Back to School

When we decided to embark on an extended cycle tour, we thought it might be prudent to do a bit of a test run to make sure we really understood what we were getting in to, and that it would actually be fun! We took a three week trip to Vietnam at christmas which helped us identify a few additional pieces of kit we would require for a smooth journey and, most importantly, it made us realise how important communication was for a more fulfilling trip. As we found out, Vietnamese is nigh on impossible to pick up in a year, let alone three weeks. Playing charades to order a sandwich or find the nearest toilet (entertaining one another no end as we become proportionally more adventurous in our actions based on how urgently a result was required) was a daily adventure, but this left no real space for any meaningful conversation (other than one lady letting Lizzie know she’d done well to find a husband with such a big nose).  All this, and the fact that it is a much more accessible language, as well as one we have some grounding in, led us to commit to significant effort to learn Spanish before and during our trip.  

In the months prior to the trip, we adopted a Blitzkrieg approach to learning Spanish. This entailed:

• an audio CD, (Michel Thomas, very engaging and a good foundation for some grammar)
• an app (Duolingo - highly recommended for expanding vocab),
• a split Spanish/English book (disaster - this was short stories by the likes of Cevantes, written in ye Olde Spanish rendering it somewhat useless unless we want to talk about chivalrous knights and brooding storm clouds),
• a Spanish book with simple stories and some vocab (the stories left something to be desired but it was good to consolidate our learning),
• Spanish podcasts (great to practice listening to people actually speak)
• and finally some Spanish lessons in the evenings (from the dynamic and pensive Fernando who had a strange obsession with the shipping forecast).

This gave us the basics for the start of our trip and has facilitated simple and straightforward engagement with the people we’ve met along the way - where we have come from, where we’re heading, how tired we are, how hungry we are - all pretty stimulating stuff…

So, before we left, knowing our Spanish wouldn’t pass muster if we wanted to find out about political opinion, historical knowledge or who just won the Champion’s League, we identified a great looking Spanish school in San Pedro, on the shores of Lake Atitlan (Lago de Atitlan - see how good our Spanish is now??!). The lake is stunning - about 15km long and proudly ringed by a monotony of mountains (2500+ meters) and a veritable collection of three volcanoes (over 3000+ metres). Whilst this made the school somewhat challenging to cycle to, once we were there the views were pretty ok. 

Lake Atitlan

We have just left the Lake, after a week there improving our Spanish. We opted to fully immerse ourselves in the learning by staying with a local family (with whom we conversed solely in Spanish), going to Spanish school for four hours in the morning, having copious amounts of homework in the afternoon (that wasn’t mentioned when we signed up!) and conversation class in the evening.

The family were great - Bartolo and Lea, their twin children Frank and Angie (6) and little Bartolito (2). Staying with them was probably the highlight of the week as they were hugely generous, welcoming and, most importantly, ridiculously patient as we took two minutes to decline the correct version of ‘to go’, in saying something hugely stimulating such as ‘we went to the pub for a beer after class’. They must have loved the insight we brought to their lives… One of the things that left a really big impression was the way they operated as a family - Bartolo ran a computer business but worked hard to make time to be at home to help managing the three children; Lea running the house and looking after us whilst already clearly having a lot on her plate; and the children, who were so well-tempered, and loved playing with each other or happily alone, not pleading for attention as Bartolo and Lea helped us stumble and stutter through our simple Spanish phrases.  All this, whilst always laughing and joking (yep, thats right - we understood their jokes in Spanish). This happy, well functioning and good natured family set a high standard for anyone and were a pleasure to spend time with.

Our wonderful hosts

At the start of the week, we were slightly nervous of our ability to concentrate for a four-hour Spanish lessons with just the teacher and the two of us.  Lizzie was particularly concerned given her strong propensity to daydream and regularly nap (she once achieved the particularly impressive feat of falling asleep in a one-on-one meeting). Worryingly, the ‘classroom’ had no windows to stare out of as it was already outside, set in a beautiful garden next to the lake, staring at the volcanoes and wondering what it might have been like to live in Pompeii - serious ammunition for daydreaming (auto-correct keeps changing this to Pompey, which is perhaps an even worse fate than doesn’t bear thinking about). Fortunately, we had the most energetic and engaging Spanish teacher, Clemente, who regularely described himself as ‘loco’ and spent the week trying to prove the point.  He used some wonderful acting to demonstrate the subtleties of the language; a simple description of the disctinction between two different forms of the verb ‘to know’ in two different past tenses (a nuance which the Engllish language lacks) led to two elaborate 5-minute performances, with him (enthusiastically) playing multiple characters. We now have this wonderful memory etched into our brains and we expect this will keep it rooted there for the long term. If only Miss. Goodwin had had the same panache…

Clemente and our "classroom"

Since leaving formal education and entering the world of work, we have both really noticed the joy we get from learning - this seems to stem from a number of factors. Despite much discussion, we are yet to pin down the relative magnitude of each so in no particular order they are:

• We are not being forced to learn but are doing so because we want to and so choosing our subject
• There is a more tangible outcome from the learning
• It allows us to use our brain in a different way from normal
• The progress feels discreet and rewarding
• We’re paying for it and so want to make the most of it!

When Ali went on a French exchange trip as a teenager, his friend John and he pulled every trick in the book to avoid the family, stay in their room and attempt to complete every challenge in Brian Lara cricket (Michael Bevan’s knock against England at the 1999 World Cup was a real sticking point that required us to avoid the family for an entire day, coming down only for lunch and dinner). With the benefit of time, some maturity, and the above factors, we couldn’t get enough of spending time with the family, practicing with them, with each other and asking endless questions. The result is, hopefully, that the next three months of the trip will see us having far more rewarding conversations with people along the way and getting so much more from the trip. Vamos!

Whilst the intensity and masochism of our learning Spanish didn’t leave much spare time, we managed to cram what free periods we had with exploring the town and the lake. It was great to have a week in a place and get use to its rhythm and traditions (in particular going to the Mr. and Mrs. San Pedro competition one evening, which involved some apparently hilarious skit in Mayan, a lot of incense and some slow walking). The lake is surrounded by three volcanoes, which not only creates a stunning vista but presents a challenge that we couldn’t refuse - on our one day off, we got up early to hike up Volcan de San Pedro, although it turns our that cycling muscles are different to hiking muscles as the next day, and the day after, and the day after that we could barely walk down the stairs our legs were so tight. Lesson learnt.

Lizzie was given a magic stick
to hike the volcano

We also managed to continue our developing tradition of swimming before breakfast -  we seemed to have the lake almost to ourselves at sunrise, with just a few fisherman gently paddling by, collecting the night’s catch. There were some eerie half structures in the lake, ghosts of old buildings that the rising lake has gobbled up - in a storm in 2007 the level increased significantly and reclaimed large swathes of land, but thankfully it has been relatively stable since. One benefit of the old structures is they are used as a refuge by fish - a fact taken advantage of by local fisherman who snorkel at night with torches and harpoons. Ali joined them one evening - swimming at night with a torch was an awe-inspiring and magical experience; the harpooning of fish less so. He managed to get one that would barely feed a kitten and another that would just about have generated a ceviche starter.

Early morning swimming 

Harpooner Hunter Gatherer

It was wonderful to have a week off the bikes and really use our brains rather than our legs. The intesntiy mean it didn’t really feel like a break, we’ll just have to wait for the beaches of El Salvador to feel like we might be able to relax on this trip!