Welcome to Xela

So I am going to try to blog a bit about my experience in Guatemala.. it beats sending out lots of emails. It´s certainly no Appalachian Trail, but this way, only people actually interested in my time here have to put up with me.

I arrived here on Saturday, 7/17 (it is now Monday). Let me briefly recount that first day. We landed in Guatemala City, and I was met at the airport by agents of Celas Maya, my language school, who drove me to the bus station. All very easy. But I could NEVER have done it on my own. It´s a huge city, and the people at Celas Maya say that it is not too safe. I didn´t spend much time in Guatemala City, but it seemed very large and chaotic and dirty. Carrie, you might like it, since they are apparently huge U of I fans (signs for Orange Crush everywhere! ;) ). Steg, you´d appreciate it for the Pollo Campero in every neighborhood. Otherwise, I was not impressed. I´ll be interested to experience it again after my time in Xela.


Celas Maya is in Quetzaltenango, or Xela (pronounced Shay-la), which is four hours away from Guatemala City. To get there, you need to take the first-class bus or the ¨chicken bus¨. To the eternal disappointment of several people I´m sure, I did not take the chicken bus (which, for those interested, is really just a school bus with a fenced-in pen on top where you throw your luggage.. that´s right, it´s just sitting on top of the bus, exposed to the rain and weather.. nothing special.. sorry to disappoint, Elizabeth). I took instead the first-class bus, which is like a Greyhound bus, without a bathroom. But, the similarity ends there.

When we left the station, I wondered why it took two workers on the bus.. a driver, and the guy who loaded the luggage into the lower compartments.. it seemed inefficient. I soon understood.. the station was an optional place to pick up the bus. Instead, every few blocks, the bus would slow down when it passed by a group of people on the side of the road. The extra guy would open the door, take one foot off the bus, and shout ¨Xela! Xela! Xela! Xela! Xela!¨ about twenty times, hoping that people in the crowd wanted to get on board. Note that I said, ¨slow down¨.. if you did want to get onboard, you better be swift of foot, since with all the honking from the traffic behind the bus, not to mention other busses vying for the same business, the bus was not likely to stop for you. Mothers were almost tossing kids on-board the bus to ensure that they got onboard.. fortunately the doorman was there to help. At larger intersections, the doorman might get off the bus, run through the crowd, and re-board the bus several hundred yards later.
Pretty crazy!

And what if you got hungry while on the bus.. no problem! At various points, vendors would climb aboard the bus, walk up and down the aisle trying to sell their wares, and then just get off the bus whereever it happened to be.. the bus of course, still moving the whole time. It did actually stop at one point about halfway on the trip, but that was only because a lot of people were trying to get off there (otherwise, the bus might slow to a crawl when people tried to get off in the middle of the trip).

As far as I can make out, traffic lanes are really heuristics or suggestions, and posted signs, such as an arrow pointing in one direction labelled "UNA VIA", are optional. Without fail, however, the scariest part of the trip consisted of about ten points in the route where the road was blocked or washed out or under water. I do not know if this is all from the recent weather, but in Guatemala´s defense, there were signs at every point indicating that traffic should cross the median and use a lane from the other direction (each side of the median, fortunately having two lanes). I didn´t get any pictures on the way here, but I´ll try to snap some on the way back. It was pretty wild.

And parts of the trip were on super steep cliffs. These drivers obviously drive all the time, and are very proficient at their jobs, but they were taking the turns might fast. My housemate, who is a bus driver in Seattle, said that was somewhat frightened by the speed with which they rounded those curves!

After four hours, mas o menos, we arrived in Xela. Took a cab to the school. Interestingly, the cars are really the same cars we all drive, not smaller versions like in Europe, but the roads are much smaller. In fact, today I actually saw a car that was stamped with Ourisman Fairfax as the dealership.. it made me smile. But drivers around here seem different in that (1) if you are walking in the road when they come, well, that´s your problem, isn´t it? and (2) they seem to be much more patient for problems with other cars in the road, such as when the road isn´t large enough for two cars to pass at the same time. But if there´s a pedestrian in the way.. well, let´s just say that there´s NEVER a pedestrian in the way.

Anyway, enough for today. The trip here really was safe, but quite an eye-opener. I´ll talk about my first impressions of Xela next time!