Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

There are 2 large shopping centers in Xela and recently Wal-Mart bought both of them. We’ve been shopping at a small grocery store near our school. I was reminded of Hugo Chavez’s recent speech at the UN when I realized the devil is all around us. The director of our language school is a Guatemalan woman and we had a short discussion about some of the criticism Wal-Mart receives in the US. It was interesting to hear what she had to say about Wal-Mart. I took her point to be that when people in Guatemala barely have enough to eat they don’t worry about things like business practices, the effects on small-businesses or working conditions of the people producing goods sold at Wal-Mart. I’ve never seen it as a real luxury to be able to criticize Wal-Mart and choose to shop elsewhere, but I guess it really is.

Every day our school has special activities. We’ve been to a weaving cooperative run by Guatemalan women, yesterday we had a cooking class and today we took a trip to a small town about an hour away from Xela.

We first took a city bus, and then took 2 chicken buses up to the town. This time we actually did have chickens in the bus. I kept hearing this squeaking noise when I finally saw the small beaks of little chickens poking out through the holes in a cardboard box stored above Matthias and William. At times the bus was absolutely packed. When these buses are on the road in the States I think they only allow 2 kids per seat. There were 6 of us on my seat for a while. There was a woman at the window, I was in the middle with William on my lap and at the isle was a Mayan woman with a little girl on her lap and a baby wrapped on her back. We went to a small town with an interesting church. It was bright yellow with lots of colors. There is a picture of Matthias and his Spanish teacher here. There wasn’t a lot to do in the city so while we were waiting for the bus back Matthias’ teacher started to tell him about another nearby church they wanted to take us to. It is high up in the mountains and they perform all sorts of witchcraft. They decided that we shouldn’t actually go there because they sacrifice chickens and other animals and that might not be good for the kids.

Matthias is really enjoying his Spanish teacher this week. They sit and chat the entire time and he’s getting good at bull-shitting in Spanish. I knew he could do it. She ended up telling him how much money she makes as a teacher. At the school we are attending we each pay $100 for private language classes (5 hours of lessons for 5 days). Our teachers take half of what we pay, which means she earns $50/ week. Sometimes she works at other schools, where she is paid less. Right now she lives on $200/month. The same work in the US draws a salary 8-10 times higher wages. Matthias asked her if she wants to travel around with us for the next week or two since she doesn’t have any students lined up for next week. We’d pay for her food and accommodation and pay her her current salary. We want to continue learning Spanish, she knows a lot about Guatemala and she has a really good sense of humor. It could be a lot of fun for all of us. We’ll see what she says, but there might be 5 of us in the Yoda Van for the next couple of weeks. Plus we might finally see an end to all the “Gringo Prices” we’ve getting getting at the stores if we let her do a bit of the negotiating.

Somehow our blog has deteriorated into more information about the people we are living with than what we are up to. All that is definitely a part of what we are experiencing, but I thought we should try to tell a bit more about Guatemala. On a side note, our guest house is almost empty. Most of the people we have been writing about have left and we honestly miss them. Despite all their peculiarites (like the fact that Paul sleeps with a headband on – and please don’t ask me how I know this) we have really enjoyed the last week with them. In addition to this I believe that Matthias and I are probably just as good fodder for all of their blogs as they have been for ours.

Travel around Xela is mostly done in little mini-busses. In Mexico the comperable mode of transportation was called a “collectivo” but we never actually rode in one in Mexico. Xela is the second largest city in Guatemala and it is necessary to use them to get around and see some of the sights in this city. There are some corners with official bus stop signs, but often there are none and, really, they’ll stop for you just about any where you can hail their attention. These vehicles are the size of an average American mini van and they have one driver plus an assistant. The assistant’s job is to hang out the side window and call out the major destinations of the bus. For example when we were headed to the Zoo we took the bus that was headed towards “terminal” (the main bus terminal which is right next to the zoo). When the bus arrives at a stop the assistant opens the side door, jumps out, collects the fare of everyone exiting (1 Quetzal = 15 cents, and kids ride free if they are on your lap) and loudly broadcasts the major stops on the route. The assistant gives the driver the ok to continue, the driver continues on and the assistant hops into the van (as it is moving) and may or may not close the side door. The thing that makes these buses so neat is that there really is no official capacity, there are only practical limitations to the amount of people who will fit in one. A van of this type in the US would be rated for 8 passengers, but the van we were in had 23. There are also no timetables or schedules. If you want a ride in one, you just have to stand on the side of the road and hope that the next one that comes along stops for you, and if it does, you hope that it is going to direction you want to travel, and if that is also true, you just have to hope it have enough room left for you to stuff your small Guatemalen self into it.

Today we went on our first real outing outside of Xela since we’ve been here. We didn’t travel far, but we decided we’d go to the hot springs in the next larger town, Zunil. The entire country of Guatemala is honestly littered with volcanoes, hot springs and ruins. There are 3 major hot springs just south of Xela and we decided to visit the ones our friends recommended. Jason had given us a good description of how to get there: “Get on the chicken bus at the gas station about 3 blocks from our school towards Zunil, don’t get off at the first major stop, but get off at the stop next to the river and the bridge. Once you get off the bus, hail a pick-up driver and he’ll take you up the mountain to the entrance of Georginas (the hot springs).” We found the bus stop fine, and the first chicken bus that stopped was going towards Zunil. Chicken buses are old American school buses that are no longer considered street worthy in the US. They are often painted vibrant colors and can take you just about anywhere in Guatemala that you want to go. We waited out the first stop and continued along. Our directions were to get off when the bus stopped next to a bridge and a river. We’re beginners at navigating Guatemala, so we were a little unsure where we were supposed to get off. We saw a river, but not a bridge. When we finally ended at the stop in Zunil it was obvious that it was the stop to get off at. I asked an older man on the bus and he pointed up the mountain towards the hotsprings and we knew we were right.

The next obstaclce was to hail a pick-up. We weren’t really sure how that worked either, but it turned out to be quite easy. Pick-ups seem to be the second mode of transportation in Guatemala and one stopped for us right after we got off the bus. We were told they would want to charge us 75 Quetzales (10 US dollars) to get up to the hotsprings, but we should talk them down to 40. The first person who stopped wanted 40 so we didn’t even try to bargain. Matthias, William, Julian and I all climb into the back of this pick-up and we set off. But the driver stays on the main route and we’re heading down the mountain. The old man in the bus pointed way up into the hills towards Georgina. Matthias makes his way to the front of the truck bed, yells out “Senor? Vamos a Georgina?” He stops the truck so he could hear us better and we realize that he is headed to the hot springs further down the mountain. He says he wants 10 Quetzales more to take us to Georginas, which we figured was fair since we were halfway to the other hotsprings already. We turned around and headed up into the hills. It reminded us both of the Alps, but it is also a bit more misty and jungle-like. In addition the mountains look like a patchwork of fields where they are growing all sorts of vegetables: cabbage, carrots, radishes, corn, lettuce, onions,… The indigenous Mayan women working in the fields really stand out in their bright clothing against the green of their agriculture. When walking through town they often have a basket or cloth package on top their head, and/or a baby strapped to their back.

As we were approaching the hot springs we saw 2 women (who happened to be from Germany) who were jogging up the mountain. Matthias overheard one of them say “If you are going to enter paradise, you might as well take it slow and enjoy it.” What a great description that was. The hotsprings (at nearly 10,0000 feet) are located in a quiet, narrow crevice high up in the hills. There is not a lot of sun that shines there, but they have channeled the water (warmed by volcanoes) into natural stone pools. It is above the clouds, surrounded by steep mountains, covered in greenery and the steam lifts off the green, sulfurous water. We swam for a few hours in all the different pools, had lunch, swam some more, and then headed back toward Xela (in another pick-up, chicken bus ride home).

On Monday we start another week of Spanish classes. We’ve decided to both take classes in the morning and our school has arranged a babysitter to come and play with William and Julian while we are in class. We wanted to both take classes in the morning so we can do more exploring in the afternoon together. It’s amazing how much Spanish William and Julian are picking up by just listening to the people around them. The babysitter apparently doesn’t speak much English so I’m sure our kids will be ordering our food in restauraunts soon better than we can. Maybe we can even get one of them a job in the mini-buses once they learn to make change.

We’re planning on taking Spanish classes for at least another week, maybe two. We put our car in a secure parking lot (which in Guatemala means the backyard of a friend of a friend of a friend of the girlfriend of the director of the school’s backyard). We had to give him the key to the car “in case he has to move it.” If (when we’re ready to leave) we can actually find this guy’s house, and if he hasn’t sold our car off for parts while we’ve been learning to hablar espanol, we’ll be headed out of Xela in about a week or two. If our car and the guy who has our key is nowhere to be found, we’ll be backpacking through the rest of central America and back to Seattle. Honestly, it has been nice not driving for a while. We’ve already driven over 6,000 miles (10,000 km) since we’ve left Seattle. There have been a lot of military checks in Mexico (and a few in Guatemala). Pulling up to a dozen people with rifles with limited Spanish skills looses its luster pretty quickly.