Guatemala, Day 2 (part 2)
Still Day 2: Wednesday, 01/03/07
When we returned from the hike up the volcano, lunch was already waiting for us. Susan had fixed her own version of chicken and broccoli alfredo, which was really good. As usual, there was fruit too, and afterwards Tom read another chapter. The kids all call him Pappa or Poppi, by the way, and Susan is Momma or Mommi.
After lunch, Mike, Dani, and I worked on replacing all the bolts on the doors of the hangar. Someone is systematically removing the existing bolts. At first the assumption was that they were trying to break into the hangar, as they’ve done numerous times in the past. But on closer inspection, it seems that they are simply stealing the bolts themselves, either to use or to resell.
It turned out to be a three person operation, with Mike on the outside redrilling the holes and inserting the new flat-headed bolts, me on the inside hand-tightening the washers and nuts, and Dani also on the inside ratcheting them tight with a wrench.
The Hangar
The view down at the airstrip was beautiful, and as the afternoon progressed, the clouds started to roll in over the volcanos.
On our way back up to the house, we passed the mostly empty house that the group rented while construction was still underway. It’s just a couple of minutes hike from here up to the house.
When we arrived back at the house, we found that Hugo, Julio, and his “cousin” David have shown up. Hugo is an 18 year old Guatemalan who has been helping out at the orphanage for several years. Hugo plays guitar, and often leads singing after dinner and at church services. As a part of the extended family at the orphanage, he is also being schooled there. While we waited for dinner, we got acquainted with the three young men (which was interesting since only Hugo speaks some English), and we played quiet games and read with the kids.
Dinner tonight was rice and beans, with hot green chili sauce if you want it (I do!). The rice had carrot pulp mixed in, left over from Susan’s first attempts with the new juicer that her daughter Lizzie got her for Christmas. We all had vegetable juice too. Afterwards, Tom read as always.
Tom offered to exchange some money for us since the country was in a financial crisis. There was no paper money to be had anywhere in the capital. It seems that before Christmas, someone had the bright idea to withdraw all the old tattered bills, but forgot that the treasury department that printed up new bills was on vacation. This was the lead story in all the newspapers while we were there (but of course we didn’t know that until Tom told us). People everywhere were operating by credit, but that wasn’t going to help us much. We learned that US dollars are highly coveted, since they’re more stable than quetzales, but if you use them you have to haggle over the exchange rate as well as the price…a bit more than we bargained for!
Tom took us into Santiago Atitlan to familiarize us with the streets that we would visit in the morning. To me, with my lousy sense of direction, it was simply a confusing warren of roads that would get me lost in an instant. But Mike figured it out quickly. Thank goodness. We arrived back at the hotel by 7:30, almost tired enough to go to bed right away (there was an hour time change, so we felt like it was 8:30 anyway). We showered up and fell into bed.
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POSTED IN: Guatemala, My Family & Friends
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