The Road to Xela

We left Guate early and loaded everything up, then started the 4-5 hour drive to Xela where we would be spending the next three days. The picture above is a shot of Lake Atitlan as seen from the road. There is no such thing as a straight road on the highway, since these mountains are volcanic and so any valleys are winding affairs.

I had previously looked at maps of Guatemala that showed the different provinces and where the cities were, and so in my mind I had formed a picture of cities seperated by wilderness - as we have in Canada. Anyone who has driven through the mountains of British Columbia has memories of the great untouched wilderness that dominates most of the landscape - Guatemala is nothing like that.

Everywhere you look in Guatemala there are people - the road is lined with shops, shacks and quarries the whole way, and each valley and mountainside is filled with people and farms. Which makes sense, I suppose, when you consider that this country, at about the equivalent size of Newfoundland, has almost half the entire population of Canada - most of whom do not live in urban areas. There are, no doubt, places in Guatemala where nature has been left untouched - I'm sure in the North East jungles of Petan there are areas of undisturbed wilderness, as well as in the lowlands to the east - but the road to Xela is like one unending village.

We arrived in Xela in the early afternoon and dropped our bags at Casa Dona Mercedes where we would be staying, then headed out to meet the ladies (and man) of La Fraternidad where Denise works as a nutritionist.