This series will go country by country through my two-year trip. I plan on sharing some experiences, thoughts, and photos of each country that I visited.

Country by Country 22: Guatemala.

After my short trip to the USA to visit family and friends, it was time to get back on the road. My plan was to spend a long stretch of time in South America. I failed my high school Spanish class, so I figured it would be a good idea to take some classes. I read that Guatemala was one of the cheapest places to learn Spanish, so that's where I went.

At LAX, the airline forced me to buy a return ticket because I only had a one-way into Guatemala. I had heard of this happening with flights to Thailand. I was a little ticked-off, but when I got Guatemala, I didn't have too many problems refunding the flight. After taking care of that, I took a bus to Antigua.

Antigua was a very pretty tourist town. I only spent one night there, but it seemed like it would have been a nice place to spend a few days. While there, I arranged transportation to San Pedro La Laguna. On the next day, I got into the van and we made our way to the town that would be my home for close to 3 months.

I didn't have anything booked when I arrived, but I had seen good reviews of "Corazon Maya". I had a tuk-tuk take me there. Luckily they had space for me and the private room with a private bathroom was available. I'm not certain about the prices, but I believe that I paid around $90 per week for 20 hours of class, and $60 per week for the bungalow.

The street in front of my Spanish School.

This is the front of my duplex bungalow. There was another apartment above mine. A couple of Kiwis stayed above me for a month or two. They were on a road trip from Alaska to the bottom tip of Chile.

Another shot of my room.

This is the side of my building with the stairs leading up to the other apartment.

This is the classroom area. All of the classes are 1 on 1. Many of the trees produce fruit or avocados.

One nice thing about my stay in Guatemala was that it came with free pets! I love pets, but a traveling lifestyle doesn't allow for them. Staying here was great. My first pet was this black cat.

This black cat adopted me pretty early into my stay. He was always coming into my room looking for food and attention. The attention part was easy, but they don't really have pet food in Guatemala, so feeding it was going to be a small challenge. I ended up feeding him Chicharrones (fried pig skin).

Another one of the pets that came with my bungalow lived in the shower. This shower would deliver electric shocks if you touched the handle wrong, but apparently that wasn't terrifying enough. It also had a giant spider living behind the breaker-box of horror. I was too scared to mount an attack against the spider so I just left it in there and was very fast with my showers. After a month, I didn't see it anymore. My guess is that it moved under my bed.

I also had lizard pets. I never saw any lizards on their own. My cat helped me out by catching them and bringing them onto the tiles (where they can't run away). After the cat would get bored of playing, it would eat the lizards. I tried to help them escape, but the cat always got them.

I also had giant rat pets. Luckily, I never saw these guys on their own either. Right after this photo, the cat ate the whole thing, including the tail.

We also had some outdoor-spiders.

I've found that I prefer when the spiders stay outside.

I've read that it's common in America for people to give their black cats to the animal shelters because it's so hard to get photos of black cats. I don't know what those people's problem is. My cat was very photogenic. Here's a lovely picture of it while it was trying to spy on me through the window.

Besides all of the animals, the grounds had a wide variety of amazing plants. Sometimes, walking down to my bungalow felt like I was walking through a jungle or Ewok village.

A cool looking flower.

I've never seen this kind of flower anywhere else in the world.

What a weird and awesome plant!

I had a giant poinsettia in my front yard.

This plant grows on a vine and it's called Güisquil (sounds like the word "whiskey", but ends in "il" instead of "y"). This plant is boiled and it's very starchy like a potato. It's used for similar things as potatoes. I ate a ton of this as it's a staple in the local diet.

I don't know what this plant is.

We had plenty of citrus fruits.

They also grew coffee at the school.

I don't know anything about this weird plant.

The people who live in San Pedro are mostly Mayan. They speak a Mayan language (there are over 20 of them spoken in Guatemala). They generally do a very good job of teaching Spanish because they all had to learn it as a second language. Here are some of the photos of people that I took during my stay.

This is my lovely, talented, and very very patient teacher. She was a great instructor and taught me not only about Spanish but about the Mayan culture in Guatemala.

One day there was a celebration of Children's day (I think). So the school had a pinata.

The cardboard animal is filled with candy and the kids hit it with a stick until it breaks open.

Then all the candy busts out and all the kids swarm on it and try to pick up as much candy as they can.

Once a week they would usually do a group cooking thing with the students. We made a lot of different local food.

A woman carrying her goods home from the store.

My neighbor Don, who lived at the school while I was there. He helped me a lot by showing me the ropes.

A local band playing an event in town.

There was an event happening when I was there. All of the high school kids run around the town with a torch. It has something to do with graduation, I think.

Finally, here are some of my photos of the San Pedro La Laguna area.

This is a view looking over one of the fences at the school.

A view of the lake.

Another lake view.

This area is having problems with the lake. Because the lake doesn't have any outlets, it's filling up with water and a lot of "beach front property" is now under water.

San Pedro.

My morning view. The volcano in the background, a fresh cup of coffee, and an avocado that fell off the tree during the night.

That concludes my tour of Guatemala. I didn't visit very many places while I was there. but I still had a great time. It often felt like I was too stupid to learn Spanish, but in the next countries, I would use my Spanish a lot. Thank you to my teacher for all of her hard work!

Stay tuned for the next post where I'll be visiting Colombia.