Xela - Week 3

Day 339.

And just like that the third week of Spanish school has flown by. And although we’re not skipping between places at the moment the sights continue to deliver on a daily basis. Whether its the locals getting their cowboy boots polished on our way to school or the never ending festivals, yes there’s another 3 days celebration this week - it really doesn’t end, not quite sure when anybody works here..

In an attempt to break our English habits Spanish immersion began on Monday, which meant on top of our 5 hours of lessons and 3 meals a day in Spanish we have decided to only now speak to one another in Spanish too. This went fantastically well on Monday might I add whether it was jibberish or not we will never know, and it’s only down to our sheer laziness that this well and truly did not last the full week. There’s always next week right…

This week Ellie faced her first real hurdle come dinner time, Tomale’s aren’t her favourite at the best of times, but I have to admit this blended plate of rice corn well and truly tasted, and looked pretty god dam awful. Luckily the tienda at the end of the road is always stocked full when you need a late night Wotsit run!

Our joint knowledge of Latin America is clearly significantly improving given that our weekly quiz team only went and came joint first, next week the cash (and tequila will be ours I’m sure). As always Friday flew around and the Pot luck lunch certainly delivered - the food was incredible, with us whipping up some pretty darn good Quesidillas based on the compliments we received from the locals! 

This week everyone most definitely had that Friday feeling after a gruelling week of school. Several rounds of Perudo, a lot of time on the jukebox and three or four too many bottles of Quetzalteca and before you know it it’s 1am and you’re up showing of your salsa moves (or not) with the locals. Really dived into the local delicacies tonight too (not that I can recall it) but Ellie said the hot dogs were great.

We took the plunge and opted for private salsa lessons this week, still slightly confused by the pay disparity given we’re paying our salsa teacher 5x the rate of our Spanish language teachers, given Rosa (the salsa queen) is never less than half intoxicated during the lesson this seems slightly unbalanced, but hey.

Determined not to let Saturday sink away with a headache from the night before we were up and straight into a trek to one of the best view points in Xela, turns out when you haven't done exercise in God knows how many months and definitely over eaten, even this trek required a break or two on route! Something we will remedy once back in the road!

Getting a taste for the walking again saturdaywe set out the challenge our fitness come Sunday with a volcano trek to check out Santiguito, the local active volcano, given it erupts 3-5 times a day we were in with a good shot of seeing some action. We jumped in an Uber first thing and headed to the hills, after a fairly gruelling 2 hour climb, one or two slips in some less than pleasant horse leftovers we arrived at the Mirarador on the other side of the Santa Maria Volcano, sadly we weren’t the only ones and those pesky clouds appeared right on top of us like magic. There would be no views for us today given we couldn’t see further than 30 feet, let alone the Volcano 3km in the distance..

Regardless the trek was worth it and great practise for next week, 30000 steps later and it was a well deserved relaxing Sunday night.Weiterlesen