people who work hard and are willing to share with you, be it their time, a story, or just a smile.
Even the donkeys work hard here
A mural depicting the most recent war in Guatemala and its impact in the highlands.
A little tale (still with us?) to illustrate life in the mountains. we were talking with one guy, around our age probably a bit younger. He had just come back from 6 years in the USA as an illegal immigrant working in kitchens. He had gone over illegally because the cost of a work visa was way more than anyone here can afford. He had gone over because he needed money to support his wife and 2 year old son. For 6 years he worked hard in kitchens, sending money back but never seeing his family. He has returned now to be with his family however there is no work for him. He sees his options as scraping by on bits of work here or leaving his family again to return to the states. What a choice. Yet he was upbeat and optimistic that it would work out, somehow.
…..aaaaand that’s where this blog entry ended at month seven. We have now been travelling 8 months. Why was this not posted earlier? A combination of internet access, tiredness, and lack of inspiration. We’ve spent the last month studying Spanish, making amazing friends, and having adventures. Quite frankly however this blog is convoluted and messy enough. We were tempted to scrap it but we needed something to show for the last few months! Were just going to finish with a few photos (and no blah blah blah) from our time in Xela studying. If you’ve made it this far through the blog, you’re a trooper. Guatemala is an amazing country that deserved far better from us that this one disconnect blog, but maybe reading the confusion and disorientation in here will give you an idea of our experiences – this is your brain on Guatemala. Off to El Salvador and back to, short(ish), frequent, to the point entries with less text and more pics. We hope….
Two Legs Good 