The last few weeks here have been really, really tough for all the volunteers. Since Semana Santa is so huge here, all the regular employees have the week off. The volunteers have to pick up the slack and work around the clock for a full week which is really friggen hard when you have thirty kids who refuse to listen to you and make fun of every little mistake you say in Spanish. I totally lucked out though. Usually the nurses don't have off during this time, so I would be expected to go and work in the kids' houses with all the other volunteers since they dont really need me in the clinic. Fortunately, one of the nurses decided to take her vacation time and since Tia Rosa was away on her honeymoon, it fell to me to cover the nurse's shifts. I got to work what would otherwise be considered a tough schedule: 24 hours on, 48 hours off, but next to the grueling schedule of the other volunteers, mine was a cake walk. Sadly though, once Semana Santa ended and all the employees returned, I had to jump back into doing my inservices. I'm not allowed to be out of the clinic for that long during my shifts, so I had to move all the charlas to my days off, so now I've been working 24 hours on, followed by half days in between. It doesn't sound like much, but having those two days off in between made the shift worth while, it's completely draining otherwise.
Anyway, we all decided that we deserved a little getaway, so all the volunteers went to the well-hyped up Earth Lodge. I had been hearing about this place since I was in language school. It's a resort tucked away in the forested mountains overlooking Antigua. The only way to get there is to have their driver pick you up; the resort is down a long unmarked dirt path that DEFINITELY didn't look suitable for driving on. We had gone up the side of the mountain for about fifteen minutes, then we drove along the ridge for a while on the dirt road. One side dropped down into a steep slope that went down to the bottom of the mountain. I'm pretty sure our wheels were riding the edge of that cliff; the people on that side of the van were squirming in their seats quite a bit. Eventually we came to a dead end and we all had to get out and walk the rest of the way. They definitely get points for being remote.
The walk down to the resort
Misty jungle...
They had the two healthiest dogs in all of Guatemala!
The place was really great. They had cabins tucked away on little trails and a huge meadow of avocado trees (they're a fully functional avocado farm. Too bad we weren't visiting in harvest season (which I now know is January and July))
They also had cool succulent plants everywhere. Check out this one, it's like a tree!
One of the rooms that my friends rented. It had a tree growing right through the center of it, so cool!!
Here's our cabin. I stayed in the cheapest option, an 8-bed dorm for $7.50 a night. It was amazingly clean, way better than any camping experience I'd ever had before.
Right outside our front door was the Mayan sauna, basically a small stone house with benches inside. There was a metal barrel cemented into the back wall; you can make a fire from the outside of the cabin and it causes the heat to radiate inside the home. I had big plans of taking this baby for a whirl, but sadly I got way too busy relaxing to find time for it.
The main lodge was where we spent most of our time. They had a lounge area with the same couches Jamie and I had in Jersey! I love these couches! Needless to say I spent a lot of time spread out on one reading.
They also had a bar with a good happy hour ($1 drinks from 5-7)
But the best part was definitely the view. This picture doesn't even begin to capture it.
Liz and Vero contemplate the meaning of life while looking out over the beautiful vista
Okay, so this place has a reputation of having really great food. We had to prepay for the dinners, but they had a menu for breakfasts and lunch. Gotta say, it lived up to the hype. At Q60 for dinner ($7.50), it was definitely worth the price. The first night we had lentils with shredded carrots, roasted vegetables,
Here's supper the second night. Saturday nights you can choose to add meat for an additional Q20 ($2.50). I had a BBQ pork chop, beer bread, sweet and sour vegetables, AMAZING potatoes au gratin, mixed black beans and a side salad. These pictures aren't doing any justice to the food, it was really delicious (and healthy!!). Their dinners are also family style so every table gets a bowl of everything that was served, that way if you want more you can grab some!
Here's the pila (sink) where the local folks do their laundry. Unlike other towns that only have their water running one day a week (and thus it becomes everyone's "laundry day") this pila was fed off of a natural spring so it always had a nice flow of fresh water :)
Edith and Bianca testing out the hammocks and deeming them to be good quality
I spent Friday night taking full advantage of the happy hour specials, then playing my favorite Swiss board game, Brandi Dog! (Which I now know is spelled as Brandi Dog and not Brandy Dock. Sometimes it's hard to understand accents :) This is the game that we had been playing at the volunteer houses that reminded me of Sorry. Erika has a nice version of it (rather than our paper version with the noodle pieces). Turns out that this game is somehow affiliated with a large residential center in Switzerland for people with developmental disabilities. All proceeds go to help with their care. I'm going to buy this game when I get home!!
Saturday I woke up and ate a fantastic American breakfast of sausage, bacon, eggs and toast. After reading for a few hours, me and a few of the girls went for a hike in the mountains. It was really gorgeous, lots of farmland surrounded by jungle.
Great overlook
And because Guatemala loves to surprise me, we stumbled upon a (abandoned?) zip line! Who needs gates? Kids will learn to stay back the hard way.
It goes straight across to another mountain, then people can walk up a bit and take a return line back. If this was working I would have totally done it!! (though its really easy to say that when the option isn't there)
After our hiking I went back and relaxed some more. I got a ton of reading done on this trip which was a nice change of pace. All in all, I really loved Earth Lodge. There were some down sides for me (it was really hippie-dippie for me, lots of white kids in dreadlocks running around.) It annoyed me that they were visiting Guatemala and staying in a resort like this, completely separated from the real experience of Guatemala. I had to remind myself that I had no clue who these people were and they could also be volunteers just looking for a break. Luckily there was plenty of room for all of us to do our own things with limited interaction. Everything was a good value, even if it was a little expensive by Guatemalan standards. I ended up getting two nights in the room, five full meals and countless drinks (alcoholic and not) for under $65. Not a trip I'd be making every weekend, but definitely do-able again in the future when I want some quiet time :) Now we're back to the orphanage and back to the grind for one more week until the nurse gets back. I have an entry in the works about my experiences in the clinic these last three weeks, so be on the lookout for that!
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