 |
| Photo taken of Group B departing Xela by fellow traveller, Elise Leijstra. |
After a long first day of trading the high density of Xela for the freedom of rural Guatemalan landscapes, I was captivated by the night sky above me. Our resting point was a town-hall made of concrete walls and a roof with a wood frame shielded by corrugated metal. Since we arrived at nightfall the village of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan appeared to be surrounded by only a few small structures, the homes of locals and the closed tienda (a small grocery shop). It was dawn the next day that revealed a town much vaster. As if I was lost in time and space, I stared up at the calm night sky to admire every star visible to the naked eye. It was an odd realization that the moon was in hiding. At 11:00pm in the Northern Hemisphere, the sky seemed incomplete without its bright, white luminescence. After cramping the muscles in my neck, I retired to my sleeping bag laid out on a tiled floor accompanied by forty-one other travellers and the dread of 6:00am wake-up call.
By the time 5:55am had rolled around I had given up on falling asleep hours ago. Instead, the consequences of sleep deprivation kicked in and I wrote this weary passage:
The howling wind rumbles through the fragile tin-like ceiling. There's a smell of mildew rising from the vibrating floor. The metal door barely holds, its strong resistance from the wind eager to knock it down. A creak. Metal sways back and forth. No sleepers in this holding. Perhaps just one. His heavy breathing gives him away. Shadows and light illuminate the ground but darkness still hides in the corners. A gust of wind blows through a heavy cloud of dust, intoxicating us all. A warm chill. We are safe beneath these blankets, pressed hard against the earth. Dare we walk today in the sun after this restlessness. The dogs that howl warn us of something. An impending doom or the dawn of another day? Perhaps it's animal instincts we'll never understand. Are we that out of tune? Too busy building concrete walls, playing with machines, carrying heavy wood stacks on our backs, climbing mountains, breaking into a sweat, starving, gorging, sipping, smoking to speed up our heart rates when we could be slowing down. Somewhere in the village there's a constant alarm from the horn of an unknown vehicle. Noise always consumes us. Even in the middle of nowhere, even when it's time to rest...
I was interrupted by one of the guides announcing it was time to get moving. With about 15km of walking ahead of us and the challenge of tackling what our guides called, Record Hill (a steep incline that takes an average of 15-25 minutes to climb and one that left me feeling like an asthmatic kid who decided to run up the playground slide without an inhaler), rolling over onto the hard floor and playing dead seemed rather appealing. Yet looking back, I'm glad I was forced to rise early and carry on. On the road it seems we rarely ever fail to seize a great opportunity despite our discomforts. Moving forward is always a constant, an unwritten necessity in our pledge to see the world. Here within the comforts of home it's too easy to fall asleep, stay ravelled in our bed sheets, miss out on a great opportunity because we'd rather stay still or avoid the risk all-together. This leads me to reminiscence about these defining moments in travel. The moments I very reluctantly but somehow willingly made the choice to rise and take the steps forward that propelled me into the great unknown.
Whether you're at home or out on the road Happy New Year! Keep on taking one step forward and don't forget to stop every once awhile to look to the sky above or the land below.
 |
| Elise admiring Lago Atitlán from the mirador. Photo taken by me. |
