Highlights

After Elliot left, Bjorn and I headed down to Lake Atitlan to visit the small town of San Juan, where I´d most likely be teaching English sometime during the next four weeks.

The town is terribly small - one main street, one restaurant, and absolutely nothing to do but talk to the natives. That, fortunately, is entertaining enough - as a rule, all the women are entirely too trusting and all the men are players of the first order. Even the pastor´s sons had several girlfriends, none of whom knew of the others. One of them had composed several lines of poetry expressing his utter devotion to whoever the recipient would be (most likely several people), and it was by far the sappiest love poetry I´d ever seen ("Words cannot express my love, but I´ll try anyway"). It was funny insofar as it was pathetic, but insofar as it actually worked (which it did, apparently), it was rather infuriating ("We have words to describe people like you in the US, best translated cabron in Spanish").

After arriving in San Juan, Bjorn and I hiked twelve hours into the jungle to visit a few of the native fincas, most of which had never seen white people before. The pattern in each was roughly the same - everyone would stare, and all the children would follow us a safe distance away, running away screaming (delight or terror) if we turned around and waved. Bjorn´s camera was by far the most frightening thing most of them had ever seen, and it took good deal of coaxing for them to approach and have their picture taken. Once they discovered how it worked, they never tired of it.

Here, smiling with delight:



And here, crying in terror:



It should be noted that this little girl, after crying for three minutes at the white people with the camera, abruptly stopped crying to snatch a gumball I handed her mother to pacify her, and then immediately resumed crying.

Our guide took us to see his family in one of the more remote fincas, one without electricity. They were among the poorest families I´d ever seen - dirt floor, incomplete walls, one candle, and at least fifteen people living under the same set of three rooms. Their generosity was incredible - I ate two of the best meals I´ve had here on the table below:



For a family that eats meat once a week, serving it twice in 24 hours to two foreigners was an incredible gesture. Bjorn and I returned it as much we could, buying medicine for them (things like cough syrup, pills for indigestion, etc., that they usually cannot affoard) and leaving it in their house.

The highlight of the trip occurred around this table at breakfast. The family´s baby girl, one Maria Elena, was - and without exaggeration - the happiest child I´d ever seen. She was also the only one who didn´t have any fear of white people. She had been carried around by Bjorn and I the previous night, and so knew that if she came up to either one of us and smiled, she would be picked up and carried around. After making the rounds with Bjorn, she came over to where I was sitting (just across the table) and grabbed my leg as a way of demanding attention. I complied. After five minutes, I put her down again, at which point she circled the table and grabbed my leg again. We repeated the exercise about three times until it was time for Bjorn and I to go, at which point she refused to get off my lap. I finally had to pick her up and put her in one of the large fruit baskets the family had on hand, something which she found unbelievably funny and demanded a repeat performance.

Am now back in Antigua. Bjorn leaves tomorrow.

Oh, and here´s me with our guide, trying desperately to keep out the rain.