La Antigua y Monterricco - Guatemala

Entonces.

I arrived unscathed in Guatemala City Thursday afternoon. I made my connection in El Salvador really smoothly (San Salvador is a tiny airport, and both flights were half an hour behind schedule; de-icing in Toronto, Central American time - muy relajandar - in El Salvador). La Escuela Español Sevilla, where I´m learning Spanish for the next week, arranged for a shuttle to pick me up at the airport. When I arrived at my casa in Antigua, it seemed really, really quiet and empty. I asked Ana, the young woman who runs the house, if there were other students staying here at the moment, and I guess she didn´t understand my crappy attempt at Spanish because she said no. So then I got REALLY lonely and envisioned a week of solitary Spanish study and no one to hang out with. After I got settled in my room, I started to panic a bit about the fact that I´m travelling alone. Anyone who knows me knows I have absolutely no sense of direction; I actually think that I have problems with proprioception in general, as I´m always walking into walls, spilling liquids, walking into oncoming traffic. And, despite my Spanish class last summer in Toronto, I´m a complete beginner. How the hell am I to travel around Central and South America with such limited Español?

An hour later, some of the other students returned to the student house in time for dinner; they´d been partying at the school all evening, and some of them were quite tipsy. I met Georgina and Caroline, two smart English women who have been at the school for one and two weeks, respectively. They´re really cool! Anna and Christina (the other woman who runs the house) were not informed of my veganism, so my first dinner consisted of watermelon and cantoloupe. And bread. I felt timid during dinner, didn´t really want to talk to people that much, and then I got paranoid that I would feel like this for my entire trip and never meet anyone at all. Then I realized I was really tired and decided to go to bed.

Guatemalans LOVE fireworks. Fireworks seem to fulfill a need for excitement and escape that Canadians seek in beer and Americans in giant food portions. My first night in Antigua, I mistook a firecracker for a gunshot, and envisioned myself getting attacked in the night. The following morning, a German girl named Sandra informed me that the noises were, in fact, firecrackers. I`ve heard them every night since.

Before class on Friday, I decided to walk around Antigua. Since all the streets are numbered on my map, I thought I´d be fine. Unfortunately, the calles and avenidas are not marked very clearly in reality, so I ended up getting lost. I kept returning to the same yellow church, and realized by the third or fourth time that I was not, in fact, walking south. I eventually returned back at the student house in time for lunch, and then headed off to Sevilla for my first Guatemalan Spanish lesson.

I think I must have one of the best Spanish teachers in Antigua. Her name is Gloria, and she´s absolutely lovely. She began speaking in Spanish to me as soon as we met, and I was able to understand her, if not respond in very clear Spanish. Each lesson lasts four hours, and, though my Friday class was at 2:00, all of this week´s classes are at 8:00. That´s right, folks, 8 in the a.m. Anyway, Gloria is really nice and patient, and does speak a bit of English, so we communicate quite well.

Georgina, Caroline and I decided to spend the weekend in Monterricco, a cute little beach town about 2 hours from Antigua. Antigua´s high up in the mountains, and has been quite chilly since I arrived, getting down to 13 degrees or so in the evenings (I KNOW, I KNOW, but I came on this trip in part to experience some intense heat), and Monterricco was HOT. The three of us lazed around the beach (the sand was black and got really hot in the sun) and played in the intense waves in the ocean. Being in the ocean was heaven for me; I could only think about staying above water (the rip tide is crazy at that beach), so it cleared my head and I finally started to relax.

Sunday morning, Georgina, Caroline and I got up at 5 a.m. to take a boat trip with around 2 dozen other tourists through a Monterricco nature reserve. Back in my undergrad days, I used to go to bed at 5 a.m. Anyway, the tour was led by a really great guide who made a point to speak really slowly and articulately in Spanish so that we could get a sense of the plants and wildlife in the area. We watched the sunrise, saw a school of flying fish that seemed to be performing a choreographed dance for us, and heard many beautiful birds I could not identify. I took loads of pictures, which I hope to share with ya´ll very soon!

The girls and I had the best daiquiris we´ve EVER had in Monterricco. They were made with real strawberries rather than that sweet filler that most daiquiris are made of. DELICOUS.

Sunday night, I stopped into a restaurant and internet café to call home, and ordered a ¨burrito rez.¨ I assumed the burrito rez was vegan, and I ordered it without cheese and cream. Since I was so hungry after my exhausting day lying around the beach, I took a big bite and swallowed two mouthfuls before I realized that, mixed in with the black beans was BEEF. I haven´t eaten cow – beautiful, cryptic cows! – in 13 freakin´ years! That´s half my damn life! Fortunately, the kitchen and wait staff were really nice and brought me a vegan burrito.

Monday, after class, I finally got a chance to take some photos of this beautiful city. La Antigua is full of cobblestone streets, big old dilapidated colonial buildings which have aged very gracefully, and, like every Latin American city I´ve been to, lots of colour! I´m finally starting to feel like I know the city a bit better, and am making a conscious effort, while walking around by myself, to notice landmarks and remind myself every 20 seconds which direction I´m headed.

La Antigua is surrounded by three volcanoes, and I´m going to hike up the active one, Pacaya, tomorrow afternoon with some other students from my school. I can´t wait to see lava for the first time in my life!