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.