Antigua

In a nutshell, Antigua is quaint cobblestone streets, charming colonial buildings, and /gringos everywhere/. The city is sometimes faulted for these things (¨it isn't the 'real Guatemala'¨), but it worked out well for me: spending three relaxed days there was a good transition from home in the states to being a solo female traveler in a country where she doesn't speak the language(s).

I spent most of my time in Antigua wandering the streets with hostel insta-friends, reading in various coffee shops, establishing my beer preferences (Moza > Gallo), and trying my hand at purchasing things. And purchasing things, my friends, is scary, because it involves /speaking Spanish/.

So far my interactions with the locals have been either pleasant or utterly embarrassing, and whether an interaction falls into one category or the other is completely determined by how much Spanish I have to speak. "Pleasant" goes like this: I say "buenas tardes" and smile, random local returns the greeting and smiles, we pass each other a bit happier than a moment ago. "Utterly embarrassing" is any conversation consisting of more than ten words, and usually goes like this: I have a conversation prescripted in my head before I enter a shop. But inevitably (admittedly fewer than a dozen times at this point) my planned conversation is derailed when, being friendly or wanting additional specifications of my request, the shopkeeper/barista/baker/market vendor asks me another question. Which I usually don't understand at all. Hilarity ensues, and much gesturing and one- to two-word sentences later, both parties are a bit exhausted.



On the up side, I successfully bargained during my last market purchase in Antigua, getting an avocado for Q3 ($0.38) instead of Q4 ($0.50)--still gringo-priced, but there isn't much I can do about that.

Besides the above-mentioned activities, the only other noteworthy event was climbing Acatenango, one of Antigua's neighboring volcanoes. It was, to borrow one of Caleb's phrases, insanity sauce. I went through my hostel's affiliated company, OX (Outdoor Excursions), which is run by a bunch of super-fit expats. Ten clients, our guide Lisa, and two police escorts went. We left at 5:00am on Saturday and drove an hour into the hills on really hairy rural roads. Around 7:00 we got to the trailhead, a deep culvert between two hillside corn fields, and began climbing. The grade of the hike wasn't any more difficult than a Coloradan 13er, but the terrain made it tough--unstable volcanic sediment, which eroded away easily with rain, resulting in a deep fissure snaking along the trail with us. Several folks were really good at falling into it. Repeatedly.



After an hour of farmland hiking we entered ¨the cloud forest¨. Which, as far as I could tell, meant ¨foggy rainforest¨. We did two hours of switchback hiking through that, which actually was really pretty and enjoyable. Then, about three hours into our hike, just as we got above treeline, the insanity sauce started, i.e., it started raining. Basically, then this happened:
-It made the hike turn into something like walking up a mountain of wet cement;
-No one except for our guide and the cops brought rain pants, which made everyone completely soaked from waist down;
-The increased physical and mental demands of hike+rain broke the will of one of the hikers, so we had to carry her pack, and a bit later, pull her by a stick up the mountain;
-Once we got up to the false summit, everyone's soaked pants made everyone really f'in cold and some folks were starting to look hypothermic.

So, rather wisely, our guide recommended we head down rather than hike the additional hour up to the true summit in dense fog and rain. We still took the typical summit photo, but I think we only made it to 12,700-something feet, about 300 feet short of the top.

On the way down we opted for the steeper, quicker, "more adventurous" trail. And wow, it was amazing. I can best summarize it by saying: Fern Gully + buckets of rain + the scene in Honey I Shrunk the Kids where the kids go screaming down a mud/water chute made of grass and mud. Really cool.

* * *

I've since moved on from Antigua, and am now in Quetzaltenango, or Xela (SHAY-la), where I will be spending the majority of my time if all works out well. I'm staying with a host family, who are all very nice, but don't speak English. With me not speaking Spanish, things are a bit awkward at the moment, but our language barrier will work in my favor once I start picking up their language. And that begins in earnest tomorrow morning, when class starts.

That's all for now. I'll be sure to keep y'all posted. Thanks for reading! :)