Xela, Guatemala

Sitting on the dusty steps outside an inconspicuous immigration office in no-mans land between Mexico and Guatemala for 6 hours is not how I imagined my first foray into Guatemala. If I'm honest I imagined something much more sinister, armed holdups, gang warfare or illegal immigrants smuggling themselves across the lengthy border.

But our hold up can be thanked to a simple economic problem of maize prices. Guatemalan farmers wanted the prices of imported Mexican maize to be lowered, so the most effective way to make the government listen is, in their opinion, by blocking the roads. The trucks stops, transport stops and bad press begins.

So we waited patiently until 6pm until the roads were opened, and made our way onward to Xela.

Quetzaltenango (or more simply Xela) has recently jumped on the relatively successful bandwagon of Spanish schools and now hosts over 20. I chose to study at El Nahual which runs the schools to help fund its volunteer project educating young children and adults who may not have access to public education.

So two weeks of 4 hour a day one-on-one Spanish lessons are now up. As are two weeks of living with a Guatemalan family and having breakfast, lunch and dinner ready and waiting for you each day and crazy afternoon with numerous under 10's who crave attention and lots of it.

I enjoyed my time here, but not sure if I would do it again. The teachers weren't the best, my first made me read a four-page article about the history of baby jesus figurines, while my second teacher taught me preterito, imperfect, futuro and condicional tenses in two days and expected me to remember them all!

I loved getting to know the kids, helping those who really wanted to learn, and sympathising with those who really struggle. In Guatemala if a child wasn't registered with the government when it was born (a surprisingly high occurance) then its a lengthy and costly process to get it into school later. A process most families can't/won't/don't do. So volunteer programs like El Nahual help to give these kids some level of education.

Our host family was comparably wealthy, the 11 year-old grandson had a laptop and plasma TV in his room, and they were in the process of adding a second story to their modest home. The food was homely and tasty. The grandmother ran the roost, along with her young Mayan maid. We ate porridge for breakfast, beans, meat and vegtables for lunch, and beans, tortillas and rice for dinner.

The long days wore me out so most nights I was sleeping before 10pm. We took a mother-daughter break with another mother and dughter duo from Belgium the middle weekend to the mesmerizing Lago de Atitlan. We stayed in the touristy Panajachel, and relaxed by the volcanous lakeside. The water was cool and refreshing. The sun was delciously soothing after the coolness of Xela. We ate well, drank well and laughed a lot.

Tomorrow I'm embarking on what I hope will be an incredible experience. I'll be hiking a live volcano, Santiaguito, at midnight, under a full moon. Can you get more magical than that.