Traveling with other people is a compromise in motion. Some people try to see everything possible, some people try to rest as much as possible, and some people just wake up early and wait for the other two. 

 

Mom was up crazy early – like 7:00am and from what I hear had a relaxing morning. I was up next and spent the morning chatting with our hosts while they made Vegan pancakes over a fire because they were out of gas for the stove. By the time breakfast was ready, James had woken up. No need for all of us to waste energy at the same time.

 

Their house, by the way, was a beautiful, lean two level structure made of thick Guatemalan hardwoods. No insulation (that we could tell), no carpets, almost no paint. There weren’t even screens, just thin colorful curtains over the tall windows. There was nothing, save the deep blue lacquered floor, to distract from the dark, exposed wood. They said it had been built by an Austrian man and a Uruguayan lady who preferred large windows and wood to the more cramped local building styles that primarily use cement. So the house was an anomaly. 

 

 

Their way of getting it was an anomaly too. No banks, no loans. Just an agreement with the owner (a family friend) to pay it off in something like 10 years. Tania said that they had gone to a bank to inquire about getting a loan but that the interest rates were far too high (10%+). Anyway, they couldn’t imagine paying so much to the bank so they found a shortcut, made a person-to-person deal, and bypassed the banks altogether.

 

It felt a little funny sitting there in the middle of Guatemala talking mortgages and shaking our heads over exorbitant prices and the difficulty of finding housing that one could pay off before the unborn children had grown up and left the house you bought because of them. She probably thought it was funny too because if there’s any place where people might have the money and mind to buy a nice house, you’d think it’d be the US. But my theory is that the dues to join the average US society club are higher than the dues to join the average Guatemalan society club so it kinda balances out – though granted, the clubs may not have the same perks or decor.

 

In my own Colorado town, for example, the average person earns $50,000/yr pretax [payscale.com] and rent in a normal area is $1300/mo. 

 

Meanwhile, 2,600 miles south in Guatemala City, from what I could find, the average person makes something like $27,000/yr pretax¹ and rent is about $500 in a normal area².

 

It’s admittedly hard to compare houses between Guatemala City and my town – especially since I’m having trouble finding average costs for houses and the two economies are pretty different – but we’ll try just for kicks. I did find that cost per square foot of an apartment outside the city center was $66³. So I’ll compare that to my friend’s condo, since we don’t usually buy apartments in the US, which is also outside the city center. He paid $205/sqft.

 

In the end, a guy in Guatemala City will have to shell out 2.2x his annual income to buy a 900 sqft flat while a guy here in Colorado has to shell out 3.69x his annual salary for the same size living space. And that’s not even considering that Zillow says the average house around here costs about $380,000 which is 7.6x an annual salary. It’s also not factoring in that the rest of Guatemala is earning more like $7,423/yr and that mortgage rates in Guatemala are around 9% while the US rate is around 4%.

 

Therefore, I very scientifically conclude that in both places, buying housing is tricky…and also, maybe I should take my purchasing power south…and maybe it wasn’t so funny after all that Tania and I were commiserating about mortgages.

 

Anyway, the only downside to the house was its lack of fans since it must’ve been over 90F in the rooms – probably a rookie host mistake.

 

We had had a relaxing morning and a charming bi-lingual breakfast. Argentina, Guatemala, and the United States: three countries known for eating meat all gathered around Vegan pancakes and fake maple syrup.

 

I was mostly just glad that I’d gotten away without mortifying myself with any false cognates (for instance, trying to say “I’m embarrassed” with “estoy embarazado!” which actually means “I’m pregnant!” The word you’re looking for is desconcertado) or embarrassing myself via regional variations (i.e. like how the British call a sweater a “jumper”). At least I didn’t do that that I know of. Or maybe they were all just too embarazado to point it out.