Waterfall - San Rafael Chilasco

So, as usual I'll start with an apology for not having written for ages. We're a month and a bit into summer school and the schedule is hectic to say the least. I'm teaching 15 hours of SAT preparation a week, which means a lot of preparation as until Wednesday I hadn't actually taken the exam. It also requires me to teach math, which has a much greater capacity to make you look like a berk in front of your class, so much of my time at the moment is spent with my head in a math book trying to recall everything.

In personal terms I'd say that the Guatemala honeymoon is very much over. I'm increasingly fed up with working a six day week with no scope for travel, not being able to learn Spanish as I'm teaching the whole time and being too tired at the end of the week to do anything interesting. My other problem is that there is relatively little to actually do here. The city is a fascinating place to live for about 6 months, after which it becomes very, very boring. The problem is that everyone is terrified of each other and so there is little social scene in the city. Any that there is lacks any kind of cultural drive and usually tends towards drinking over-priced under-flavoured beer in completely soulless bars. I am though striving to find something, anything more interesting to do with the little free time I have.

In terms of plans, I would like to continue to teach English abroad and work on my Spanish. However, with few savings it looks like this is going to be a difficult ask. Thus, I'm hoping to score a job in Korea or China, with paid flights and accomodation and frankly a much better wage than the one I currently earn. At the moment I'm hoping to leave in November but we'll see. I do need to start looking now, and I've earmarked most of today to do some applications.

To hark back to happier times, I've posted some photos of a trip i made back in April. This was the last call on my Semana Santa tour and came as something of a surprise. I had intended to just get the bus back from Coban, but a last minute change of plans meant that Bryant was driving back to the city. We decided that in the interests of pushing some eco-tourism style stuff, we should check out one of the local attractions: a little known waterfall at a small village in the mountains called San Rafael Chilasco.

Getting there is not easy. You turn off the Coban highway at km125 and follow a twisting dirt track about 15km as it winds up into the mountains. It's worth it for the drive alone as you rise further up above the valley around some potentially fatal corners. When you finally reach the top you are greeted by the local tourism committee, to whom you pay an entrance fee and hire a guide. We actually ended up with two guides for the price of one, as the girls we were assigned's brother jumped in too. We drove another kilometer to the top of the trail and set off into the jungle.

It's not an easy hike to the waterfall, as it involves a steep descent on muddy paths down hte side of the valley. The jungle is incredible though, with giant ferns making it seem like you've regressed to prehistoric times. It's not the safest place in the world though; on walking past a section where a landslide had previously wiped out the path and a great swathe of jungle below it, we asked our guide how long ago had it happened? "About 15 days," came the reply. It was about this time we started to be able to hear the distinctive roar of a lot of water falling a long way. Rounding a corner of the path we were greeted by the sight of a white torrent plunging about a hundred metres into the jungle. It looked a bit like this:

We walked on for another twenty minutes and finally reached the bottom of the waterfall. despite our guides advising us not to we went over to the bottom of it. Only then do you realise quite how powerful and quite how loud it is. You really can't hear much but you can get some awesome photos like this:

It was a bit cold and we were underprepared so we didn't try swimming, but the pool under the waterfall is quite calm so it would certainly be possible. Instead we took some more photos with our guides and then headed off to the other waterfall.

The other waterfall is less spectacular in that it has less water, but is much more serene. This is another good place for a swim or simply clambering about on tree roots about a drop of about 50m so you can take photos like this. How neither Bryant nor I died taking this I'll never know.

Having squeezed the last battery life out of my camera we decided that we'd better get back and get on our way. We didn't quite manage it though, as we decided to stop for lunch in the village as well, and ended up hanging around and chatting to the locals for quite a long time. It was three in the afternoon when we finally got back on the road, about three hours later than intended. Both of us agreed it was a thouroughly worthwhile day though, and now I have a tracing of Winnie the Pooh given to me by a little girl in the village. I just have time to post up one more picture of Bryant posing with our guides...

...and then I'm off. I have lots of photos and some time today, so expect more very soon.

Semuc Champey

So, back to my Semana Santa travels, though expect a blog on my current health situation very soon.

Our plan for day two of our Alta Verapaz adventure was to visit the natural wonder of Semuc Champey, about two and a half hours outside Cobán. My enthusiasm waned quickly when I got up, as we were in the middle of the most intense rainstorm I'd seen in Guatemala. I was assured that this was pretty natural for Cobán though. Still, the prospect of leaping into cold water, and then being further soaked by cold water falling from the sky was not attractive.

I need to backtrack a bit here and explain Semuc. A river running along the bottom of a valley suddenly drops away into an underground cavern, through which it runs for around 500m. Some of the water then bubbles back up through the rocks to make spectacular blue green bathing pools. It's a bit like the Sovereign Centre in Eastbourne but without the wave machine. Perhaps a photo would go some way to explaining this phenomenon?



Okay, so hopefully now you have some idea of how it all works at Semuc. If not, there are more photos to follow. For now, lets whizz back to Cobán where the rain, as usual, was absolutely bucketing down. Check out the shot below from the Parque Central. Quite why the people of Cobán decided to build something looking like a spare prop from Independence Day in the centre of their town I have no idea, but this is Guatemala, and things don't always make sense here.

Without our own transportation a shuttle becomes our sole means of getting to Lanquin, the nearest village to Semuc Champey. This time I'm sat in the back and the preponderance of people prevents me from checking out the driving. I think this is for the best, my nerves are still frayed from yesterday's trip to the Biotopo. On arriving at Lanquin we jump straight on to a pickup bound for Semuc. Pick-ups are just about my favourite way to travel in Guatemala. Basically, you jump in the back and hang on to a metal frame, you have to stand up as it's so packed but you get to meet many interesting people and their cargoes, which range from wood to enormous bags of fish. Like I've said before, travel here is rarely boring and never comfortable.

When we arrive we head straight up to the Mirador (look out point) from where I took the first photo. We figure that it's better to get the sweating out of the way before we jump in the water. It's a good idea too as it ascends very rapidly and very steeply but it's a great fun climb. When we get back down, we take a few photos of where the river disappears (see below) and wonder if anyone has ever made it in and out of the underground cavern (answer, unlikely). Then it's on with the swimming costume (Jasmine almost flashes some unsuspecting tourists and I'm forced to act as a makeshift beach hut using a towel) and into the water. It really is beautiful: clear and populated with small fish which pick your feet if you stay still. This is a feeling no-one can work out whether they like or hate. You have to watch your toes at times as there's also a smattering of good size freshwater crabs wandering about on the bottom. There's excellent opportunity for diving, jumping, swimming or just lounging under a waterfall. Awesome.

Climbing up to the Mirador Jasmine and Greg looked off the pace.


I'm trying very hard not to fall in here.


Tan check: Negative.



I'm not trying very hard not to fall in here though.

Having done all this we get Churrasco (BBQ pork) for lunch, and I just have time to hurl myself off a bridge before the pick-up returns. I will endeavour to add the youtube footage of this happening, though perhaps with the sound turned off to mask my girly scream. Then it's back to Cobán for tacos and sleepytime.

Brief Update

I still have a lot of interesting stuff to blog about from my travels around Easter, but since then it's been (mostly) back to work. However, a few notable things have happened since then.

1. Illness

After a relatively fortunate first three months here, the stomach troubles that seem to plague everyone have cuaght up with me. I'm now two weeks into a stint of diahorrea which nothing seems to shift. I've been given anti parasitic medicine but even that didn't do much more than postpone it for a couple of days. I'm now on an exclusively rice, bread and pasta diet. Fun, I can assure you, it is not. However, as a form of crash dieting I can highly recommend it: I haven't weighed myself recently but I'm willing to bet the scales haven't been this untroubled in a few years.

2. New Housemates

The merry-go-round at the Oxford teachers' house continues to turn, and we welcome Nick and Hannah (both Australian, making the current scores Aus 3, US 2 and UK 1 (sob)). Ben leaves in a couple of weeks and then perhaps we get someone new. Anyways, Nick and Hannah are both ace and up for drinking and adventuring. Nick's buying a car too, so the potential for weekend road-trips pops its head up.

3. Big Trouble in Little Guatemala

Trouble at the top in Guatemala politics-wise. The assasination of a notable lawyer this weekend (who was the lawyer for a notable anti-corruption politician) triggered the release of a posthumous video in which he accuses the president's secretary of carrying out the murder of his client and implicating the president, a major bank and the Mexican drug cartels of working together. I'm going to refrain from commenting as I don't fully understand the political system down here (or indeed, how anything works at all) but if you're interested you can watch the video on youtube. Some of our staff are quite excited by the prospect of a coup, me not so much. Revolution often involves bullets and collateral damage, being a part of which I'm not a fan.

Right, I'm off to neck an Immodium and try to teach my SAT class. Toodle-pip.

First blog post for ages!

Hey team, apologies for the lengthy interlude between blog posts. As you may have guessed, I have been rather busy over the last month, and not having the interent at home makes blogging a challenge. So, while the blog vegetable patch may be looking a little overgrown, I think with some careful pruning and weeding it might just be salvagable...

So let's go back in time a month to just before Semana Santa and our big week off. The Friday directly before SS we all went to pick up our renewed passport stamps from the immigration office (a surprisingly hassle-free process, destroying my illusions of Central American beauracracy) and then popped into Guate's botanical garden for a look around. The garden was actually closed but the 'gringo factor' and some gentle pleading got us in to the deserted garden. It really is a beautiful place, and forms a surprisingly effective sanctuary in the middle of the city. While you can still hear the car-horns, you can at least imagine that you're elsewhere. I have a couple of pictures that I took.

(L to R: Andrea, Me, Jasmine, Alice, Theo, Ben)

Following this we went for our usual Friday tacos & Gallo session, which was complemented by a procession. I wasn't sure if it was appropriate, but I took some photos anyway.

If you flick back through my blog posts, you'll notice that a few weeks before all this Andrea and I had dinner at our taxi drivers house. We thought it would be polite to return the invitation, so for Saturday lunchtime we invited him and his family around. We had assumed in would just be him, his wife and his Grandson, so we were slightly surprised when no less than 10 people turned up. Still, a quick trip to the butchers later and beef stir fry for 13 was underway. All in all it was a reasonable success, though the stress of the cooking rendered what little Spanish I speak useless. Still we battled through the awkwardness and made it out the other side.

After this, it was time to say goodbye to a couple of housemates who were off to Coban (though weirdly, it was us leaving for Coban the next day). Cuatro Grados Norte was the destination of choice, followed by Cien Puertas. Basically, drink was taken and a good time was had by all. The highlight was probably the ride home in the back of a pick up. Photos:

(In order: 1. Drunken Greg, 2. Me doing my collie impression, 3. Alice & Theo (Goodbye!))

The following day I woke up around 11, having been informed we'd be leaving for our holidays in Coban "before 12". Given the way I was feeling and the state of my director the previous evening I thought I'd have at least an hours grace. Thus, I stumbled out of the door to hunt for eggs and bread, to be confronted by my directors truck pulling up "I told you before 12!" he yells. Ugh. This was going to be a long day. We woke housemate Greg up and told him to pack (it took him an impressive 5 minutes) and hit the road to Coban, via a quick pit-stop for Gatorade and sandwiches. Jasmine opened a box of warm red wine which did nobody any good. The drive through Guatemala is pretty impressive. Baja Verapaz, which features the lowest point in Guatemala is pretty much a desert and was a little hot for one so pasty as I.

As we climbed back up towards Alta Verapaz we broke to climb to a waterfall in the hills just off the road. Accompanied by the dogs from the local farm we climbed up into the forest as you can see from these photos. It was rather peaceful apart from the dogs, who were intent on fighting with each other and also biting Greg's ankles. Heh.

Having got to Coban and had a delicious dinner in Casa de Acuna, we spent the following day Quetzal hunting. The Quetzal is Guatemala's national bird, a symbol of freedom (it dies in captivity) and highly prized by the Maya and Aztec cultures. It's also extremely rare. The biotopo de Quetzal is a reserve set up to protect their cloudforest habitat and to give people a chance to see them. However, unless you get up very early in the morning it's almost impossible apparently. Unfortunately, so it proved for us, though the biotopo nevertheless sports some beautiful forest, though not much wildlife apart from lizards (one of which is pictured below). We see two birds the whole time we're there (not quetzals) and so we have to be content with the stuffed quetzal at the end of the trail (also pictured). Still, it's a fun day I guess. We hail a 'shuttle' to get back to Coban. These are small minibuses which drive around the country picking up and dropping off locals. They are extremely cheap and outrageously uncomfortable. At one point, our 12 seater minibus has 25 occupants and is still overhauling articulated trucks around the outside of blind bends. Travel in Guatemala is very much not for the faint-hearted. We survived though, and having eaten a delicious Cuban BBQ meal for dinner, drank some cheap rum and hit the sack.

That's it for this post, I'll further cover my adventures in Semuc Champey and San Rafael Chilasco, as well as later travels in Rio Dulce and Antigua. This afternoon I'm debating whether I'm well enough to climb one of the highest volcanoes in Guatemala. More on this later.

Grev.

Slightly late weekly update.

Blog Entry – 22/3/09

Yesterday was my two-monthiversary in Guatemala. Perhaps it’s time for a bit of a review; be prepared for some self-indulgence later on. First though, this week, which has been a bit more interesting than last.

Firstly, no scorpions this week, though I did have to kill a cockroach on Saturday morning. This week has been mental, I’ve taught 30 hours of classes, which is a lot I can assure you. I’d be interested to know how many hours you guys teaching at home do, and if it’s as much as this, how you do it. I am exhausted. Still, I am looking forward to a pretty big paycheck at the end of this month.

Football this week was a little disappointing. We were only six out of seven again so a 6-3 defeat sounds like a respectable effort, but that hides the fact that the opposition never even got out of a jog. I think the big problem is lack of practice, but there’s not much opportunity. Guatemala doesn’t really do parks, they just build houses on them. There’s very little green space here, except in the middle of the main east to west highway. This is closed each Sunday for people to use as a park, which is nice but not really ideal. Apparently London is about 50% green space: in Guatemala the figure is more like 5%. Football-wise, I’m starting to favour the idea of joining a softball league instead. I was rounders captain in primary school, so I have experience.

On Friday evening our taxista, Freddi, invited housemate Andrea and I to his house and to watch a religious procession in El Pueblito (the little village), where he lives. I’ve talked before about how religious Guatemala is, but it’s worth mentioning again especially as we are in the run up to Semana Santa (Holy Week). Every bus you get on has numerous figures of Jesus and other religious minutiae, and most of the ‘camionetas’ are painted with “Jesus Es Mi Pastor” or suchlike. This obviously doesn’t help too much with keeping them safe though, as the number of bus-drivers murdered this year is already in double figures. Freddy, by comparison, is not so fanatical, keeping the iconography down to a small pendant of Christ on the cross hung from his rear-view mirror and ‘D-I-O-S’ written on the side of four pads of post-its on his dashboard.

Anyway, Freddi’s invitation poses a couple of problems. One, it threatens a whole evening of speaking Spanish, at which I am still less than proficient. Secondly, watching religious festivals make me feel rather awkward and slightly perverted: I’ve never quite seen why people who are wholly irreligious choose to get married in church. I can respect that people worship, but going to watch seems a little weird. I put these concerns to one side though, as this is something that few foreigners get to see in Guatemala -you can’t just wander into a village here, order a cream tea and potter about in the churchyard like you could in England. So, after work on Friday Freddy picks us up from our house and drives us up the hill south of the city to El Pueblito.

Freddi lives in a three storey house constructed of concrete blocks. It’s pretty austere but homely, and contains a nice stereo, big TV complete with Nintendo Wii for his nephew, Davide. He shares the house with his wife, three daughters, one of their husbands. He also has three cocker spaniels, who live perched precariously on the roof. His uncle lives next door, with several other relations. When we arrive, his family are engaged in building a shrine outside the house for the procession.

The procession takes the form of several of the women from the village carrying a statue of Jesus dragging the cross through the village. They are followed by a battered Nissan with a huge amplifier lashed to the top. From this emerges a stately march at deafening volume. Each house in the village has constructed a shrine outside, lit with candles or floodlights, and featuring variously pictures or statues of Jesus, melons, bits of tree and incense burners. The procession halts at each house, the music is turned off and the women say prayers through a microphone to the kneeling population. I stay back and observe while Andrea takes photos. I think about how privileged I am to be seeing this, and then about how many houses are in the village and how many stops the procession will make before it gets to Freddi’s house at the top of the hill. I reckon about 15 instances of listening to unintelligible prayers before I get some food. The children of the village prove to be more entertaining, they seem to be excused from the procession and amuse themselves playing football. Some of them speak a little English and shout “How are you?” They don’t really seem to understand when I answer them though. I try in Spanish instead with no more success. The only person who I seem to be able to communicate with is Davide, who is six. I think our Spanish is probably at about the same level, though that might be unfair on him.

Andrea meanwhile is proving a hit with the children. She is surrounded by them, showing them pictures on her digital camera and chattering away in Spanish. Andrea was definitely born to teach kids. I cower by Freddi’s side: “Muchos amigos,” he says pointing at Andrea. “Si,” I reply, then after a pause “Ella es muy beuno con los ninos”. I suspect that this is less than perfect Spanish, but I get my point across.

After about an hour of prayers and singing the procession winds its way to Freddi’s house. I stand next to him on a step. His daughters kneel in front of the shrine. Prayers are said and songs are sung, he looks at me and smiles. I can tell he’s proud. After one more halt, the procession makes its way back to the church. We follow it and bathe in the stares of the villagers who weren’t involved in the procession. Normally I feel fairly foreign just walking around the city, here I feel triply so. When we get to the church, the lady pastor gives a mercifully short speech and then thanks everyone for coming, including personally thanking “our visitors”, prompting everyone to turn around and applaud Andrea and I. I wonder if this is really deserved, all I’ve done is stand around and look out of place.

We retire to Freddi’s house for tacos and sweetbreads, both of which are delicious. I spend the rest of the evening murdering the Spanish language in an attempt to communicate, and confessing that yes, the English do drink a lot (well, we do). Then we go back home through the ravine, which Freddi tells us isn’t that dangerous after all, and is absolutely amazing. I set my alarm for 6:30am (on a Saturday!) and go to bed.

Saturday night is birthday night, no less than three people associated with the school had birthdays around last weekend, so on Saturday night we went out for some drinks and a bit of dancing in Cuatro Grados Norte, a small, slightly bohemian area which is springing up in Zona 4. It’s definitely the best part of the city I’ve been to. The bars are cool, the crowds are good and you can row about drink prices in pigeon Spanish. We go to a bar where we are the only white people, and show the locals how you should definitely not go about dancing.

Since I started writing this a while ago more stuff has happened. Yesterday we all got sent home early as Guatemala City was ‘kicking off’ a bit. The gangsters here murdered 8 bus drivers for not paying their extortion monies, and also two Koreans for no good reason at all. Then the bus drivers blocked the roads, the army came out and martial law was looking like it might get declared. In the end I don’t think that it did. It made little difference to me anyway, I went home, went for a run, ate some soup and watched ‘The Last Castle’ with Robert Redford. It’s a hard job living here, but someone has to do it.

So how is it going? Well, actually really good. The teaching’s going well, though in terms of grammar it’s a very steep learning curve especially as I prefer to teach higher levels, and the people at the school are great. They kind of have to be though, as it’s not the easiest place to meet people here. There’s little nightlife and what there is is eye-wateringly expensive for poorly paid English teachers. The house is also fine, I’m enjoying things being a bit more simple, though the electricity cutting out halfway through your shower is never a good thing. I’m not that sunburnt, though not at all tanned either. I’ll end with two wishes:

1) The school recruits a teacher who’s halfway decent at football, but not so good as to upstage me.

2) Someone brings me a computer, or points one out that I can afford here.

Thanks for reading all this. I’m also attaching some parade photos, courtesy of Andrea.

AG

The Scorpion King!

So, I’ve had a nice weekend. I wish, for the sake of interest, I could say it was a nice weekend enjoying the spectacular scenery and fascinating culture that Guatemala has to offer. Sadly for you, dear reader, I’ve hardly left the house.

Everyone seems to have been away this weekend. My housemates are, as I write this, on their way back from Antigua Guatemala, the quetzal reserve and a hippy festival at Lake Attitlan. I was invited to the festival, but the thought of a ten hour round trip simply to come back smelling of Patchouli wasn’t too appealing. Besides, I had to work on a Saturday and shouting at a corral of ten Korean kids of a morning is my best paid class all week.

So that left me with nothing to do except to tell my housemates that I intended to spend the entire weekend naked, and head to the supermarket in search of steak. “Could you grab some toilet roll while you’re there?” they asked. No problem, I thought. I got in to Paiz (basically Wal-mart) and located the toilet rolls. A big special offer sign grabbed my attention. “I’m in here,” I thought, “Cheap toilet roll and steak, awsomeproso!” Then I looked at the price: 60 quetzales for 12 rolls. That’s about £5! I’m not sure what the going rate for bog roll back at home is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not that much. Even if it is, as a proportion of my earnings it’s huge, I only earn around £500 a month here and I can’t afford to be shelling out that much just for a wipe. It’s not even good quality either, Andrex shits all over it.

The relative cost of things here is mad, anything vaguely western or middle class is hugely expensive, largely as you are also funding the men with shotguns who guard the store and keep most of the local populace out. Being a ‘canche’ has it’s advantages here as you never get challenged going anywhere, as people just assume that you’re rich. Anyway, by way of a comparison, I bought three bags of fairly basic sweets for one of my classes on Friday (due to a foolish bowling bet). They cost me 75Q, about the same amount I’d spent on full, cooked lunches with drink and sometimes dessert in the local eateries that week.

Basically, a lot of things are damned expensive here. I’m keen to buy a laptop as my lesson planning is causing the destruction of great swathes of rainforest, and my room is starting to resemble that of one of those old people they have to dig out of their flats as they’ve kept every newspaper they’ve ever bought. Sadly, the cheapest laptop here new is about 7,000Q. This is once again because of security issues, and the fact that there’s no internet shopping whatsoever here means the prices are prohibitive to say the least. Fortunately, I might have found someone with a laptop to sell for nearer 2,000Q, so that would be nice. It might even mean more regular bog updates. No doubt you’ll be pleased to hear that.

Definitely the most terrifying thing that’s happened to me this weekend involves an encounter with some of the local fauna. Having woken up from a little late afternoon nap, I was sat downstairs doing my Spanish homework. Grappling with relative pronouns, I was distracted by a movement on the floor. Initially I thought it was a cockroach, but looking again I espied a scorpion sauntering toward my flip-flop shod foot. I squealed, and ran upstairs. Scorpions are a bit of a childhood fear: I used to check under my duvet each night after my Dad told me they snuck into England in banana crates. Having calmed down a little bit, I decided it was time to man up and go scorpion hunting. I changed into some more appropriate footwear and crept back downstairs. I armed myself with a Tupperware box and peered into the dining room. The scorpion was sat by a table leg. At this point I should say it was all of an inch and a half long, and probably as scared of me as I was of it. It wasn’t the fleetest either, and sat meekly as I threw the box over it. I considered keeping it, my flatmate Ben would have been very interested in a scorpion, but I decided that I should set the noble beast free. Sliding a folder under the box, I scooped the intruder up and deposited it at the edge of the patio. Hopefully we won’t be seeing it again, as I’m fairly sure Alice would go absolutely spastic if she saw it.

That though, was about as exciting as anything got this weekend. I watched Fracture in Spanish (awful film) and then a bit of Slipstream with Vinnie Jones (even worse) while supping a litre of Clos Cabernet Sauvignon (surprisingly good). I had steak twice and chips once, and of course the obligatory Friday night tacos and beer. If anyone wants to come and see me, it will be worth it just for a trip to the taco stand by the way. I went for a quick potter round the residencia this evening and peered into the barranco, and said good afternoon to the pretty girl cleaning her car, but that’s about as far as my flirting Spanish (or English) extends.

Maybe I’ll do something next weekend. It feels like I should. If I do, I’ll be sure to tell you about it. Hasta la proximo vez. Grev

Still alive, yo.

Hey team,

Apologies for the lack of hot blog action of late. Truth is I've been very busy of late. My teaching schedule is now up to 23 hours a week, with 8 hours of travelling to and from to business classes and another 6 hours of Spanish tuition. That's all before I've started lesson planning too. All this means I'm not a very exciting bunny at the moment.

That said, the teaching is great fun and to be honest, there's not really that much to do here anyway. I did manage to go to some bars and talk to some Guatemaltecos in halting Spanish last weekend and as soon as I finish writing this the school is taking all the staff bowling. Then I'm off to empty the pockets of Arnout, our Dutch teacher, in a game of poker.

In football news, we keep getting thrashed but we have now recruited a 7th player and we we're even ahead for a few minutes last week, so things might be looking up. No suntan (obviously) or Guatemalan girlfriend yet to those keeping score on that front. My sunblock just needs to last another couple of months and the its rainy season and cloudy skies for six whole months, whoop whoop!

My future plans include a trip up north to our other school in Coban, and maybe escaping down to El Salvador for a weekend if I can ever get some time off. Reports on anything exciting I do will be swiftly posted on here, possibly with photos once I've attacked the charger for my camera battery with some 'No mas claves'.

That's about time up for this blog post. Thanks to anyone who's emailed - I've tried to reply to all correspondence. If anyone fancies visiting feel free, although bear in mind there is bugger all to do here. Also, if anyone fancies bringing me a laptop from Asia, the US or Britain that would be awesome.

Laters, potaters...