For those of you who have just joined us...

It's three weeks today until I start a six day Kayak challenge here in Guatemala to raise money for local community and education projects.

If you have virtually wandered over here as a result of my Facebook message, then thanks for taking the time to look further into this, and hopefully many thanks for your kind donation to my fundraising efforts.

Usually my posts are witty at best, pretentious at worst. Today, I'm going to have to be serious for a moment.

This is Maria Angelica. She's seven years old and goes to the GVI school in Santa Maria de Jesus, about half an hour outside of Antigua where I live. Every Thursday morning I get 'realeased' from my duties in our office in town and go up to School. I work mainly with Maria Angelica as, although she's a complete character and great fun, she does struggle with basic literacy and numeracy. As well as free schooling, Maria Angelica recently had clean burning stove installed in her house as a result of GVI volunteer contributions.

These are the kinds of things that the money raised from challenges (like the one I'm doing) go towards. Yes if you check back you will get to undoubtedly see pictures of me in a silly hat looking knackered in the rain, but you will also be able to put faces to the donation that you have made.

Wish me luck! 

It never rains but it pours...

So, this time in four weeks I will be on the water! And doesn't it look like a long way?!

I'm still not fully sure what is involved in this here Kayak challenge, but I do know that we are going to be kayaking 70kms, pretty much solidly for 4 days. At first when I was told we were going to have 'floating luches' it sounded like some blissful idle; I think I had wind in the willows esque images in my head, of boaters and champagne flutes. The reality I feel, will be something alltogether different!

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The challenge is looming, and I have decided it's time to up the ante from lunch-time laps  in the pool to some full on gym action.

Gyms in Antigua are something of an experience. On one of my first trips I went with my housemate Sophie to a spinning class. We got there witha  good twenty minutes to spare before the start of the class, however, to our amazement we found that they had all already been reserved! It seems that the desire to cycle so hard and for so long that it feels like your legs are going to fall off, without ever going anywhere is way more popular than we had guessed it would be!

I've recently migrated from what we jokingly call the poor mans gym, to the 'gringo' gym. Why? Because it's closer to my house. Hypocritical? Me? Never...

Amongst the characters at this gym are the portly instructor who spends the vast majority of his time at a pace no faster than a waddle, barking intstuctions to a group of red-faced bemused followers. There is also the woman who wanders around wearing a top that could be described as minimalist to say the least. It's suprising that more dumbells haven't been dropped on feet as she strolls past the free weights section of the gym, boobs out, hair up and a full on face of make-up. She occasionally puts down her caffeinated energy drink long enough to do lunges across the middle of the room!

I suppose I can't really talk though, the most energetic thing I have done today is write a blog post about going to the gym, and listened to wimbledon on the radio....

Further Afield - Part 1

I was doing a bit a clearing up earlier and came across a piece of paper torn out of my Spanish notebook (naturally) with some almost illegible scribblings on it. They were hastily written and full of the self indulgent waffle of a pendant, but hey, if a blog is not the place for that kind of thing then where is?

A few weeks back, when my fellow Britons were re-discovering their patriotism, or making use of the back to back bank holidays to take a couple of weeks holiday in the Med, I too went on a little jaunt.

The aforementioned ramblings had been scrawled as I sat in the communal area of a backpacker's hostel in Flores, in the Peten region of Northern Guatemala (it was before the beheadings).

And the reason I was in a backpackers in Flores? I'd spent too much money at the ruins of Tikal the previous day! Who've thought it, spending too much money in a 'lost' city...

"I feel like I've stayed at this place before. There's something about the plethora of bamboo, mismatched furniture, and untamed pot plants that strikes a chord with me. Even the beds seem to have been bought from the same supplier as many a backpackers on many a continent. I wonder if somewhere there is a giant warehouse that stocks the furniture needed for these kinds of places. Row upon row of sturdy wooden bunkbeds with lumpy mattresses and pillows no thicker than a Graham Greene novel (I had one, I checked).

The people are the same too, I sometimes feel that they may be like rats in a neverending maze. The haristyles change (slightly) but essentially they seem doomed for all enternity to all follow the well trodden trail, from one  must-see destination to another.

The girls (for they are most definitely girls and not women) fall into two distinct groups, characterised by their uniforms. You have the floaty dresses / big hats brigade, who periodically circulate between hammock, bar, and roof top terrace. They are almost always holding a copy of the latest bestseller in one hand, and a vodka soda in the other.

The second group prefer to see themselves as more worldy, less image conscious, they're not. They swap the dresses for Shorts and sturdy walking sandles, the bestseller for the biography of Castro or Guevara and the soda for the beer, but they are still desperately trying to convey a message, usually to themselves more than the rest of the world, because the rest of the world has seen it all before.

The boys are slightly more difficult to categorise, favouring open shirts, a lot of facial hair and too many tattoos that they got done at some 'great little out of the way place' called Koh Pahngan...

And they all smoke. A lot. They smoke like it's the 1950's and cigarettes haven't had cancer put in them yet. They smoke and flirt and drink Latin American beer straight from the glass bottles which have aided and abbetted thousands of tourists and locals on the road to oblivion.

The sound track diverges little from India to Guatemala via New Zealand and South Africa. Jack Johnson, oh that mediocre troubador of the Backpacking masses!

One thing that has changed over the years is the explosion in personal gadgets. These penny concscious traveller types (who will quibble over a 50p taxi fair outside the confines of the gated gringo community) will happily sit with one hand on a laptop, the other on a smart phone, whilst they upload their pictures and listen to a podcast of the latest edition of the adam and joe show." 

It seems not even sunsets, palm trees, cheap booze and Mayan ruins can tear these people away from their virtual world. During the course of my stay I overheard an Australian woman retreat from conversation with the wider group because she was 'way behind' in updating her blog, it's probably why it's taken me over a month to write this up on my own blog...

As a qualifier, I do love backpackers (Well except perhaps that one in Palmerston North... ;o) ). They have provided me with a job, and some life long friends and some truly unforgetable memories. And I hope that they continue to thrive and grow, and provide a whole new generation with life experiences. As someone who was passing through for a night, I  was glad I spent my evening observing this inimitable section of society rather than be stuck in a hotel room on my own watching re-runs of an out of date American sitcom.