Yesterday (Saturday) we met at the school to walk to El Baul, a local hilltop. It is actually bigger than a hill but mountain may be deceiving because there are some pretty huge mountains around Xela. Eduardo, the brother of our school director, guided us through Zona 5 toward El Baul. We passed through La Colonia Molina, a quaint neighborhood where the local school’s marching band was practicing. As we climbed the hill, we could see more and more of the city. About forty minutes later we arrived at the top and could see over the entire city. Xela is much larger than I imagined. Some 250,000 people live in the valley. We could identify landmarks like the church in the central park, the municipality building, the soccer stadium, and the cemetery. However, there were many new buildings we saw and wanted to explore.
At the top of the hill, there is a plaza with a giant Mayan (I assume so) statue. There are also four giant slides of concrete. You sit on your butt and slide down. If you sit on a plastic bottle, you fly. There are two bumps in the slide and a few of the girls bounced quite high over them. Everyone’s butts were brown from the slide but had smiling faces. Someone took a picture of everyone’s dirty pants – I’ll have to find it and post it J
On our walk down, we passed a dairy farm and watched cows cross the road. We also passed a lot of street vendors out on the beautiful day. We could not have asked for better weather. Sunshine, breeze, and shorts! No rain all afternoon either.
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