Guatemalan weekend

    Last week as we were setting up for clinic in the Mopan Maya village of San Jose, the medical students and I were discussing languages.  This month we have four from Germany working with us and I have been impressed with their English skills.  They had worried about their medical English but have studied English in school since kindergarten and are exposed to it through our TV shows that are exported there.  We discussed the prevalence of Spanish in the U.S. and that I was actually missing speaking Spanish as I had been doing it almost daily in my previous practice.  Well in walked our first patient and I got to speak Spanish.  He was from El Salvador but had relocated to this Maya village in Belize along the Guatemalan border because of the violence in his previous home.  He was farming corn, beans and rice like the other villagers but had not learned to speak Mopan Maya or English.  The encounter went well as we discussed his back pain and other issues and it was fun to do it in Spanish.

Looking across the ocean in front of our house to Guatemala and Honduras

Then the opportunity came to really use my Spanish.  Since Bill had a birthday on Sunday, we took a weekend trip as a family across the Bay of Honduras to Livingston, Guatemala to celebrate.  Getting everyone on the same page about the trip and making the arrangements was challenging including reserving a place to stay and negotiating for a water taxi across the bay but once we pulled away from the dock in Punta Gorda, it was a nice feeling.  We have really been needing a break.  The 45 minute boat ride in the 21-foot boat was bumpier than a log ride at Six Flags and Will who was sitting towards the front got just as wet but it was nice to be in open water heading for the mountains we see in the distance across the bay daily.  As we were coming up to the town, Caelan leaned over towards me and noted how developed everything was.  Now if we were to plop someone from the U.S. down in Livingston, Guatemala, their first impression would be that it is a quaint town in a third world country; however, we had just come from southern Belize that has less infrastructure and amenities and so it really does look developed.  Livingston sits on the Bay of Honduras at the delta of the (river) Rio Dulce.  After we got our passports stamped in the immigration office up the steep hill from the dock, we continued up the hill to the market area.  We had dinner in a restaurant and then had real ice cream cones from another place for dessert.  We stayed in a small hotel built on a dock that juts out into the bay.   

The water taxi that took us to Guatemala

Coming into Livingston, Guatemala

Docks on the Rio Dulce side of Livingston

Saturday afternoon we hired another boat to take us down the coastline where we then hiked into the jungle to see the "Siete Altares" (Seven Alters).  This is a series of waterfalls into cascading pools made from volcanic magma flow.  The boys found a place to jump from and we all enjoyed the cool water. 

Siete Altares

We enjoyed walking around Livingston, and doing shopping in the little stores.  The streets were cleaner, even the dogs looked much healthier with much less mange!    I was on a search for a mixing bowl since I am presently using a bedpan to mix any batter when baking but was not able to find one in Guatemala either - every bowl has a fairly flat bottom.  I guess it makes sense since so much of the time they carry it on their heads and it would be difficult to carry a rounded bowl like we are used to using.  We were also looking for soccer cleats and goalie gloves for Will who is playing on a local soccer team.  No one had larger than a size 43 (U.S. 9.5) or medium gloves and Will wears a size 11.5 or 12 and would use at least large or extra-large gloves.  It is indicative of the average size of the Belizean or Guatemalan guy.

A neighborhood "laundromat" in Livingston

The Maya in Guatemala carry their babies just like the Maya in Belize - in a cloth hung from their head down their backs (or hung from a fence while waiting for a ride).