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Published: February 20th 2012
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Wednesday morning and we had the last breakfast at the little restaurant up the street. I had something different today, a ham and cheese omelette which was great, different from my usual pancakes and fruit but every bit as tasty. We had everything packed up at the hotel and were ready to head out once Jose arrived with the trucks. We are not travelling in the luxury we had coming to Xela in, which was a transport van, this time we are in two double cab pickup trucks which seem kind of crowed with the two seats in front and then three passengers across the back seat. I was the lucky one who got to sit in the middle, short legs so I could straddle the hump. It was a long 3 ½ hour ride for sure; the roads are extremely poor and very winding. Zigzagging across the mountains and dodging pot holes at a very slow pace made the trip seem all that much longer. Once we had a view of Lake Atitlan though it all seemed just fine. It is difficult to describe the sight when you can look down from the height of the mountain road to see
the lake below and the little villages dotted along the shoreline. We were above the clouds and could see the lake peeking out from under them as we descended the mountain side, curve after curve we would look at the lake and were more anxious at every turn to arrive at our destination. The small village of San Pedro is like a place out of time, it is full of aging hippies from the 60’s, just relaxing and enjoying to surroundings. Out of the truck and shaking our legs to bring life back to the sleeping limbs, we settled into our hotel and headed out for a visit to a coffee cooperative which Jim and I had been to before. Jim, Dana, George and I took a Tuc tuc (a small 3 wheel transporter) to the cooperative, and were dropped off right at the foot of the steps to the coffee bean weigh in. George and Dana found it really interesting and I must say I found the changes were pretty astonishing as well. The cooperative has grown quite a bit, employing more staff than it had 2 years ago, and now dealing with nonorganic coffee as well as the
organic coffee. We were given a tour of the facilities by a young woman who spoke English very well; she was a secretary there and was called upon whenever they needed translations. Fabiola had come from a single parent family and was lucky enough to have a sponsor for her schooling from grade school up to the secretarial program she graduated from. Her sponsor was from Anchorage Alaska which is where she went, with another student, after they graduated and there they spent 14 months learning English. She felt that she had been very lucky to have a sponsor for her schooling, telling me that if young students from the poor village families did not have sponsors for schooling then usually they were not able to finish school. Fabiola made it very clear that she owed much to her sponsor for her schooling and was really very grateful for the opportunity. Between us we bought 7 lbs of coffee to bring home, at the great cost of $6.00 US per lb for the organic beans. After the tour we walked back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit prior to dinner. At this point Jim was struck by the
dreaded Guatemalan flu and went down for the count; he went to bed with a bucket while the rest of us headed to dinner at Mikasa on the beach. It actually was the beach as the water level in the lake is so high the restaurant front was at water level. Much of the former beach is gone (under water) with the hot tubs now out in the water instead of being on the beach, a number of homes have had to be abandoned due to the water level as well. All along the shore line you could see the devastation from the water, with empty homes just standing out from the shore and trees seeming to grow out of the lake, it is not clear how much more water the area can stand.
Dinner went well with a nice presentation from Jose and Griselda of CEDEC thanking the Guatemala Stove Project of their assistance over the past year in the various projects they had been involved in. After dinner it was off to bed as again we have an early morning start heading to Chichi (the largest open air market in Central America) and then to
Fabiola
This young woman had a real story to tell of her education and how grateful she was to her sponsor for helping her to break from the cycle of poverty Antigua and the Posada Merced for out final 2 nights in Guatemala.
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