Next up: 3 countries, 1 day

Tomorrow we cross the border from Honduras back to Guatemala for a short while, and then into El Salvador.

We’re not particularly excited for the border crossing into Guatemala as it’s the same one we went through a couple of days ago and it took a long time. 

It’s an absolutely delightful and thrilling 7 hours on the road tomorrow, where we end up in Suchitoto El Salvador.  The apparently as a reward for surviving the trip we get to make our own dinner — a cooking lesson in making Pupusa. 

Footnote: I booked the Intrepid 30 day Ultimate Peru, Argentina, Brazil trip today (special ends tomorrow), going from Lima to Lake Titicaca to Machu Picchu to Amazon Jungle, then fly to Buenos Aires, then fly to Rio de Janeiro. More on that trip later.

I had this concoction tonight, it was like a Bloody Mary, but with beer instead of vodka. Surprisingly nice.

Copan Ruins

Cesar, our local guide for the ruins

Today, our full day in Copan, we visited the Mayan ruins. I can’t do justice to the story, but I will say I was quite interested in them, our local guide (for the ruins) was most engaging and kept our attention. It was fascinating that the site was built layer upon layer, each dynasty built upon the temple layer of the previous. They built on the wisdom of their ancestors — literally. 

Hola from Copan

 Copan had no internet or cell service most of the day, it’s just come back on. A lot of people in the group spent a lot of time trying to get connected. 

I’ll post my thoughts on Copan in a couple of days once there is semi decent internets.

On the road to Copan, Honduras

 8 hours on the road in a bus. At least we will have rest stops on the way.

In case you think “oh you’re smart, you’re at the back and can stretch out — well, you’re kinda right, but I am sharing the back…

Antigua, Guatemala

I’m sitting here in a park in Antigua, Guatemala, admiring that I have “5G”, but it takes 2 minutes to load this blog entry with no photos. (Update: I have some wifi)

So instead you’ll have to deal with my poor vocabulary of adjectives to describe this beautiful town. The streets are literally cobblestone, all of them, and the maximum speed a car is able to drive over them is 20kph — any faster and the car is disassembled faster than any car “chop shop” on the planet.

There’s a rather large conical volcano that dominates the view from pretty much anywhere here. Look south and there it is. It becomes very clear to me how Pompeii happened.

The town itself has a Spanish Colonial/South American blend (unsurprisingly), with a regrettable modern west influence — I’ve seen a Starbucks, a Subway, and a Wendy’s. At least they have the common decency to keep with the local aesthetics and not plaster gaudy neon lights and glass windows everywhere. 

The hotel I’m staying at is quite lovely, it reminds me of some in Nepal.

This afternoon I meet my group and find out what the plans for the next two weeks. In the meantime I’m going to continue to explore, and keep an eye out for pyroclastic flows.

Welcome to Guatemala

 Have landed. Almost didn’t get here as the agent at the gate in San Jose pulled me aside as I didn’t have a return ticket and they wanted proof I was going to leave Guatemala. It was at that point that I realised I couldn’t remember where I had saved my invoice/confirmation for my bus trip out of here. A lot of cursing at the speed of the wifi later and I was able to dig it up.

With that discovery I predicted an even more difficult time when I hit immigration in Guatemala, only to find a very bored agent who was more interested in what my NZ passport looked like that where I was going. The entire conversation consisted of “hola”, then a grunt as he handed it back to me.

I’m currently in a taxi to the hotel — fortunately I looked ahead and new it was going to be expensive, and the hotel is actually quite far from the airport, because right now we are speeding down a very dark and winding road. My Spanish has served me well enough that I was able to make basic small talk and establish its $60 to the hotel. That’s about what I was expecting, maybe a touch on the high side, but I’ll be his last fare tonight, no more flights coming in by the time he gets back to the airport.

More later, assuming this is in fact a legit taxi, and I’m not about to meet some “not nice people”. 

Something I didn’t appreciate that I missed

Checked into the hotel for a night before my flight to Guatemala.

An actual hot shower.

Wow.

It was glorious.

Dejar es difícil — leaving is hard

 

End of classes

I showed someone some of the previous post’s Spanish. The good news is it was comprehendible. The bad news is it was only just comprehendible 😂. (It apparently isn’t too bad, especially given I didn’t use the translate app to write it, just lookup verbs).

The end of the morning class featured the certificate handing out and usual photos etc for everyone. Because every week some students go, and some join, every departure ceremony you go to on Fridays isn’t really that emotional, we always said big goodbyes and “I will miss you” etc, sometimes they are people you only met 5 days ago. 

Today I discovered (in retrospect, unsurprisingly) it’s rather different when you are the one leaving. This Friday I was really feeling it. Saying goodbye to two of my classmates I had only met 5 days ago was sad, the one I met 2 weeks ago was really sad. The one student who started when I did, 6 whole weeks ago — not sure I’ll ever recover!

The ceremonies are at lunchtime, but of course some students (like myself) have private classes after lunch. Leaving my final class which finished at 5pm was quite a weird feeling. There are very few people still around at that time, combined with when you leave you go through the secure door with bars on it, and it locks with an audible clunk, meant that as I left I pulled closed and was solidly locked out of Tico Lingo. Something like the Hollywood stereotype of the prison door closing and locking — except I was leaving.

I lie here now in my casa tica, one more nights sleep, one more breakfast. It’s a strange feeling, I’ve only been here 6 weeks, but it feels like 6 months.

Tomorrow I give my big backpack to Freddy, a professor at Tico Lingo who has agreed to look after it for me while I travel Central America where I don’t need the cold weather/hiking gear. Tomorrow night I’m staying in a nice hotel (I splashed out for one with a big bed and a nice modern shower!), and finally Sunday I fly.

Ultima dia, un historia

Ultima diá. 

Last day. 

Estoy triste por eso, no quiero ir, pero todas las cosas buenas debe llegar a terminar. Yo dejo mi familia tica en sabado por la mañana, pero viernes es mi ultima todo diá, y mi ultima diá de escuela. (aunque, yo acualamente dejo Costa Rica en domingo -- yo voy a dormir en un hotel circa de aerupuerto por mañana por la noche) 

I am sad, I don't want to go, but all good things must come to an end. I leave my homestay family on Saturday morning, but Friday is my last full day, and my last day of school. (Although, I actually leave Costa Rica on Sunday, I will sleep in a hotel near the airport tomorrow night).

Me siento que yo hice progreso bueno, a pesar de que fui despacio. Si yo tuve dos mas semanas, pienso voy a poder hace muy bien. Con quatro mas semanas, tal vez yo voy a poder conjugate mi verbos correctamente.

I feel that I made good progress, even though I was slow. I think with two more weeks, I would have been able to do really well. With four more weeks, maybe I could even conjugate my verbs correctly.

Voy a extrañar a mi familia tica y mi profesores y profesoras. Fué un seis semenas dificiles. Seis semanas intensos, muy intensos, muy agotadors. Pero, en la fin, yo disfruté eso todo (ok, casi todo).

I will miss my Costa Rican family and my professors. It was 6 hard weeks, 6 intense weeks, very intense, very exhausting. But, in the end, I enjoyed it all (ok, almost all). 

Tuve alguno tiempos buenos con mi mamá tica, nosotros dijimos alguno historias divertido, y a veces nos reímos de mi español mal. Yo enseñe su la cancion de "a b c" en ingles, y ella enseñó me eso en español. Noche nosotros hicimos "tongue twisters" en español. Tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal. Pero, la palabra "probablemente" es suficiente por me.

I had some good times with my Costa Rican mum, we told some funny stories, and sometimes we laughed at my bad Spanish. I taught her the "a b c's" song in English, and she taught me it in Spanish. Tonight we did tongue-twisters in Spanish. 3 sad tigers swallowed wheat in a wheat field. (Tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal). Although, the word "probablemente" (Probably) is enough for me. 

Y sí, necesité buscar algunas palabras para escribo esto. Y sí, esto tuvo mucho tiempo a escribir

And yes, I needed to lookup some words in order to write this. And yes, this took a long time to write.

Only 2.5 more days

 It’s only taken five and a half weeks, and I’m starting to feel like I’m finally getting there. Listening comprehension is much better, though — of course —vocab has a way to go. When I do know the words I can hear and recall them and mostly work out what the sentence is without having to stop and think about it. The issue has been that even if I know the word, eg también, I haven’t been able to easily associate it with the meaning when I hear it verbally (“also”), but I can say and pronounce it easily, and comprehend it when I read it, but the association of the sounds to words has been harder. I hear “también” and have to “write it” in my head and then “read” what I wrote. But now I feel I’m finally getting better at linking the spoken word to the meaning.

I definitely feel I need a break, but I also feel that given a couple more weeks, I would really improve a lot. Maybe on my travels I’ll get that experience. 

I am quite sad that it’s only a few more days before I leave. I have loved my time at my homestay, Mizonil has been amazing, I really lucked out with her. I hear from other students they deal with things like no water on the weekends, or bugs, or other such things. My biggest complaint is there is ONE mosquito in my room that buzzes when I sleep. I don’t want anyone to get the impression that the home stays aren’t good — they really are, and they are enormously helpful for learning Spanish, but I got very lucky with mine. 

Last week!

It’s amazing what 5 weeks of intensive study will do for you. I mean, I bet it is amazing. For me I feel like I’m about at week 3 of knowledge, but I’m ok with that — I went in with the goal of learning “some” Spanish, and I succeeded at that by the end of day one. So everything afterwards is a bonus. 

I feel like I’m now, finally, able to recall the nouns and verbs I need, and conjugate them appropriately (for presente simple, preterite, and the “voy a” hack for futura), and I’m getting better at reflexive verbs — I’m now able to shower myself! 

I have a new private teacher this week, she’s good. We are practicing conversations — that’s the most important thing I’m going to need for the next 5 months. I will leave reading Don Quixote in the original Spanish till after I get back.

Next plans — my large backpack is going to Freddy’s place on Wednesday, so I’ll be down to just that small backpack. Thank goodness, the large one is embarrassing, but it’s the medication, sleeping bag, mat, and cold weather gear that takes up so much room.

I finally found what looks like a decent outdoor store — I stupidly forgot a dry bag for inside my backpack, which is pretty stupid thing to forget for the backpacking I’m gonna be doing.

Speaking of which, I think I’m gonna go visit a lost city in Colombia after Panama.

Finally, in Africa news — travel insurance purchased and the trip deposit is paid!

So I did a thing

So I did a thing.

I'm going to Africa -- for awhile.

Quite awhile.

Blog update -- South American travels moved here

 I've moved the blog of my South American trip and merged it into this one. This blog has all of my travels.

Una semana más

One more week. 5 more days until I’m totally fluent in Spanish — that’s how it works, right?

My class I’ve had for the previous week. The guy beside me is our teacher. I have him again next week, but in the afternoons I have a different private teacher. Be interesting to see how that goes.

I permanently have “Que significa…” and “como se dice…” stuck in my head, phrases that mean “what does… mean” and “how do you say…” respectively — we say them so often!

I’m going out to get some stuff tomorrow that I’ll need for the next few weeks, but they are only minor items. I’m still lugging around lots of my medication — I brought 6 months worth and it’s only been 1.5 months, it’s bulky and annoying. In hindsight given the rather easy availability of medications in Costa Rica, I could have saved myself a lot of baggage space by simply buying what I needed here! 

I’m looking forward to the next part of my trip, given how much mental energy doing these classes has taken from me, it really feels like I’ve done nothing else (and I really haven’t). There were lots of weekend trips I could have taken advantage of, but my brain needed to vege out — speaking the weekend speaking Spanish with strangers would have killed every last brain cell. But from here onwards, hopefully it’s all about the travel. 

I've lost weight, and not long to wait!

 

It's not long until school finishes -- 6 more school days. In preparation for the next part of my trip, I took everything I want to take on the road from Guatemala to Panama and put it all in my shiny summit pack. This is a 36L backpack that is very comfy to carry. 

Since I'm not having to take all my winter, hiking, and climbing gear with me on this part of the trip, I can shed all that weight and volume. This smaller backpack should feel very nice carrying around -- first measure is that it's only 10kg and will easily fit in an overhead locker or probably even at my feet on a plane.

I don't need hiking poles, sleeping bags, jackets, gloves, etc. all of that stuff is remaining in my big backpack. And all of that weighs a lot, so now I'll have less weight on my back. How much? Of course I had to measure, so I used the trick of standing on the scales with and without my backpack. 10kg, not bad, but I also noted that my personal weight is now down to 100kg. Wow!

Classes and glasses

This week (esta semana), I am repeating the previous weeks class (repitiendo la clase de la hace semana), however this is a good thing, because that sentence above says “me repeating the class from a week ago.” 

Next steps confirmed

Late February I'll be continuing my adventure to Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and then back to Costa Rica! Yes, these aren't countries people normally line up to visit, but I'm not over here to visit the big destinations -- I'd have stayed in Europe if I was.

Poco a poco

Poco a poco — little by little, a favourite saying around here, meaning that you learn spanish a little bit at a time, but with only 3 weeks(!!) left of my time at Tico Lingo, I really need grande a grande else I feel I’m going to still be saying lo siento, sólo hablo un poco de español — I’m sorry, I only speak a little Spanish. I probably will always say that, even if I magically got to conversational level in the next 3 weeks.