roasting marshmallows in lava.

on tuesday we hiked a volcano. it is called pacaya. at the top of pacaya, after 2 hours of straight up hiking, you break through the thick layer of clouds and you see a sight that could only be described as the most breathtaking vista on earth. j.r.tolkein...eat your heart out. so, when you get to the base of the volcano (as high as you can go without your shoes melting) you start to hike out in the black battle field of hardened magma, watching your step and looking forward towards the feral dogs that walk with you in hopes of getting food (how they do it, why they do it, left me astounded). at one point, if you stop to take a breath, a few things happen. one thing is that you look straight, and you see 3 more volcanoes reaching high above the clouds, one right after another, and the vibrant green vegitation that contrasts with the black as night rock you stand on. the other thing that happens is that your shoes start to melt. after you walk for a little while, your feet always moving, you reach a point where you can look through cracks in the rock, and see bright red streams flowing through them, about 2 or 3 feet below. that is lava, there. a group of german tourists, who had brought jet-puff marshmallows, decided that their kids had enough sugar (much to the shagrin of the 13 year old son, who gave me the evilist eye ever when i thanked him) and gave us their half finished bag. our tour guide had brought a stick, and we threw some of the jumbo mallows on it. then, we spent the next few minutes, always quick stepping some our shoes didnt become tar, roasting marshmallows in the ambient heat of the lava. true, i love roasted marshmallows over a campfire. true, i love looking out over an unknown terrain and thinking, wow, this is incredible. but the unbelievable combination of my sticky hands covered with roasted marshmallows that were roasted by lava, looking out over the sunset across jet black craggy rocks to the lush green and volcanos in the distance, was something i will never recreate. and thats the way i like it.

dressing burn victims

on monday we worked in the actual clinic, having had our share of injecting needles into children. on first arrival, we were trained to take heights and weights of the incoming patients. but then, they decided that that wasnt really that important, so we were moved into the one-stop-shop nursing room to take care of all things quick and medical. included in these tasks were taking out sutures of women who had c sections, more vaccinations but this time for people of all ages (did you know that the birth control shot is the number 1 preferred family planning method here?) and, of course, quick fixes for burn victims. an elderly man, who works as a cement mixer down by the city dump, had an accident with the mixture, and suffered severe chemical burns on both of his calves. in strong tradition of my mother, the only thing that really grosses me out in terms of ailments of the human body is a gnary, puss filled, infected, skin hanging off, basal cell layer exposed body part, with exposed nerve endings creating exruciating pain for whomever. so, of course, thats what i got to see at 8 in the morning. pancakes be damned! so, i took a deep breath, put on gloves (incredible!) and went to work with a wooden stick and some antibiotic cream. i struck up a conversation with the burned man, but he couldnt quite talk through the pain. i wasnt nervous, its not hard to swab cream on a leg, but it was an experience - no pain medication, no gauze to cover the wound, just an old man's burned leg, and me sweating and feeling amazed that i was doing it without barfing.

things that made the weekend great.

1) a zoo in a rainforest. around the town of flores and santa elena, there are several sights to see. one of those is a zoo which you have to take a boat to get to. once in the zoo, you will find all the animals of the rainforest. and dont worry, there are no fences to hold the animals in. also, there are waterslides from the canopy to the lake in the zoo.
2) spelunking. after the zoo, our group decided to check out this cave we had sort of heard of a little bit. when we arrived at the cave, we were lucky enough to be shuttled into the entrance along with a group of 45 teenage guatemalan boys on a school field trip. after a slight descent on a lighted pathway, we saw the usual cave fare - stalagtite/mites, bats chirping in the distance, the possibility of a cavein (pun obviously intended). then, what do you know, the tour guide points to what looks incredibly like a rabbit hole, and says in spanish, ladies first, and dont worry, this is only one of the smallest holes we will climb through today. then, for the next 2 hours, we were either on our hands and knees crawling through bat shit, sliding on our stomachs through bat shit to get through the tight parts, or being in total darkness save for a few flashlights with bats flying around our heads, confused and sweating and scared and laughing and swearing and trying to photodocument the experience.
3) mayan ruins with a tourguide that can answer any question on earth. tikal, one of the great pyramid complexes in the new world, was our main stop on saturday. when you walk through a place like that, you sense the magnatism, the weight, the collective memory of an entire civilization. not many words can describe how incredible it was. our tour guide, rolando, made it exponentially better by knowing how to do monkey calls, how to coerce rainforest tarantulas to come out of their underground lairs, and by having a 1 hour discussion with me about 2012, metaphysics, synchronism, and the 5th world.
4) canopy tours. what everyone does in the rainforest. all the obvious joys, including several large insects among the highest highs of the trees.
5) a bar called AAdictos? that happened.

it was one of those weekends that enlightened, tested your physical and spiritual limits, reinvigorated your sense of wonder, made you so tired you dont remember falling asleep, and made you feel completely immersed in the moment.

when buses break down in guatemala.

i needed to save a few hundred dollars, and so did a few other people. so, instead of taking the 45 minute flight to tikal, we decided to take a bus. it was a charter bus after all, and i figured that charter buses are sort of universal...what with the fabric cup holders, the guy behind you that makes you anxious to recline your seat, and the overwhelming knowledge that yes, at one point, you will have to use the unairconditioned lavatory. much to my surprise, then, when after 10 minutes of driving, the piloto, or driver, got out to smoke a cigar. i didnt misspell that word. then, about an hour after that, the bus lurched to a stop, and my friends and i looked at eachother with a mixture of confusion, and amusement. yes, we were bad ass for taking the 8 hours bus ride. no, we didnt know that the driver had an overactive bladder and an unusual hankering for cigars. so, after about 30 minutes of sitting on an emergency pull out on a country highway (see the blog post a few days ago to remind yourself what that is) 3 hours outside of the city, in the middle of burgeoning rainforest, we realize the transmission is shot. to ease my mind, i went for a quick walk into the underbrush, until i ran into (literally) a cow who mooed at me in the most vitriolic way i had ever heard. then, we played some frisbee, being careful not to throw it into the busy highway. after about 2 hours, a new bus came. sure, this one didnt have airconditioning (again...rainforest), but only a short 12 hours later, at 12 47 in the morning the next day, we arrived at the tikal bus stop, feeling achy, tired, and still, bad ass.

me, vaccinating, and where i do it.

doing laundry here is both awesome and weird

you know those days when you have to do laundry and you really dont want to? at those moments, if god descended down from the heavens and asked you in his thunderous voice, "may i, god, wash, dry, and fold your clothes for you, while you stop over at the internet cafe and drink a latte?" you would literally bow down and submit to his glory. but have you ever really thought about someone else doing your laundry? i always thought it would be bad ass, until today. see, i had to get my laundromat on, and thinking it was going to be a self wash kind of situation, i didnt bother rinsing off my pants that i wore to work today, on which feces was caked on the cuffs from walking in the shantytowns. then, i showed up at the laundromat, and someone just outstreched their hands and took my shit. literally, and figuratively. i of course started backtracking, explaining that well ok, see, its gross but its ok because its where i work and that shirt is black and new so please dont wash it with that one and can this be dried and i think i need this for tomorrow. trust me, spanish as a second language works well until there is shit on your pants.
but, lets face it. in 10 minutes i will show up, and the clothes will be folded. and dried, at least pretty much. then i will pack my bag and head to tikal to see the mayan ruins tomorrow, and be pretty thankful ive got clean pajamas.

children are people too

around lake atitlan are several mayan villages. each has a different name and a different significance to the natives peoples. they all have different catholic churches and traditional festivals. they all have a different patron saint with names including many letter like x. the one thing they do have in common is the fact that tourists come through to puruse the merchandise, and pay the local people the equivalent of 13 cents to have their picture photographed (in these mayan villages, their dress is traditional). with tourists comes essential revenue, sure. but also, it brings out the most brutal desperation of an otherwise proud and vibrant culture i have ever layed witness to. we stepped off the boat at every stop (save the 2nd stop, which was a part of the lake that was naturally heated by lava flowing underneath, creating hotsprings within the cold body of water) to the barrage of children, i mean, CHILDREN, assualting our guilty sides with handmade gifts. trinkets, really. in our group of 15 there was the entire spectrum, those who simply ignored them, those who said no, no gracias, no los quiero, or those who just handed over 1 quetzal, otra vez y otra vez, until they couldnt rummage for any more change. this was all fine, i was somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. i just kept pointing at other groups and saying, maybe you could ask them.
until dinner, i didnt really think of these little humans as children. our group of friends tossed around ideas of whether their parents taught them things to say (eg - please buy this so i can buy pencils for school) or if any of it was true. i sort of put them and their souls on the backburner and thought, well, theyre just trying to make a living. just while discussing this over sugarcane cocacola and the first pizza of the trip, a little boy approached our table holding a plastic bucket with homemade keychains. they were cute, but our whole table had already bought some from another little boy who sat in the rain and stared at us while we waited for the rest of our group on the boat earlier that day. at this particular dinner table, all of us said the same thing to him, no, no gracias, no los quiero. and then something happened that changed my life. he put his small black haired head on the table and started to weep. the weeping didnt sound like it was coming from a 6 year old, but from someone who had seen too much. took on too much. one of our group, the fluent spanish speaker, was able to understand what he was saying through heaves of his small chest. he just wanted a slice of pizza, he said. he didnt want anyone to buy his things. he just wanted pizza. after a few minutes of all of us, eyes filled with tears, looking at eachother in astonishment and confusion and horror and guilt, a little girl, perhaps 1 or 2 years the boys senior, approached the table and put her chin on his shoulder. she whispered something. his eyes were red but he stopped crying. they turned and walked away.