Peace Corps

Today I ran into the aforementioned Peace Corps people... the first Americans since I´ve been up here! It´s strange how different it is in a place with NO tourists/foreigners/Americans compared to a place with even a couple of them... it gets lonely.

The people in question were Jaime, a volunteer in the Guatemalan Peace Corps public health program in a village right near Santa Eulalia, and his boss. They were driving an awesome and brand-new looking Jeep with a "Cuerpo de Paz" logo on the side, and they spotted me as I was trying to change hotels (with two backpacks and a 5-gallon jug of water.) They offered to take me to the other hotel, which quickly turned into an invitation to go to a village way down the mountain in "tierra caliente" to set things up for incoming volunteers.

The road we took was two hours of up and down with lots of erosion on the slopes, and quite frankly, I can´t believe we made it with no problems. It ran along ridges with dropoffs on both sides a lot of the time, which made for spectacular views since it was an unusually non-rainy day. (Have I mentioned that it´s the rainy season up here?) The village was completely tropical, with coffee trees and banana trees everywhere, and people even had their shirts off. Compare to Santa Eulalia in the same township, where people go around in hats and jackets with gigantic umbrellas all the time...

It was really great to talk to other Americans, and I´m jealous of the volunteers that are going to live in this rather pristine tropical village in adorable painted houses and teach the people about good health practices.

In other news, my new hotel is NICE for $10 a night... brand new, huge, and the restaurant has filet mignon on the menu ($9). Compare that to the other restaurants in the town, which don´t have menus at all. Someone is doing Santa a big development favor, and I hope they get rich in the process. It sure beats my $6 hotel where the shower shocked me, the water didn´t always come out of the sink, and the mattresses smelled like either mildew or *other things*...