A brief stop in Tilapita

My attempts to save the lifes of unhatched seaturtles was unsuccessful last weekend. Instead the weekend turned into a beach fest with fourty other foreigners who had also been misled into believing that turtles appeared in abundance on the beach at Tilapita to lay their eggs. The notice in the XelaWho made no mention of the fact that none of the participants over the last three years had actually ever seen a turtle come out of the sea at midnight much less collected freshly laid eggs to take to the hatchery. Once we were given this information we decided to take Saturday night off and have a bonfire on the beach before returning to the concrete sweat boxes that were our hotel rooms.

The chicken bus on the way back was a brutal ride that erased all memory of the relaxing weekend on the beach. Chicken buses are ordinary American schoolbuses that are too old to use on North American streets and find their way onto Central American roads. Only now, they cram three people onto each bench and as many people as possible into the aisles.

Monday it was back to class with a fresh tan. Last week I had the ex-guerilla fighter as my teacher. He was an old geyser who joined the guerilla movement in Guatemala without the knowledge of his upper middle class family. He gave me a couple of very unexpected pep-talks and mentioned my origin and language skills to anyone who even dared to say hello to him on the street during our afternoon walks.

This week I´ve had the pleasure of experiencing the Guatemalan metrosexual. He lathers himself in sunblock while we sit on the roof under an umbrella and uses his index finger quite vigorously to rub his nose.

This is week three of language instruction and I am still not fluent. My spanish has improved a little. I am still stuck in the present tense but am making headway using the language during my five hours of class time.

Speaking to Guatemalans in English is still one of my favorite activities though. Monday night I met a nice university student that is part of another Spanish students homestay. Cancun came up in conversation and I swear he told me he saw on the Discovery Channel that American girls go there to participate in wet t'shirt contests. He then proceeded to tell me that fornication was abound during Spring Break and then it was only a natural progression in conversation to abortion. Apparently National Geographic has been making TV shows claiming that hippies loved to keep their aborted fetuses in jars around the house.

No conversation about slutty American girls and abortion is complete without a brief mention of the obviously raging hormones and unprotected sex Guatemalan teens are having. Jamie Lynn Spears and Sarah Palin´s daughter would not create a media circus in Central America for being pregnant. Girls in Guatemala, and Central America as a whole, get pregnant quite early and it doesn´t seem to be too much of a disturbance to family life with the parents. I´ve heard some travelers joke that it´s impossible to find a 16 year old Nicaraguan girl that isn´t pregnant. It´s definitely an obvious phenomenon but at least they don´t keep their aborted fetuses in jars. I don´t think the Mexican border officials would let them (abortion is illegal in Catholic Guatemala, so some people will take a quickie trip to Mexico to take care of things).