Lake Atitlan
February 2024
Proudly and boldly, I walked through the Guatemala City airpot customs as I wore all my belongings for the next 3, maybe even 4 months, strapped to the front and back of my body. Having your life’s belongings attached to your body simultaneously feels liberating, knowing that you only need these few items to get by, but also scarily vulnerable, like I am an identifiable moving target that can so helplessly and easily be robbed of everything in a moment.
I followed the travel agency guide outside into the almost blinding morning sun as he guided me to my first shuttle of the day, a 1 hour shuttle ride to Antigua. From there I would take a 4 hour shuttle ride to Panajachel, take a 30 minute boat ride to San Pedro, and then walk 15 minutes from the dock to my Spanish school where I would meet my host family. The driver took my larger backpack and nonchalantly threw it on top of the shuttle van like he was taking out the trash, and then climbed onto the roof to tie it down with the rest of the other Osprey, North Face, and Patagonia backpacking bags. I put my hand on top of my “never-leave-my-eyesight” backpack that I carried on my chest, just to double check that it was still there. Asking if my backpack was going to be secure for the shuttle ride was pointless, and I was not yet comfortable enough in my Spanish to think of the words to ask.
The van was already full, with of course, all white backpackers that looked to be 20 or 30 something years old. From my spot sitting shotgun, I believe that I heard murmurs of German, French, and Dutch being spoken behind me. The other Americans or native English speakers must have been too shy or tired to talk with anyone. I did not hear any English during the entire 1 hour ride to Antigua. At least not until the driver asked me a question in Spanish that I did not understand, and a passenger had to step in to translate the question to English.
View of my Spanish School
Here in Guatemala, everyone is traveling, at least among the people that I have met so far. People are backpacking Central and South America for anywhere from 1 month to 1 year, almost all of them Europeans, some Canadians and Australians, and just a dash of Americans. The only other American I had met so far staying for longer than a few weeks was a guy who spent the past 5 months riding his motorcycle down from Alaska to Guatemala. Most of the backpackers started in Mexico and are making their way down south through Central America to maybe reach South America, or they are taking the northern route and ending their trip in Mexico. They usually hop from the different cities and countries taking the easily available tourist shuttles or chicken buses, the option taken by locals that is about a 1/3 the price but 3 times more expensive.
Prior to this trip, I did not know that people backpacked Mexico. And all the backpackers I met were shocked to learn that I did not know that people backpacked Mexico, considering that I lived so close, compared to the two flights and almost 20 hours of travel that the majority of the backpackers had to travel. The only travel I was aware of that people did in Mexico was to either do a surf trip in Baja California, enjoy the resorts of Cabo or Cancun, or to visit Mexico City.
Streets of the pueblo San Juan
For the first 2 weeks in Guatemala, I spent my time enrolled in Spanish school, in the pueblo of San Pedro, on Lake Atitlan. Lake Atitlan is a beautiful crater lake that sits on and among other volcanos in the southwestern highlands of Guatemala. Around the lake are the different pueblos that exist as their own individual communities, and still strongly and proudly hold onto their indigenous Mayan cultures. Walking around, you can still hear the locals speaking in Tzʼutujil, the local Mayan language, and you can still see that the majority of the women wear their traditional dresses unique to their pueblo. The people happily buy their produce at the morning outdoor markets and hand make their tortillas everyday from fresh corn.
I chose to start my backpacking trip with Spanish school in Guatemala so that I could build a stronger base of my Spanish, to more easily travel solo through the rest of Central America. For $290 a week, I received 4 hours of 1-on-1 private Spanish lessons, a private room with a homestay family, and 3 freshly cooked authentic Guatemala meals a day for 6 days a week. The 4 hours of Spanish lessons are spent doing some grammar, but mostly conversing in Spanish, allowing me to develop an intimate understanding of the lives and culture of the people in Lake Atitlan from the perspective of my teacher, a single mother born and raised here in San Pedro. I learned about the discrimination that my teacher’s family and the rest of the indigenous community faced growing up in San Pedro from the Spanish, and of my teacher’s life today balancing work and raising her 4 year old son. The father lives in another city due to his current battling of an alcohol addiction, a supposed common problem among the local men.
Local girls in Santiago Atitlan who approached me
My free time outside of classes was spent studying Spanish, journaling, exercising on my travel yoga mat, or exploring the pueblos around the lake. In the pueblo of San Juan, I visited a chocolate factory where a 22 year old girl demonstrated, in barely understandable English, how Guatemaltecos used cacao beans grown in the more tropical parts of the country, to make different chocolate flavored and scented concoctions like rum and body lotion. I discovered the pueblo of San Marcos to be a hippie dippie haven catering to tourists who looked like “wanna-be-jesus” and enjoyed sound baths, mushroom trips, or other holistically healing experiences that intertwined aspects of the Mayan culture. I hiked the pueblo’s nature reserve and bruised my butt from jumping off a designated 12 meter high platform into the lake. Then in Santiago Atitlan, I tried some fruits and snacks at the lake’s biggest market and befriended some 7-9 year old girls that asked me to record them doing cartwheels.
My host mom Imelda, was a sweetly stumpy Mayan grandma who tied her hair in a long braid that reaches her lower back, always wearing the bright, floral or geometrically patterned traditional skirts. 6 days a week, the other students and I sit at the wooden dining table draped with a red striped table cloth in the warm and poorly ventilated kitchen for our home cooked meals. The first week, I shared the space with a Dutch guy who was in between jobs, and was halfway through his 4 months of backpacking from Panama to Mexico City. I was joined by 2 friendly British lads the following week: an enthusiastically social recently graduated 23 year old, and a 31 year old, more mellowed out finance director that was using his time on sabbatical to travel the world.
Imelda preparing lunch for us students
Despite how much housekeeping work Imelda had to take care of us and the Airbnb guests she hosted, or despite how much her knees were in pain, she always sat with me and the other students during the meals so that we could practice our Spanish. Sleeping off the pain was all that she could do since taking medicine and seeing a doctor was too expensive. The closest hospital was also about a 2 hour commute away. Sometimes, we would be joined by Imelda’s son Julio, her daughter-in-law Carol, or her two grandkids Meme and little Julio.
Carol was usually always in the kitchen as well helping cook or making jello cakes that she sold to locals on the side for some extra money. Meme was 4 years old and little Julio was 1.5 year old. I enjoyed helping the family by watching and playing with little Julio as he played with PVC pipes he found laying around the house, pushed a kitchen stool around the patio to practice walking, and grabbed at my beaded bracelets and necklaces saying “rata,” his attempt at saying “pelota,” meaning ball in Spanish.
Little Julio pushing using his kitchen stool walker while Carol cooks in the background
In addition to the conversations I had with my Spanish teacher, the meals were an opportunity for me to get a deeper understanding of the family and the lives of the locals around the lake. I learned how Imelda’s husband had died in a car accident about 25 years ago, leaving her to raise her 3 children under 10 while working as a teacher. I learned that Imelda’s son Julio worked all day, often for up to 12 hours a day driving shuttle buses that transported tourists, just like the ones I took my first day in Guatemala. And by a, as Imelda said, miracle of God, he managed to get a visa to the states that allowed him to spend months at a time working and saving money that he could bring back home to support his family in Guatemala.
If meat was cooked for the meal, the portions would be rationed to each of us. I did not mind that Meme and little Julio were the only ones in the family who would usually get second servings of food. I felt conflicted doing this considering that the family ate the same meal as us, but sometimes, the other students and I would go out again for a second, more substantial meal since the food we were served was not enough. I felt guilty for going out to eat again, that even by traveling as a “budget” backpacker, I still had the resources to buy more food for ourselves when the family, as far as I was aware, was eating the same amount that we had.
All the tourists talked about how cheap everything was in Guatemala. In addition to practicing Spanish, I also chose to come to Guatemala for the cheaper prices. But for the locals, the prices were still only low enough for them to get by. One of my taxi drivers who had lived in the US for a few months said to me that in the US, you worked hard and earned good money, whereas in Guatemala, you still worked hard and earned no money.
For the first days, it was a culture shock, and it felt disorientating to be here. To casually be traveling for my own enjoyment, while the family who was providing me food and shelter in the walls of their own home, and the rest of the locals in the pueblo would probably never be able to travel their own country as freely as I was planning to do. I felt like I was taking advantage of the dire financial situation that the people here were in for my selfish enjoyment and self-betterment. But at the same time, my travel and staying with this family was allowing them to put food on the table and have a source of income.
One of the most eye opening, dawning moments for me that reminded me of how different of a world I was in, was when I told my Spanish teacher that I enjoyed reading and writing. She explained to me that she was an anomaly for enjoying reading. But like most of the people here, she often did not have time to read or partake in leisure activities. People often didn’t have time to read or enjoy leisure activities since they were too busy working and getting by. Any leisure time she had was spent at church or with family.
Reading was culturally, not a common hobby. The first book that my teacher owned was a gift she received for her 8th birthday. Books were too expensive and kids did not grow up with picture books. As a result, they never developed the habit of picking up or even holding books. After my teacher pointed out the limited access to books, I realized I did not see 1 book or bookstore in the entirety of my time in Lake Atitlan. Yet every adult I saw, regardless of their occupation, all still had smart phones.
