Day 21 - Guatemala City Redux

Before I begin, I have to mention junk food in Latin America. It's awesome. They have all the goodies taht we have in the states (Doritos, Fritos, etc...) and add tons of good stuff like Gancito and Pinquino. Their junk food is ultra sugary and incredibly delicious. My personal favorite is Gancito. It's something like a little debbie snack cake. It's got yellow cake with creme and raspberry filling covered in chocolate. Yummy.

Olfo (one of the Guatemalan dental students) set up a brewery tour this morning at the Cervaceria Central Americana Brewery. Their biggest product is Gallo beer, which I've spoken of before. They also make a few other beers (Dorado Ice and Mazo) as well as snack foods and sodas. I didn't realize that Olfo was the great great grandson of the brewery's founder. We ended up getting the cadillac tour from one of the brewmasters. The brewmaster is a chemical engineer who knew everything about beer. We even got to taste Gallo beer directly from the post-filtration tank! They have a nice operation which was revamped in 2002.

After the tour, we tooled around on of their shopping malls. From what I can tell, the malls there catered more to the high end customers. There were a lot of American stores like Gap and many that I'd never heard of. Thankfully we didn't linger in the mall too long. Instead, we went back to the hotel and took a nice long nap.

The Guatemalan students had a big exam at 5PM tonight, so after that we went to dinner with them. Olfo took us to a wonderful steak house which was his favorite place in the city. They have traditional cuts of meat as well as Argentinian cuts (which are slightly different that whate we're used to). The steak was some of the best I've ever had in my life! We also had several desserts, one of which was affectionately called "Farts of the Nun" in Spanish. Fat and happy, we retired back to the hotel and wished our new friends goodbye.

Tomorrow we leave Guatemala. Our flight is at 7:15AM Guatemala time. We should arrive in Miami around 1PM Eastern and hopefully reach RDU by 5:00PM. It's been fun posting to this blog and I've enjoyed reading the comments. At some point I'll post the 300 other pictures and send everyone the link.

Day 20 - Leaving the Lake

Aldous Huxley wrote the following about Lake Atitlan: " "Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing." Atitlan is incredibly beautiful. The water is clear and deep, the mountains frame the lake and everything is emerald green.

Today, we spent our last half day at the lake relaxing and enjoying the sun. Our hotel had a wonderful pool, complete with a water slide that Derek enjoyed immensely. I'm not sure if he or the two 10 year old girls who were competing for slide-time enjoyed it more. The pool was heated to the perfect temperature and was sparsley polulated.

At noon, we rode back to Guatemala City. It's nearly a 3 hour ride from the lake through some pretty winding roads, so beware if you get car-sick. Once back in the city, our gracious hosts (the Guatemalan dental students) took us to a nice dinner at a place called 'Pizza Bar'. If you've ever been to brixx in Chapel Hill, the pizza was pretty similar. The biggest difference had the look of an upscale restaurant. It was sortof wierd eating pizza and drinking beer in such a swanky setting. Thankfully, the prices didn't match the decor!

Tomorrow, we've been promised a morning tour of the Gallo Brewery and possibly a trip to one of the malls here in Guatemala City. Yes, we are all getting a little homesick and ready to be back in the States. I'm sure the dental students have much more in store for us tomorrow than just the brewery tour. They've been such gracious hosts and I'd love to reciprocate and show them a great time in North Carolina!

Day 19 - Lake Attilan

Today was one of our few days of rest. The hotel that we're staying in is really nice, extremely comfortable, and quiet. Even being the early riser that I am, I didn't get out of bed until 8:30AM. The lake is one of the most beautiful places on earth. It's supposed to be nearly 1000 feet deep in places, is volcanic in origin, and is surrounded by several active and inactive volcanoes.

The majority of the morning I spent in a hammock with my book. I've already read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy earlier in the trip. It's a dark book, and slightly depressing, but very good. Right now, I'm reading Derek's book, "The Woods" by Harlan Coben. It's rounding out to be a very good book as well.

For lunch, we went to a restaurant that overlooks the lake. I had an interesting dish which featured shrimp breaded in a corn breading and fried. It was sort of like shrimp filled hushpuppies and was tasty. In the afternoon we walked through the market. Guatemalan craftsmen and women are extremely talented. There were gorgeous blankets, wood carvings, scarves, and jewelery all around.

Continuing on the theme of relaxation, we got a quick dinner and watched olympics at night. Michael Phelps is really killing it now. The games have been extremely entertaining so far.

Tomorrow, we load up around noon and head back into Guatemala City for the last two days of our trip. Olfo, one of the Guatemalan dental students mentioned that we might be able to get a tour of the Gallo brewery. I'm sure they have a lot of stuff planned for us! This trip has been a great experience, but I'm definitely ready to get back home. There is no sleep that's as good as sleep in your own bed and there's no food that's quite as good as the stuff in your own home.

Day 18 - Volcano Pacaya

Our bus to Volcano Pacaya left at 6AM. Unfortunately, sleeping the night before was less than optimal. Actually, it was the perfect storm of suck. Being Saturday night in a tourist town, the bars and nightclubs were jumping, especially the rock concert that was next door to our hotel. The music was so loud that I couldn't even drown it out with my headphones in! They stopped playing around 1:30AM and in true form the baby in the room next to us started crying about 15 minutes later. The baby cried for a solid hour. Then the roosters started crowing at 4AM. All in all, we ended up getting about 2 hours of sleep.

The bus to the Volcano took about 45 minutes. Pacaya is now a national park and it's helped make the trek up to the top more safe. The first 300 meters of the ascent were brutal. Thankfully, it leveled out a bit and wasn't too bad the rest of the way. There were several stop-off points with beautiful vistas. One of the best views was of the Volcano Agua, which is inactive. You can't get to the peak of Pacaya anymore due to an eruption which destroyed part of the cone, but they allow you to get within 300 meters of it. We also were able to walk out onto an old lava flow. At several points on the lava flow you could feel heat through your shoes! We also saw one small place with red-hot lava.

We returned to Antigua for lunch and then boarded our bus to Lake Atitilan. Atitlan is in Western Guatemala. It's about 2 hours of bus ride through the heart of the mountains. We're staying in the town Panajachel. It's a touristy town with big markets and lots of interesting restaurants. For dinner we ate at a Uruguayan resturant. Norma mentioned that they are particularly good with grilled beef and pork, so I got a sandwhich of grilled beef with chimichurri sauce. It was excellent! Afterwards, we retired back to the hotel room and watched the olympics. Holy cow, the 400m relay race was amazing! Go team USA!

(Lastly, I'm posting one of the pictures I took in Antigua. There are lots of dogs, many strays and some owned in latin america. This particular dog was holding watch outside of our hotel and was part of the hotel family.)

Day 17 - Antigua

As stated before, Antigua is a gorgeous town. This picture is from the rooftop of our hotel and frames Volcan de Agua (one of the many "active" volcanoes in Guatemala). The town itself is relatively small and has quite a variety of things to do, places to stay, and types of restaurants. Our breakfast was at the hotel and consisted of a hearty buffet breakfast with panqueques (pancakes), fruit, and some kind of bread pudding which was more cake than pudding.

In the morning, we found out that our hotel was only booked for one night instead of two, so we had to scramble to find another place. Thankfully, the Let's Go guide to Guatemala helped out and we found a small hostel/hotel called Casa Rustica. Once we settle in, we met Soledad and her friend Allessandra and had lunch. Guatemalans LOVE a semi-fast food place called Pollo Campero. The place is more or less like a KFC and has similar entrees. Olfo mentioned a few days ago that the owner of Pollo Campero did a really good job integrating the agriculture of chicken farming with the restaurant business. Apparently they grow all the chickens for the restaurants in Guatemala. Recently the franchise has expanded to the US and China.

After lunch we went to the marketplace. There were tons of interesting things to see including some gorgeous wooden decorations and trinkets. It has rained on and off for most of our stay in Guatemala, but we got a bit of a break this afternoon. Speaking of weather, it is relatively cool here during the day. My guess is that the temperature hasn't broken 75 since we've been in the country. Combine that with the rain and it can be down right chilly!

We came back to the hotel room after leaving the marketplace and said fairwell to Soledad and Allessandra. They have an exam on Wednesday and are starting to study. They must be gunners! Anyway, we hung out watching some Olympics and eventually mustered up the energy to get dinner.

While looking through the dining part of our tour book, Norma (who is from Peru) noticed that there was a Peruvian restaurant here, and so we decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, the restaurant listed in the book had shut down, but there was a different one open a few blocks away. The trek around Antigua in the rain was not fun, but it was well worth the trouble. Our dinner consisted of Ceviche appetizer, a citrus-y cocktail, and a main entree of Lomo Saltado.

The Civiche was awesome. Basically, it's uncooked fish which is soaked in lemon juice and spices for several hours. The acidity of the lemon juice 'cooks' the fish. The Peruvian version had lots of onions, some potatoes, and an interesting type of corn which had been fried into semi-hard single kernals. The main course, Lomo Saltado, was a mixture of beef strips, potatoes, onions, and tomatoes marinated in a wonderful light sauce. I have to give two thumbs up to Peruvian food at this point!

Tomorrow, we are on the move again. Soledad and Bobbi suggested that we hike to the summit of the nearby Volcano Pacaya. It's an active volcano, but is very quiet. The hike up is supposed to be gorgeous and sometimes you're able to see the inner part of the crater where there is flowing lava. Hopefully it won't rain! After the hike, the plan is to take a bus to Panajachel which is on Lake Atitlan. The views are supposed to be incredible.

Addendum

Here is a video clip from the zipline tour in Copan. It's huge, but will give you some idea of how neat it was. One of the guides filmed me with my camera as we were on a 1km long line. We were somewhere around 200-300 yards above the ground in part of the film. Enjoy!

Day 16 - Universidad Francisco Marroquin

Today (friday) we attended Dental School that, thankfully, wasn't at UNC. We attended a seminar given by one of the UNC facutly at Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala City, Guatemala. The campus is beautiful. The university teaches business, economics, and medicine as well as having a small dental school. Each class is roughly 25 people, so they get to know each other pretty well. In Guatemala, you start dental school right after their equivalent of high school and they go for 6 years. It's an interesting idea, but it certainly wouldn't have fit my situation!

The students were wonderful. We met several of the 6th year class (Bobbi, Soledad, Olfo, Ricky, and Berto) and every one of them went out of their way to make us feel welcome. They even took the initiative to help us plan the our time in Antigua and at Lake Atitlan. Olfo, who is their class president, took us to his house in the city. The majority of his family lives in a huge complex complete with horse stables, security guards, and house staff. The picture of the four of us is the view of Guatemala City from his grandmother's front yard. It was breathtaking. The interesting thing is that you would have never guessed that Olfo was wealthy when you met him. He was very down to earth and sincerely happy to help us take in Guatemala.

After the seminars, we got lunch at an Italian resturant in one of the extremely nice zones of Guatemala City. There were a ton more American stores and restaurants that I anticipated. After lunch, we sat in on another seminar (both were in Spanish, mind you) and said farewell to our professor. Again, the students really went out of their way. One of them lives in Antigua (about 40 mintues from Guatemala City) and gave us a ride with all of our luggage. We arrived in Antigua aroun 6:30, checked into our hotel and then had dinner at a local Thai restaurant. Afterwards, we had a few Guatemalan beers and drinks at a place called Frida's. Even in Antiqua, which is a touristy town, things are inexpensive. Rum and coke drinks were about $3 and the local Guatemalan beer (Gallo, pronounced Guy-O) was about $1.

Antigua is beautiful. It is in a valley surrounded by mountains and some active volcanos. There is a lot of history here and it is safe. The speed of life here is much slower than in Guatemala City. It looks a bit like Copan, only nicer. Guatemala in general seems to be a bit more well-off than Honduras. The students that we met were from the middle to upper class and some were exceedingly well-to-do, but none were snooty.

Tomorrow we will explore Antigua, visit the marketplace, and meet up with Soledad for lunch. It'll be nice to slow the pace down a bit and do some serious relaxing since we're closing in on 1 week until school starts back. It's hard to believe that we've been in Central America for over two weeks!!

Day 15 - Copan Ruins/Guatemala

Today we woke up early to visit the Copan Ruins. The Mayans built Copan in a near perfect site. It is in a very fertile valley with a river running through. Apparently the movie Apocolypto is pretty accurate in it's portrayal of the typical Mayan city. Our guide, Fidel, mentioned many times that they harvested 3 crops per year and had musician monkeys and dancing jaguars. The last two are suspect, but who knows?

The ruins themselves span an area of about 1 square km. They are very well preserved and are a national treasure for Honduras. The site is very well kept and they do a good job with tours. FYI, a good percentage of the locals in Copan speak english very well. It's probably a product of tourism and the fact that there are a lot of dual language schools in the area.

After visiting the ruins, we boarded yet another Hedman-Alas bus to Guatemala city. The travel time was about 5 hours. Hedman-Alas does bus transit right. We splurged this time on a 'first-class' seat and got a meal and HUGE seats for our ride. It was well worth the extra $10.

The Guatemalan dental school sent students to the bus station to pick us up. Then they treated us to a wonderful night on the town including a great sushi dinner and drinks at a local bar. Many of the restuarants and establishments in this part of Guatemala City are in English, and most of the students were very fluent. The group that we were with were obviously from wealthy families, but they didn't show any pretentiousness that you'd expect from folks in the states. Instead, they welcomed us into their circle of friends and made us feel very welcome.

Tomorrow we're spending the day at the dental school and listening to seminars (in spanish). One of the seminars is being given by one of our professors from UNC. It should be fun to see how a central american dental school is run. One thing that I found is universal: Dental school sucks everywhere.

Day 14 - Copan

The city surrounding Copan Ruins is ecclectic. There's an interesting mix of Latina, Gringo, and other folks here. The streets are all cobblestone and the only taxis available are glorified scooters called Tuk-Tuks. There are a ton of interesting restaurants, bars, hotels and hostels here. You can live on the cheap ($5 for a room in pretty much any hostel) or extravagantly ($100+ for a big room in one of the ultra nice hotels). We chose the middle ground. For $50, we got a nice room in a hotel that was a block from Parque Central. Unfortunately, the hotel had beds that were as hard as the floor and, unknown to us at the time, water was out throughout the city. That left us with aching backs and cold showers. To remedy the situation, we decided to change hotels. The one we chose wasn't as lush, but had two twin beds and a queen which worked well for the four of us.

Breakfast was a wonderful french toast at a place called ViaVia. We had a great cup of Honduran coffee with our breakfast and a few of our group had a kind of shake with fresh papaya or banana juice. We'll definitely be back tomorrow for an early shake.

The hotel owner also runs a tour company next door to the hotel. He hooked us up with deals on the zipline/canopy tour and after grabbing a few waters, we were off. The canopy tour is something that I've been looking forward to for the entire trip. Well, it certainly didn't disappoint. The ziplines covered about 10 kilometers in distance and some were 100+ meters above the ground. I can't explain how exhilerating it is to 'fly' above the canopy. It is also a bit unnerving to know that a 1/2" cable that is more than 1km long is the only thing keeping you from falling 300 feet down to the forrest floor! Thankfully the guides were fun and were looking out for everyone's safety. Above is a video (very large) of one me zipping through the canopy.

Lunch was a very Honduran meal at a place called "Jim's Pizza". The pizza there was hot, quick, and tasted great and the beer was ice cold. It made for a great lunch and recharged us for the rest of our day. After lunch we went to the Parque de Aves (a Bird Park) and saw a ton of Macaws, Parrots, Parakeets, and Tucans. They also had several baby Macaws. Did you know that Macaws reach their full adult size in 3 months and can live to be 100? Me neither...

After a long day, we had dinner and then drinks afterwards back at ViaVia. They were supposed to have Sala dancing, but the instructor backed out so it sortof fizzled. Exhuasted, we decided to head back to get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a full day of touring the ruins and then travelling to Guatemala City. Hopefully I can get some good pictures of the ruins to post.

Day 13 - Travel day, redux

Today was a day of travel. We awoke early and were surprised to find that all of Honduras was on strike. The Ranch has a policy of closing down shuttles in and out whenever there is a strike, so we were left with the choice of finding our own way to town or staying on the Ranch for another day. After consulting Dilcia, we decided to bus it from the Ranch to Tegus and get a cab from the bus stop to the terminal. It turns out, this was a good decision.

Our Hedman-Alas bus was really nice. This busline, which does a lot of cross-country travel in Honduras and Guatemala is the Cadillac of Honduran buslines. The trip took us back to San Pedro Sula and then on to Copan. We left at 1:30PM and FINALLY arrived in Copan around 9:30PM. It was definitely a long trip, but thankfully the bus was comfortable.

Tomorrow we head into the ruins and will try to get some zip-line action in. I've taken about 100 pictures so far and hopefully will get at least that tomorrow. The little Canon S750 has been wonderful. It has a digital macro feature which works VERY well. A few of my more artsy-fartsy pictures are here. FYI, the 2GB card I've got supposedly will hold 600 pictures. I'm hoping to fill the thing up, but it'll be tough.

Day 12 - Last day at the Ranch

Today was our last full day at the Ranch. Tomorrow we'll be off to the bus station at around 8AM to catch our 10:30 bus. We're heading to the Copan Ruins, which are Mayan (think Apocolypto). They are supposed to be awesome. We're also planning to do a rain forest zip line tour. Hopefully I can get some good pictures.
Since it's Monday, we worked on people who live near the ranch. Unfortunately, the renovations to the dental clinic were not finished over the weekend, so we had to improvise. Basically, all we could do is extract teeth. I ended up extracting 4 teeth and a root tip and learned a lot on the process. Dilcia really knows here stuff. She's very good at dealing with uncooperative kids and (out of necessity) she's great at extracting teeth and showed me quite a few tips/tricks to make it less traumatic for the patient.
After we finished with our last patient, she gave us yet another typical Honduran lunch. It was a roll with cheese and beans inside. The cheese is hard and salty, but tastes really good in combination with beans/rice/etc. She also gave each of us a regalo (small gift), a neat Honduras t-shirt. Finally, she walked over to the depository and helped us get a free NPH t-shirt. All in all it was a great day.

Day 11 - Valle de Angeles

This morning, Dilcia the dentista took us to a small village called Valle de Angeles which is about 1/2 hour east of Tegucigalpa. It's an art community which tends to draw touristas and locals alike. The ride from Tegus to Valle de Angeles is beautiful. The town itself is in the hills and offers some beautiful views of the surrounding valleys and mountains. We ate a wonderful breakfast at Comedor Maria. For about $2, we got coffee with milk, scrambled eggs, chorizo (sausage), refried beans, and fried plantains. Derek ended up getting a HUGE tamale for a little under $1.

Dilcia then took us to some of the artisan shops. Most had gorgeous wood carvings, leather work, and original paintings. I almost bought a dozen Cuban cigars, but wasn't sure if I could get them back into the States or not.

We ended up getting lunch in Valle as well. I ended up getting Plato Tipico, which is a typical honduran lunch. It had carne asada (beef), chorizo (suasage), pork, avacado, rice, beans, and fried plantains. The meal was excellent and cost about $5. We even had Coke in glass bottles!

We left Valle behind after lunch and Dilcia took us into Tegucigalpa for a little sight-seeing. One of the interesting things we saw was the old Spanish cathedral that's pictured above. It was gorgeous and also covered with pigeons. To the right of the cathedral is Tegus's Christ statue. While not as big as the one in Rio, it's big enough to be seen from a good distance away. Dilcia is awesome. She really made us feel welcome and gave us a wonderful local's tour of Tegus and Valle.

The rest of our Sunday was spent relaxing. FYI, our dinner was pancakes and they were good. Even the warm milk was very good and not nearly as thick as it has been recently. Tomorrow, we work on folks from nearby areas. I'm excited to be doing work again, but a little sad as it marks out last day at the Ranch. I will definitely miss Dilcia and the kids, but I am looking forward to the adventures ahead.

Uno update: Norma made a big push tonight to get back into 2nd place.
- Derek - 23
- Norma - 16
- Steve - 15
- Alex - 11

Day 10 - Tegucigalpa

This morning we got up early, had a quick breakfast of beans, rice, and cheese and headed into Tegucigalpa which is the capital city of Honduras. Tegus (Tey-Goose), as the locals call it, has about 2 million citizens and is quite a big city. There is a lot of beauty in the city and a lot of nastiness.
On the ride in, we took the NPH bus. Basically it is a renovated middle school bus with almost no shock absorbers. There were a few times that my behind got air as we hit a particularly big bump in the road. We then took a taxi to parque central (central park). The park was busy with a lot of traffic and pedestrians.
One thing to note about Honduran driving is that they use their horn indiscriminately. They beep to let you know they are coming, they beep to let you know you are in their way, and they beep to know they are about to run over you. And they will run you down. The phrase, "Keep your head on a swivel" applies here.
Just off the park, we had lunch at a neat little restuarant called Paradiso. They had quite a variety of dishes, most <$5. I ended up having Sopa de Tortilla (tortilla soup) with rice and chicken. Some of the other folks got a very tasty club sandwhich with fries. Heading back into the park, we went into a gorgeous Cathedral which was beautifully decorated inside and out. Next we just had to stop at the local McDonalds to get a McCono Chocodip (chocolated dipped soft serve ice cream cone). It wasn't exactly like the ones in the states, but it was pretty darned good on a hot day.
On our way back to the Ranch we took the local "chicken bus". The local public transports are all privately owned and some owners really pimp their rides. Other volunteers have seen busses with spinners, sound systems and even flat panel TVs. Ours was not so posh, and was jam packed with hondurans. My guess is that we had 70 folks on that bus at one point. The ride took a little longer, but wasn't too bad.
Mass was at 4PM today to allow the departing volunteers enough time to get to dinner in Tegus. Again the service was beautiful. Mass was followed by dinner and a rock concert. The concert was fun and we ended up playing with the kids more than listening to the band. They did tons of cover tunes in Spanish. The kids had a treat of some kind of candy and chocolate milk, so they were all pretty sugar-buzzed.
We've really gotten to know 10-20 of the kids. It's ashame that we can't stay longer to get to know more. It's a great feeling to be sitting at a concert and have one of your favorites come running over and jump into your lap only to fall sound asleep.

Day 9 - Instructional Time

Today the dental clinic was closed for renovations, so we took the opportunity to give Oral Hygiene Instruction to the new residents at the Ranch. Our slogan was, "Cepilla, cepilla, cepilla, tres veces al dia" which roughly translates into, "Brush, brush, brush, three times a day". We (Norma and Alex) also made posters to illustrate the point.

The Ranch dentista, Dilcia is awesome. She has made us traditional Honduran lunches every day that we've been here working and they are delicious. Today's lunch was two tortillas with a bean, cheese, plantain, and pork filling. Speaking of Dilcia, everyone on the Ranch calls her Doctora. They all love her too. It's easy to see why. She's as good with the little ones as she is with the teens. On Sunday, she's taking us into a small town about an hour away which has a lot of arts/crafts type stuff. I'm sure it'll be a great time.

After teaching the new kids how to brush and floss, we took our show to Casa Suyapa, which is the little ones' dorm. The instruction was lost on most of the kids (aged 2-4), but they had a great time with their new cepillas (toothbrushes) and hilo dental (dental floss). We also applied a small amount of fluoride varnish to their teeth. Next it was play time. As you can see in the picture, the kids loved to sit in laps and were super friendly. The one in my lap dragged me all over the classroom to show me all kinds of extremely important stuff. I then gave about half of the class upside-down rides around the room. Man am I gonna be sore tomorrow!