Because the trip was so long, people needed to eat along the way. The vans don't want to lose time by waiting for people to get food, so they'd pull over on the side of the road and these ladies would surround the vans trying to sell their food through the windows. I actually had some really great fried chicken this way. If you look in the distance, you can see them doing it to a nearby van. It was quite entertaining, everyone shouting and trying to get you to buy their stuff.
We got up to town at around 5:30pm (LONG day of traveling) and headed straight to Ezekial's friend's house. The house belongs to an older man in his 80s, his wife and two grandsons (ages 9 and 12). It was a simple Mayan house, cement floors and corrugated steel roof. The house was pretty open, no walls around the "living room", more of just a cement patio with the roof overhead. It was good though, it was nice to be outside the whole time.
The bathroom left something to be desired. It was an outhouse and raised up off the ground about four feet, but there was no pit or anything underneath it. Everything would just hit the ground and stay there. High-five for not pooping for three days.
This is how we showered. We hand pumped water up from the well (very cool!) and then just poured it over ourselves. It was kind of hilarious to have the ducks in the farm run down to the pump every time someone washed themselves. They'd swim around in the puddles
Here was the shitty apart about the shower:
Open fields surrounding the shower are nice for rural Maine, not so much for a neighborhood with folks walking by every few minutes. Needless to say, I stayed fully clothed during my trip. It was a skanky but necessary decision.
And here's the rain water they collected. We used this for cooking and drinking, though I don't really understand why they used this instead of the getting water from the well. After the farmer's wife told me a "funny" story about finding mosquito larvae in the glass of water she was drinking, I switched over to only drinking the water that I brought with me in my Nalgene from NPH.
Behind the house was a little wood chicken coop. The chickens were running in and out and the farmer's wife kept walking in there in her bare feet. Eventually I walked over and realized it was the kitchen! It looked pretty clean inside, despite being the poultry pit stop.
There were a ton of baby chicks! This hen had ten of her own (is that normal?!)
A turkey comes to visit us in the living room
Before we could head out to the jungle, we had to get our machetes ready (by "our" I mean "their." They chose not to arm me for some reason.) The first thing to do was rub them in dirt to clean off the rust. This worked surprisingly well.
After that, he sharpened the blade with a file. This thing was crazy sharp by the time we set out
Because why not?
Then it was time to head off! We walked through the village for about twenty minutes. People let their animals run all over the place, I guess they just wander home at night
Finally we got to the end of the pueblo. We walked through meadows surrounded by the jungle. It was really beautiful. I also learned a good lesson about following eight year olds. David and I fell back from Ezekial and David's grandpa. Eventually we lost sight of them, but I wasn't worried because this kid does this walk everyday to work on the farm. We came to a barbed wire fence which David easily crawled under. I followed, but it was a lot more difficult for me; I ended up having to wriggle through the mud on my belly like some kind of Marine. We followed on the inside of the fence for about fifty yards before passing a gate. I asked him why we didn't use the gate instead of crawling under. He simply told me that he never uses the gate. Great. Not that it mattered much because I was covered head to toe in mud from the rest of our walk to the farm anyways.
Then it was time to enter into the jungle! A lot of farmers come through that way, so there was a pretty well-trodden path to follow.
Some kind of weird fruit we passed on the way. I've actually never seen a fruit growing directly out of the trunk of a tree before, I was impressed
We followed the path and finally it opened up to a clearing of corn. The farm was huge, way bigger than I expected. Here's Ezekial standing in front of about 1/4 of his crop.
David shows off the helotes (corn cobs)
Pineapple plants
The corn was really tall, but you could see a huge difference in the ones that received fertilizer and the ones that didn't. Note to self: when growing corn in Guatemala, money for fertilizer is well spent.
The farm also has a nice little stream running through it. It was pretty hot out (maybe 95 degrees) and the mosquitos were awful, so we splashed around in there for a while. Here we are taking a snack break.
I'm sure you can guess what our snack was (we had cooked a few before heading out)
A mariposa (butterfly) stops to give David a little luck
After an hour of hanging out on the farm (no real work was done, it was more of a status check), we headed out. I have no idea how this was decided, but for some reason we went bushwacking through the jungle instead of following the very nice, easy path out.
Maybe they were trying to give me a taste of adventure? Needless to say, within twenty minutes we were lost. I didn't freak out because both Ezekial and the grandpa knew their way around the surrounding pueblos, so I figured if we just kept going in a reasonably straight line, we'd eventually pop out somewhere familiar. It was a little disconcerting to see them notching trees so we wouldn't backtrack, though.
Luckily, after about 45 minutes of wandering aimlessly, we stumbled upon the path. We all collapsed and let the mosquitos eat us for a while before walking the hour back to the pueblo. The walk back was just as beautiful.
Wall etchings done by ancient Mayans
Well, maybe not ancient
We got home in one piece, thank goodness. I cleaned up as best I could and then fell into a chair with a happily purchased soda. Ezekial had some mystery plans to take care of and left for the rest of the day. I decided to keep to myself and relax.
I was finally happy, giving into my natural anti-social tendencies by sitting inside and reading my book. David comes up to me and enthusiastically spits out the question I've been dreading to hear since I arrived in Guatemala: "Will you play soccer with us??" I hate sports. I especially hate sports that involve me running or moving my body with any kind of coordination. I wanted nothing more than to lay there and read until it was time to leave, but his little face was so cute (plus it's so rare that someone begs me to be on their sports team. Have to take advantage while I can). I said I'd play as long as I could be goalie, which turned out to be a really good call. I barely had to move to block and by the end of the game they were all shouting "Yay Gordito!" which roughly translates to Yay Fatso, but it was said with love and true admiration.
After the game (we won, 3-1, though the fact that we won against three kids younger than 9, one of whom was wearing his sandals on his hands the whole time, seems hardly something to brag about), we climbed into bed just in time for a hurricane to hit us. A big tropical storm had been heading towards Peten for days and we thought that maybe we'd get out before it got us, but no such luck. It was pretty mild though, barely any wind, just heavy downpour all night. it was actually quite nice to sleep through.
The next morning we woke up at 4:30 and started our trip home. Six buses and twelve hours later, I got back to NPH and took the hottest, longest shower I've had in the last year, crawled into my bed and slept for ten hours. I had a good time on the farm, but it was really roughing it way more than I had anticipated. While the family was nice to me, I was really uncomfortable most of the time and happy to have only stayed for three days. I'm so, so happy that my next trip is to the beach next month!!
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