Growing Pichacha

Not too much to write about in this blog, I have a dog who lives with a friend so I get to go play with her and not worry about cleaning up her poop. My dog’s name is Pichacha, she likes to bite and cuddle (in that order, and often at the same time). But first, a few non-sequitors. I think I mentioned a year ago that May brings Zompopos or Chequenes – the big flying ants that come out of the trees during the start of the rainy season that people like to grub on. Last year, I was a trooper and ate a few, and this year, I ate even more, so here are some photos of an unsung Guatemalan culinary delight.

Eating Zompopos/Chequenes

Close up

And now, some dated but super cute photos of my growing dog

Pichacha and Beethoven

Pichacha

About to try and bite Devora

Biting time

Getting her chew on

Just chewed on Beethoven’s tail

With Harry, Devora, and a Cappuccino chocolate bar (appropriate I think)

End of July photo, she has been put on a leash to prevent running after cars in the street

Happy to hang

Splendor in the grass - weighing in at 12 lbs!

Travels with Devora – Pachalum and Beyond

The trip back from the Honduran-Guatemalan border to Antigua, Guatemala took far too long, I made it in around 9:30pm, and the next morning I went to the Peace Corps Center to attend meetings and the In-Service Training for the first year muni volunteers. Along with training sessions on counterpart relations, how to get project funding, and how to collaborate with outside NGOs, I put in my two cents and we had an ‘Arts and Crafts Fair’ that involved me teaching everyone how to make bracelets.

Teaching first year muni volunteers how to make bracelets, an activity they could duplicate in their womens groups.

Two days after I arrived back in Antigua, Devora showed up with snack foods (yay!!) and no change of clothes (really airlines? given what you are charging for airfare, the least you could do is track those bags!). For her first meal in Guatemala, I took her to the best typical Guatemalan food restaurant in Antigua and we cleaned our plates – I got Chicken Pepian and she ate Beef Hilachas (not sure how to explain either, there is meat and a very tasty sauce. The beef is shredded).

Food blog worthy

Devora was very low-key and when it was not raining we cruised the streets of Antigua and enjoyed the sights.

With Devora and big pila

Devora taking photo outside of San Francisco - My favorite picture of Devora in Antigua

San Francisco wall

Devora got to know my fellow PCVs and gamely attended the much-hyped 2^nd of July Party held near the Peace Corps Center (Devora comments, not in her words: it is so entertaining that you are all so excited at this lame party. I guess watching a talent show and dancing to the Cupid Shuffle is not too exciting in the USA, but after non-stop banda and people not dancing at parties, it was a nice change of pace).

Breakfast with 1^st year PCVs

With Volcan de Agua in the background and my super cool Peace Corps shirt

I had originally planned to take Devora along with a lot of other PCVs to the beach, but after being out of site for two weeks, I was vacationed out and wanted to go home. On Sunday morning we headed back to Pachalum and made it in the afternoon. I took Devora on a tour of Pachalum, going through some of the communities in the northern part of the municipality, and we saw some lovely waterfalls thanks to the heavy rains.

On a tour of Pachalum

On Monday July 4^th, I went back to the office to surprise Juanita by returning two days early from my planned vacation. When I decided to return early, I had not remembered that my municipality was going to celebrate its 25^th Anniversary from June 7^th-9^th. The municipality’s anniversary is not as big of a deal as Feria at the end of October, however it still merits parades, dances, and some award ceremonies, all of which means there needs to be ADORNO (decoration). As is the case in far too many municipalities, the ADORNO duties fell on the Women’s Office and when I got to the office Monday morning Juanita wanted help making decorations for the corridor in front of the muni. Devora taught us how to make paper cranes and we decided to hang twenty-five paper cranes in three different mobiles. Hence began Crane Monday.

Making adorno

Hours later

After working all day Monday and not getting to see the beach, Devora wanted to see Mixco Viejo. On Tuesday morning, we woke up to rain that cleared up by the time we headed out at 8:30am. The trip to Mixco with Devora was the best one yet for me for two reasons – 1. since it had just stopped raining it was not hot-as-balls and my clothing was not plastered to my skin in a mix of sweat and sunscreen, 2. I figured out how to use color accent on my camera to take photos where only green came out, super cool.

Like a photo taken on the roof of the Bayit many years ago

Climbing a pyramid

Jump attempt number 43, all previous shots were taken with color accent on. I figured that might be the cause of the blurriness of the photos and lo and behold, the one normal color photo comes out right.

Pretty tree

I can only jump in color

Climing down from the mountain we needed to stop and ponder which way back to Pachalum.

Sign found, we were on our way

Devora’s one week trip to Guatemala was much appreciated, but far too short. After a marathon of visitors since early May, it was both exciting and sad to receive the last one (that I know of, any surprises?). Luckily, Devora’s visit left its mark in the hallways of the muni with her spectacular adorno.

Adorno, Devora’s lasting mark to Pachalum

Coming Soon – Growing Pichacha and Athalia’s HIV Training Marathon!

Travels in Honduras Part II – Copan

Copan Ruinas is a small town of around 10,000 about 10 kilometers from the border with Guatemala. Copan Ruinas is a few kilometers from the acutal Copan Ruinas (Copan Ruins) – Mayan ruins from the city furthest south in the Empire. Along with the ruins, Copan is known for being a charming town with lots of good food and activities close by. After a full day of travel (leave hotel in Roatan – 6am, arrive hotel in Copan – 6pm. Note: distance was not that far, but at every stop we had a good 1-3 hour layover) we arrived in Copan in the cool of the twilight and went to the beautiful Casa de Café B&B.

View from B&B

Our first and only full day in Copan we started out early with a trip to the ruins. In order to get in, we had to pay for entrance and a guide, definitely a good investment. The Copan Ruins are closely associated with Harvard University, the earliest explorers were Archeologists from Harvard, and as a result the ruins are well maintained, a lot of the history is known, and in the site there is a lot of personnel. In order to get in to the ruins, we passed through an entryway where a lot of saved macaws from Macaw Mountain (a bird sanctuary, more to come later) are being slowly reacclimated to the wild. Along with being beautiful, the macaws make a racket, so throughout our visit, we got to hear their atonal squaks.

With Macaws in Copan Ruins

What follows now are a lot of photos of the ruins. Our tour guide was very descriptive of everything we saw, but it would be a lie to say I was paying much attention. Basically, Copan was a big Mayan City that lasted around 400 years (I think) and had 16 rulers. One of these rulers, 18 Rabbit or something like that, was very prolific in the making of stelae that were carved all around – all of this done mind you without the use of any metals. The ruins themselves are rather small (especially in comparison to Tikal), and that is reflective of the fact that only 25,000 people lived in Copan at it’s height (versus 150,000 estimated at Tikal). The site is beautiful, close to a river (unlike Tikal, which had no natural water source) and really really hot and humid. Our tour guide was very excited about the blood and gore of the Mayan times and repeatedly encouraged us to watch Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto in order to get a feel for how Mayans actually were.

Ruins (notice the beautiful stelae, very detailed and well-preserved, carved on all four sides)

With Allison

On Stairs to a pyramid where the King used to go to make blood sacrifices (from his mouth, face, and penis, talk about taking one for the team)

Atop pyramid

Copan’s biggest claim to fame is the 60-something long hyroglyphic staircase that has the longest narration of Mayan history. The Harvard archaeologists that came out to Copan found this staircase, and after it fell due to excavation or a heavy rainy season, they reordered it almost 100% wrong. The staircase is now re-done and it is estimated that it is 60% correctly in order (how they can tell, I do not know, there is no Rosetta Stone to figure out these glyphs). The staircase used to be walkable – they would let people climb on, but since the 1960s it has been off limits, and it is furthermore covered by a tarp all year long to protect it from the elements since a lot of the glyphs are really damaged.

In front of longest hiyroglyhic steps

Later in the day, Allison and I went into the municipal building and looked at a photo exhibit of the history of Copan the town and the ruins. The early archaeologists that came to Copan took a lot of photos and they were relatively recently discovered, and the pictures of the ruins from back in the day are being used by archaeologists today to attempt to re-arrange the steps into their correct order.

Jumping with our tour guide Fidel in the stelae ‘garden’, the largest in the Mayan world. This 18-Rabbit guy was really into himself, he had a lot of statues made in his honor – as both a young and older man.

After taking a break at lunch, Allison and I decided to visit the ruins called ‘Las Ranas’ (the frogs) that were found close to town and that were apparently a place where women went for fertility rites. The walk was really lovely, we crossed the river and climbed up a bit and saw all of the town behind us.

Jumping with town in background

We climbed to Las Ranas and it was a little less impressive than hoped for – made me appreciate the hard work of keeping well-maintained ruins at Copan. Las Ranas were these huge rocks with some faint lines and a description of what we were supposedly seeing.

With Allison at Las Ranas

On our last day in Copan, a half-day before parting ways, we decided to go to Macaw Mountain to see the birds and nature reserve up there. At breakfast, one of the many kittens at the B&B was going for my wallet or for my breakfast, but was unsuccessful at getting either.

Kitty wants my breakfast

Macaw (Guacamaya in Spanish) Mountain is a refuge for tropical birds that were illegally owned or sold within Honduras. There are a ton of birds there, not only Macaws but also parrots, toucans, owls, parakeets, etc. One of the birds, we were told, used to belong to a pirate. The younger birds are rehabilitated and some are reintroduced into the wild, but most of them are there for the long haul. There was a special area for birds that were dealing with depression (macaws mate for life, so when the partner dies, the other gets very sad and loses all its feathers, other birds that had just recently gotten out of captivity were also recuperating) right next to the parakeets because apparently the huge ruckus of the parakeets helps the birds feel better (not a treatment course I would chose).

Close-up of Bird of Paradise

Allison with toucan - apparently toucans are very aggressive, and cannot be around other birds. Toucan Sam always looked so agreeable...

With Parrot

With Macaw

Two parakeets

Lone toucan

Parrot

Two Parrots

The trip to Honduras ended on a high note, but there is no place like home, so I headed back to Guatemala in the afternoon, ready for some Peace Corps meetings, the 2^nd of July Party, and my next visitor – Devora!

Travels in Honduras Part I – Roatan

My marathon of travels continued through the end of June and into July, and I have officially gotten rid of my travel itch and plan on staying as sedentary as possible for the rest of my time in Guatemala. Mirit and I stayed in Pachalum for a week and she got to meet people in three of the communities where I have been working. In that week of her visit, the Women’s Committee that was created at the end of May was legalized, and we started planning future women’s conferences about elections and project prioritization. I stayed in site another week after my sister left, and then it was off to Honduras with Allison.

I had a friend who went to Honduras over Semana Santa and being lazy essentially just copied her travel plans. Unfortunately, my genius plan to save money and take a luxury bus line to Honduras did not take into consideration my nausea at not being able to see the road in front of me and I now know that luxury means curtains over all windows, including the front-facing ones. It was a LONG day of travel (left Antigua at 3:30am and arrived in La Ceiba, Honduras at 6:30pm), with a few stops on the road. In San Pedro Sula Allison and I met up and traveled the last leg of the trip together. Besides nausea, my first impressions of Honduras were that there were a lot more people of African descendence, and there were also a lot more people with serious weight problems. In La Ceiba, one of the larger cities on the northern coast, there were chain fast-food restaurants (Denny’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, etc.) on every corner and our taxi driver told us that these businesses have a special deal that was with the government and do not pay taxes or buy any local products. The taxi driver was REALLY against all these businesses, he blamed them for keeping the country poor and fat.

On the following morning, Allison and I went in the early morning to the ferry terminal and caught a huge ship to the largest of the Bay Islands – Roatan. Once again, my stomach failed me, though I do not think it was so much my fault – as soon as we got on the boat people came by with vomit bags and towels, so I knew that it was not going to be an easy ride. After an hour and a half of bumpy non-fun, we finally arrived at our destination. Roatan is a BEAUTIFUL island that has amazing clear water, is surrounded entirely by a reef, and has essentially no farming (EVERYTHING comes from the mainland and is therefore super expensive). Allison and I checked into a wonderful hotel called ArcoIris Hotel in the West End and went out to our beach to hang out and do a little kayaking.

Kayaking in the cove next to our hotel

Sitting on the beach for a few minutes quickly drew to our attention the one downside of Roatan – sand flies. Apparently, there is some spraying of the beaches, but the toxins that kill the sand flies also affect the coral, so it is an unpleasant but unavoidable experience. Allison and I went on a walk down the beach through the West End and it was really charming. There are tons of restaurants and bars, tourist shops full of Guatemalan trinkets, and scuba shops. Compared to Caye Caulker in Belize, the West End won for ambiance, though Caye Caulker had the benefit of no sand flies and my visit with my parents was better timed in terms of humidity (I calculate it was around 85 to 90-degrees with like 100% humidity in Roatan).

With Allison on waterfront

In front of cool sign, apparently this bar had karaoke one night and I missed it:(

For dinner on the first night, we had noodles and it was awesome! Makes going home to Asian food that much more drool inspiring.

Allison and I stayed on Roatan for around four days and one of our favorite eating spots was Chapi-Catrachos. Chapin is the slang term Guatemalans use for themselves, while Catracho is the slang term for Hondurans (other slang names: tiko – Costa Rican, nica – Nicaraguan, gringa – Athalia). Chapi-Catrachos was the cheapest food to be found in the West End and it served baleadas – the Honduran national dish. Baleadas are flour tortillas filled with red beans, some cream, a meat of some sort, egg, and salsa. It is pretty yummy, kind of like Honduran soul food, but it has nothing to do with Guatemalan food (the name of this joint was from the fact that the owners were Guatemalans).

Baleadas with chicken, beef, egg, avocado or a combination (yum yum YUM)

Sunset on tables on the beach in front of our hotel

Allison and I had planned to go snorkeling morning and afternoon, but after our first day walking for 1.5 hours in the sun (another one of my genius ideas…) to get to a beach that was just a $3 boat ride away, we both got burned and exhausted, so for the rest of the trip we took it easy with some snorkeling in the morning or afternoon and indoor time from 11 am to 2 or 3pm. One afternoon we went along on a scuba boat and snorkeled further away from shore. It was cool further out since the coral is less damaged, but staying on the surface also meant that we did not see as much since the water was deep, though Allison did find two turtles. I think that in the future if I take more tropical vacations, I would invest in a lot more sun-protective gear and I would also give scuba diving a try. Seeing all the scuba divers up close and personal with coral 20 feet below us made me want to know what was going on down there.

Heading out on a boat to go snorkeling

Jumping in water

Last day on the beach

Sunset

Overall, Roatan was kick-ass, but both Allison and I got itchy (not just from the sand-flies) to DO more. Roatan has lots of great food, lovely beaches, yoga, scuba and snorkeling, but it lacks culture…so after four days of sitting, lying, and eating (should this post have been called Roman Holiday?), we decided to head back to the mainland and all across Honduras to the Guatemalan border town of Copan Ruinas…