Si, hablo espanol!

It´s been quite a week, and a lot has happened so I´m going to summarise as best I can.

We´re both very well and have so far avoided any illnesses or rip-offs. However, turns out HoserFu and doxycycline (malaria preventative) don´t go together and both of us have had to stop taking them. I had a particularly fun reaction and got an inflamed oesophagus which made eating so painful I really couldn´t force much down - oh the bitter irony of all my jokes about the dysentry diet. Luckily I had plenty of fat reserves due to the portion sizes in New York. We spent a morning walking around San Pedro looking for the doctor, which actually turned out to be a maternity clinic in a church. They were very kind, made sure I didn´t have an infection or anything, gave me a prescription and I´m back to normal now.

San Pedro la Laguna is a weird combination of traditionally-dressed Mayans and dreadlocked gringos in striped harem pants. We signed up for a week of spanish classes, four hours a day for five days. The classes were one-on-one with local teachers, partly conversation and partly learning verbs verbs verbs and more verbs. Yes, we can now hold conversations in spanish, as long as the conversation is with someone who speaks slowly and already knows what we´re trying to say.

Things I talked about with my spanish teacher: The weather. The world cup qualifiers. The maternity clinic. Mayan customs after childbirth. Her fear of earth tremors (not unfounded, having now experienced one), swimming underwater, and spiders. The extortionate cost of onions and other foodstuffs.

Things Chris talked about with his spanish teacher: The weather. The world cup qualifiers. Prostitutes. The availability of space cakes in San Pedro. The subtle but very important difference between "mucho gusto" and "me gusta" when meeting your teacher´s girlfriend. Underwear.

I think we were pretty culture-shocked, climate-shocked and generally under the weather for our first week in Guatemala, but we´ve got into our stride now. We found a fantastic bar cafe restaurant type thing in San Pedro with hammocks and enormous portions of guacamole, and practically moved in for a couple of days, drinking licuados (fruit shakes) and pretending to study our spanish homework. Yesterday we got the lancha back across the lake, caught a tourist shuttle to Antigua, a bus to Guatemala city, and then an overnight coach to Flores in the north of Guatemala near the border with Belize. We went first-class on the bus, which means it is an old greyhound coach with seats that recline rather than an old school bus.

It was very intelligent of us to bring a sleeping bag for the overnight bus, because it was freezing with the air conditioning turned up high and seemingly every fan pointed directly at our seat. However, it was not very intelligent of us to leave it behind on the shuttle bus and have to huddle together under a thin cotton shirt all night. I got a surprising amount of sleep in spite of this and the very loud horror movie they decided to show (possible loss of conciousness due to hypothermia or fear?).

So we made it to humid Flores, where it was hot and sunny this morning then suddenly teemed with rain for a couple of hours (I´ve never seen anything like it) before the sun came out again. Tomorrow we´re getting a minibus at 3am for a sunrise tour of Tikal, said to be the best Mayan site in central America.