Blogs from Cobán, Verapaz Region, Guatemala, Central America Caribbean

Friday was a trip from Antigua to Coban. The sole purpose of this lengthy (7 hour) trip was to get closer to the Semuc Champey, which we will visit tomorrow. We were picked up from our hotel in Antigua by a mini-van. We were the first on, and took the seat behind the driver. It turned out to be the roomiest spot on the bus, but it was a very long ride in a not so comfortable van. We picked up more people than was comfortable and finally left the city about an hour after we were first picked up. We had an Australian couple, a French couple, a guy from Tyler, Texas, one from Houston and another female. We had some traffic, but otherwise the roads were generally good. We ate lunch at a roadside ... read more

After our little mini chill out in El Remate, we continued on to the town of Coban. We stayed here as it is a good stepping stone in order to get to Semuc Champey, the famous clear water pools of Guatemala. Again the bus trip to our destination was full of antics and craziness which you may have realised is a bit of a running trait here in Central America. This time the driver decided he fancied a chat with his friend in another bus, and therefore he just pulled alongside his buddies van, being in the wrong lane, and stayed there chit-chatting away until a car came the other way before quickly pulling in and repeating this once the vehicle had passed. Anyway, after a fairly long and dangerous drive, we finally made it to ... read more

After our forth and final day of clinics we took a slightly different way back to Coban from the community. Along this route is the community of Rey Marcos. In 1998 after Hurricane Mitch swept through the region, a discovery was made in Rey Marcos. When we arrived we were given a pair of rubber boots and a hard hat with a headlamp. We walked up a few switchbacks along a small river of waterfalls cascading down the hill. Then the path seemed to just stop at the edge of one of the waterfalls. What we soon learned is that this was just the beginning of our adventure. Our guide took out a key, walked into the water, and unlocked the small door of medal bars that was set into the stone. One by one we ... read more

Guatemala, the district of Alta Verapaz, and specifically the Municipality of San Juan Chamelco have staggering statistics regarding childhood illness, infant mortality, and maternal mortality. The numbers are hard to comprehend laid out on a white sheet of paper. When you enter into the communities the statistics doesn’t slap you in the face. You don’t see children with tiny arms and legs, lethargic from malnutrition. The people of the community are very welcoming and on the surface the suffering isn’t glaringly apparent. It is obviously a difficult life but it is tricky sometimes to see the statistics. Looking around at the unpaved roads, and the lack of electricity and running water in some communities, it makes you wonder how we got to be so lucky. What exactly was it in the development of our country that ... read more

So I am playing a little bit of catch up here because I spent the last week out in the field with my first work group. Jorge, the teams coordinator, and I left last Sunday on a bus back to Guatemala City. It had been less that one week before that I was taking the same drive in the opposite direction upon my arrival to Guatemala. We met the group at the airport and immediately started to get to know one another on the shuttle ride to the hotel. It was a very diverse, intergenerational, and fun group. We had quite the spectrum of experiences from two 13-year-old boys on their first MTI trip with their fathers, to two college sophomores, to one young man who spent most of the past few years traveling around the ... read more