The Big Trip: Maximon and the Lost Keys

Another week gone and the Spanish is really coming on well now. I have learnt the pretorit, imperfect and future tenses this week along with stacks of vocabulary. It's going so well in fact that we are going to spend another week here at the school.

Not much else to report on this week.

On Tuesday we went to see the Shawshank Redemption at one of the local cafes. However many times I see this film I never get bored of it, it's an absolute classic.

We were invited to a good birthday party at a bar called Jarachik on Wednesday. Jammed with band on the bongos for a while until it started to rain hard and we all had to move inside. Also, went to a fantastic chill out bar Zoola to watch the same musicians jam the next night.

Saturday was quite an eventful day.

We finally met Maximon today. Maximon is an wooden effigy representing a Mayan God. There are several of these located in various parts of Guatemala and they must be placated with gifts, most usually a cigar and rum! Read more about him here.

The most revered Maximon lives in Santiago Atitlan, a small market town just 20mins boat ride from San Pedro. We arrived late morning and were immediately accosted by a group of young chicos who all offered to take us to him for a small fee of Q5. After a brisk 5min walk we arrived at the current residence of Maximon and paid our Q10 to have our photo taken with him.

Later on, in the evening, Mel prepared a traditional Aussie BBQ for our family before we went out to the Buddha bar for drinks. A good night was had by all and we arrived back at our house at 1.30am, slightly inebriated, only to find we had left our keys inside our room! We tried to knock on the door and call out for Juan but with no success. It was then I had the drunken but brilliant idea of climbing onto the roof of the house so that I could access the property from the stairwell (they are currently adding a couple of floors to their place to accomodate more students so the stairwell is open to the elements). Melanie skillfully hoisted me up and somehow I managed to pull myself up onto the roof before tiptoeing down the stairs to let her in. It was then I discovered that we needed the keys to open the door from the inside. I turned to head towards our room to recover the keys to find the door locked (presumably by Juan after we left). So....I'm stuck in the reception area and Mel is waiting outside and everything has taken a turn for the worst, when Juan walks out loking slightly dazed and confused asking what's going on. The next few minutes we spent embarrasingly trying to explain, in Spanish, with the aid of our phrase books what had happened.

I think they are ok with everything now. I wrote them a letter this morning to apologise.

So, today there has been torrential rain from 1pm so I have pretty much been sitting here updating this blog and my photos. Later on we will head towards the Alegro where we hope to defend our pub quiz title.