Longarone Rio Hondo

... night, the rain, the 4Q (80c) Cuba Libres, litro bottles of Gallo and Bravha, vodka y naranja (vodka and orange) with freshly squeezed jugo de naranja (orange juice), the pirated movies...and...<br><br><br><br><br><br> <br><br> ...the chickens, the pigs, the dogs, 3 x 10 tacos, the &#8220;bolsos de agua&#8221; (bags of water), street stalls selling 8Q ($1.50) chicken dinners and mouth ...

... and brittle footing. I had no problems climbing up the slope, although I was a bit concerned with the fact that through some of the cracks you can see molten rock. You also quickly learned that and white shaded rocks are still hot and should not be used as a handhold or lingered on. At the lava flow some of the people were roasting marsh-mellows...I did not want to get any where near that close to the molten rock. Because ...

... managed to see it 4 times in different parts of the town and still do other things with our day. At night it´s even more impressive as to light the band and the float they push around a generator on a trolley. Anyway, we have never seen anything like it. Paul and I are not religious, but you can´t fault the amount of work, strain and effort that goes into carrying a 15 tonne Jesus around the town for 11 hours. That´s faith right there.

... a few of the boys followed us from behind calling out taxi from time to time. I felt like they were there to pick on the weak, they obviously knew from experience that at some point people with a low level of fitness will be happy to catch a ride at a rather high price to be able to make it to the top. After a long climb we started to walk on black dust very much like a giant black sand dune the way the dust moved ...

... City. Yes, Guatemala has presented many surprises so far, and I've been here less than two weeks. The first two or three days I was in a precarious state between scared-shitless-ness and ridiculous elation. I never expected that I'd actually be afraid of this; I always looked forward to the trip with joy and positive expectation. Even in Winnipeg, Chicago and Houston I didn't really sense a lot of apprehension. The full gravity of what I was embarking on hit me when we ...

Our site was split up into our small groups and off we went to build houses for Habitat For Humanity. For 2 weeks we lived in Rio Hondo and built our house. We stayed at a sketchy hotel called Hotel Hawaii (running water was limited, cocroaches were unlimited and most toilets had no toilet seats) but enjoyed every minute of it. Except for the time a creepy Guatemalan man opened mine and Heidi's door at ...

... other half is on some mangy old dusty road through the mountains. We try to be up and running by 830 every day. So in the last two days we saw tons of patients. Both days I did great in the morning but after about 2 in the afternoon I was pretty worn down. Since I was translating the whole time, that basically means that my spanish left me around that time and it was harder for me to understand what the people were saying and also I was getting my words confused. In the end though it all ...

So we got up at 6 this morning to get everything reeady for out 3 hour journey from Antigua to Rio Hondo! Blah blah blah Ill be back to finish the rest in a bit. Okay basically all we did today was travel from point A to point B ( A being Antigua and B being Rio Hondo) After arriving at point B we had lunch lounged ...

So about 5 PM we pulled into the hotel grounds and set up tents around the pool side. As usual I found a thatched roof to sleep under in my sleeping bag rather than a tent. Everybody dove into the pool which was a rather nice one, with sliding pond and diving board.