three weeks in: week three.

tales from the trekking world (of good people and places):
we have returned to xela from our long distance trekking adventure to the highest peak in central america. oy... i am a bit sore, unfortunately, and i am sad to report that i only made it to 100 m. before the top of the tallest peak in central america (although we checked and i still made it to the highest point in central america), but the weather was horrible and my body was a strange temp, and so i felt like i was going to pass out - perhaps altitude, i don´t know. anyway, i don´t feel too terrible about it, as there were no views from the top. only frigid wind.

good, great things about the trekking company. their name is quetzal trekkers. they are the only non profit trekking agency in xela. all of their money - 100% - goes to a school, a group home and a hospital, all cheap or free, for impoverished kids in xela. the guides also spend 3 or 4 hours with the kids twice a week, building relationships. very cool. so, peak reached or no, our money went to a good cause.

but most importantly, we met some interesting folks along the way: first, was an israeli guy named gill. interesting just because he was pretty patriotic, but really nice, and spent a lot of time with us, despite the fact that our views on israel are incredibly different.

the other was a girl named naomi who is probably about 26. she and i have an uncanny number of things in common. first, that her folks adopted an eight year old boy from columbia when she was 9. they went through a lot of the same troubles we´ve had with aidar, culminating in a really tough adolescence. the good news is, as he grew older (he´s now my age), he has matured into a really interesting, interested person who is doing a lot of neat things. second, she is a jewish woman who is dating a palestinian christian guy who is from ramullah. his parents worked with rick and kitty ufford-chase to establish the christian peacemaker team project in hebron, which we visited while we were there. his brother - eric - works in jerusalem for a group called seeds of peace. and, lastly, she works in el paso-juarez for a borderlinks-type organization, leading groups of students into mexico for semesters at a time. really, really cool. she has done the whole tucson circuit, and we know a bunch of the same people. very fun - very crazy - very cool.

anyway, naomi and i have concocted a plan for my return to the states: i guess you can fly into juarez from mexico city for about 100 dollars. we´ll do the juarez tour (of folk art, specifically), and then drive over to tucson and nogales where i can show her around for a few days, and i´ll head home from there-probably fly into spokane again, which is only $100, around may 18th ish..ish. we´ll see how money goes, and whether i get into school, but i guess juarez has a really interesting folk art movement going on around border stuff, and it would be a great place to start developing a research project. anyway, good connection, eh?? kind of unbelievable.

after trekking, we meandered over to lago atitlan for a second time, watched a gorgeous sunset over the lake, then proceeded to san pedro, on the opposite end of the lake from panahachel (the city where we´d stayed before). we shared a hookah and drank a few beers while listening to a BLUES band (who were fabulous)...this lasted until we realized that san pedro is basically disney land for drugged out gringos, and we retired to bed shortly thereafter.

departed in the morn for livingston (no, not montana. har har), a really interesting town on the east coast of the country. we stayed over in rio dulce, a little town on the water...on the rio dulce, in fact... on the way into livingston. we arrived in livingston the next day via boat tour, where we had the chance to swim in a hot spring.

livingston was a really amazing town. we took a tour through a group called "exotic travel" which was very eye opening. we walked from town through the jungle, learning about the plantlife as we went, down river in a canoe, and up to "siete altares," a park with 7 waterfalls. our tour guide was a native livingstonian. so, some cool things about livingston:
-populated by the garifono people; descendents of a shipwrecked slave ship from africa who built their civilization in between these inlets.
-the language there is some mix of french, spanish, english, quiche and swahili. garifono.
-there are no roads leading into livingston. the government wanted to put one in in the 1990s, but the people said "no thansk." thus, it is only accessible by boat. this means the community has a unique cosmology and community environment. really, it is a place unlike anywhere else on earth.
-there are basically no exports from livingston. the community, and its tourist industry, sustain its markets. imports are limited.
and so on.
basically: visit livingston. julie lauterbach wrote a fab poem about our guide, pablo, and julie, if you read this, perhaps post it, if you feel so inclined.

a funny highlight from our livingston trip is that we ran into cari and brian while eating dinner the first night! so, we hung out with them for the weekend. we had some good - great laughs.

en route back to xela, we stopped off again in rio dulce...where i caught some sort of annoying cold, which i´m nearly over now...then, i departed from eric and julie (tear) and made my way to antigua for a night of sneezing, and back to xela...welcome home!

yeah. i don´t joke. it´s good to be back "home," back in class, with my host family, and among friendly and familiar faces at ica.

more when there´s more...
adios.