Christmas Day

We managed an almost British Christmas dinner.

Jo and Matt had managed to make Christmas cake and mince pies from scratch - and crackers - all of which are impossible to find here.

Monopoly - Guatemalan version!

Scrabble - travel version!
Boxing Day games with the Rice Family.

Recycled Christmas decorations

I've been being creative - with Christmas decorations!!

Another proposal

Another taxi driver - another proposal. This one (another old bearded man) said that I look like the actress who played Joan of Arc in the film - I've not seen the film so I don't know whether that's a compliment!!!!

Back in Guatemala

I'm back in Guatemala - after saying Goodbye to England and the groovy globes at Heathrow terminal 5!

Devon

I've been in Devon for a week catching up with friends and family. Of course I had to go for a swim in the sea with my sister. We even managed to convince a few others to join us - including a large shark!

Inspire-d

I've been in England!!!
It was cool to fly in over London, and appreciate the autumn colours (I'd forgotten about them!), and walk out into the reassuring chill of England!
I came over to go to 'Inspire', Latin Link's supporter conference. It was really great to see all the striders and steppers from last year again, and catch up with them, and to get a feel of the variety and the unity within the Latin Link community.
Afterwards, I was a part of the Short Term Coordinators conference - bringing together (nearly)everyone within Latin Link who works with the short term programmes. We talked about lots of stuff, and had a great time bonding! (Although we probably could have done without the fire alarm in the middle of the night!)

Flying Kites at Sumpango

Today is the 1st of November - in Mexico they celebrate the day of the dead - there are similar traditions here in Guatemala.

Amongst the Kachiquel mayan people here, it's traditional to make giant kites to fly on 1st November. People go to the cemeteries where their ancestors are buried, and clean and put new flowers on the graves / tombs (there's been extra flower markets all over the place for the last week.) And they fly kites from the cemeteries, symbolically attracting the spirits to earth - for this day when they believe that the dead and living are reunited.

In some towns, giant kites have become traditional, and now form an important time when groups within the community compete to make the biggest kites that can fly for the longest. They are huge and colourful creations. Here's a few.

It's a bit of a village fayre atmosphere, with competitions in different size and age groups.

The kites can take months to plan and make, and many are put together on the day. They have a bamboo frame, and are made of tissue paper in intricate designs.

For the really large ones, there is then a complicated arrangement of pullies etc to stand the kite up ready to fly.




Some have political messages...

(Freedom against racism)

(From the heart of the earth, to the whisper of the wind, to the rediscovery of our identity)

(Migrants, undocumented, documented or illegal, but they are our brothers and cry blood)

Others with designs depicting the natural environment in Guatemala, or the traditions of the people.

Flores

We stayed in Flores - a small island town in Lake Peten Itza, which is really pretty. So I swam all the way around the island this morning - I think it was about 2km.

The view from our hotel balcony.....

The view from the restaurant where we had breakfast...

Naomi found a friend......

We flew back to Guatemala city - in an 18 seater plane -which said 'I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me'.

-which is probably a good thing as the pilot was chatting to his mates on the phone.

But we had some great views out of the windows - actually the first time we saw the sun -as it had been raining most of the couple of days that we were there.

Tikal

Yesterday I went to Tikal - the biggest (and most famous) site of Mayan ruins in Guatemala. The difference with other mayan sites is that it is deep in the jungle - so it's tall steep-sided pyramids appear to poke out above the rainforest canopy. It also means that you're surrounded by the jungle with all it's wildlife. It was actually tipping with rain nearly all day -so most of it had the sense to hide, but we did hear lots of howler monkeys.

Temple 1


The Gran Plaza

Alot of the pyramids are built in 'twin-temple' complexes - pairs of pyramids which face each other across a plaza or courtyard. Apparently they were built to commemorate the end of a 'katun', a 20 year cycle in the Mayan calendar. Tikal was inhabited and built between 700BC and 900AD.

Some carvings on one of the temples - generally there's lots more 'art' at Copan, but there's still lots of carvings and hiergliphics at Tikal too.

Temple 3 as we walked through the jungle.

Temple 4 - which is the tallest at 64m high-

- which we climbed and then had this view

of the twin temples of 1 and 2 on the left, and temple 3 (I think) on the right.