Well if I left the lake to escape the rain I'd come to the wrong place, being in the mountains Xe'la (or Quetzaltenango to give it its proper name) gets its fair share and my first impressions were not great. Xe'la struck me as quite a grey, uninspiring city. And having recently come from Antigua with its gorgeous colonial architecture Xe'la didn't really deliver on this front either. However I had heard that it was exactly this, that was its charm- it offered a grittier, more authentic Guatemalan vibe, and as a university town there were supposedly lots of different social scenes bubbling below the surface. So I was keen to go discover this despite my first impressions.

I'd heard good things about the Black Cat Hostel so headed there & it was pretty cool. There weren't many tourists to socialise with as it was low season but the staff were lovely, remembered your name and loved a good chat. Next mission was to choose a language school as I planned to study for at least a couple of weeks here. Language schools are big business in Xe'la as was evident by the two scouts waiting at the bus terminal when I arrived. I managed to scarper before they could give me their pitch but I needn't have bothered as they popped up again in the hostel. They told me about their not for profit school El Portal, which actually had been on my list so I agreed to go check it out. It was pretty basic but good and the teachers seemed lovely but I wanted to go check out a few more before committing to one. Utatlan was next. It focused much more on social activities. It was fairly big and right in the centre of town. The staff were really chilled out and gave me a tour of the place explaining how it all worked. I checked out a few more schools but ended up coming back to Utatlan.

My teacher was Sylvia, a 22 year old quite forward thinking girl. She'd moved out of her family home a few years ago to study in Xela, something quite unusual in Guatemala as most girls only move out of home when they get married. Granted, at first she moved to live with a family who reported to her mother, but since then she has moved a few times and was actually about to move into a place with two male friends. She was however; a little apprehensive about how they would take this back home, but fair play to her. She was lovely girl, but every bit her age- she ended up telling me far too much about her personal life and asking me advice on guys etc. Our classes were very entertaining and interesting from a cultural point of view but they never really seemed to have any structure or focus so I decided I needed to change.

The next issue was my host family. I had been placed with a husband and wife, their two teenage daughters and their 2 grandmas and their 3 dogs. The house was pretty nice and was attached to a store which one of the grandamas ran. I'm not a fan of dogs, which I'd told the school, but they were only little and I thought I'd give it a go. However the dogs kept pissing and s***ting in the house and I had to keep telling the family every time it happened so they'd clean it up, even thought they'd obviously already seen it! Anyway I decided to ask to move family as it wasn't just the dogs, it was the whole atmosphere in the house. The other couple staying there and I were treated much more like boarders and not really welcomed into family life. Our food was pretty crap and generally served separate from the family. 2 of the 5 'meals' I had there, were really sugary baps with horrible plastic meat and cheese and a mountain of ketchup and mayo. The husband was also rude or just extremely untalkative. In one of my futile conversations with him I asked him what he worked as and he completely ignored me. But I later realised he may not actually have a job as I never saw him do anything or leave the house for long. He was also typically macho expecting to be served by his wife at all times even though she worked 2 jobs. In general I just didn't like the vibes in the house and so as it was the weekend I moved back to the hostel until I could sort things at the school office on Monday. I later found out the mum was a sister of the school director so thankfully I was very diplomatic about my request to change.

I couldn't have moved to a nicer family. I went to live with Aura, a nursery school teacher and her son and daughter who were both at university. They are such a lovely family and really open minded. They all study philosophy outside of their work/studies and are really interested in other cultures, so our chats were really diverse and interesting. They took me to a theatre performance and talk on Mayan culture in the university and we all went to a salsa club together. Really and truly I couldn't have had a better family in regard to friendliness and using my Spanish. Most nights we'd have dinner and sit chatting for ages. To be honest the food wasn't great but given that they don't have a cooker-only a plug in 2 ring hob and no fridge. I think they do pretty good!

The school also switched my teacher to Irene who was 36 and 6 months pregnant- not the norm in Guatemala (this was also a massive shock to her as her other 2 daughters are 15 and 13.) She was lovely and we had some very interesting chats ranging from corrupt governments, drug abuse and violence in Guatemala. But more importantly she was a fantastic teacher who would pull me up on mistakes I was making and explain the relevant grammar rules.

I did have some good nights out in Xe'la mainly in the salsa bars (La Parranda) and the bars around the university especially a real local place called el Barrio which had live music at the weekends with a guy on a guitar playing all the big Latino hits. In true Guatemalan style, one of the nights we went there was packed but a big group of students made room for us and squeezed us all (8 in total) onto their tables and started chatting away making us all very welcome. I also went to La Casa Rosa, the gay bar in town which was also the main after hours venue. Pretty cool place, great interior decoration (as you'd expect) and a guy in drag behind the bar, what more could you ask for? Well… music would've been nice! But the police were outside so they had to turn it off and we all had to whisper and were essentially locked in for an hour -great party lol! But to be fair the police there don't mess around and they were just looking for a reason to shut the place down so we didn't want to cause them any problems and just stayed put. On our way to the bar, the police were shutting down the main bar street- with a patrol of 12 police vans - so they're generally pretty strict on kicking out time. Someone has obviously paid the right people to keep that place open behind closed doors.

I also took part in some of the school's social activities, including pot luck dinners, salsa classes and visits to surrounding towns including San Andres Xecul which has a cool little church; it's bright yellow with technicoloured saints, flowers and angels all over it! The town also has a weird resident Saint Simon (very like Maximon in San Pedro de Laguna) where you make offerings of cigarettes and alcohol -someone had even left him a bag of weed! You can also light different coloured candles at his altar for specific requests; blue for intelligence, pink, to make someone fall in love with you- you know the usual stuff!

I did an excursion to Laguna Chicabal a beautiful lake in the crater of a volcano. The lake is sacred to the Mayans and only Mayan priests are allowed in the water as they believe beneath the lake is the entrance to the sky. Science does not contradict their theory as it is so deep they have never been able to measure it!

Xe'la is really famous for being a base for amazing treks in the nearby mountains. I only managed to go climb Volcan Santa Maria during my stay, but it was pretty special as I saw my first volcanic explosion up close, of the nearby and very active Santiaguito. I had really wanted to do the amazing 4-6 day trek from Nebaj to Todos Santos as the scenery is supposed to be amazing, but it is pretty intense and you need to carry all your supplies for the whole 6 days. And given that the weather was so wet I'm not sure how enjoyable it would have been. Instead I opted for visiting Fuentes Georginas; a beautiful natural spa in a gorgeous setting hidden in the mountains- tough choice really!

My second week in Xe'la had been infinitely better than my first. I now loved my host family and teacher but I just didn't love Xe'la, so decided to return to Antigua, which I had been strangely missing.