Studying Spanish in the Guatemalan higlands

Lake Atitlan

We spent a few days chilling out at Panajachel, the stunning highland enclave perched on Lake Atitlan, a massive body of water ringed by lush, pine covered mountains and two enormous mist-shrouded volcanoes. Sometimes the clouds were so low that they barely cleared the roof tops of the town as they passed by.

We took Spanish lessons at one of the local schools here, Jardin de America. Guatemala’s approach to language instruction is vastly different from the regimented, rote-learning method we experienced at the university in Mexico City.

For one thing, most Guatemalan schools do one-on-one instruction with a teacher, which is probably less threatening when you’re first starting out. When you’re more advanced, you can ask the teacher to just teach you certain things to fill in the gaps of your knowledge, and you don’t have to waste time waiting for other students to catch up.

Adam in the garden of learning

That said, I enjoyed the Mexico City classes because they were incredibly varied and we got to have a lot of discussions and debates with other students based on topics we had studied. Here there was a bigger focus on learning grammar, but I was able to break this up by asking my teacher to talk about certain topics to help improve my vocabulary.

He taught me some Guatemaltecismos, slang words used only in Guatemala, such as pisto, meaning money, bolo, which means drunk and chonde, slang for police. There is no way my uptight super-religious teacher in Mexico City would have taught me any of this stuff!

True to its name, lessons at Jardin de America were conducted in the school’s pretty garden in a quiet back laneway. It was great learning outdoors, and fortunately in the highlands it is a few degrees cooler and easier to concentrate than at sea level.

In the afternoons there were free activities and excursions to various places. We saw a Guatemalan film one day (about the popular topic of crossing illegally into the United States for a better life) and visited an indigenous lakeside town a short distance away from the school.

Panajachel is pretty touristy - its main street chockers with handicraft stalls, upmarket bars and restaurants - so it was good to escape it to see how locals actually live. San Antonio Palapo clings precariously to a steep hillside, its modest concrete-block dwellings seemingly stacked on top of each other.

Down at the lakefront, there were a couple of submerged buildings, the result of flooding that happened years ago that increased the water level by five metres, and has not since receded as the water drains too slowly to keep up with all of the rainfall.

Villagers here mainly dress in their traditional costumes, a combination of brightly-coloured woven skirts, blouses and scarves. It was funny to see three-year-old girls in the same outfits as their grandmothers, with the same hairstyles and jewellery to boot. Most of the men did not wear the complete outfit, which includes a skirt, but many sported a traditional white cowboy-style hat.

Groups of women were preparing the for the upcoming Easter celebrations, threading fresh lilies and pansies into complicated floral arrangements with which to decorate the town. Everywhere I looked, people were doing things by hand – washing clothes, cracking holes in the road to repair the pavers, weaving scarves – and lugging massive packages on their heads as they navigated the steep hillside pathways.

We travelled to and from the village in the back of a ute loaded up with about 20 other people, mainly women returning from selling goods in Panajachel. On the return trip we were joined by a group of cute giggling kids, who were doing this funny counting game, where they would spot something on the side of the road and scream out “uno…dos….tres….quatro”, etc in unison. When I asked them what they were counting, they cried “casas!!” (houses).

The vibe on the main streets of Panajachel got progressively busier as the week went on, with tourists pouring in from other highland and lakeside towns. The reason? Panajachel is a hotspot for Easter celebrations, which take place over an entire week in Guatemala and other Spanish-speaking countries, known as Semana Santa, or Holy Week.

On the last day of class, we were frequently interrupted by loud explosions coming from the nearby school - they were setting off fireworks in preparation for the big processions that take place on Good Friday, Saturday and Easter Sunday. However, we decided to head to the highland town of Antigua, Guatemala's mecca for Semana Santa celebrations. So on the Thursday afternoon we hit the road again, braving the gridlocked holiday traffic to get to Antigua, two hours east of Lake Atitlan.

San Antonio Palapo