{"id":782,"date":"2010-11-10T13:19:27","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T19:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/?p=782"},"modified":"2010-11-10T13:21:29","modified_gmt":"2010-11-10T19:21:29","slug":"au-revoir-payasos-y-xela-hasta-pronto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/au-revoir-payasos-y-xela-hasta-pronto\/","title":{"rendered":"Au revoir, payasos y Xela…hasta pronto"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a sad sunny day in Quetzaltenango…I am running around, packing up my little room where I have managed to already accumulate\u00a0little piles of paper, just like home.\u00a0 Just finished\u00a0stuffing all my clothes into garbage bags just like my mommy told me to.\u00a0 I’d love to bring a few things home from here, the infectious smiles of the Maya, the colors and chilis and longanizas<\/em>, but I am a little terrified of bringing home amoeba and invisible biting bugs.\u00a0 I already planned to leave my bags outside when I get home and run to the laundry first thing in the morning, but hopefully the garbage bags and 12 hours of cargo hold quarantine will suffocate any stowaways.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Weekend in Champerico...what a lovely way to say goodbye to Guatemala. Taken by 10 year old Fernando...an amazing eye!<\/p><\/div>\n

I will head towards Guate tomorrow, stopping in Solola near Lake Atitlan to\u00a0bid my last farewell to the clowns.\u00a0 They have been meeting there all week and it is Stef’s birthday\u00a0so I will show up with a surprise adios<\/em>.\u00a0 I hope I can find the hotel.\u00a0 I hope I can find Solola.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Went to the beach this weekend with Christine, Fernando and Oscar and had a blast.\u00a0 I hadn’t been to the Pacific Coast of Guatemala so it was nice to see some different landscape than mountains and volcanoes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Champerico is exactly the way I imagine tropical Central America to be.\u00a0\u00a0Roadside banana stands, roads that bisect sugar canes, a slightly seedy\u00a0town on the ocean that basks in\u00a0hot, sultry air.\u00a0 I didn’t realize how freakin’ cold Xela is!\u00a0 Our little road trip included a stop in San Felipe for a healthy breakfast of chicharrones, blood sausage and pork, all served on a big banana leaf in the back of market stall accompanied by a few Gallos.\u00a0 Oh yeah, it was officially vacation time!!\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Fernando imitating my rendition of Swollen Eye's invisible lasso move & Christine enjoying an afternoon at El Gato Negro.<\/p><\/div>\n

Next stop, Hotel Miramar in Champerico.\u00a0Old building with lots of character, a block back from the beach.\u00a0 After a few Gallos and some beans and tortillas in the lobby, we made our way to our next meal.\u00a0 It felt like we were eating our way to lunch.\u00a0 Christine took us to Stef’s friend’s restuarant shack on the beach, El Gato Negro, where\u00a0we dined on\u00a0caldo de mariscos<\/em> and freshly shucked oysters from a local beach vendor.\u00a0 This is where I realized that Fernando is the Guatemalan James Deane.\u00a0 Within minutes of arriving somewhere, there is an instant party.\u00a0 This guy, and I can’t remember his name, had six children who were also working the beach selling tortugas <\/em>and puka necklaces, sand crabs and anything else they managed to cart around with them.\u00a0 Including oysters.\u00a0 And as he handed me\u00a0an ostione\u00a0<\/em>from his could-be-cleaner hands, I said to myself \u00a8oh boy, this is going to make me sooooo sick\u00a8, but ate it anyway.\u00a0 And it was delicious.\u00a0 A little chili and lemon, yummm.\u00a0 These oysters were buttery like Northwest Pacific Coast…even Fernando said, \u00a8you are going to be soooo sick…but we have medicine!\u00a8\u00a0And they did.\u00a0 When we stopped in San Felipe, Oscar went into a pharmacy and bought some antibacterial pills.\u00a0 You can buy most medicines over the counter here without a prescription.\u00a0\u00a0 And you can buy onesies. \u00a0It is wild.\u00a0 Sleeping pills, high-octane painkillers, antibiotics, etc.\u00a0 I was scared to take the Panadol I bought in Dispensa, there was no way I was taking some random pill.\u00a0 And miraculously, I didn’t get sick at all.<\/p>\n

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Fernando, Lionel and their two beautiful sisters whose names I can't remember...playing at sunset.<\/p><\/div>\n

After hours of eating, drinking,\u00a0lolling\u00a0around in hammocks on the military-protected beach it was time to think about dinner, por supuesto.<\/em>\u00a0 We planned on having paella at our restaurant and of course the oyster guy and his wife and gorgeous\u00a0six kids were joining us.\u00a0 It was a beautiful gesture.\u00a0 Poverty is\u00a0such a\u00a0part of the landscape here and it was truly wonderful to share a meal with a family we played with all day.\u00a0 I love showing digital pictures to children and I love it even more when they want to take photos.\u00a0 The oldest child, Fernando, was particularly interested in setting up photos and composed some really great pictures.\u00a0 He remembered everything I told him about operating the camera and actually figured out some stuff on his own.\u00a0 When I told him that when he grew up he could be a famous photographer, he looked at me quite seriously, way too seriously for a 10 year old, and told me he wasn’t interestered and when I asked why he said \u00a8Porque no hay nada se vende\u00a8.<\/em>\u00a0 Because there is nothing to sell.<\/p>\n

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My favorite Fernando face...with his tortuga, that Oscar managed to buy somehow at some point.<\/p><\/div>\n

When we got back to the hotel, Christine took over the kitchen and\u00a0it was official, collaborative\u00a0paella was about to be born.\u00a0\u00a0 She was the chef at the Royal Paris in Xela and the woman who owns the hotel\u00a0has been making paella for years.\u00a0\u00a0They went to the market to get chicken, shrimp and squid while me, Fernando and Oscar had appetizers of tortillas, eggs and beans and sauteed calamari.\u00a0 The family arrived around 8 and we all had a great time eating and laughing and hugging and taking pictures.\u00a0\u00a0 Kids understand my Spanish, I don’t think it even occurred to them that I didn’t speak it.\u00a0 Even though the children were so affectionate and seemed happy, I was a little sad when I think about how tough their lives are.\u00a0 This couple was so young, in their 20s, have six children, no money, no education, rely on selling random things to random people.\u00a0 I know I\u00a0should really stop thinking\u00a0about that so\u00a0much because at the end of the day, everyone had an amazing day.<\/p>\n

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Our beautiful Champerico compa\u00f1eros<\/p><\/div>\n

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Who says Guatemala isn't safe?<\/p><\/div>\n

The next day we\u00a0ate our way back to Xela, starting with a whole fish in the a.m, before ceviche in Retalhuleu and then a churrasco\u00a0lunch next to Las Cumbres at a comedor with the sweetest couple.\u00a0 Didn’t arrive until around 6pm yesterday and just writing this makes me want to drink some seltzer and take a nap.\u00a0 I don’t really feel like I’m leaving but I am…so I better get packing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And as he handed me the oyster from his could-be-cleaner hands, I said to myself \u00a8oh boy, this is going to make me sooooo sick\u00a8. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studying-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":817,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions\/817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}