life @ 13

The Mountains in my Legs
so, as expected, my 4 days in san pedro were uneventful, to say the least. but the living was cheap, and it was nice to have persistent company. i got a really nasty headcold the day i left antigua, and i'm still getting over it now, but at the moment i am enjoying a period of respite from the bacteria.
yesterday morning i woke up early, a little hung over and very dehydrated. i took the boat back to panajachel, wandered around for a bit, unsuccessful in finding the supermarket, and ended up having a breakfast of eggs, beans and tortillas. over breakfast i inspected my new topo/political/road map of guatemala for the 1000th time, except this time i noticed the fine print, which read "3670m, the highest pass on the inter-american highway" with an arrow pointing to the road i was to take.
from my descent into panajachel i knew it would be rough getting out, but i didn't know it would be _that_ rough. literally 2 minutes after starting i had to walk; the road was too steep. the first 6k took what felt like 2 hours. by the time i made it to the (inter-american) highway, only 17k into the day, i was ready to quit. the next 35k were a slow grind, but the nice grading of the highway at least allowed me to pedal instead of walk. when i started the climb to the high pass (12,000 feet, exactly) <<edit: i'm pretty sure now that the map was wrong, the elevation was probably closer to 10,500 >>, i really, really wanted to take a bus, as i was already starting to cramp and had some strange and sharp pains in my left knee/shin. however, i could not get a bus to stop on the pass, and couldn't make myself turn around, so i kept going, very slowly, one switchback at a time. but, in the end, i recieved the distinct satisfaction of climbing into the clouds and very cool air on my own power -- by the time i reached the top i had climbed over 7000 feet for the day.
the people in these guatemalan highlands are, by and large, of mayan descent. their dress, language, and way of life has remained intact for the better part of 1500 years. in other words, they have Real Culture, something which i feel i've missed out on. but that is another rant
anyway, my immediate goal is to learn some spanish. honestly, i haven't been too impressed with myself so far, possibly because i came here with the goal of getting close to the people, hoping for some sort of useful knowledge or experience to come from it. but language is the first obvious barrier, and i'm going to try and fix that
right now i'm in quetzaltenango (official name) a.k.a xela/xelaju (mayan name), which, to say the least, is my kind of city. even though there is a small mass of gringos here, their effect is nothing like antigua. this is, effectively, a typical, if somewhat large, guatemalan city, which happens to be hospitible to foreigners. it should be an excellent place to learn spanish, as very little english is spoken. a spanish course here means 5 hours of private instruction (partly grammar and vocab, partly shooting the shit in spanish), 5 days a week, and living with a local family. the cost is about $110/week, which, all things considered, is dirt cheap. i'm going to start on monday, we'll see how it goes.