Guatemalan Highland Wanderings

Though I haven't mentioned much at all regarding Mexico. I will soon. Right now, I will write of my recent travels in Guatemala.

I met a student of Spanish in the same house I was staying at in Mexico. He is young, a christian, and from Texas. His name is Jeremy and the week before he had off from his language school. I says to him, "What are you doing next week?" He replies, "Nothing that I know of." I says, "What say you and I pack our bags for Guatemala?" After which he says,"OK." and the rest was history.

We hopped on a bus one early morning and rode and rode until the sun passed across the sky for who knows how long and how many times. Some time, on some obscure date, we came to the southern most town of Mexico and there crossed the border into Guatemala. We walked across a bridge that was erected above a river or marsh. I could barely tell the difference. Whereas, in the American mindset, the US has the Rio Grande separating it from Mexico and the traces of a less priveleged life; Mexico has this river separating it from Guatemala and the traces of a less priveleged life. I was amazed that there could be such a contrast from the Mexican side to the Guatemalan side. The first person we saw on the Guatemalan side was in his underwear and was stooping to either pluck feathers from a chicken or to remove a splinter from his foot. I really couldn't tell the difference on this one either. But regardless he was in what I guess he would call his backyard. We could see him plainly. He had no real fence. Just a stream of garbage around his living quarters. -That's what I mean by a less priveleged life than Mexico. But what Jeremy and I found within Guatemala was so much more than a destitute country. We witnessed a very interesting mixture of people from the most progressive-minded western tourist to the most backwoods Mayan Indian. And I shall really, really strive to detail these accounts...almost every day in this blog so bare with me.
The mountains grew high and misty. The scenery succumbed to the jungle. And the mists still tried to wrap and hide the people and land that we so eagerly sought to see with our eyes as we journeyed further. To be continued...