“What if she doesn't like this place?”, “What if she doesn't want to sleep on a couch?”, “Where should we take her to eat?” I ask Pete all these questions almost simultaneously with a flurry of nervous energy behind them. He looks at me with an exasperated, furrowed brow and replies, “Natasha, It's Lindsey”

We usually prefer to be camped in the mountains, next to a river, or on a beach far from crowds. However, every once in a while we crave a little "civilization". Our new friends Vince and Lucy both live in Quetzaltenengo (commonly known as Xela), and said it was worth a visit.

On our trip to Asia we experienced four different languages, all of which are vastly different from western languages. One syllable can mean three to five different things depending on whether you say it with a rising, falling, or neutral tone. We did our best to learn how to say hello, goodbye, thank you, and beer, and how to count to ten in every language. We managed to get by with this and plenty of sign language, but we definitely weren't having many in depth conversations. So one of the things we were most excited about on this trip was learning Spanish.

We took it as a good sign that after another beautiful drive through the mountains of northern Guatemala a rainbow seemed to end directly over our destination, the town of Todos Santos Cuchutman.