QuetzaltaNOGO

Today we decided it was time to leave lovely San Pedro. After five days of sunshine and fun, we were getting a little complacent. We decided Quetzaltenango, better known as Xela (Shay-la) should be our next stop due to the excellent things we had heard about the town from acquaintances in the US. So we got on yet another brightly painted American school bus, known as a chicken bus here, only to find that it had served the school district of Buena Vista, VA. Wacky, wacky.

On to Xela: Dude, don´t go there.

It´s nothing but a big dirty city - for those in the know, like Lima, but without all the charm. You might think a little central american sunshine would improve things, but that is not the case. We got here early in the afternoon, in time to hit up the city´s chief museum - el museo de cultura y naturaleza - right after checking into our hostel. It was easily the most bizarre place either of us had ever been, right up there with the largest prarie dog in Kansas.

The musuem´s first floor is filled with random electronics, various curiosities demonstrating Guatemala´s importance to modern Western culture (ie: a certificate of completion for a Guatemalan that swam across the English channel), and lots of typed documents. You´re also not allowed to talk to each other, or touch or photograph anything.

Little did we know what treasures awaited us on the second floor of the musuem. We passed through a random collection of Mayan artifacts that lacked significant descriptions, aside from 20th C paintings depicting the progress of Mayan civilization....didn´t look much like the history we studied: colonial era is depicted as Mayans killing Spaniards, and everything after is symbolized by the dove of peace! Then we got to the really weird stuff.

The far back room was the natural history portion of the musuem, where taxodermies abounded, but were so poorly done that you could barely tell what the animals were. Of course, there was a two-headed calf to gawk at (is every two-headed calf stuffed??), mountain lions, an armadillo, and more....but what really freaked us out were all of the FETUSES IN JARS!!!! They featured just about every type of animal, including humans. In a country where abortion is illegal, where do you get a fetus to put in a jar and showcase in a museum? Who puts a fetus in a jar?

Beyond the weirdo musuem, Xela is fairly expensive. We´re paying signifincatly more than we have anywhere else, and our hostel is not nearly as nice or as cool. The high rates are probably due to the large number of hippied-out gringos that have made this their home. We don´t really understand why they chose Xela...maybe we´ll find out tomorrow when we visit Fuentes Georginas, some nearby hotsprings fed by volcanos. There´s supposed to be great hiking and outdoor activities here, but the city itself is not worth a visit.