From the lake...And back...

We left the lake yesterday on a chicken bus to Xela. Xela, the name that everyone calls Quetzaltenango, is Guatemala's second biggest city, and is located in the Highlands. The ride here was lovely. Chicken busses are actually really nice. Their well maintained, cheap, and frankly pretty pimped out. They are brightly colored and kept really clean, and they are decorated inside and out with information about Jesus, such as the fact that only he can change your life, and that he is coming, so prepare yourself. The scenery was lovely though. We drove into the mountains and the whole lake was spread below. Then it was patchworks of crops and little towns, and of course the obligatory road work.

Xela is nice, so far. The central park is pretty, although we haven't spent much time in it yet. After finding our hostel (and learning that there is not actually work there for us, as we expected...) we ventured into the mercado. There we ate at a comedor, where we sampled vegetable soup with huge whole vegetables, rice, and thick plain corn tamales. We've gotten more bold in our culinary choices, as breakfast yesterday was purchased off the street, and was quite tasty and cheap as well.

The big goal now (how did TFA language slip in there?) is to find something to do for the next couple of weeks. Cheka and Phoebe are still looking for long term volunteer opportunities, while my schedule really only permits shorter ones. To this end we went to a benefit dinner for an organization called Quetzaltrekkers. Volunteers lead people on hikes, and the proceeds go towards a school and orphanage for street children. The dinner itself was awesome. All the food was donated by local restruarants, and it was held at the house where all of the guides live. Cheka and Phoebe are actually thinking of becoming guides, and so all of us are leaving tomorrow on a three day hike BACK to the lake so that they can check it out.

Last night we dined with a bunch of foreigners, smoked a hooka on couches covered in cat print sheets, and then walked out onto the streets of Xela. We walked towards out hostel with the sounds of 80's pop fading behind us. We're realizing through our travels what a strange place Guatemala is. There's this strange undercurrent of backpackers/tourists. My understanding is that many countries have this backpacking culture. But to me, this one seems somehow unsettled, new, like things haven't had a chance to shake down.

I am a triathalete

Well not really, but we were pretty active today, a nice switch from lazing around in the sun, as enjoyable as that was. Today we hiked from Santa Cruz, where we are staying to San Marcos, where we are not. It did take about three hours, and was a nice mix of hard uphill, slippery downhill, rock scrambling, and flat trail. There were points where it felt exactly like hiking in the East Bay with tall brown grasses. Pretty much the whole time we had a wonderful view of the volcano ringed lake. It was sunny and sparkly, and from where we were we could see boats and towns and random crops high up on the hills. It was lovely, although more often than not one of us would trip while trying to both walk and take in the view.

I did not have my aura read in San Marcos. Instead we got lunch (tofu and cheese sandwhich, who would have thought...) and then headed to the shore. We rented kayaks and paddled around the edge of the lake. We swam right off of the kayaks, which seemed like a great idea until it was time to get back in. Leah pulls herself up onto the kayak, Leah falls headfirst into the water. Adventures in clumsiness, I suppose. On our way back two of my traveling companions hollered at a naked guy bathing on the shore, and of course we met up with him not five minutes later. Adventures in something...

Tonight we´re checking out a different hotel for dinner, and tomorrow we´re going to go check out a different town on the lake. Becky leaves from there, and then we take off for Xela.

Since Becky showed up, I have been dedicated to keeping this trip Guate, and it is going very well. We did some bargaining in the market, visited a macadamia nut farm, and climbed an active volcano. We got not three feet from active flowing lava, and would have roasted marshmallows on it except that we forgot to bring sticks. This might be obvious, but the lava was really hot. I mean, really hot. As Becky said, it was so hot that you could stick it in your barbeque and cook a chicken.

Yesterday we hopped on a shuttle from Antigua to Lago Atitlan. We're staying at a place called La Iguana Perdida a hostel right on the shores of the lake in a town called Santa Cruz. They've got a big family style vegetarian dinner every night, hot water, and hammocks. It's lush and green, not too hot, and the lake is surrounded by huge mountains. It's really lovely, and might be the thing that actually inspires me to figure out how to post pictures.

Today we spent the whole day lying in the sun. I collected hundreds of tiny white shells, so small that all of them would fill maybe a tablespoon. Along with the shells I also got one hell of a sunburn. Good times, good times.

Tomorrow we're going to wake up early and walk to San Marcos, which is about three hours away and offers such services as massages and aura readings. I'll let you know how it goes...

The Guate Part (pics)

Antigua is a really lovely city. It was at one point the capital, and there are some really nice details to it, such as the fountain in the central park. Stone women cup their bossoms and water streams from their nipples. There are old churches with intricate stone carvings, ruins of other old buildings, and a nice yellow archway. The buildings are low and brightly colored, and the streets are cobble stone. There is definitely an international/touristy feel about the place. There are several books stores that sell primarily books in English, and on every street there is at least one internet place and one travel agency, frequently both in the same building. There are also tons of really cute coffee shops and restaurants. A couple nights ago we watched most of Fight Club at a really swanky bar with comfy couches, tasty crepes, and a huge movie screen. Last night we went out to a great sushi dinner at an American owned place. It was beautifully decorated, the service was amazing, and the sushi was creative and suprisingly good. The guy we went with, the same one we went to the coffee finca with, knows the owner, and we wound up sitting around this beautiful low wood table talking him and drinking mojitos.

One astute reader of this blog e-mailed me and noted that I've seen a lot of the mala part of Guatemala, and it's now time to find the Guate part. So that's the goal.

Our friend Becky showed up today, and I'm officially begining the Guate portion of my trip. We are leaving tomorrow for Lago Atitlan (we have reservations for a hostel that hosts a cross dressing party every saturday...). We're going to check out a number of the towns around the lake and hopefully do some swimming, boating, and laying in the sun. The week after that we head to Xela where we're working for our room and board for a week. After that, it's a little up in the air. My wonderful girlfriend is coming the week of the 14th, and hopefully I'll be able to give her a best of tour.

This really should be a whole separate entry, but I wanted to let you all know that we're officially moving to the Bay Area in August. I'll be attending law school at UC Hastings, and KJ will be persuing her masters at UC Berkeley. I am pumped.

All About Coffee (pics)

Yesterday we visited a coffee plantation right in Antigua. It was only ten minutes from where we are staying, and we went with a guy who is starting a coffee import business in New Orleans.

We went on a tour lead by a guy named Carlos.


First, we watched a short and cheesey video about coffee growing in Antigua. It was fun to see the silly eighties hairstyles, but not all that informative. Next we hopped into a van and drove to the lower part of the actual plantation. It's the end of the harvet season, but there were still plants in all stages. We saw coffee flowers, which look, smell, and taste a lot like honey suckle, and we saw coffee berries, which are green when unripe, yellow when they're getting there, red when their ripe, and shriveled when they're over ripe. First Carlos showed us the actual berry. He had us take them apart and explained that there are four layers that need to be removed before getting to the green bean stage that is ready for roasting. First there's the outer skin, called the cherry layer, then a sort of slimy sticky (and sweet!) layer that I can't remember the name of, then there's the parchment layer, and lastly the the silver layer. The last two layers you really only see once the beans have been dried.

I remember when I worked at Peets hearing about shade grown coffee, and this was indeed shade grown coffee. The trees they use for shade are planted at the same time new coffee plants are planted, but they grow much faster. The tree they use is actually native to Australia, and bears flowers but not big fruit. They used to use mango trees and avocado trees, working a kind of double harvest. The problem with that was that the coffee plants would have to compete for nutrients in the soil, plus fallen fruit would make the soil too acidic. The flowering trees didn't have this problem, plus they have the added advantage of attracting birds, which in turn eat insects that could harm the coffee plant. Pretty cool.



Carlos explained that at this particular finca, the picking season is from November to March. Each bush winds up being picked several times as the berries mature, so the harvest takes a while. The people who pick the coffee berries are mostly indigenous folks from the mountains. He told us that because many of them live far away, they move to the finca for the season and live in refugios, shelters, for the time that they are picking.
Whole families come, and the kids pick coffee too. We were told that the school year is set up for this, (this is similar to why the school year in the states is the way it is too...) and that having the kids work allows the family to make more money, as they are paid by the pound. I'm not sure what to think about all this, because as much as he was trying to frame it well for us, I still see kids working and living in shelters away from home. It's more complicated than that of course. It's different standards and a different way of life. This isn't the United States. This is Guatemala.

Next we moved to the nursery where we saw new plants. They actually make each plant by hand, grafting the more flavorful arabica plant onto the sturdier robusta roots. This is done by hand by four women who can produce thousands of plants each per day. There are several million plants on the plantation, and each has about 8 to 10 years of production before being removed and replaced, so there is a pretty constant turnover rate of plants.






We got back in the van and came to the processing area of the whole deal. There are three aspects to it: wet mill, dry mill, and roasting and packing. During the wet mill stage, all the beans are chucked into a vat of water. The good ripe ones sink, the less ripe or too ripe ones float to the top. The floaters and skimmed off and set out to dry. These are sold to other companies for use in lower quality and instant coffee. The rest of the beans are run through a machine that removes the cherry layer, which is collected and used as fertilizer. They are then put into big vats of water and left for 40 to 48 hours to loosen the next layer off. Once that layer is removed, they are put in the sun for 8 to 14 days. They are on clay tiles and are raked every two hours.




When they are dry, they are put into sacks. Some of these sacs are exported, the parchment and silver layers staying on to increase shelf life. Others stay at the plantation. They are stored in these stacks until they are needed, at which point they are taken to the dry mill. Dry milling removes the parchment (which is saved and used for bedding for the resident mules, which are, by the way, named after U.S presidents and their wives...) and the silver layer in order to bring the bean to the green bean stage. Then another machine sorts the beans by size into three categories, the largest being elephant, the smallest being peaberry, and he middle size the standard size. Then the beans are put onto a conveyor belt and hand sorted to take out any bad beans. After all of this, the beans are sent to roasting and packaging.

Next we checked out the roasting area, which smelled wonderful. Carlos showed us the machinery that roasts, grinds, and packages and then took us upstairs to the tasting room. They have one professional taster who tastes every single batch of coffee before it is sold anywhere. He will spend all day tasting (and then spitting out) coffee. He's got 27 years of experience and can pinpoint problems in a batch anywhere from the picking (too ripe or not ripe enough) to the drying, to the sorting.

We ended the day sitting at the restaurant and drinking, of course coffee.

The other highliht of Antigua is the people we're meeting. It's a very international city (which is bad too, as I've barely spoken spanish here...) with a lot of travelers. We're getting the skinny on the best places to visit and the best places to stay.

Today we go check out Camino Seguro, a possible volunteer place. Antigua is nice, but I'm realizing again what I realized in Mexico. I'm not so good at just hanging out and doing nothing.

Pienso que me quedo aqui....

I left Hotel Backpacker at 5:45 this morning on a bus to Guatemala City. I traveled with a guy named Hernan who had lived at Casa for 8 monthes, and is now starting his own orphanage in San Salvador in El Salvador. He had an amazing time at Casa, and told me all about Christmas when one of the vols dressed as Santa and everyone stayed up late wrapping presents. It was really nice to hear such positive views of Casa, even though I didn't have the same experience.

The trip to Guate was shorter than I expected, and from there I caught a cab and then a chicken bus to Antigua. I have the worst sense of direction, and a walk that should have been five minutes wound up being forty five, and I wound up taking a cab because I just couldn't figure out where the hell I was. Silly. By the way, cobble stone streets are nice, just not in a three wheeled vehicle. Ouch.

It was great to see Cheka and Phoebe again. It felt like it had been months, not weeks. They've talked with other travelers who have had or heard about similarly not so great experiences at Casa. They also talked to travelers who have volunteered at some other organizations that are legit, and that really value their vols. So we will spend some time this week checking out organizations here and in Xela. I'm not going back to Casa. I'm making a clean break. And I feel positive about this decision.

Becky is coming down on Wednesday, and will be here for a week. We're just going to travel and relax, which is really what I need now. I took a hot shower for the first time in weeks, cut my nails, and used some anti piojo shampoo, just as a precautionary measure. I'm trying to get Casa out of my system, and move on.

Leaving Take Two

This whole leaving thing is very complicated. After my visit to Fronteras last Saturday, I went back to Casa ready to leave. I spoke with the volunteer coordinator the next day and told her that it wasn’t for me, and that I was out. She was great and said that she was surprised, and that I needed to do what I needed to do, but ultimately she hoped I would stay. And as soon as I told her I was leaving, and as soon as she told me I could go, I felt like I could stay. And so I did. I spent a week working in Kindergarten, this time not with little Dulce Maria. We played in the park and visited the pigs and chickens and made leaf rubbings. I gracefully handled a situation in which one of my students pooped her pants causing the other teacher to throw up. I discovered that counting down backwards from five is magic in Spanish as well (teachers, you’ll probably understand that a little better than most). It was a pretty good week. I started enjoying my time with the other volunteers a little more, and have even learned to flush the toilet cuando no hay aqua.

The kids at Casa Guatemala are really beautiful too. All kids are, at least to some degree, even when they are crapping their pants. I had activities with the big girls one day last week, and they spent the whole time teaching the little girls to dance, and I used my supercoolheadlight as a strobe light. I’ve spent more time with the boys the past couple of days, and they are awesome too. Two of the older boys built a raft complete with an anchor, a fishnet, and an oar made out of a stick and a ping pong paddle.

Of course there are the monkeys too. There’s a whole huge family of them that hangs out in front of the comedor including a momma monkey who carries a baby on her back. A family of monkeys!! Can you believe it! What luck!

My Spanish is improving too. I’m understanding more and more, and depending on who I’m talking to, am able to actually carry on a conversation. The kindergarten teacher is from Spain, and she’s wonderful and patient, and also just walked into the internet place as I started writing about her. Creepy. I’ve learned that chuca means dirty, culo means butt, and chula means cool, as do calidad and vale.

All of that being said, I think I’m leaving. I’m in Rio Dulce again, this time with all of my stuff. I do not regret my decision to stay another week. I feel like I am making good choices and giving myself lots of chances. Tomorrow I leave for Antigua to meet up with my original travel companions, who are looking for other volunteer opportunities. Technically I am on descanso, and am expected to return next Sunday. We’ll see. If I return to Casa, I will be working as an orientador for the little boys, working with an excellent volunteer. I might try it for a week. If I don’t, I don’t know what I will be doing. I need to see all the cards on the table. I have been vacillating a lot on all of this, and it’s wearing me down a little bit. It’s great though to come online and see the supportive comments and get the supportive emails. I know that I’ve got a crowd behind me all the way, even if I do ultimately wind up with the rats and the maggots again.

Well folks, I've got some pretty interesting news to report. First of all, I want to say that my girlfriend is a total rock star. For those of you who don't know, she, like everyone else in the world, applied to grad school. She applied to Harvard, Berkeley, NY, Brown, Carnegie Mellon and Northeastern. And she got in. To Every Single One. Every Single One. To bring it back to me, I've got excellent taste in women.

So, there's a change of plans. I've been at the orphanage one day short of w eek, and I will be leaving it one day more than a week after arriving. It's not the kids, it's not the job. It's not really even the lack of hot water and electricity or inconsistency in the availability of water. It's just that my heart isn't in it. The kids are really sweet for the most part, and even had a good day on Friday in the classroom. We spent an hour on the field learning how to walk in a line, and then I had a talk with the ninas after lunch during which I learned that when I'm chastising five year olds my Spanish is pretty good. So it's been getting better. But I didn't come all the way to Guatemala for things to just get better. I've been really frustrated at the Casa, and frustrated the week before, and frankly, pretty frustrated traveling before that. I had a nice little life going in Boston before I left, and I didn't leave that life to be frustrated. So, I'm taking off.

I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing or where I'll be going. There's a big lake here called Lago Atitlan. There are places all around the lake, from hippy towns with space cookies to really traditional towns, I was thinking about heading that way and chilling there for a while. If anybody has any suggestions, I would be happy to take them.

I feel a lot better having made that decision. It's been a tough week. Now all I need to do is let the people here know, and then, pues, me voy!

Escape! (pics)

I wanted to put that title in spanish, but unfortunately, "I escaped!" translates in Spanish into Escape! You have to imagine the accent on the second e.

I´m worried, because I´m loosing my English. This would be a great thing if I were replacing my English with Spanish, but that is not actually the case. Within a few weeks, I will be completely mute. And the world will rejoice.

So, today marks my fourth full day working at Casa Guatemala. To be honest, it´s been up and down. The upside is that many of the volunteers at the Casa are quite nice, interesting, and reasonable people, and not one of them has insisted that I pour them a rum and coke. Also, the kids really are lovely, and ridiculously friendly. They come up to me and ask me my name, although they frequently can´t understand it. The other plus side is that two littlers of piggies have been born in since I´ve been there. Piglets are ugly and scrawny, but in a really cute way.
Another upside is that I've been spending a lot of time with the baby, Dulce Maria, and she´s quite fond of me. Cheka and I have been tag teaming taking care of her, and Cheka has been sleeping with her.

The down side is that every day seems to be a game of what will Leah clean up off of the floor next. Don't read this next part if you've got a weak stomach. Okay, so Casa Guatemala is not exactly equipt to deal with babies. They used to have babies there at some point, but for whatever reason, most of the kids are between the ages of 4 and 14. We have little Dulce Maria there as sort of a special circumstance. Her mom grew up at the orphanage, so much for follow through, and is working at the hotel. So Dulce is there. The problem is, they don't have basic things a baby needs. Like diapers. Little Dulce spent Monday night sleeping with a tshirt fashioned as a diaper. This would not be so bad, except that little Dulce is a sick little puppy, and has a lot of runny poopies. Tshirt do not so much hold runny poopies. So I spent Tuesday morning cleaning baby poop up off the floor. The room that little Dulce sleeps in with Cheka is a big quiet room that used to house the chiquitas when Casa Guatemala housed chiquitas. Nobody really lives there now, except for rats which they are currently trying to get rid of by poisoning them. Today Cheka found to dead rats under her bed. Because she did not find them right away, they were accompanied by a family of maggots. Being the nice person that I am, I clean up the guts and maggots today for Cheka. So we've got baby poop, rat guts, and next, anybody's guess. Sorry folks, I just wanted to get that off my chest.

IT'S SAFE TO READ NOW.

Anyhow. When I'm not taking care of the little one or mopping the floor, I'm working in the kinder class. They just split kinder and pre kinder, and if all goes well, I'll be working with 6 little ones between the ages of 18 months and 4 years. I was not really feeling the love, but today one of the little ones, named Kristi
in fact, climbed onto my lap and fell alseep. I also made up a song in Spanish to the tune of ring around the morning, and I'm writing a good morning song to the tune of Are You Sleeping Brother John.

So it's good. That being said, I make deals with myself to stay one day at a time. Adjustment is hard. Everyone says it gets easier and better with time, and I'm hoping it's true. I'm by no means miserable, I'm just not quite sure why I'm here...

I'll try to post pictures soon!

It occured to me last night that I've been volunteering at a bar. To help orphans. Strange. It's not exactly clear why we have to volunteer at a bar prior to say, teaching kindergarten. The best answer that my fellow travelers and I can come up with is that it is some sort of hazing. We're either bored to tears, or having people yell at us. And in case there was any confusion, I am not a bar tender. In fact, last night I was told that I should never be a bar tender. I absolutely agree. I'm not the only misfit bartender though. Last night one of my friends, and I'm not going to say who, was drinking a Cuba Libre, then made a Cuba Libre for a customer, and then gave her Cuba Libre to said customer. That's personal service for you.

When I'm not getting in the way at the bar, I'm in the kitchen, usually washing dishes but sometimes buttering pans or making lopsided tortillas. The kitchen is actually pretty great. Chef is this round guy who wears a chef hat, looks like a muppet, and likes to say "oh my god" and "I'm sorry" in English and cracks up when I repeat the words back to him. He and the other guys who work in the kitchen are sweet, and it's fun to try to banter with them, although the language sometimes presents a challenge.

Tonight is our last night as volunteers at Hotel Backpacker, and I can honestly say that I am not at all sad to say goodbye. It's one more crazy night of drunk volunteers and more Gallo beers than you can shake a stick at. This has been one of the slowest weeks of my life. Not the hardest, not the longest, just the slowest.