We´ve Left Panajachel

Panajachel was good but Santiago was great. We were there for three days. Emily used to teach english there and stayed with a local family during that time. Emily let them know we were coming and they opened their place to us. Marissa took care of us the whole time. A great room, breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, except for the night we took her and her son Jessie. Marrisa is in her twenties and her son is 5 year old. She has a great place and lives with her husband and son, her in laws and her four brothers and sisters. It´s a full house yet there are still three more rooms available for other people. She wants to teach spanish to people from Canada or the States while giving room and board as addition as income. It would be a great opportunity of someone to learn spanish and become ingrained in the culture for a few months in a beautiful community.
Through out our time there we mostly relaxed. We played cards at night and was in bed early. We did have a couple adventures though.
Sanitago had a major mudslide two years ago and it´s said that at least one person died from every family on the island. We went on a walk and checked out the damage. Em says the town look completely different and there is a lot of construction going on albeit it is going very slow due to the poverty and lack of funding from the government. Em also started to sponser a child in the city right after the mudslide. Her name is Julia and she is 14 years old, her dad had died when she very young and her mom died saving the kids during the mudslide. Em arranged to meet her on Thursday outside a restaurant in Santiago. To our suprise her whole family showed up. Her siblings, cousins, and her Aunt and Uncle who took her in after her mom died. We had ice cream, Julia was very quite but her Aunt told us all about the day of the slide and her mother´s death among a lot of other things. We then were invited to see where they live. We caught a Tuk Tuk ( a local taxi) about 5 minutes out of the town to a camp of displaced families from the slide. After seeing their two 4x6 ft rooms that 6 or 7 people share It really makes thankful for what you have. Julia´s aunt thanked God for this shelter after the mudslide destroyed their homes. We sat and talked some more at there place and told us more about their life, her husband makes 25Q per day that´s less than $5 CDN! It was all very sad and humbling. As we left Julia gave both Em and me a present, I was given a little beaded angel keychain since they had found out I did not belong to a church and Em a beaded rooster keychain. What an experience.

We also got to watch all the school children and youth sports teams parade through the city on Friday. I was cool to see all the different colours of the school flags, uniforms and of course all the cute kids.

We headed back to Panajchel on Friday afternoon, payed another 25Q each to take a boat across the lake, and headed to a nature reserve where we saw monkeys hanging out in trees, a butterfly exibit and a waterfall that would be amazing in the rainy season but a little lame this time if year.

Then we took off by bus to Antigua. By the way to take a bus to Antigua only cost us 30Q each.

written by

Chris Pagett on March 3, 2009 from Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala

from the travel blog: Chris and Em's Adventure

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I went to San Pedro and they never offered me weed once!
Bev R

written by Bev R on March 6, 2009

Ha Ha! wierd, they didn´t offer Em any either. I guess I got that kind of face

written by

Chris Pagett on March 7, 2009

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