Caliente

After five days I am back to a town with Internet. After my last note, I left San Pedro at Lake Atitlan and got on an over-night bus to Flores in the Peten Region of Northern Guatemala. The Peten Region is the jungle area. Flores is the capital situated on an Island in Lake Peten Itza. And it is hot here. I mean really hot. F´n hot.

I spent about a day in Flores. It is a small, sleepy town. Very quiet and very clean. Not a lot to do there except get some good food and watch amazing sunrises and sunsets. The still lake is a perfect mirror of the sky producing vivid sunrises, day time images and sunsets. Its breathtaking.

From Flores I headed across the lake in a Lancha to San Andres where I spent the week living with a family and going to Eco-Escuela. And I am pleased to report I finally got a taste of the third world. Details include a wood burning stove, no phone, and no sink to be seen. The shower empties into the street by a PVC pipe. I mean this living situation was a new experience for me. My sink was a bucket I filled with water (there wasn´t a lot of shaving this week). If this was the first place I had lived I would have been very concerned about Guatemala. Also, i got my first taste of doing my own laundry by hand. And I suck at it. I hope to never do it again.

But I had a great time this week. My teacher was very cool. 23 year old dude that likes to play basketball (which is highly unusual here). We were gonna play but I had to rectify a problem with my shoes. My shoes stunk. I washed them 3 times and I think there are back from hell. I had no idea until the overnight bus. I am sure that I was the only one sleeping on that bus ride.

sidenote - Speaking of bus rides. The overnight bus was a breeze. I had heard some horror stories. The three stops for police to search the bus were the only times I woke up. And it was half empty, so my lanky ass could spread out and let the rest of em enjoy the true horror that was my shoes.

Back to San Andres - I went on a couple cool hikes in San Andres. The first was with the school. We went to a guys own private rainforest-farm type place. They are trying to reclaim some of the jungle areas that have been ruined by people trying to grow corn and other crops improperly. This man has 50 hectars where he is growing all kinds of food (corn, beans, papaya, bananas, okra, mandarins, pimiento, oranges, guavas, etc.) and also replanting the native trees to try and slowly grow back some rainforest. Although the trees will take hundreds of years to grow. Got some free fruit here and it was awesome.

The second hike caught me by surprise. My teacher (huber) told me he wanted to show me a cool archaelogical spot so I met him after class for a ¨walk¨. After 5 hours, I mentioned to him that this was a hike not a walk. But anyways, he showed me a really cool spot that I don´t think many people would know to go see (its not in the books). It is called Motul and has only just recently been cleaned up. They have cut back all the overgrowth but the buildings have not been excavated (they are covered by grass and moss and some trees grow directly on the pyramids and what not). It was awesome. About seven or eight building structures out in the middle of the forest. Marked only by a simple little sign. Nobody else was around. Also, we found some ceramic pieces and a little Mayan sculpture just chillin on the ground.

The other big highlight was swimming in the lake by a half built house. Some moron started building a house on the shore of the lake. Unfortunately for this guy, the lake goes up and down in a cycle of about 40 years and it was at the bottom of the cycle when he started building. Halfway through getting the house done it was underwater and remains so today. I swam out about 200 feet from shore and found the two wood posts marking the entrance. The first floor of the house is about three quarters submerged. The locals love laughing about this place.

Other interesting experiences included seeing a black scorpion chilling with me in the bathroom. Also, this morning I saw an iguana sunning outside my room. It was about 2 feet long. I was hoping to see a snake or tarantula but that will have to wait for later in the week I guess. The boas are well liked for controlling the rats and mice in houses. Oh and I saw an eclipse today over the lake which was also cool.

Oh and one last thing. I had a breathtaking view from my room which was situated on a hill facing back toward Flores on the otherside of the lake. The sunrise was on my left and sunset was on my right. It was unreal but hot, real hot. I mean hot.

Ok. I am off for El Remate, Tikal, hopefully rafting, caving, etc. No school this week.