Travelogues

Perhaps my greatest asset on arriving in Guatemala late on a Wednesday night was my almost total lack of competency in Spanish. I was moving to this Central American country, about which I understood little and where I knew no-one, for a tangled jumble of reasons. But one of those reasons was to get some space and time away from the English language.

For most of the 33 years we have been intimate, my relationship with English has been a really good one - we were happy together. Yet, lately I could sense a certain staleness creeping in, hints that we had arrived at the "maybe we should see other people" phase. Words, happy playmates for so much of my life, had changed for me. Rather than acting as bridges to connect me to others, words began to resemble cell-bars, hemming me in within a prison of my own making, creating distance rather than connection with those around me.

There may be many reasons as to why my relationship with English was going through a rocky phase, but probably the main one is that language is an exercise in logic. We create our reality with the words we choose, yet using the neat precision of words to make sense of our world is like sketching a flower with only harsh angular lines. Language is more about head than heart - music rather than literature is the real medium of feeling.

So I was now entering an environment in which my accumulated dependency on English words would, I hoped, be shaken. As is common amongst language students in Guatemala, I had booked my first couple of week's accommodation with a Guatemalan family. Casa Carolina, Edgar y Familia has a house rule that only Spanish is to be spoken. Living with this regulation gave me an early snapshot of what life without words can be like.

I arrived in Guatemala after spending the previous 24 hours strapped into a series of metal cylinders that catapulted me from Dublin to Frankfurt to Mexico to Guatemala. I was tired and disoriented as Roberto, the tour operator dispatched by my Spanish school to meet me, drove me the 45 minutes from Guatemala airport to my new home in Antigua. Welcoming me just after 1am to her home, Carolina, the mater familias of my host family informed me in Spanish that my classes would start at 8am and breakfast was therefore at 7.

What I really craved at that moment was the promise of a lie-in and a lazy day of recuperation. But I didn´t have the words to explain my desires and was too tired to launch into an elaborate game of charades to try to communicate my meaning. Not only would I have an early start, I felt like I was like regressing to adolescence. I once again needed to get used to feeling mis-understood.

A few short hours later, Anika and Kristin, two young Norwegians I met at the breakfast table were showing me the way to our Spanish School. For all my desires to get some respite from the English language, I gave thanks for the polyglot talents of Scandinavians. I could babble happily in my own tongue to both - which was welcome relief for my head, already feeling sore at just the thought of 4 hours Spanish lessons each day plus Spanish small-talk at every mealtime.

The two blond chicas later than night introduced me to my first taste of Guatemalan night life - which I must sheepishly relate was Reilly`s Irish Bar. This was an early hint that Antigua may not be the best place in the country for an authentic Guatemalan experience and that my holiday from my relationship with English would really consist of several hours of infidelity each day.

At the near-by Maya town of San Antonio Aguas Calientes, I met fellow students at my school Trish (a 24 year old, very smart and highly sociable computer programmer from the Isle of Man) and Gina (a very likable American teacher whose 30th birthday we would next week celebrate on top of an erupting volcano). Two more magnets pulling me back to the anglosphere.

Just two days into my Guatemalan journey, I noted that I was already creating a bubble in which I would socialise in English. I knew that I needed to start making some Guatemalan friends if that bubble was not to expand un-controllably to the point where I may as well not be in Latin America.

Fortunately, that weekend I made some new Guatemalan friends roughly my own age - Ivanna (psychologist and Tae Kwon Do instructor) and sisters Johanna (free spirited explorer and flamenco dancer celebrating her 31st birthday) and Patricia (another talented dancer whose occasionally rips teeth from people`s jaws during her day job as a dentist). For the moment our conversations would be in English - I judged that my value as a new friend might appear limited if I cycled through the phrases tengo trente tres anos and soy de irlanda as my sole conversational gambits. But I nursed the hope that it would not be too long before we would speak in Spanish.

I had met my three new Guatemalateca friends through the WAYN website during a trip to one of the natural jewels of Latin America - Lago De Atitlan. My Friday afternoon trip to this lake provided me with my first proper taste of what a spectacularly beautiful country Guatemala is. I discovered an almost infinite number of varieties of green as my shuttle bus traveled the 3 hours or so to Panajachel on the shores of Atitlan.

I spent much of the weekend gawping inarticulately (no words in any language desired or required) at the stupendous beauty that Lago De Atitlan casually provides. I also sampled some excellent local food and explored lakeside town Santiago, where I paid my respects at the delightfully idiosyncratic shrine of the cigar puffing, booze guzzling and avaricious "saint" Maximon.

My time by Lago De Atitlan coincided with the tail end of Guatemala`s rainy season. The frequent heavy rain produced vigorous rivers of water that suddenly overtook Panajachel`s steep streets and made me bless my decision to bring excellent rain gear with me. On the drive back with Patricia, I learned a new Spanish word - catarata (waterfall), the only fitting way describe the violent mud and water cascade hitting our road from the abundant greenery of the mountains we drove through.

When arriving back in Antigua on Sunday night, I answered an accommodation posting on the Guatemalan network in Facebook and checked out the apartment. It was beautiful - high ceilings, a distinctive lay out and a great dining area - and I wanted it as my home. My week therefore ended on a high when I was told I could have it.

I would move in properly two weeks later. My two new flat-mates - Luke (a student at Edinburgh University from England) and Michaela (a young German woman with immaculate English volunteering at a local children`s project) - are both very cool, so I was glad to add them to the Anglo-bubble that seems to expand every day. With just a few days down, I realise that though my relationship with English may be a bit stale, I can´t seem to make a clean break.