Weekend Travels

The sunrise over Lago Atitlan taken from the 6am lancha across the lake to Santiago La Laguna.



A fisherman on Lago Atitlan at sunrise.



Another fisherman on the lake as mist comes off the water close to Santiago La Laguna.



Santiago in the early morning light.



One of the chicken busses gets a gas refill on our journey to the coast.



My traveling partner Jenna, another Centro Maya volunteer, walks on the beach in Monterico on Guatemala´s Pacific coast.



My feets touch the Pacific again- on a beach of black sand.



A baby sea turtle crawls its way into the ocean. Tour guides from a local conservation park release the turtles with groups that pay to send off each turtle.



Tourists watch the baby sea turtles race to the water.



The sun sets over the Pacific.



One of the lanchas docks in Santiago on the return trip.



Part of the dock in Santiago.


So this weekend I took a trip down from the mountains to the Pacific coast to hang out on the beach for three days. The kids at Centro Maya weren´t scheduled to start again until Monday (today), and they actually didn´t even show up yet today either. If Guatemala has a catch phrase, it is definitely, ¨Mañana.¨

So Jenna and I left on Thursday morning at 5:30am and walked the 1km to San Pedro to catch the 6am lancha to Santiago on the other side of the lake. Then we took a series of chicken busses (although there weren´t actually chickens or any other animals aboard any of them that I was on) to Monterico on the Pacific coast. It took probably between 4-5 hours of traveling total due to all the connections, mountain roads, and stopping to pick up passengers all the time. It went real smoothly though- after getting off of a bus we never waited over a minute for the next one to come. All it took was knowing the name of the town next on the road in the direction we wanted to travel and we were able to successfully arrive in Monterico in the early afternoon.

Monterico isn´t very big. Aside from the local residential areas, it´s pretty much just one street lined with restaurants and tiendas (little stores selling grocery items) that intersects the beach which is lined with hotels and bars. I didn´t really make too many photos since my primary occupation of my three days on the beach was sitting in a hammock watching the ocean, sleeping, or reading ¨On the Road.¨ At night I hung out with fellow international travelers and went to a bar down the beach on Friday night with a pretty decent group of people including myself, Jenna, a local tour guide, girls from Iceland, Sweden, Estonia, and England, an American guy, and three Irish dudes.

It was a fantastic time. I got back to the lake, again via chicken busses, on Sunday afternoon and have now moved into a new place. It´s a property owned by a Norwegian woman who doesn´t live there most of the year. A guatemalan family lives there to house sit the place year round and rent out the other rooms. So I have my own room, which is a lot bigger than my last one, a kitchen, and a bathroom with a hot shower... all for 20Q a night- roughly just under $3. Today I´ve been running around doing errands and now I´m heading to get some groceries so I can make myself some food.

Adios and cheers...

Food Distribution

Last Thursday was the food distribution day for the families on food assistance with Centro Maya. All the families meet at Super Quic, the largest grocery store in San Juan, and food is distribted to each family. It ran very smoothly and most of the families already knew me so it was very easy to blend in and just shoot.

Visiting More Families

Last week I visited a few more families with Jeanne that have kids in the Centro Maya program. In addition to having disabled children that go to school or get extra help in the center, most of these families are in the food assistance program. People from the United States have sponsored most of these families for $35 a week, which doesn´t sound like a lot, but really goes far here.

Zapatos

This is a few days old now but I haven't had a chance to post this until now. I tried to post this yesterday' but it was going to slow and I had to be back at my house in time for dinner. On Sunday I went with Jeanne and Bob to give out shoes that were donated by students from North Scott (Scott County, Iowa) elementary schools. We visited two families on Sunday and later some other families came to Jeanne and Bob´s house... but these photos are from just one of the families we visited.

It was pretty cool to see how excited all the kids got about getting new shoes. When we got there the kids were either wearing no shoes or really ratty ones. I've been visiting a lot of families that have kids in the Centro Maya program with Jeanne and hopefully I´ll be coming back to most of the families to photograph them living their daily lives. It's hard enough to convince people that speak your language that you don't want them to pose but it's next to impossible trying to convey that in Spanish, which I speak horribly, to people that speak Spanish as their second language to their tribal Mayan languages.

Always interesting.

-Pat

San Pedro

On Saturday I took a pickup truck for 2 quetzales (about a quarter) to San Pedro and wandered around. It´s a lot different than San Juan in that there are way more foreigners walking around and foreigner owned businesses. Lots of stuff for the backpacker crowd. I´ll definitely be exploring more there in the future.

While in San Pedro, Jeanne and I also visited a family that sends their daughter to the Centro Maya program. The conditions in some of the houses here are pretty poor and it´s no surprise why they are apart of the food assistance program Centro Maya offers to some of the families. Despite everything they´re lacking, everyone seems very happy.

The last two pictures are of some weavers in a cooperative in San Juan that I came across with Jeanne. She was able to translate and explain to them what I wanted to do and they eventually got comfortable with me snapping photos. I think Jeanne usually takes some of the material and woven objects back to the US to sell for them and my photos will likely be used to show where the cloth came from.

San Juan La Laguna

Una tortilla.



Mi cuarto (my room).



More of my room.



Angelica feeding some of the pollitos (baby chickens) in the yard. After they got their food I helped her wrangle them all back into the basket that they live in, which was a surprisingly not so easy task.



Me relaxing outside my room reading Emalie´s high school Spanish/English dictionary. Yo mucho necessito.



Cristobal, one of my housemates. He wants to learn English and I want to learn Spanish so hopefully we´ll be helping each other towards those goals.



A sign at the San Juan muelle greeting visitors.



The dock (muelle) in San Juan where you can take a lancha to some of the other towns and villages on the lake.


Today is my second day waking up in San Juan. I´m actually updating from an internet cafe in San Pedro, the slightly larger more touristy town about 1km from San Juan. Jeanne and I took a pick-up truck here this morning for 2 quetzales (about 25 cents) I´m staying with a family that my friends Bob and Jeanne from home know through the Centro Maya program. Angelica is the mother and three of her children live there as well, who are all in their 20s or late teens, along with the two children of the eldest daughter. Angelica cooks for me everyday, the cost of which is part of my rent. The food is delicious- always homemade tortillas with any combination of rice, beans, potatoes, avocado, tomato salsa, and eggs. It´s a bit awkward since my Spanish is muy terrible, but I´m hacking my way through and I think I´m getting slightly better everyday.

Yesterday I was shown around San Juan by Bob and Jeanne. I went to one of the Spanish language schools that one of their friends runs, down to the muelle, and to see their house that they recently built. I went to the first volunteer meeting for Centro Maya. Although I didn´t really understand anything that was said it was interesting to meet some of the other people that I´ll be working with. Although I´ve taken many snapshots, I haven´t really made any strides toward starting photo projects as of yet. I´m still trying to get settled, figure out my way around the area, and get adjusted to speaking a language that I barely have a grasp of. Definitely good times though.

The Centro Maya school doesn´t start officially until next week but we have plenty of things to do there starting on Monday. Until then I guess I´ll be just hanging out, walking around, and trying to get my Spanish to a more acceptable level.

Adios,
Pat

More Antigua Streets

Two more from the Antigua streets earlier today. They're just too colorful to stop making photos of.