Todos Santos

We ended up staying in San Marcos for a pretty long time. We left the family we were renting a room from and moved into a really nice house. The house is owned by a midwife that works with the clinic that Lily volunteered at, so we go to stay there pretty much for free. Lily met two chilean guys through the clinic, and we chilled with them and their argintinan and urugayan friends a few times. They talk really fast and incomprehensibly, especially the Chileans. One of the Chileans, Martìn, was a great musician and played some awesome victor hara and manu chao songs. They played at the party of this japanese restaurant. I was suprised to see such a full on japanese restaurant in a town as small as San Marcos, but I guess its been around for 2 years. The owner kept coming around with tequila shots, asking ¨quiere teqira¨?
One night the Argintinean, Pablo, set off a ¨globo electrostatico¨ over the lake. It was like a mini hot air balloon, you light something inside it and it floats. It went quite far, before falling into the lake.
The Uruguayan, ¨Cosito¨, took us hiking up a trail behind the town. He has been travelling from country to country in Latin America for 30 years, selling jewelry he makes.
We also hiked the ¨Nariz del Maya¨ , a tall mountain above the lake that looks like the nose of someone lying down, in profile. It was a good hike with great views of the lake (I dont have batteries so I havent been taking pictures). The coffee fields around there look almost like normal forests, as there is a good diversity in shade trees. If you didnt know there was coffee underneath, you would probably think it was natural forest.

Then we left to Fuentes Georginas, a natural volcanic hotspring, for a day. Its in a really misty, steamy jungle and is really hot, you cant stay in for long.

Then we finally made the trip to Todos Santos. We stayed with the family that Lily stayed with 8 years ago. The are incredibly nice, and wouldnt accept money even though they fed us 3 meals a day!
Todos Santos is interesting because the men still wear the traditional traje and actually stand out more than the women. The men everywhere else I have seen wear american style clothes (american, as in from china with typically american brands like Hollister). The traje consists of white and red striped pants, a white striped jacket with a colorfully embroidered collar, and a small round hat with a blue ribbon. The young guys still wear this, but underneath almost all of them had black shirts with icons such as wrestling stars, bob marley, rambo, and jesus.
I spent my 21st birthday in Todos Santos, where it is ironically prohibited to sell alchohol. Before, as lily and the lonely planet mention, there were passed out Todos Santeros in the main street at any hour of the day, especially on market days. Becuase of this problem with alchoholism, it is no longer sold in the town. It was a good day anyway, as the family made a really good lunch and lily bought a huge cake, and they sang and the kids hugged me.

All of these trips involved ¨chicken buses¨which are the normal mode of transport for people here. The first one we got on was a good introduction to how incredibly uncomfortable they are. It was packed, six people in each row, in a bus designed for school children, which is no fun if you are tall! The buses are those ubuiqitous yellow school buses, that somehow make it to Guatemala and are painted incredibly bright.

Now we are back in Xela. Lily is leaving tomorrow. I am planning on studying Spanish more here. It looks like there is alot to do here, and some of the schools look really cool.