Had a lovely breakfast in this cute little cafe by the town square before we left for Chichicastenango this morning. Enjoyed it so much we lost track of time and were a tad late, sorry everyone!
We rushed back and hopped straight on the bus and headed off into the mountains.
Toilet break with a view
After a few hours on the bus we arrived in the town of Chichicastenango (thank god for autocorrect because I can barely pronounce the name let alone spell it), we were all pretty geared up for some serious haggling. Neither Egypt nor Morocco could have prepared me for the harassment you get here, literally people are constantly shouting "business is business" and "how much you want?" Just randomly from all angles. I found the women were a lot easier to barter with whereas the men were pretty tough to get down in their prices. This was slightly annoying because I wanted to buy a lot of jewellery and the men mainly ran the jewellery stalls. It's still mega cheap though!
It's so easy to get lost in the markets, it's a bit like the souks in Morocco except that instead of being based around a square it's just rows running off in all angles and everything looks the same. While we were waiting for our lunch to arrive me and Erica went to get some last minute deals and to buy a few presents for our host family and we got completely lost. We ended up in this part of the market where all the locals seemed to be eating and selling the food plus there was a giant church, which we'd never seen before with incense and fire burning out the front.
A small view of the markets from up in one of the restaurants
After lunch it was time to get back on the bus and head to San Jorge la Laguna where we'd be staying with our Guatemalan families. I think it's safe to say we were a little bit nervous, they mainly speak Kaqchikel, one of 23 Mayan languages, although Spanish is their second language. Time to crack out what little Spanish I know.
When we arrived we were swamped by the little kids playing in the square, who knew we'd come with presents. They were grabbing the toys and sweets we had out of our hands and running riot. I hate children. Haha joking, they were pretty cute.
We got introduced to Juanita, the mother of our family and she walked us down to their house. The setting of this village is absolutely beautiful, it's situated deep in the mountains but high enough that you get a spectacular view of the lake and the volcanos surrounding it.
Me and Kayley leant our cameras to the boys we were staying with and I've never seen someone take so many photos in the space of an hour. We briefly took our cameras back to get some nice scenic shots when we went higher up the mountain and shockingly found a lot of boob and arse shots! (Little shits). We laughed about it and handed them back as they seemed to be enjoying it, I have to admit Jorge (the boy from my house) took quite a few nice photos and seemed to be getting a bit artsy with the camera. Will defs be putting them up when I get to a computer.
Kelly and Eva in their traditional outfits (shots of me Erica to come)
So we returned for dinner and chatted a little bit and I got practising with my Spanish again, I definitely got a conversation going and managed to communicate with them. Then came our turn to dress up, Juanita came into the kitchen carrying a big load of material and beckoned us to follow her into the bedroom. I honestly don't know how they cope in this weather wearing such thick material and the men don't have to do it! It's so unfair!
Not the best quality but Jorge killed the battery on my camera.
After we were dressed up we helped Juanita and Carolina make tortillas in the kitchen, it's a lot harder than it looks! I started to get the gist of it and then I dropped my tortilla -_- plus my rings kept getting stuck in the dough. Urgh I hate tortillas. We made so many too! We legitimately could have fed the whole village with the amount that we made and I only managed to eat one. They gave me spaghetti in tomato sauce with carrots and what looked like potatoes (they weren't and I have no clue what they were) I tried to spoon the spaghetti onto the tortilla so I could eat more, but realised this was ruining the spaghetti for me haha. It was just in the homestay that I didn't like the tortillas, I've become sick of them ever since Belize.
After dinner we signed their guestbook and played a few games with Jorge and then headed off to bed as we were exhausted.
XOXO
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