oh nine, huehue, xela, antigua

2009! what a great way to start this year. my new years activities were limited because of the plans i made for the first, so i didn´t enjoy it as much as i would´ve liked. i ended up at home, with my grandma, drinking my chilean chardonnay by myself (she decided the wine i bought was too strong.. i took it´s strength as a plus). my new years resolution, obv, was to do exactly what my little heart desires. no more, no less. oh, and write/draw everyday. and try to blog. the first fave music video of 2009:


on the first i had a great barbecue lunch with the fam, then went off to spend the night with my grandmother, as we were leaving the next day very early to go up to huehuetenango. The drive up the countryside was absolutely phenomenal. i couldn´t stop taking the pictures the whole way. we passed by many little towns and farming villages. the harvest of wheat starts right about now, and i enjoyed seeing the countryside dotted with little wheatfields that were just starting to be plowed.



it was pretty tought to take any pictures though, the roads, while they are being renovated at the present time, are strill abismal at best. potholes abound, and the dust kicked up by all the cars was enough to kickstart my allergies, which plagued me for the rest of my stay up there.



i think i still got some ok pictures, though they fall short of capturing the beauty of the panaroma.

We stopped at huehuetenango for lunch, and it was a busy little town. it was tough to walk around because there´s very little sidewalk left after they expanded the roads to accomodate the influx of cars. apaprently it has more than doubled in size in the last few years, or since my grandmother passed by last. as with everywhere else in guatemala, there was a lot of construction going on and it was pretty dusty all around.




tiny ass sidewalks, enormous cars.


driving around in huehue, trying to find parking.


after having a fine meal of the national favorite, fried chicken and french fries , we visited the local cemetery.


it was very colorful and quite lively. i liked it a lot better than the somber cemeteries i visited in guatemala city.



we also visited my great uncle´s grave, Jose Ernesto Monzon, who was celebrated throughout guatemala as a prolific songwriter. his grave was dedicated to him by the state of huehuetenango.

the drive into camojallito, where my family runs some coffee farms, was even more picturesque than the drive up. we passed straight through the cuchumatanes, some of the highest peaks in central america.




we reached camojallito in about an hour or so, and i was absolutely exhausted. we pretty much just hung around the house, drank lots of fresh coffee, and watched the beans dry.


at night, we visited the towns of la democracia, and la mesilla. The first a really cute little town, the latter a bordertown with mexico, and quite a sight! unfortunately my camera had died from all the on the road picture taking, and i wasn´t able to capture the sight. it was bumping at ten at night, filled with mexicans, guatemalans (yes, you can tell the diff) and tourists galore. everything was one sale - chinese backpacks, mexcian tequilla, even pseudo abercrombie and fitch polos.

while i have done a lot more since last friday, my internet time is up. i will be writing more about the coffee farms, how coffee is made, and my time in antigua... soon.