Today CJ and I went on a trip with a group from the school in the afternoon. We went out to a small village that might well have actually been part of Xela, technically, but was definiltey rural, to see the agricultural areas. We took the ¨chicken bus¨ (repurposed Amercan school busused both as city and long distance buses in Guatemala) out of town until the driver apparently decided that he wasn´t going any further and had us all get off. Then, we walked for probably the better part of an hour down a road that was not technically dirt but that was so full of mud and water that it functioned as a dirt road. It was interesting to see all the fields up close, and CJ nearly ran into a huge Holstein that a boy was leading down the road. Unfortunately because of all the rain we´ve been having the roads were so muddy that every time a truck drove by, we got splashed with muddy water. That made it a bit more difficult to focus on what was going on around us. We also got a look at the aftermath of Hurricane Agatha that had wiped out part of the road and damanged some buildings and fields with mudslides and excessive rain.
We eventually got to a place where they have hot baths. They were extremely similar to the ones that CJ and I went to last week, but these were sulfuric which didn´t smell good, but which our guide claimed was medicinal. CJ and I didn´t actually go into the baths this time since we´d done it last week, and instead we sat on a bench in the entrance area and CJ read and I studied verbs and vocabulary.
Once everyone who was using the baths had finished, we all headed out of the baths to go back towards Xela. I was worried that we´d have to retrace our steps along the long, muddy road, but our guide negotiated with a random guy parked along the road to drive us all back towards the main road in town in the back of his pickup truck for 20 quetzales (around $3). CJ was very excited to ride in the back of the truck. It was quite muddy, had some onions laying back there, and smelled vaguely of manure so most of the adults were slightly less taken with it than CJ was, but it was far, far faster than walking would have been.
We got back to the main road, but unfortunately, a chuck of it was closed because they were doing construction work of some kind and had the whole width of the road blocked off. We had to walk on this long, thin pile of dirt that was running along one side of the road and hope that a) the dirt didn´t slide so that we´d fall off the edge and into the construction work and b) that we didn´t cut ourselves on any of the random nails or pieces of metal and wood sticking out from the sides of the buidlings we were practically rubbing up against. When we finally made it through that without any major mishaps, we came to another part of the road where the whole surface of the road, which is paved, was so thick with mud that while we walked through it, one girl had to hold onto the tops of her rain boots to keep them on her feet as the mud squirted up past her ankles and another girl lost a flip flop that had to be dug out of the mud pit. Interstingly, all of this was on the most major road running through the area!
After that, we eventually got back to the chicken bus that took us back to Xela. Amazingly, it didn´t rain at all during the whole afternoon, though it was misty at times, and drizzled a tiny bit as we were walking the last few blocks back to the school. I´m hopeful that there won´t be any more major rains for the next couple of weeks because especially after hurricane, all of this rain has been very problematic. Tonight, CJ wanted very badly to watch a movie that the school is showing about the Guatemalan civil war in Spanish with English subtitles. Unfortunately, she has not done any of the homework she was supposed to do today and did not behave well at all this morning, so she´s missing out on that. I would have liked to hear her thoughts about the movie and it´s implications for the broader geopolitical situation, both in Central America and beyond.
A note about the pictures:
All of these were taken on the trip today, mostly by CJ. They primarly show things we saw as we walked down the road through the fields.
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