It was 1978, I had hitchhiked across the South Pacific on other peoples boats and was living in San Francisco. I met some backpackers from Denmark who were on their way to Peru, South America. They had heard from other backpackers that the Incas have a Sun Festival called Inti Raymi that only happens every 300 years. It sounded so cool and what an opportunity if it only happened every 300 years! I was working and saving to continue my trip to England.
Well, I just changed my plans.
With my American friends, Jim and Michelle, we started the trip south to Peru. We caught a bus in San Francisco to San Diego and crossed the border into Mexico at Tijuana. From there it was another bus to Mexicali and then a train to Guadalajara. At the time, I had never learned or attempted to speak a second language. This was my chance to do it. I bought a Berlitz book on Spanish. My unfortunate fellow passengers got to hear me mispronounce words for hours. I thought I was doing great until someone would start talking back to me in Spanish and I didn’t have a clue what they were saying.
After Guadalajara, we went to Mexico City. We stayed in this small hotel called a pension. I was amazed at the size of the city and so many people! This would be a great place for me to get out and start practicing my Spanish. Jim and Michelle wanted to go to see some ruins but I wanted to spend the day walking the streets of Mexico City, explore and practice my Spanish.
Lunchtime was approaching so I started looking for a restaurant. A lot of restaurants in Mexico display the entire plate of food in the window so you can see the selections that are on the menu. In one restaurant window, I saw a terrific plate of chicken with rice and beans with veggies. Being on a budget, I was always conscious of my money. This was a large portion of food for only a few pesos. I studied my Berlitz book and wrote out a sentence to order this meal. Feeling confident, I went inside. I said the first Spanish words I learned, “Hablar Englis?” (Do you speak English?) The ladies smiled and replied “No”. So I opened my book and proceeded to order. They were smiling and then laughing….I guess I wasn’t getting my message across. I went over to the window and pointed to the plate I wanted. In Spanish, ‘I would like to have this for lunch’. The look on their faces told me I still was not getting the message across. I removed the plate from the window and “INSISTED” (yes, a demanding gringo!) that this is the plate I want to order. I had finally got my message across. One of the ladies went behind the counter into the kitchen and returned a while later with my lunch. It was in a bag so I guess it was to go. Yeah! It worked. I had ordered my first meal in Spanish. I felt so happy.
I went to the plaza nearby and ate the lunch. It was cold but I assumed it was supposed to be that way. Later that afternoon I realized what I did wrong. As I was sitting on the toilet with chronic diarrhea wondering if the food I had eaten was bad, it dawned on me. I had demanded the actual plate I showed them from the window and that is exactly what they gave me. Ah! It took me two days before I could comfortably leave my room. Jim and Michele, who had both learned their Spanish in High School, confirmed my language blunder. I know this is probably ‘TMI’ but it was certainly a lesson learned. It’s fine to practice your Spanish, but if they say ‘No’ there is a reason.
I started to use more and more Spanish every day. At the bus station, at the markets and my friends even let me order for them at restaurants. Supervised – of course. I was determined to be able to communicate even on a basic level. The secret to learning another language is to not be embarrassed to use it. Don’t be timido (shy). Well that has never been a problem for me. I find that nearly all of the locals applaud the attempt from a visitor to speak their language.
Michelle, Jim and I continued our way south on buses through Central America. We made it into Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, when the Sandanista guerillas decided to take over the country. They took over the Parliament, transported all the politicians to the airport and put them on a plane to Panama. We decided it was a good time to leave Nicaragua and head to Costa Rica.
I remember sitting on the bus next to a beautiful Senorita and started in on my Spanish. She kept replying to me in English. Her English was good, and of course she wanted to practice speaking a different language but it wasn’t doing my Spanish any good. So I told her “I am from Australia and we don’t speak English”. This worked fine until Jim came up to my seat and started talking away to me in English. Later in my travels it worked in my favor saying I don’t speak English. They want to practice their English but I wanted to fast track my Spanish.
We made it into San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. After a couple of days exploring the city I started to look for a language school. I found one off of the Centro Colon. The Centro Linguistica del Conversa was run by a couple of Americans with teachers from different parts of Latin America. I only had enough money to pay for 1 month of Beginner Spanish lessons so I enrolled and met my teacher. She was from Chile.
The first day of class I met up with 6 other gringos and away we went. We started asking questions to the teacher about what the curriculum was but she replied in Spanish. We were all shocked that she was only speaking Spanish to us. That’s right – she could not speak English. Oh Boy! This would be interesting. As time went on I could see why this worked for all of us as students. If you needed to ask a question you had to think about it and then ask in Spanish. Also, you needed to translate the answer.
I moved into a small 1-room pension across from the market. After class I would wander the market and talk to all the vendors. Man, were they patient. In my room I had everything labeled. The door – la puerta. Walls – pared. Floor – piso. Windows – la ventana. Everything including opening the cutlery drawer in the kitchen and the utensils were labeled.
I progressed well in class and after about 3 weeks. I was talking with the director of the school and he was telling me about his idea of expanding the school. He wanted to add 2 more classrooms out in the back yard. That night I drew up a proposal with a couple of drawings for his classrooms. The next day I presented it to him. All I wanted was to swap my hours of labour building the classrooms in exchange for continued Spanish lessons. It worked! He accepted this idea so I made a list of materials for him to purchase. Each day after 2:00 pm and on the weekends, I worked on the project.
During this time I moved out of San Jose to a small village called Naranjo. It was a 45-minute commute on the bus each way and in town nobody spoke English. When I first started school living in San Jose, all the students would hang out at a gringo bar called Cay Largo by Parque Morison. Of course, flirting with the Senoritas in English. Now I was in Naranjo, with only Spanish speaking locals with whom to communicate. This certainly helped my conversational Spanish.
I finished the classrooms and completed 6 months of language lessons. Speaking Spanish has served me well over time as I continued on backpacking through South America and then later, working in San Francisco, California where most of the construction workers were Latinos. After many years, I returned to Mexico, Central America and Panama and have been so thankful to be able to communicate with people. Now we are living in Belize in Central America and although the main language here is English, all of my workers are from other parts of Latin America.
You are probably wondering what happened to the Inti Raymi? When we arrived in Costa Rica, we found out from someone that the festival is every year, not every 300 years. (Don’t believe all of the travel stories I guess). So I was in no hurry to get there. I spent some valuable, interesting time in Costa Rica, and made it to Peru – and the Sun Festival – a year later. That’s one thing about traveling – and I guess about life – be flexible and take advantage of opportunities when they are there.
