November's Activities

The arrival of December marks the end of my 5th month in Mali. Cold season is starting and although many of you might not call it cold directly the 90 degree days somehow have a different feeling to them. The wind picks up and it's really dry. Peanut farming has ended much to the delight of my blistered hands and I'm headed back into Bamako for 2 weeks of training in water sanitation stuff. Not too much has been going on outside of some Bambara studying and I can't help feeling like I'm at some distant summer camp. It didn't really strike me that I was in Africa...until recently.

I was sitting in my concession a couple days before Thanksgiving and I heard a lot of people talking excitedly about 100m from my huts. The procession of about 20 people (most of them kids) was walking in my direction and after they passed and moved to my neighbor's concession my counterpart came over and said "Come quick, there's a big snake!" Usually Malians tend to exaggerate the size of snakes and I expected maybe a 5 footer. I found this:A 12 foot African Rock Python. They quickly killed it and looked around proudly as the meat was filleted. I asked the guy who's holding the snake in the above picture, Bonjugu, if I could try it. He looked at me a little funny as if it were a crime that I had never eaten snake meat before and while patting my back with a huge smile said, "Ni Allah soona, I bena sa sogo dun sufe" "If God wills it, you will eat snake meat later tonight." Apparently Allah had other plans and he willed me a wicked giardia relapse before night's end but before that, I couldn't resist the photo op with this 50lb beast :It's hard describing perspective to Malians and you can't really see the magnitude of the snake in my hands. (also, yes, those are his guts on the right side)
After the stark realization that reptiles like this roam around my village I realized that I was indeed, in Africa. It still feels a little like summer camp though.

Thanksgiving came and went and I decided to stay in my village to get ready for the biggest Muslim holiday of the year Tabaski. It synchronized well with Thanksgiving and I was able to feast with my villagers on goat and lamb meat. During Tabaski, everyone gets new clothes and decides to debut them, so I got a lot of family portraits of the 15 families in my village. Also, there was lots of music and dancing -an all around fun time.The village dancing with drummers in the middleMy host family in their new clothes

Mamadou looking innocent in his new complet (keyword: looking)

Some other interesting things that have happened that have furthered my realization that I'm no longer in the states:

One of the older guys in my village pointed at a line in the dirt in front of my house and said that it was a snake path. I asked him where the snake had gone and he said he didn't know, but probably over there and nodded his head in the direction of my house while making a clicking noise with his tongue. We searched around inside my hut and couldn't find it, so we went back out to re-examine the path which we both decided was conclusive evidence that it's most definitely in the hut somewhere. During my second look I started moving some things around while wielding a long bamboo staff, my movements being followed by a group of onlookers peeping their heads through the screen door to see what the commotion was about. I pulled back my trunk and heard a really loud hiss and knew I found him. The hiss and coloring was indicative of a certain species of viper that is known to inhabit this area called the Puff Adder. It was small and not very intimidating, but the sound it made and the defensive position it took made me realize he meant business. I'm not one for killing everything and ideally I would have liked to do a catch and release sort of thing, but with the group of Malians behind me, my reputation as a man in the village on the line, along with my knowledge of this specific snake and what it could do to the kids in my village if I released it somewhere and it came back, I decided it was best to use the Malian philosophy: Kill All Snakes. So, I smashed his face with the bamboo staff and walked out of my house to the approval of the crowd of villagers assembled outside my door. Check it out:

Okay, so it's an adolescent snake which hasn't quite grown into it's coloring. There are markings on its back resembling what an adult puff adder should look like, but I'm not 100% sure my assumption was correct. Definitely some sort of viper because I looked at his fangs during what I'll call a "field autopsy." (Sidenote: Mom, don't do any research on this snake, just trust that I'm taking necessary precautions to avoid them)

Also, I found what I think is some sort of whip scorpion under my pillow in the stage house. Not really sure though. It looked like this:

So, if these things haven't gotten you excited to come out and visit me I don't know what else to do. I'm enjoying the wildlife a lot and finally all of those hours I thought I wasted watching Discovery Channel snake specials are paying off.

Another cool thing I saw was a hippo territorial dispute. It was pretty intense, as this one lone bull approached the family that normally sits in front of the stage house in Manantali. There's something pretty crazy about seeing animals that are the size of mini-vans with 12 inch tusks and mouths that can fit full grown humans inside battling it out, good times. My friend Jason took these pictures below...we were at a safe distance without a good zoom on the camera and I've compressed the pictures to fit them on here so that's why the image is slightly blurry.
Here's some other pictures that I took that I can post because the internet is good right now:

Sunrise as viewed from the gate of my concession.

The Manantali Stage house (there's two huts side by side), in case you were wondering what I was referring to when I mentioned it. The river is right behind where I took the picture from. This is where I spend my time if I'm not at site, there's an actual toilette (not just a hole in the ground), power, a shower, and a kitchen.


The neighbors kid with the monitor lizard he caught and later cooked. Once again, I didn't partake in eating it or taking the picture, Jason did, and he said the meat was surprisingly good and tasted like chicken (in case you were wondering).

That's all for now. I'll be within email range for the next couple weeks, so if you'd like a moderately prompt response, from now until the January would be a good time.

My Village

The surrounding area around my village is awesome and I'm sure that I'll spend a lot of time hiking around it and getting to know the lay of the land. I have no or very little cell phone service in my community and it'll be rough getting to the town that has reception because it's far. I'll do my best to make it out there every three weeks or so, so Mom, I'll call...just more infrequently (yes that's possible).

As for the rest of the details of Ganfa, I'll start with some personal description. The players:

The Bandis (from the French word for Bandit, bearing the same meaning)

The Bandis are a group of 5 to 10 year old boys that runs around my village constantly getting into trouble. They are a gang of about 8 sling shot toting trouble makers that are constantly in some sort of scuffle. The lead is actually one of the youngest and doesn't yet go to school. Malinkes have a way of pronouncing F's as H's, and this kid's name is Fambaga, pronounced Hambaga, so I call him Hamburger -and he's quite the ham. His close associate is his cousin who is about a year or two older. His father runs a boutique that sells tea, soap, rice and sugar. The way the sugar is sold is in small plastic bags and after they are used on pots of tea or mone, the bags are set aside to blow away in the wind. This young Bandi has realized this and has grown a taste for the sugar lined plastic and often times when I see him running around town he's got one of them in his mouth, so I call him Sweet Tooth. Hamburger and Sweet Tooth's other associates vary from day to day but often involve the same group of 5 or 6 which I have yet to learn all of their names. I attempted to recruit them, in my rudimentary Bambara, to help me protect the flowers in my concession that my homologue planted from the sheep that burst through my gate and decide to eat them. The first meeting for my Department of Concessional Defense was yesterday and during the middle of it, Hamburger saw it fit to walk outside the wood fence that lines my concession and pee. I didn't see this because I was reading a book at the time, but was notified of it by the other members shortly thereafter at which point the group decided that I should grab a branch from the tree, strip it of its leaves and teach Hamburger a lesson. I declined the offer and decided discretion would be best as it is our first meeting and if I lose the kingpin, I would surely lose the rest of the Bandis as well. Another thing about the Bandis and what gives them their name is that they really can't be trusted with much. They're always wanting to play cards with me, though none of them know how to play correctly, but whenever I indulge in playing or try to teach them they find ways of cheating and removing any aspect of competition from the game as they quickly gang up and claim victory. Cards with them for now is a lost cause.

Hamburger manning the slingshot with sweet tooth on the right.

The Musow (The Women)

They work incredibly hard and spend most of their day cooking and taking care of the kids. All of them are incredibly friendly, but our conversations don't extend much past standard greetings as they only speak Malinke for the most part. I'm quite positive that every girl above the age of 12 could easily beat me up. They throw around 20 liter water jugs like it's nothing, pound millet for hours with these over sized mortar and pestles and from this have incredibly muscular arms. With that in mind I've done my best to stay on their good sides and oblige to help them whenever asked with corn harvest or peanut shelling.

Cew (The Men)

Most of the men work in the fields all day doing back breaking labor with small tools that cause you to stoop over and put a lot of stress on your back. Most are very good natured and happy to help me learn Bambara while drinking tea and discussing local politics. Two of the notable cew in the village are my homologue Nwugoun and my friend which just left for Bamako for 3 months today Niouma. They have both been very helpful in getting me adjusted to the village life. Nwugoun is a very soft spoken good guy who is the first Malian I've noted in my village to enjoy the look of flowers. He planted some in my concession, but they were quickly eaten by sheep. My favorite time with him was when I was just getting into Bambara and my knowledge of it was really poor. He came over after dinner and we sat and watched the toads that lined up around the light to eat the bugs. He started throwing little pieces of charcoal at this one who when pelted with the little pieces would lash his tongue out and gobble down the charcoal. Bambara makes you sound like Yoda from Star Wars if translated word for word and at the time I was still listening to sentences and doing that and Nwugoun turned to me and said "Look, great hunger has this one" as he threw more charcoal at him which the toad continued to eat. I laughed pretty hard when I heard that and realized that Nwugoun and I had a lot in common as we both found it hilarious that this stupid toad would keep eating charcoal.

Nwugoun with his flowers

Niouma is a bit different from Nwugoun. He's a little bit taller than me and with roughly the same build. He's a bit more a ladies man than the average Ganfan man and shows it with crisp, clean jeans and a button up t-shirt (always with the collar up -I haven't figured out how to talk fashion with him yet, but hopefully I can convince him to change that). Niouma is one of the guys I go to the market in Dioukeli (Joe-kelly : a village about 11km away) with every Thursday. He takes a lot of offense to people that try to rip me off because I'm white and he ends up doing a lot of my bargaining for me in the market.

Cewkoroba (old men)

Most of the old men speak Malinke so I don't spend too much time with them. The majority of them spend their days making baskets out of palm fronds and drinking tea. One of the nicest guys in the village is Mamadou Diaby and he has taken it upon himself to make sure that everything is taken care of for me. He does a lot of work with pump maintenance and is one of a select few people who can actually read. Unfortunately, his sight is going and with that is his ability to read. He's currently blind in one eye and has depth perception troubles, so I help him by lighting his cigarettes for him. He has this uncanny skill of holding on to his cigarettes without ashing them and building this 3 inch long ash trail all the while making vigorous hand gestures (as pantomiming things is one of the best ways for me to communicate right now). He has a ton of knowledge about water sanitation and pump maintainance and is very excited that I'm in his village.

Diaby on the left, standing with neighbor and kids

Cool things I've seen:

Someone tried to sell me this monkey

This is how we cook corn on the cob

Red-billed Horn Bill

Hippos

I'm officially a sworn in Peace Corps Volunteer. Swear in was the 10th of September, so it's been some time since then. I meant to update this shortly thereafter, but it is hard to find a reliable source for internet. Anyhow, the swear in ceremony was similar to that of a small high school graduation -only with the main language being French and with Malian TV cameras there. Everyone met at the embassy, most in traditional Malian garb and my specific homestay group of guys in our own take on Malian attire. We chose some fabric from the local market and had the tailor throw it all together in what we still think to be a rather fashionable ensemble. You can be the judge for yourself though:

Soundougouba Homestay Crew (Colleen, Owen, Eric, Matt S, Me, Matt C, & Pilar)

Everyone: Risky Business

So we sat in the heat of the day listening to the speaches given by the Country Director, fellow volunteers who exhibited some of the different languages learned over the past two and a half months and finally the Embassador. After sweating through the speaches and congratulations we were invited to stand and take our vow to defend the constitution at which point the elation of the whole process struck us as we were now allowed to seek cooler shade the after party. I spent the night hanging out with my other 65 fellow volunteers in Bamako at various establishments allthewhile maintaining the most professional behavior and setting a spendid example of how a good American boy should behave. Seriously...

The next day we regrouped at the Tubaniso training center and prepared for the next following day which would take us to our sites for final installation and the upcoming two years of our lives. For the first three months we aren't allowed to leave our region which is kind of a bummer, but more so to make sure that we can hack it. However, in those three months we have relatively few objectives outside of getting as integrated as possible into your community. It sounds a lot easier than it is. My village, as I may have mentioned speaks Malinke, not Bambara which I learned in training. Granted, there are some similarities between the two but for the most part I have a lot of difficulty figuring it out. The problem is that they sound very much alike and since my Bambara was pretty poor upon arrival I assumed that I just wasn't understanding the Bambara, but it has become strikingly evident that their usage of Bambara is very limited. Unless I specifically preface a conversation with "please speak Bambara only," Malinke is the only spoken language. Even then, their conversations are peppered with Malinke words and different pronunciations of words than I'm not used to hearing and gaining full understanding of what's going on is quite a chore. The women, older men, and young children don't speak any Bambara. The men from about 12 to 50 speak Bambara. In a village of 400 people, that's about half. It's frustrating because I constantly get asked 'why I don't speak Malinke' and I respond with 'the same reason you don't speak English.' It's hard to maintain composure because I take a lot of flack from the kids that think it's easy to speak Malinke and since they don't hear me speak anything but garbled Bambara and horrid French and therefore assume that I'm retarded -then I just start speaking to them in English and get as angry at them as they do at me when I don't understand them. It's rough, but simple joys can be taken in the nicer families that find time to stop by my house with tea, peanuts and roasted ears of corn and more than make up for the troubles I encounter day to day with language. Overall, I love my village immensely, but there are some things that make living in it very difficult. The food is awesome. I usually eat alone and since they don't use utensils I use my hands. My diatigi's (jah tee gee : host) wives are excellent cooks and I'm supplied with tons of millet, corn or rice covered in tigadegena (peanut sauce) which is one of my new favorite things. I don't eat much meat, but since I've now witnessed an in-village slaughter of a goat, I'm not sure that I want to eat much. In between meals I spend my days eating peanuts and since we just harvested the corn, we've been eating a lot of ears of corn -at the peak I was eating upwards of 5 ears a day cooked on charcoal. I have absolutely no complaints about the food as the Malinke people are well known for having spectacular peanut dishes. My day to day routine goes as follows: I wake up at or shortly after 6 when one of my diatigi's wives brings water to bathe with. I take a bucket bath after about 30 minutes of light exercise. After that I read a little while and await the arrival of breakfast, usually in the form of mone (Moh-nee - millet porridge) or siri (rice or corn porridge). After that my supervisor usually stops by and informs me of his plan for the day at which point I agree to do whatever he's doing, decide to go work in the field with my homologue or diatigi or sit it out and study in my concession. There's no shade in my concession after about 10 AM and I'm forced to take refuge under the big tree in the middle of the village which is a common hang out for those who don't go off to the field during the heat of the day. Tea is made sporadically throughout the day (yes, I now own a tea set and am not afraid to admit it). The tea is half sugar and half tea and is served in the form of shots in small glasses. You have to be cautious about the timing of your tea drinking because if you drink it to late you'll be up all night...I've made that mistake several times. Also, cards are played as well. Usually a game called Cent Cinquante-et-Un (151) which is basically Malian Uno. Lunch is served around noon and dinner shortly after 7, after the sun has set. The problem with dinner is that sunset unleashes throngs of bugs from the grassy areas. If I wear my head lamp I will literally get rained on by bugs. Being that I'm too lazy to take my food inside and attempt to eat it under my bug net, I end up eating a lot of bugs. It's not a bad thing because most don't really have any taste, however, recently there's been this spawn of little flying beetles. They're about the size of an M&M and love flying right into my food. Initially I plucked them out, but with time I got complacent and lazy and haphazardly stuck my hand in the bowl and withdrew without looking beforehand. I immediately realized my mistake and came to the realization that these aren't normal beetles, but stink bugs. Since then I've been much more attentive to what I eat but there are so many of these bugs that it's impossible to avoid them all. I have yet to develop a taste for them, but the toads that come into my concession with the night who congregate in front of my area light like the ones that I throw out covered in tigadegena. Accompanying the thousands of flying beetles that come every night are hordes of toads to snack on the ones that stick around the light too long. After about an hour of aerial attacks by the beetles they stop coming and around 8 or 9 I can sit back and enjoy the full advantage of being in the middle of nowhere without power as the milky way stems from horizon to horizon and countless stars blur the constellations.

My Village

My Huts

Dinner: Tigadegena & To

The black things are the beetles and those are toads...the flash made it look light outside but it's pitch black

My hut with a rainbow

Me Chasing Hippos

I will update more tomorrow...I swear.

Here are some of the pictures from the previous weeks of home-stay. They are basically in chronological order beginning with me eating breakfast inside my hut sitting on my small bed with the mosquito net.


A picture of the outside of my hut with the Peace Corps blue surrounding the windows and door frame. The paint has done nothing to slow the constant onslaught of crickets invading my personal space, so I've begun capturing geckos and letting them run amok in my room. So far the crickets are winning.


This is a picture of my host dad (N'tji Otis Diara). This is shortly after eating lunch one afternoon. Also, he's not unhappy, it's just really hard to get Malians to smile in pictures.

Next is a picture of some of the locals outside of the corner store watching a soccer game.

A picture of some of the family. There's a ton of kids running around in my concession so I'm not sure which are direct brothers and cousins, but I do know that on the left is my host mom and she's been taking care of me quite well.

My sisters making shea butter.

Some other trainees and I at a wedding in Baguineda Camp (3km from my village)
Panoramic shot of Soudougouba and surrounding area. (the sun was setting on the left side, so that's why it looks bleached.)

Sunset shortly after the panorama was taken.


Boats out on the Niger river pulling up sand for brick making.

Now for some animal life:
A cool looking grasshopper with one leg missing.
A gecko trying to escape into a crevice.

An owl. It's way bigger than the picture makes it look.


I'm still doing well in Soundougouba. We're currently about to head to our sites for the first time in 4 days. I found out this afternoon that I will be spending the next 2 years in Ganfan in the Kayes region (in the south west of the country towards Senegal). I'm really excited and will have more pictures from there to show you when I get back in a little under 3 weeks.

Also, my address is:

Corps de la Paix
BP 85
Bamako, Mali

Feel free to send stuff.

First 19 Days in Africa

I've been in Africa for just about 3 weeks now, the first week of which I spent in a place called Tubaniso which is the Peace Corps training center in Mali and has showers and Americanized cuisine. It's been the base camp for budding friendships which have started on our common interests and gastrointestinal issues. I've found the the glue that keeps the Peace Corps together is poo jokes and it's really thing that keeps you going when you realize that you're spending a significant amount of your day running to the bathroom.

My group of 66 departed from Tubaniso and went to our home-stay villages for 12 days where we began the intense language training. I'm learning Bambara, the native language in Mali. My home-stay village is named Soundougouba and is about 30 kilometers north of Bamako, the capital. The village has a population somewhere in the vicinity of 1000 people and has a farm based community. I'm there with 6 other trainees.

When we first arrived, the villagers set up a welcoming ceremony centered on native music and dancing. It was quite nice but quickly turned awkward when they made all of the toubobs (their version of gringo) dance with them. After dancing, or attempting to dance with the villagers we gave the Dugutigi (who is the chief of the village) kola nuts which in Mali is a sign of gratitude. We were then introduced to our host families.

My host father's name is N'tji Diara and he was very excited to meet me when I arried. All of the trainees were given traditional Malian names, mine is Mari Diara after my host father's father. N'tji speaks French and Bambara but our level of communication has been low due to my lack of understanding in both. However, I'm beginning to get the hang of it and gain an understanding of the sentence structure which is quite different from English. Everything seems backwards, but there is very little verb conjugation so it makes it a bit easier. It really makes me realize how hard it must be to learn English.

I live in the same concession as my host father and his family. It's one of the largest in the village. There is a pump right outside the entrance which is where I get my water for drinking and bucket baths. The villagers start pumping on it around 5 in the morning and don't stop until about 9 at night. This ends up dictating my sleeping schedule because it's really loud. I live in a small one room hut on the corner of the concession that unfortunately is very poorly ventilated. Usually it's about 95 degrees in my room and unbelievably humid. Sleeping has been the roughest part of my stay because the lack of moving air causes it to stay blazing hot into the night even when it's cool outside. The weather as a whole hasn't been that bad. It gets hot during the day and the humidity is a bit of a pain, but the nights are cool and enjoyable.

The surrounding area of Soundougouba is punctuated by large red and purple rock formations that I frequently climb around on with some of the other trainees. The views from the top are outstanding and it's a good way to escape after spending eight hours struggling to learn Bambara and another two or three sitting with my host family trying to understand what my host mom or sisters are saying to me...which usually ends in them laughing at my attempts to respond. Everyone is incredibly patient though and very helpful with my language learning, but they let me hear it when I butcher a sentence. That's all for now, I hope everyone is well back home.

Also, I'll post pictures in another 12 days when I get back, I forgot to bring my camera this morning.

Peace Corps Visit in Guatemala

Since I'm leaving for the Peace Corps on the 9th of July, I figured I'd start my travel log off with a vacation I took to visit a current Peace Corps volunteer:

I spent the first ten days of June visiting one of my old college roommates, Ted, who is currently doing Eco-Tourism with the Peace Corps in Guatemala. I flew into Guatemala City on the evening of the first of June and upon arrival was easily spotted out of the crowd of Guatemalans by Ted who is also over six feet tall and thus a monster in comparison to the general Guatemalan population. (To give a quick idea of how odd we looked, when we went onto crowded buses the children that were sitting next to their mothers on the outside edges of the seats would begin to cry and duck under their mother’s arms for protection.)

We quickly left the airport on a small bus down to Antigua, which is an old colonial town and at one point the capital of Guatemala. We arrived late in the evening and after a short dinner and a quick sampling of the local beers, we headed to the hostel for some sleep.

A church in the center of town in Antigua

The next day we walked around the city as I tried to get acclimated to the new and foreign surroundings. We took a tour of a local coffee plant and met some rude 19 year old tourists who were studying for a month or so from Duke University. After meeting them we decided to keep our distance as not to be mistaken for friends of theirs and made haste for the opposite side of town where we met a tour guide that told us he’d take us up an active volcano which we were both quite excited about. The hike took place the next afternoon and over a glass of tequila and a few Gallo’s (Guatemalan equivalent to Budwiser) we became excited over the idea of getting to see some lava.

The next day we met the tour guide at which point he led us into a bus and we were off with about 6 other foreign tourists, none of which were the rude kids we met earlier at the coffee factory. After about an hour of driving through the rain and up a steep dirt road, we got to the volcano named Pacaya, and began hiking through the thick overgrowth to the summit. About halfway up a cloud rolled in and the air became really thick and difficult to see through. After another hour of hiking we made it to the lava river that poured from the top of the volcano and proceeded to throw rocks at it assuming that if we hit the bright orange lava that the rock would instantly melt or at least cause a sizable splash. It took about a dozen or so tries to hit it (as we were standing at a safe distance and I can’t throw very well) and we were incredibly disappointed with the results. Upon impact, the rock just sort of stuck there and nothing really happened. Plan B: we took one of the small sticks we had picked up in the forest on the walk up and got to poking the lava. Much more interesting results stemmed from this idea, though they were quite predictable. The stick caught on fire instantly and we quickly retreated from the river to avoid falling lava rocks and melting shoes. High fives were spread all around. The British travelers we hiked with one-upped us and brought marshmallows and when we found a spot that overlooked an opening in the rocks we gathered around and roasted the marshmallows over the lava. All in all, the volcano was a very memorable experience and we were glad to get out there and see it. It would have been impossible to get as close as we did anywhere in the states, but as I quickly found out, the rules in Guatemala are merely suggestions and even at that, there were no rules on the volcano.

Lava river running down Pacaya

On the following morning after our volcano hike we took a bus to Todos Santos, which is populated mainly by indigenous Mayans and about 8 hours from Antigua. Ted had heard about a hike from a fellow volunteer and while we were tromping around Antigua, a friend of his, Dave, was setting up the trip for us and waiting for our arrival into Todos Santos. We arrived in the late afternoon to a rainstorm which made quick work of our dry clothes and we just accepted that until we could find our guide, we were going to be soaking wet. We caught our bags as they were thrown from the top of the bus and trudged up the hill to where we were instructed to meet our guide. About 200 meters up the hill Ted asked one of the people standing outside of a local shop if he knew who Roman was and sure enough, he did –he was Roman, our Swiss tour guide for the two day hike from Todos Santos to Nebaj. He led us up the hill to his house which we were to stay in for the night and we followed him around the town picking up supplies for the long hike the next morning. Later we met up with Dave and we set a meet-up time of 5AM so we could catch the early bus out to the trail head and get started on our adventure. 5 in the morning came far too soon and the next thing I knew I was sleep-walking with my pack down to the bus stop and we were on our way.

Roman's House

We hit the trail head about 6 in the morning and started walking. The first couple miles crossed in and out of small towns around rock fences that kept livestock. The surroundings were incredible with big white glacier rocks and wide expanses of green cultivated land. We later found out that the first day consisted of 25 kilometers (~15 miles) of hiking and that we started at an elevation around 10,000 feet. I think not knowing the elevation and the distance was a good thing and it allowed us to keep our heads down and walk without consideration of how far we had gone or how high we climbed. The main challenge of the day was walking about 2000 feet down into this enormous ravine…and then up the opposite side. There was a river that separated the sides and we took a quick breather down there before heading up the steep opposing bank. We made it to the top around lunch time and decided to stop for a quick bite. Shortly after stopping we had to scramble to get our rain gear on because the looming clouds opened up and continued to dump rain on us for the remainder of the hike into Chortiz, where we would spend our first night.

The hillside we walked down and then back up

Once in Chortiz we stashed all of our packs in the local school where we were going to sleep and made a fire in the little hut outside the main school house to help dry off and warm up. After about an hour or so of sitting by the fire we were called out for dinner with one of the local families and were glad to get some warm food and coffee. On our way back to the school from the family’s house we were greeted by some of the local kids and got invited, but more like foced to join in their soccer game though we were all incredibly sore from the day’s hike. A half hour passed and we decided that was about all we could take and so we headed back to the fire and then to bed.

Me on the trail before sunrise

We hit the trail again at 5 in the morning the following day and began the descent from Chortiz into Nebaj. The first couple miles took us down about 4000 feet winding back and forth along the mountainside through tight switchbacks. When we were slightly over half way through the day we stopped at a cheese factory owned by an Italian guy and ate grilled cheese sandwiches and quesadillas. It was a much needed rest for our tired feet and we stayed there for an hour enjoying the scenery and the taste of the fresh cheese which was a blessing considering we spent the last two days eating hard boiled eggs and beans at every meal. We left the cheese factory and started on the last climb over the ridge into Nebaj.

View at breakfast

Route for Day 2 (over the furthest ridge and along the trail on the bottom)

Cheese Factory

Ted and me resting up at the cheese factory

Another hour or two had passed and we finally made it into Nebaj where we went into the hostel and took a very necessary shower. The hostel was owned by an old American named Popi who had been there for the past 15 years or so and he fixed us up a solid American meal of hamburgers, French fries and Mexican beer (though it doesn’t sound very American when you say it all together). It was perfect.

Morning came earlier than expected and we went back to Todos Santos to pick up the remaining gear we left behind and to stay one last night with Roman who had started on his way back when we got into Nebaj. Also, while in Todos Santos we arranged to go into a Mayan sauna. Basically it was a small rock walled building with a fire in the corner and a large tub of boiling water on top of it, surrounded by hot rocks. We crammed all three of us (Ted, Dave and me) into the small rock hut and relaxed our weary muscles until the coals underneath the water pot were completely out. When we got back to Roman’s house he quickly hopped out of bed and made us try the apple strudel that he had baked that afternoon. It tasted incredible and it was fantastic to have something sweet to complement the small glasses we had of this twelve year old rum Dave had picked up during previous travels in Mexico. Sleep came shortly thereafter.

Ted and I left the next morning and said our goodbyes to Dave, Roman and his family. After another 7 hours in a bus we came to Laguna Atitlan and took a boat taxi over to Santa Cruz where there was an Americanized jungle-style hotel by the name of ‘La Iguana Perdida.’ The hotel was right on the shore of the lake and we were surrounded by massive volcanoes and picturesque hillsides. On the first morning we were there we went down the shoreline a little ways to a cliff jumping spot with an Australian tourist and took the plunge off of this massive rock that was about 45-50 feet high. After a couple jumps we decided that was enough and figured we should just lie around in the sun for a little while before heading back to the hostel. We stayed at La Iguana Perdida for two nights and hung out with the other visitors and had a great time relaxing and decompressing after the countless miles of hiking we had done in the past couple days.

Panorama of Laguna Atitlan

By the time we left Laguna Atitlan I had one day left before I had to fly back to the states and instead of going all the way back to Guatemala City where the airport was, we decided to spend the last night in Antigua and head out in the morning. I left for the states that next morning incredibly happy that I was able to visit such an incredibly beautiful and diverse country.