Global Platform and Spanish School March 7 – April 3 in Suchitoto
The participants in the course were Joan, Birgitte, Vagn, Bibi, Helle and I. The three first mentioned returned to Denmark after the course, and the remainder started voluntary work. Bibi and I worked for another month and Helle for 5 month.
We stayed in a house right across from the local public school. We had our meals here, and the Global Platform School was held in open air under a roof in the garden. We had a weekly timetable. We had Global Platform course Monday and Wednesday, and Spanish School Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. The meals were prepared by two local cooks, and it was excellent.
We were taught Spanish in a school for foreigners situated not far from our residence. We started forming teams of two or three, but I managed to get one to one teaching, paying a little extra. My teacher was Krissia and she was only 16 years.
Andreas Kopp was the leader of Global Platform in Suchitoto. He was lecturing part of the classes and he invited local people as visiting teachers and he translated them from Spanish to Danish. One of the foreign teachers was Roberto, half Salvadoran half American. He had been staying in USA during the civil war and was lecturing in English. I met him later in another capacity.
Excursions
Part of the Global Platform course was the visits to the neighboring villages. They were normally placed in the week-ends where there were no lectures. We went down to the small harbor at Lake Suchitlan one of the first days. We visited CRC’s office in town. CRC is the partner of MS and it work for economic development in the villages around Suchitoto. Nelson Ayala was the coordinator for the cooperation with MS, but he was replaced by Luis Escobar during our stay in Suchitoto.
The first Sunday we had an excursion to Cihuatan Maya Ruins. They are situated north of Aquilares, a neighbor city to Suchitoto. It was a very hot day.
We visited the village Palo Grande one evening where they had a village festival. We participated in the fiesta together with the inhabitants. This village is situated high in the Guazapa Mountains.
We visited La Mora, the village where I later came to stay and work. A hike was arranged in the mountains for the group. Later I made the tourist maps of these trails. After the hike which took many hours, we were served a dinner at a family house in the town.
The neighboring village Sitio Zapotal was visited on another occasion. Here Bibi came to work as a volunteer a month later.
There were no lecturing and no food was served during Easter Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The group decided to go on a long trip to the Lake Coatepeque situated west of San Salvador. We paid ourselves for this trip both hotel and transportation. Part of the group chooses to climb a volcano on one of the days. I did not participate. The Lake was very beautiful but there was too much noise. There were many restaurants each with an orchestra with electronic amplification.
The last visit during the stay in Suchitoto was to the village Sitio Cenicero at the shore of Lake Suchitlan. We sailed from the small harbor in Suchitoto. We were accompanied by Nelson Ayala who himself lives in this village.
It was a two days visit and we had to sleep at different families in the town. I stayed in the house of a young widow with two children. The village has two assets, which they would like to make into tourist attractions. One is a cave full of bats. It takes an hour to reach this cave from the village. They have a plan for collecting the great amount of dung from the bats using it as fertilizer. Today they only show it to the tourists. Inside the cave it was stinking from the manure and this also attracted many cockroaches. On our way to the cave we passed system of fish ponds, where the villagers try running a fishery. Here the water is clean, and so are the fish. Lake Suchitlan is much polluted, but nevertheless fish are caught there and eaten. The villagers hope to sell clean fish even if they are more expensive.
In the village we met Roberto who had taken the road in his pickup to meet us here. He was our guide to the cave together with local people. On our way back we were served a nice fish lunch before Roberto drove us back to Suchitoto.
Easter in Suchitoto
The Easter came early in 2008, already in mid march. In Spanish the Easter week is called: Semana santa. Every day in the week is saint: Santa Lunes, Santa Martes etc. All the days have their processions through the town.
Maundy Thursday after sunset the silent procession takes place. Al participants have to keep silence. The participants carry candles, where the flame is protected by a holster. In the old days it was only men carrying out this procession. Every sensible Salvadoran knows that women cannot shut up. Today women participate in the procession. The women’s organization is very strong in the city.
Good Friday had another procession. Along the route was made intermistic altars, each symbolizing an event on the way to Golgotha. The procession stops at every altar, and the priest say a prayer. I missed the processions of Saturday and Sunday because I went to Lake Coatepeque.
During Easter, decorations are made directly in the street. All have a religious motive and are made materials from nature Coffee beans, rice, salt and salt dyed with natural indigo. These decorations have a very short lifetime before they are run over by the traffic. I managed to take some pictures before it was too late.
Voluntary Work April 3 – May 3.
The school was ended, and we had to wave goodbye to the three from the group, who returned to Denmark. Bibi started work in Sitio Zapotal, and Helle in Sitio Cenicero. I moved to La Mora a neighboring village to Sitio Zapotal. I came to live in the family of Braulio Tobar and Ruby Montoya and their two children Glenda and Antonio. The village dental clinic was built on their ground and this had a real water closet and a shower. This was a real advantage since the rest of the village had latrines. Some days in the middle of my stay, the water supply failed, and then we all had to use the latrines. The water in La Mora was potable. I was a little hesitant in the beginning, but then I drank like the rest of the village, and nothing happened.
My project was to make maps of the tourist routes in the three villages La Mora, Sitio Zapotal and Palo Grande. I started in my own village La Mora. You make a map by walking the route with an open GPS receiving and storing data. Afterwards the data are fed to a mapmaking program on a computer. The first route was a big loop starting and ending in Casa Comunal in La Mora. When I should start on the route with my guide, I received the information, that a professor from the university in San Vicente with his group of students would arrive. They were two hours late, and my guide Jose Lopez and I had to wait for their arrival. This delayed the tour so much, that we had to walk in the midday heat.
When I presented my first map to the people in La Mora they told me, that there were more routes and that they wanted them on the map. I had to walk again this time with the guide Walberto. I took pictures of all the sights along the route. These photos were used in the big composite picture I made as a result of my work.
The next route was in Sitio Zapotal. Bibi lived here, and Orlando the former manager of CRC. His son Oscar and two of his girlfriends was our guides on the first walk. It was a short version of the tour he showed us. He avoided the highest and the most difficult part. Later I came to walk this part with Orlando himself as guide.
The last route was in Palo Grande, the village we visited earlier during their city festival. This village was far away from where we lived, and we had to ask CRC for transport. Here it was a group of young people that was responsible for the tourist route, and they acted as guides for us. Bibi was also invited to walk this route.
The office work drawing the routes was done at the CRC office in Suchitoto. I borrowed Luis Escobar’s computer which had access to the internet. Part of the work did not require access to the internet, and then I could use the computer at the library in La Mora. Apart from making maps I also managed to translate a brochure from La Mora from Spanish to English.
I participated also in the social life in La Mora. The village has no priest, but there was a lay brother Miguel, who arranged religious meetings and processions. Every Saturday evening he held a meeting for the young people in the village. He tried to teach them a little bit of English. And he invited me to help him. The level of English is very poor. I tried to teach them ”My Bonnie is over the Ocean”. I had to translate every word to Spanish.
The time came, where I had to part from La Mora and El Salvador. Bibi departed first and I had an Agreement with CRC to stay in a hotel in San Salvador before my very early flight to Belize. The international Airport is situated 30 km south of the capital, a very long distance from La Mora.
Belize May 3. – 29
Now I was on my own, and I should administer my 3 weeks’ vacation. I had only my flight conection in and out of Belize to Denmark. I checked in at a cheap Guest house in Belize City and started a search of the possibilities. There were no arrangements’ for guided tours out of Belize City. I would like to see the southern part of the country, and I would like to see Caye Caulker and maybe Ambergris Caye. These two are the great tourist centers with many tourists. I chose to go south first. The next day I packed all my things and went to the bus terminal. The bus route goes over Belmorphan to Dangriga where we shifted to another bus, which took us to Punta Gorda. It took 6 hours and was a long and tiresome journey. In Punta Gorda I checked in at Natures Way Guest House. The owner told me that it was possible to visit a Maya village. He was not involved any longer in these eco-tourist visits the Mayan run this business on their own. A visit was arranged for me at Laguna Village, and the next day I first took the ordinary bus 6 miles out of town. Here I was picked up by a man from the village. His name was Vincente, and he drove me directly to the village guesthouse. Everything has a price tag during this visit. Food transports tours, but it was not expensive. I had all my meals in the house of a woman named Theresa. She picked me up when the meal was ready. I had a tour along a nature trail to the nearby laguna, which gave name to the village. We were watching many birds, kingfishers, cormorants, herons etc in our binoculars.
In the village they had a couple of Gibnuts (Pacas) in custody. This rodent has a size of a small dog and lives in the Belizean Jungle. It is an endangered species, and a breeding program has been started to prevent extinction.
The next day I left the village. Vincente drove me to the nearest bus stop at the main road, and I took the bus back to Dangriga. I checked in at Ruth’s Seaside Cabanas. I was more expensive than the tourist guide had indicated, but they had bath and toilet in the room.
Dangriga was a small city not very exciting. I decided to use one day on a trip to Tobacco caye a small sandy island ashore from the coast of Dangriga. It took 45 minutes to go there in a speed boat. I rented snorkeling gear and went for a swim on the reef. Later on I had lunch and rested the rest of the day.
I had for a long time wanted to visit Cockscomb wildlife sanctuary. This place is created in order to preserve the population of jaguars. It was impossible to reach them by telephone, so I decided to go there without any reservation. The place is located south of Dangriga not far from a small village called Maya Centre. Here I had to buy food for the two days I planned to stay. There was a self help kitchen but no canteen. There were no arranged tours, but we were free to walk at the many trails around in the jungle. The longest tour I walked was the Tiger Fern Trail. It ended in a nice pool where I bathed. I did not see any jaguars unfortunately, but I saw many birds and a small antelope which I took pictures of. An evening when I was sitting close to the river at sunset I heard a low key buzzing sound which I could not identify until I discovered a tree with hundreds of humming birds.
After Cockscomb I returned to Belize City, where I stayed one night. The next day I took the Water Taxi to San Pedro the city on the greatest tourist island Ambergris Caye. I stayed two nights at a hotel, but it
was very expensive, and I had to move to a cheaper guest house. The Price level here was very high compared to the level in Belize City and much higher than indicated in my four years old tourist guide. The advantage is that it is from here the tourist tours start both the tours to the mainland and the tours to the reef.
On my list of places to see I had noted Lamanai Maya Ruins. It is a complex of partly excavated ruins in the northern part of the mainland. It was possible to visit on a whole day trip from San Pedro. First we sailed with a speed boat almost back to Belize City. Before we reached the city we sailed up the river to a spot near the northern main road. Here we changed to busses which brought us to a bridge shortly before the city Orange Walk. Here we shifted again to another speed boat which sailed us downstream New River to Lamanai. We passed by several villages most of them inhabitated with Mennonites. This sect constitutes about 10% of the total population of Belize, and many of them live here along New River. We started with a walk around the ruins followed by lunch served in the picnic area. There were three great temples, the Jaguar Temple, The High Temple, and the Temple of The Mask. It was not as impressive as Tikal in Guatemala but it was really worth seeing. We travelled the same way back to San Pedro. We did not see many birds on the river. They were scared away by the speedboat.
From San Pedro there were many possibilities sailing to the nearby reef. This reef is number two in size after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. It stretches from the coast of Mexico, Belize and Honduras on the western side of the Yucatan peninsula. I went on a snorkeling trip ad we saw a lot of fish. We tried to touch both sharks and stingrays. They were both very peaceful and harmless. The sharks were the size of a man. There were nobody to take pictures of us, and I do not have a watertight cover for my camera.
I had been one week in San Pedro when I decided to move to Cay Caulker, the other great tourist centre in Belize. It was a good decision. The price level was lower. I paid 60 BZ$ for my room in San Pedro, and here it was only 25 BZ$. (1 US$ = 2 BZ$)
From here I went on a trip to see Manatee’s. These very peaceful animals are now protected, and the places where they live are made National Parks. They are very slow swimmers, so it is prohibited to use the boat motor in the area because the propeller may hurt the animals. Only poles are allowed to use moving the boat. It is not allowed to swim in the area, we had to stay in the boat. I took several photos.
I tried to scuba dive with air tanks on my back. It was very expensive, and I didn’t really like it. It was the second time in my life. The first time was at Guadeloupe. I went snorkeling for a second time and the guide took some pictures of me.
The time was come to return to Denmark. I took the boat back to Belize City where I stayed for one night. The next day I took the bus to Flores in Guatemala. I stayed en extra day in this city because I wanted to see it more closely. On my first trip to Guatemala, where I visited Tikal I had just got a glimpse of the city, but I had noted that it might be worth to see. Flores is a city on an island in a lake (Lago de Petén Itza) . It is very beautiful but also a tourist magnet. I had received the advice to stay in the twin city of Santa Elena because it is much cheaper. The two cities are separated by a bridge. I had plenty of time to see Flores.
From the airport of Flores I took a flight to Guatemala City. There I had to wait 7 hours before the Iberia flight started to Madrid over Panama City. I stayed one night over in Madrid. It was rather cold here people were wearing overcoats. The next day 29 of May I landed in Copenhagen airport after having been abroad for 3 month. Return