Volcan Pacaya, Guatemala: Climbing One of the Worlds Most Active Volcanoes

I knew that when I came to Guatemala, one of the things that I had to do was climb a volcano. Lucky, Guatemala has over 30 volcanoes, 3 of which are currently active including Volcan Pacaya, which is considered one of the most active volcanoes on the planet.

Volcan Pacaya sits at an altitude of 2,552 meters or 8,373 feet as it looms over the western highlands of Guatemala venting sulfurous fumes and churning pockets of hot lava. Pacaya (a little info from Wikipedia here) first erupted approximately 23,000 years ago and has erupted at least 23 times since the Spanish conquest of Guatemala and after being dormant for a century, it erupted violently in 1965 and has been erupting continuously since then. The hike up to the summit of Volcan Pacaya takes about 2 hours and a guide is required for the climb to navigate the barren planes at the base of the volcano, as well as the steep climb up to the summit.

Even though I’m deathly afraid of heights, I decided a few days ago that I was going to go for it and actually take on climbing Pacaya. So, I was really excited, and up bright and early at 5am Sunday morning to meet up with the tour group and catch the shuttle to the Volcano. Once we had arrived, we met with our guide and set out on the trail to Pacaya, which is a 30 minute hike up from the entrance of the national park through various fields and forests, and up to the base of the Volcano. This is actually where I started filming, and as you will see, where I was in total shock at the massive size AND intimidating slope of the volcano. So rather than spoiling it with any additional elaboration, just watch the video and you can see for yourselves what its like to climb one of the worlds most active volcanoes!...

PS- If trying to view with Internet Explorer click the "Byvid7 link" on the video. For some reason Explorer is cutting off my videos when viewing my blog. FireFox works perfectly, so i would recommend using that instead.

Antigua, Guatemala: Video- 3 Minutes and 21 Seconds Inside My Spanish Immersion Class!

So if you have ever wondered what its like for me here in Spanish immersion school, now’s your chance to find out!

My instructor Fernando was nice enough to allow me to film this morning’s conversation so that I could post a little bit of what my experience has been like here at the school for my family and friends on my blog.

Although I’m in class all day learning grammar, vocabulary, and other fun stuff; each morning Fernando and I have about an hour or so of uninterrupted conversation to help progress my skills in speaking the language. I managed snip out about 3 minutes and 21 seconds of related material from today’s conversation in order to put together this video (and don’t worry I included a section where I made a HUGE mistake… ha ha!)

Also, you can really see in the video what a great teacher Fernando is by the way he helps me along in the conversation, and helps me to correct the thousand or so errors that I make everyday when speaking. So, with out further adieu, here’s the video along with a few of my thoughts on the different parts of the conversation…

Section 1: We started off the video by talking about a party that the teachers had for all of their children at the school on Saturday. As it so happens, I was walking back from the café that day, and as I passed the school I saw some of the teachers coming out of the party. We also mention in the conversation that it was really lucky that the party was held on Saturday because a huge storm rolled into Antigua the next day and it rained cats and dogs. The weather remained the topic of the rest of the video.

Section 2: So here’s where I made my HUGE mistake! We were talking about the storm and well, you know; the word “fuerte” really sounds a heck of a lot like “suerte” so I mean, what’s the problem… right?? Well, when you’re trying to say it was “raining really hard” (fuerte) and instead you say that it was “raining lucky” (suerte) people tend to get a little confused. Check out Fernando, he’s like …”What? (Como?) Suerte??” LOL!!

Section 3: This parts classic! So this morning it was cold and raining and I showed up to the class in my shorts. I’m a genius right? Well, Fernando was nice enough to say that I was muy “valiente” or “brave” for wearing shorts, but I think you can figure out that that wasn’t the case at all. ;)

Enjoy!

Antigua, Guatemala: Video- Get ready for the BOMB Guacamole recipe…

Hi Everyone! Well, I found a little video that I had made during my second week here in Guatemala. I remember that after I had initially watched the video for some reason I decided not to post it. So, a lot has happened since then, namely I’ve moved into my own apartment, and I have about a dozen crazy stories to tell about my adventures here in Guatemala over the last 8 weeks (some of which may be a little inappropriate for the blog so maybe I’ll write a book about them one day…haha).

Anyway, I decided to watch the video again since I had not see it in a really long time (6 weeks later), and it really brought back the memories of all the fun people that we had in the family’s house when I was staying there. I think this video captures all the personalities of my friends from different countries that were there at the house, along with all the fun we had, not to mention that it also captures me struggling through my 2^nd week of Spanish (I just watched it and was totally laughing at myself…LOL) and even though it’s a little bit cheesy, it should definitely be on my blog.

So since I haven’t posted in a while, get ready for the BOMB guacamole recipe, and a definite “blast from the past”…Enjoy!!

PS. There will also be a 1 beer usage fee for each time you use my guacamole recipe. I will be collecting any proceeds upon my return to the US. Thank you. :D

Antigua, Guatemala: Antigua Pics

Hola,

Hoy estoy perezoso y no deso escribir en mi blog. Por eso, decedi poner photos de La Antigua aqui solamente. Yo Espero despues de mirarte las photos, tendras un idea que es como vivir en La Antigua.

Es todo....adios!


PS. Yo Vivo una cuadra de La Merced (La Iglesia amarilla)

Antigua, Guatemala: Algunas Cosas Debajo Diez Dollores

Just off the top of my head here are some things that you can buy here for less than $10: Note: (You will see the giant disparity between prices, as some of these things I buy in the tourist areas, and others off the beaten path. Also, you will see that most of the things that I buy revolve around food. Prices have already been converted from the Quetzal to the US Dollar using an approximate ratio of 8.25Q to $1US.)

$0.12- 4 freshly made tortillas

$0.36- A massive avocado the size of a softball

$0.48- 6 chocolate covered strawberries made to order

$0.97- Café con leche

$1.33- A strawberry ice cream and waffle cone

$1.45- 2 Gallo beers at the corner bar

$1.82- A Chorizo lunch including: macaroni salad, vegetables, tortillas, dessert, and a drink.

$2.06- A deli Sandwich

$2.18- A 2 egg breakfast including: beans, salsa, bread and coffee

$2.42- All of your laundry for the week washed and folded.

$2.79- 1 Gallo beer at the gringo bar

$3.03- A ham and cheese bagel sandwich with fresh tomato, sprouts, and mayo.

$3.03- A nice glass of Argentine Malbec or Chilean vino tinto

$3.64- The same 2 egg breakfast except with a HUGE steak including: beans, salsa, bread and coffee.

$3.64- Cover charge on Saturday night at the local disco (includes a free drink).

$4.36- A meal at MacDonalds (yes, that includes “Pollo McCrispy”.)

$4.85- A Steak sandwich dinner with french fries and a drink.

$6.06- An Abercrombie tee shirt

$9.70- A very nice dinner at a fine restaurant of your choosing, or a good bottle of imported wine from Chile/Argentina.

Antigua, Guatemala: Why Yoda Would Speak Great Spanish

As of today, I will have been in Spanish emersion classes for 5 weeks and one thing is for certain… Spanish is definitely hard to learn!

Granted, I am actually trying to accomplish something in a matter of weeks that takes most people years to learn. However, I have noticed and would like to document, the 3 things that have struck me as most problematic during my first month of learning the language.

First and foremost, one of the tricky things about Spanish is that it seems really easy to translate directly over from English when you are first learning the language. When you think about the most elementary phrases such as “Buenos Dias” or “Como Estas” spoken by beginning Spanish speakers, the translation is a direct one from English with “Buenos” meaning “good” and “Dias” meaning “day or days”, or “good day”. Also there are a plentiful number of words that have a similar direct translation and there are many more that actually “sound” similar in English and Spanish.

Take the verbs “Usar”, “Pintar”, and “Necesitar” in Spanish for example. It is an easy guess for beginners learning the language that these words in English translate over as: to Use, to Paint, and to Need. However, once you begin to expand your vocabulary you will find that there are many words in Spanish that sound like a direct translation in English, but their actual meanings are far different, which presents a problem during the learning process because once you run into a few words that sound like a word in English but have an ulterior meaning, one begins to second guess the meanings of all similar words after only making a few mistakes.

Take the Spanish words “asistir” and “emberazada” for example. Given the number of words that have a similar sound as well as the same meaning in Spanish and English it is really easy to assume that these words mean “to assist” and “to be embarrassed” respectively, when in actuality they meanings are far different. In Spanish “asistir” actually means “to attend” and for example, if one actually uses the word “asistir” incorrectly when speaking, and then is corrected its could be quite embarrassing. So afterwards if you are to say “Oh, I am very embarrassed” (for using the wrong word) and you say “Oh, estoy muy embarazada!” you have actually just said “Oh, I am very pregnant!”.

For instance, this morning (true story here) I was talking to a teacher about eating spicy foods and I said that I always pile on a lot of muy picante salsa on “mis lluevos” or “my eggs” for breakfast. Turns out that when your say “mis lluevos”, you are actually referring to a certain part of the body, rather than your 2 egg breakfast. I was wondering why she practically spit out her coffee and started laughing hysterically as I was describing my breakfast! LOL. The correct phrase should have been, “los llueveos”.

Another example that I can use to illustrate the point, and one thing that I have worked on for weeks to stop saying incorrectly, is the Spanish word for “tonight”. Every time that I needed to say “tonight”, as in “tonight, I’m going out” or, “I need to study tonight”, I would use a direct translation from English to Spanish as “a” being “to” and “noche” being “night”, hence “a noche” in Spanish. However, this is incorrect since, “a noche” in Spanish actually means “last night”. So I have been constantly finding my self referring to things that I am going to do tonight, as things that I am going to do “last night” in Spanish.

Second, the orientation of the words in a question many times are reversed in Spanish. For Example, last night or “a noche” I was watching a movie on TV. Someone in the house asked me in Spanish “Have you seen this already”? Now as you can see as an English speaker, the orientation of the words in the question make complete sense here.

However, in Spanish things are quite different. The orientation of the words in the question are reversed, with the question being “Ya la viste?” or translated to English being, “already, this you have seen?” I mean, it really sounds like something Yoda would say straight out of Star Wars…right? So it proves very difficult for me to ask questions correctly in Spanish. I think asking a question in Spanish is kind of the equivalent of learning to write from right to left as opposed from left to right. So I guess the next time I have to ask someone a question in Spanish I’ll have to tell myself, “Think like Yoda dude, think like Yoda. And what ever you do, don’t say mis lluevos!!”

Finally, I have found that there are an extreme number of verb tenses in Spanish, when compared to English. Take the verb “make” in English. Off the top of my head I can thing of saying that verb a few different ways, “make”, “made”, and “making”. The different tenses of the verb in English are then helped our by adding other words in front of the verb. For Example, “we made”, “they make”, “you are making”, “I am going to make”, “he should have made” etc. So in this example I have given the different persons doing the action as well as a few different tenses of the verb for past, present, future etc. As you can see, the actual verb “make” rarely changes.

However, in Spanish the persons doing the action change the verb “make” or “hacer” in 5 different ways, “hago”, “haces”, “hace“, “hacemos”, “hacen” for the persons I, you, he/she, us, and they respectively. I have also only learned 6 tenses of the verb (there are 14 in total I believe) each with 5 different changes for the person or thing doing the action.

For example the different tenses for the “yo” or “I” form are as follows, “hago”, “hice”,”haria”,”hare”, “hacia”, and “haciendo”. Multiply that by the 5 persons doing the action and you have a possible outcome of 30 different variations of the verb! Now this is just a simplified example and yes, some conjugations are the same as “haria” can be used for I, as well as he/she, and the gerundio form does not change with the person, but you can see the struggle I’m having given the insane number of possibilities for the outcome of the verb depending on what you want to say, or what people say to you.

Well, that just about sums up the top 3 issues that I’m having with the language and have to say that despite these road bumps I am thorughly enjoying learning Spanish and I really love my school. Anyway, Given that this is turning into a rather large post I think I’m going to cut it off right about here. I will try to post again soon.

Until then, May the Force be With You... and remember to use mucho of picante on los lluevos!

Antigua, Guatemala: Think you Know about Coffee??

It’s no secret that Guatemala produces great coffee, and today I was lucky enough to be able to tour the coffee museum and production facility in Antigua, which is one of the 5 coffee producing regions in Guatemala. The tour began with a complete history of coffee production in Guatemala as well as the origins and processes for producing great coffee, and concluded with a tour of the actual coffee farm and production facilities. Prior to the tour, really the only thing I knew about coffee was how to drink it.

Did you know that coffee originated in Ethiopia and was eventually brought to all the different parts of the world by the Spaniards hundreds of years ago? I thought that was a really cool fact! Anyway, it turns out that there are a couple different kinds of coffee beans that are produced today, all varying in different qualities. The best quality bean as well as the most expensive, is the Arabica bean, which is what is produced in the Antigua region in Guatemala. The bean is sold and typically blended with lesser quality beans to create the different kind of coffee blends that we’re all used to.

During the tour I discovered that the process of making coffee is extremely time consuming as well as a lot of hard work. First, the coffee plants are planted, and it take 3 years for the plant to grow and to begin producing the beans. Once a coffee plant has reached maturity it can produce beans for up to 10 to 20 years! Every year, just after the first rain of the season, amazingly, all of the coffee plants, or should I say trees because they are more like trees than plants, flower. They only flower for about three days and this is a signal from the plant that it is beginning to produce fruit. After the flowers disappear each plant begins producing a tiny little green fruit, that are about the size of small grapes (see the pictures). This is actually the coffee. After about a month, the fruit begins to ripen and turns bright red (see the pictures again). Once the fruit is ripe, it can then be harvested.

Each tree is picked by hand, which is an enormous task given the number of fruit on each plant, and only the red ripe fruit is selected. A coffee plant can be harvested several times during the year as the various fruit on the plant is produced and then ripens. Once the fruit is picked, it has to under go several different processes before it becomes the coffee we all know and love.

First, the fruit is opened and the red skin of the fruit is stripped away producing 2 tiny green coffee beans. The beans are then washed and begin the drying process, as it is necessary for the beans to be completely dry prior to the next stage of production.

At the coffee farms, there are these enormous concrete patios, the size of several football fields. The moist beans are then laid out to dry by the tens of thousands. The beans bake in the sun for 3 to 4 days and are constantly being turned over manually with rakes and shovels, to ensure that they are totally dry. So during the drying process there are thousands and thousands of coffee beans drying on these patios at any given time. Once the beans are completely dry they turn a very light brown color and are ready for distribution. The beans are then bagged in giant burlap sacks by hand and manually put onto trucks. This is extremely intensive labor as there are no machines to help with the bagging or forklifts to help with the loading.

Once the coffee has dried and been distributed, it is ready for roasting. Now this is where I found things to be really interesting, as prior to roasting all the beans are pretty much the same, with the exception of the different production qualities of the beans that I mentioned earlier.

So if all the beans are the same, what’s the difference between coffee and espresso? Is an espresso bean from a different kind of plant or a stronger version of the bean? How does that work?? Well I found out... It’s all in the roasting! For a light “breakfast” type of coffee, the beans are roasted at a very low temperature for 10-14 minutes. For your darker medium bodied coffee the beans are roasted from 14-18 minutes, and for a full bodied heavy “French” roast the beans are roasted at a high temperature for about 20 minutes. What about the espresso? Well, for an espresso roast, they blast the bean with super high temperatures for 24 or more minutes. And there you have it…coffee in a nutshell!

Well it was a really fun day, and it was awesome to learn all about coffee. We actually got to go into the roasting room and try 2 different types of the same bean, if that makes sense; one which was roasted for 14 min, and another that was an espresso roast and roasted for 24 minutes. It was really amazing in the distinction of taste with the espresso bean being a LOT stronger.

After our bean tasting experiment, our guide took us out onto a nice little patio shaded by the lush vegetation of the coffee farm where we were then served some 100% pure Arabica bean Guatemalan coffee. I think it was just about the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had.