I whizz into Santa Ana, El Salvador’s second largest city, slightly ahead of schedule and spend most a of day waiting for Lindsey to turn up on the bus. It’s a hot humid place of bustling markets. The next morning we explore the centre a little.
Hanging out with friend always seems to invovle a lot [...]
My vision of hell is a giant supermarket without an exit and I do what I can to avoid entering them. However, in Salama, an unremarkable mountain town in Guatemala, I found a supermarket that charmed me considerably and that I didn’t want to leave.
Next stop is the bakery.
Outside chicken buses bring colour and sparkle [...]
Finca Ixobal is like a little holiday from Guatemala within Guatemala: it is the antithesis to cultural and linguistic immersion in a small indigenous village and/or negotiating the Guatemalan public health services after a wild animal attack. I didn’t really realise that I needed a break but when I arrive at this place, merely a [...]
Also tagged guatemalaI enrolled at Bio Itza on the basis of zero research but at the end of my first week in San Jose I am totally won over, not only by the quality of the teaching, but by the evident benefits of the project to the community and decide to stay on for a second week.
For [...]
With two weeks to fill in before my last rabies shot and already heartily sick of Flores, I decide to make the most of my enforced stay in Peten and enroll in a Spanish school in a small Mayan community on the other side of the lake. I’ve already been travelling in Spanish speaking countries [...]
Also tagged bio itza, guatemala, peopleI soon got the chance to check my theory that the south of Spain and Campeche have a great deal in common. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a fairy godmother but I am blessed with two of them and Camilla has a house in Spain, where we spend a week in the sun.
Also tagged (dis)continuities, mexico, miscellanea, off cycleI am devoting a considerable amount of time and effort to feeding myself up while staying with a friend who has a mountain hideaway in between Mexico City and Cuernavaca. The day after I arrived a neighbour invited us both to afternoon tea.
Also tagged (dis)continuities, bibliophilia, mexico, off cycleI didn’t eat a lot of good food in Cuba but I did have one truly excellent meal.
In any coastal town, in Cuba, if you are offered a meal the choice is between lobster or fish and, incredibly, lobster costs no more. I eat it twice but I feel somehow vaguely guilty both times.
I am [...]