Mal Ojo

It has been months since the last installment of The Moustache Diaries. I apologize to any loyal readers who have been left in anticipation, and understand if you have given up on these ramblings.

I will begin where I left off, covering the last two months in increasing detail beginning with Alli´s visit and ending with the mind-boggling events of December 19. Alli was here the first week of November. We spent three days at Playa El Tunco and it was, in spite of the weather, truly perfect. The only bummer: it rained almost the entire time. Turns out El Salvador was catching Hurricane Ida at a bad time. Alli and I had no idea just how bad the storm had been until I received a call from the Peace Corps Sunday morning instructing me to stay where I was. I had to make a series of phone calls just to be allowed to take Alli to the airport. We quickly got a sense of the extent of the damage when we discovered that a major bridge has been washed out between El Tunco and the airport, forcing us to rerout through San Salvador. Fortunately, Alli made her flight, and fortunately I returned to El Tablon to find that the community had emerged relatively unscathed.

Later that week I accompanied a group of community members to a badly hit beach town to do relief work. Though the sun had been shining for days the mud was still multiple feet deep in places. People were living under plastic tarps in the street because their homes were uninhabitable. I could see where the water had reached by looking at the faded paint on the sheet metal walls of local homes; it was well over my head. Stories abounded of rescue efforts, but one man´s stood out: After rushing his family to safety he returned to help a group of men that were loading people into a kiddie pool and swimming them hundreds of yards to the nearest road, where they could stand above water. Having evacuated everyone they could find, the man remembered his cow. Unwilling to leave the cow for dead he recruited his brother to swim back to his house with him, where they somehow managed to untie the cow and get it to the road without it or either of them drowning. Though the man had lost nearly everything he still chopped down a few coconuts and offered them to us as we left.

I had another visitor at the end of November, when Devin, my main hombre since our days terrorizing the Western Swim League as speedo-clad 10 year-olds, came for a nine-day joyride through El Salvador. We began at Cerro Verde National Park in igloo-shaped cabañas that were situated in an unspeakably beautiful location in the shadow of Volcan Izalco´s perfect black cone. The next day we climbed Volcan Santa Ana with two tourist police, making for a highly desireable one-to-one police to gringo ratio. At the top we were greeted by a ginormous crater filled with a still bubbling and smoking Aquafresh toothpaste green-colored ooze. That night we drank Jim Beam and local brew and did our best to entertain ourselves without offending anyone in the neighboring igloos. The following morning we hitched to the Pan-American where a series of buses and go-kart taxis finally got us to El Tablon. The best part of our stay in El Tablon was when the local kids somehow got the idea that Devin was actually named Mauricio. I have no clue how that happened. The final two days of his stay were spent at Playa El Zonte. My body was sore for days from the rum/bodysurfing combination but it was, as it always is, worth it.

The night before leaving for San Salvador to celebrate my 25th birthday we had a party of sorts in El Tablon. A quick trip to Berlin produced a couple cases on ice, a rare sight (we still have no electricity...) in these parts, and everyone that came had their wife kill a chicken, so we were flush with meat. Around 6:30 we all went down to my neighbors and drank cold beer out of a cooler set up in the back of his pickup while we sat on sacks of corn and debated the merits of various Ranchera musicians blaring from the pickup´s stereo. Vicente Fernandez, we decided, was indisputably the king. The Mexican Elvis, only badder, because nobody fucks with Vicente. Then the chicken began arriving . Everyone grew silent. Guarro was brought out, perhaps as a sort of local digestive, after the meal. People started putting their arm around me, either as a sign of friendship or for balance, it was unclear at that point. I traded stories with a guy that lived in Maryland for a year about our experiences working in delis (his were way worse). And I retired just as I sensed things were about to turn the corner from passionately singing Rancheras to passing out in the street.

Which brings me to yesterday. A classicly strange El Tablon day. I was sitting around eating candy canes (thanks Mom) with a bunch of kids and my Salvo dad and one of his sons, Mario, who is now in his early 30s and has seven kids of his own. His youngest, Nicolas, is three. As Mario was about to leave he went into our house to get a nearly empty bottle of El Chamaco brand guarro. I asked what he wanted with the El Chamaco and was told it was to protect Nicolas from the ¨mal ojo.¨ The ¨mal ojo,¨ he went on, affects children all over El Salvador. Still not clear on what he was referring to, I asked for clarification, and was told the following:

There are certain adults who have bad, evil, conniving spirits. They are rotten in the soul. These people will often stare covetously at young children, and in so doing can cause the child to develop a pounding headache and diarrhea that, if left untreated for a period of 24 hours, may kill the child (hence the name ¨mal ojo¨ or ¨bad eye¨). In order to protect the child from these stares a mixture containing guarro (cane liquor), tobacco, garlic and another spice that I could not translate is prepared and rubbed all over the child´s body. Head to toe, except for the stomach. The stomach is spared. This is repeated once a day for three consecutive days, during which period the child is not permitted to bathe. The concoction is left on their body. On the third day, the child is protected from the stares.

At first I though Mario was screwing with me. I almost started laughing; he was, after all, talking about rubbing cane liquor and tobacco all over his three year-old son. As he went into greater and greater detail, however, I realized he was serious. No evil satanists were going to stare a fatal headache into his son.

That night after dinner I was sitting around discussing the gang issue in El Salvador with a neighbor and the rest of my family. This led to a series of questions about gangs in the States (sample: ¨Are they all Satanic?¨), which led to my neighbor bringing up money laundering, a subject about which he had heard much. The rest of the family was intrigued, and asked for an explanation. ¨Money laundering,¨ he said, ¨happens like this: Say I steal three trucks and then use those to buy a new truck. That is money laundering.¨

¨Well?¨ he asked me. ¨Right?¨

¨Well,¨ I replied, ¨no. What you have just described is car theft.¨

I then attempted to explain money laundering using a hypothetical restaurant. The restaurant makes no money, but because it is a legal business I can claim all the income I make from selling drugs and guns as restaurant income, thus turning that illegal money into legal money by way of the restaurant. The drug and gun money has been made legitimate, or cleaned, or washed.

¨Right,¨ the neighbor replied. ¨So it is like if I were to steal two cows and use those to get a different cow. Money laundering.¨

I decided it was time to go to sleep.

Angry Old Ladies

After my second visit in as many months to the States in September I tried to settle back into life here in El Tablon as best I could. It´s always a shock walking back into my house, which is perpetually covered in a thin layer of filth, after extended periods of time spent in spotless American condos, hotel rooms and restaurants. It would be one thing if I had returned from a visit to my old college residence, 9 Pine Street, at the peak of its disorder; instead, the cleanliness of Alli´s condo made me acutely aware of the subpar conditions in which I live. No matter, I spent an afternoon telling myself I would readjust followed by an afternoon of frenzied cleaning after I realized I could not readjust. The situation is now, at the very least, bearable.

I left my newly nearly clean residence the first week of October to attend Gabe´s 30th birthday extravaganza, appropriately dubbed ¨Cocktoberfest¨ given the male to female ratio of attendees. The first night we stayed at Gabe´s house in Santa Ana at the base of Cerro Montecristo. The Cerro is home to a national park that supposedly contains El Salvador´s only cloudforest. I don´t know, I didn´t make it quite that far. The second day we drove up the Cerro an hour to the ridiculous cabin we spent the night in. The cabin and the surrounding mountains were unlike anything I had ever seen in this country. Standing on the balcony looking out over the pine-covered slopes listening to a waterfall in the distance and birds (not roosters) chirping, the Peace Corps suddenly seemed like the best idea I have ever had. The steak and onions, beer, football (American variety), and near-constant laughter all supported this conclusion.

Last Monday found me running all over the department I live in, Usulutan, visiting communities the Peace Corps is considering as potential volunteer sites. The day encompassed all that I love and find frustrating about El Salvador. I woke up at 5:15 to pack and bathe myself quickly before the truck left for Berlin at 6:00. I had four pupusas and a coffee in Berlin while I read about the weekend´s World Cup qualifiers (El Salvador was eliminated). From there, it took me two buses to get to El Triunfo, where a health promoter from the Ministry of Health was waiting to take me to the community where she worked, Los Novillos, to meet with local leaders. The meeting went better than expected. I spoke briefly about the Peace Corps and the Rural Health and Sanitation program, we discussed the community´s needs, exchanged numbers, and I told them the Peace Corps would be in touch. After the meeting, I took a tour of the community. As we crossed the last river we became bogged down in the sand and the driver and, consequently, me, were forced to scramble off. I thought this was hilarious. The water only reached our shins. The driver was less enthused. He dropped me off back in El Triunfo and I waited for my next bus to Nueva Granada.

Once the bus arrived it filled fast. I was fortunate to get a seat. There was still a half-hour left until departure, but the elderly woman (she was easily in her 70s) across the aisle from me felt that since the bus was full it should leave immediately. She let the driver, who was sitting outside having a cigarette, know this. ¨Hey! Look! The bus is full. Hurry up!¨ And five minutes later, ¨Son of a bitch! It´s hot! Why are we still here?¨ And another five minutes later, ¨Hey! Son of a bitch! What´s taking so long?¨ I will never stop being entertained by fiesty old Salvadoran women. We finally left, and she finally calmed down. I met another health promoter in Nueva Granada and, after a lengthier-than-desired conversation with a smooth talking doctor who was clearly feeding me bullshit on a stick we left for Palomilla de Gualcho. Apparently I was late, because 75 people had been waiting at the soccer field for me for two hours. I gave the same presentation on the Peace Corps and then we discussed needs. The ADESCO from the neighboring community was present and made sure to pull me aside to tell me about what needed fixing where they were from. I had not two minutes earlier finished discussing what Rural Health and Sanitation volunteers do, emphasizing education and small projects, and asked those in attendance to discuss needs specifically with regard to health. This is what the young moustachioed ADESCO president told me his community needed: a new soccer field, new roads and a public park. ¨That´s great,¨ I told him, ¨I would like a unicorn that farts gold bricks.¨ He didn´t understand what a unicorn was. That night I stayed with a family in Palomilla. Things started out normally enough. I had fried tilapia for dinner (the community is next to a reservoir and has a fishing cooperative) and was talking with the father about Miami, where he had lived for three years, when the subject turned to school. His children were young and had finished 9th grade but had not yet enrolled in high school. When I asked why he said they had a ¨little problem¨. I had known this family for all of two hours so I didn´t press the matter. Laying in the hammock later, the wife approached me. She had overheard the earlier conversation and had her finger over her lips, as if she were about to divulge an ancient family secret. ¨My children and I are evangelicals, my husband is not,¨ she told me. ¨That´s why they can´t go to high school.¨ This made no sense, but the entire situation was so strange I just said alright and hoped she would leave. The next morning before I left I found out the son was in an artificial insemination class in La Union. High school bad. Artificial insemination good. Standard logic in rural El Salvador.

...Noonan...

I am back from my vacation in the States and I loved it so much I will be returning to Florida for another five days this Wednesday. As expected, the whole readjusting to rural El Salvador thing was hard. I couldn´t help but mutter a "motherfucker" to myself as I was served my first heaping plate or rice and beans. This led to the following exchange:

Mama Carmen: Que dijo? (What did you say?)

Me: Nada. No comi ni un frijol en los estados, cree eso? (Nothing. I didn´t eat one bean in the States, can you believe that?)

She could not believe that. Everyone was full of questions about the U.S., to which I gave my now standard responses, and multiple people have asked me to bring them back a bottle of the strongest liquor I can get my hands on. I hope they like Wild Turkey.

Fortunately, the last month has been full of diversions. There was a volunteer golf tournament the first weekend of September at Las Veraneras Resort in Playa Los Cobanos. I played with Will, Gabe and Jimbo and was definitely the worst of the foursome. I suppose I should clarify exactly what I mean by "play." The tournament was designed to be an 18-hole 4 to a team scramble event; however, due to a delayed start time and a bottle of Jaegermeister Jimbo and I got through at best 8 holes. Will and Gabe may have snuck in 10. I did have a few monster drives with the putter, though.

The following Wednesday the Rural Health and Sanitation program began their 3-day In-Service Training (IST) at Playa El Tunco. Wednesday also happened to be the date of El Salvador´s World Cup Qualifier with Costa Rica, so we loaded up a microbus full of 20 gringos and went to the Estadio Cuscutlan to cheer on La Selecta. The game went back and forth, with El Salvador creating the better chances in the first half (including a bicycle kick from 18 yards out that hit the post) and Costa Rica more or less dominating the second. It seemed like Costa Rica had a free, uncontested header off every corner kick, but they couldn´t take advantage and with two minutes left El Salvador broke out on the counterattack and buried one, sending the crowd into a frenzy. And that´s how it ended: 1-0 El Salvador, Brad with his shirt off embracing a fat Salvadoran man. Everybody wins.

The next two days of training covered a strangely diverse array of topics, including cocaine abuse (the current PC El Salvador doctor is from Bolivia), benign breast abnormalities, vision, hydroponic vegetables and swine flu. The swine flu session spooked me. I convinced myself the cough I had had for the previous week was definitely, without a doubt, swine flu and resolved to go and have it checked out in San Salvador immediately after training. I found out I do not have swine flu. All in all, the IST was fun. I had an opportunity to reconnect with people I hadn´t seen in months and spend time hanging out at one of my favorite beaches in El Salvador. (El Tunco recently got press in the NYTimes! Check it out: http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/travel/13next.html?hpw)

Work in El Tablon continues to go reasonably well. The pila project is close to being fully funded and will likely begin in early November, which coincides nicely with the end of our school year. At school I continue to give class. My last English exam made a girl cry. In Life Skills class we just finished the baby game. I gave each student a potato and told them to start brainstorming names because they had just received their new baby. Michael Jackson was a popular choice, as was Shakira. The students were also given a sheet with instructions on how to care for their little bundles of joy - your baby must go wherever you go, don´t leave your baby in your backpack, you are not allowed to eat your baby, etc. After five days we met again to see how everyone did. At least half the class lost or forgot their potato babies. Though I was disheartened by the higher than expected number of deadbeat mommies and daddies this did allow me to really drive my point home. If you can´t keep track of a potato for five days, it´s safe to say parenthood is not yet for you.

As always, there are ups and downs. I try to focus on what has gone well instead of the endless list of things I will never get to and be content with the fact that I am still here 18 months later trying to do my part to improve this little corner of the world.

El Norte

I leave for Florida tommorrow morning. It will be the first time I have set foot in the States in 17 months. I ca´nt say I am nervous about returning. Obviously, there will be contrasts between El Tablon and Ft. Lauderdale, some of which may be overwhelming at first, but every Volunteer I have spoken to has told me that going back to the States is easy. It feels like you never left. Its getting on the plane back to El Salvador that is hard. And that makes perfect sense. Am I nervous about spending 10 days with my girlfriend in Florida and family in Minnesota? Of course not. Am I nervous about stuffing my face with sushi and pasta and thick steaks and all the other foods I have spent countless hours longingly thinking about in my hammock? Negative. And beer with flavor and bourbon whiskey and hot showers and cold ice? Do any of those things make me nervous? No, no they do not. What does make me nervous is returning to the rice and bean diet and 24/7 animal noises after rediscovering these comforts. Of course, I may be oversimplifying things. There is a chance I will leave Miami International Airport and feel out of place, like I am in a country that is more foreign to me than El Salvador. At least there will be the bourbon to help me cope.

Everyone in El Tablon is really interested in how Americans travel to the States. In order for them to go they have to pay a coyote (local slang for the guy that arranges illegal crossings) 3,000$ to lead them on a two-week journey through Guatemala and Mexico that, if they are lucky, ends in a successful crossing (after which the coyote is owed another 4,000$). Two guys from El Tablon have attempted the trip recently. One was abandoned by his coyote in northern Mexico, decided to make a dash for the Rio Grande, and was picked up by Mexican authorities before he even caught sight of Texas. The other made it across the Rio Grande, but was involved in a car accident in Houston shortly thereafter and put in jail and deported. So people are always skeptical when I tell them I can get on a plane and be in Miami in 3 hours. Planes in general are a baffling concept, since all the available information has been gleaned from a neighbor who had a brother-in-law whose uncle was on a plane once. Frequently asked questions include:

Is it the same as riding in a bus?
A: Yes, if buses has wings and flew and were more comfortable and didnt play Gloria Estefan concerts.

Will you pass over El Tablon and, if so, will you yell down to us so we know its your plane?
A: I would, but they dont let you open the windows.

How do you feel in a plane?
A: Awesome.

More to come on the shock of returning to a developing country...

Chong-Li

I had one of the best 4th of Julys ever this year even though I wasn´t even in the States. Alli came in on Thursday. I went to a fireworks store shown to me by a cabbie in San Salvador for supplies before meeting her at the airport, from where we traveled to Alegria. On the 4th we were met by Will and Rich at the Laguna in the morning. The day was spent drinking Pilsener and shooting off fireworks and walking around. Some of us did this more successfully than others. Will managed to break a beer bottle while it was still in his hand. That night we headed back down to Alegria to eat at La Fonda and light sparklers and drink Something Special brand whiskey. I still can´t believe the actual name of the whiskey they serve at La Fonda is something special.

The next weekend I was in San Salvador working on a completion report for the latrine project when a funny thing happened. I had just finished watching a movie at MetroCentro when it started to full on Central America rainy season downpour. Sheets of rain. I was only a 5 minute walk from my hostel but decided to wait it out since 5 minutes in this rain would have left me more or less drenched. After an hour it was still raining so I decided to make a run for it, using the alley that runs between MetroCentro and the hostel as a shortcut. An aside about this alley: it is disgusting. Volunteers refer to it as ¨Crack Alley.¨ Drunks frequently take shits there (I unfortunately witnessed this once). I hold my breath while walking through it. As I reached the alley I was already soaking. I turned the first corner, turned the second and was reaching the final stretch when I stopped. The final stretch was a shin-deep puddle. The best strategy in my mind was to go high knees through the puddle. And then it happened. I went down. Not as in fell over. As in fell in a hole. Up to my stomach. In Crack Alley. As I pulled myself out I looked down and realized my pants were not only soaking but streaked brown down the front. The throng of Dutch tourists in the hostel lobby just blankly stared at me upon my arrival. I was given a towel and it was suggested that perhaps I should take a shower. When I told my friends what had happened the first thing they all said to me was some variation of, ¨Dude, you fell into the hole in Crack Alley? You know there was definitely shit in there.¨ So that was comforting.

That downpour has turned out to be an anomaly this rainy season. July has been dry and hot. The heat has been so bad that I know I may as well take my shirt off before lunch (and occasionally dinner, too) because I am just going to sweat it out anyway. This is standard procedure for all the males in my family. The other day I was eating hot soup for lunch with two of my brothers, Jose Luis and Sergio, discussing a certain pillar of American Cinema known as Bloodsport. This is Sergio´s favorite film and it comes up often. The heat was causing us all to sweat profusely. After we all finished Sergio, dripping, stood up, looked at Jose Luis and I, did the move that Chong Li does in Bloodsport where he dances his pecs up and down, and said ¨Igual al Chino¨ (¨just like the Chinese guy¨). This cracked me up as nothing has cracked me up in a long time.

School has been cancelled until further notice due to Swine Flu, which has totally cleared out my daily schedule and allowed me to put some serious time into trying to plow through David Foster Wallace´s Infinite Jest. Regarding Swine Flu, there was one death in Santiago de Maria (two hours away), so the powers that be decided to close all the schools in the department. Outside of school, as previously mentioned, the latrines are done and the community will, if all goes according to plan, begin a pila project in the next few months. Also, electricity! For real this time. The holes are being dug for the poles and men in yellow hats have been afoot. This actual, observable progress in unprecedented in the El Tablon electricity saga.

Finally, a call for assistance. There are at least four students at the Instituto (high school) in Berlin on scholarships funded by the volunteer that lived in El Tablon before me. These scholarships help the students pay for their uniforms, books, school supplies, housing and food, and without them it is unlikely they would be able to study as these costs add up to hundreds of dollar their families simply do not have. The money raised by the previous volunteer will run out at the end of the current school year in November. I would like to be able to offer these students scholarships for the following year. For two of the four it will be their last. In order to do this I need to raise money. The scholarships are funded through the organization Aid El Salvador, run by former Peace Corps volunteers. This year each student is receiving between 200$ and 300$ in scholarship money. As little as 20$ buys books for a semester. Donations can be made by check to:

Aid El Salvador

2688 Pala Mesa Court

Costa Mesa, CA 92627

Please be sure to indicate the name of my community on the check (El Tablon, Berlin) to ensure the money will be received by my students. Donations can also be made via Paypal on the Aid El Salvador website (http://www.aidelsalvador.org/donate.php - Tax ID information is available here as well). Please indicate El Tablon, Berlin as the community you are donating to on the designated funding tab. If you should have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at brad.engelsma@gmail.com!

Assorted Happenings and Goings On

Though there are many aspects of life here that no longer register as out of the ordinary (animal noises, cows taking firehose pees in my house, naked children in the street), I still have moments in which I am struck by the strangeness of what I am doing, or of what is happening around me. This is to be expected, considering I spent the first 23 years of my life living in the States and have spent just over one here. In the course of the last week, the following has caused me to stop and consider:

1. Practice on Tuesday. The local soccer team was practicing, as it does every Tuesday and Thursday, and we had just started scrimmaging when I noticed something unusual. It was not the men playing in jeans, or dress shoes, or cowboy hats. That is all standard attire. No, it was the guy playing in his underwear. And not just any guy. This was Alonso, the President of the ADESCO (the community´s development organization). And he wasn´t wearing just any underwear. These were faded swamp green briefs with navy stripes down the sides. The most powerful man in El Tablon was running around practice in either the most attractive or the ugliest (depending on your point of view) pair of banana hammocks I have seen in some time.

2. Bathing last Wednesday. The first thing I noticed was the state of the water in our pila. I see it every day, but rarely do I stop and really look at it. It was green from algae, with spiders skipping across the surface and frogs at every stage of the development process, from tadpole to full-grown fist-sized croakers, using it as their pool. I dipped the bucket I was carrying into the pila, brought it to the bright orange high school football Gatorade jug that sits in the corner of the ¨shower,¨ poured it in, repeated, and then went to my hammock for five minutes to allow all the impurities to settle at the bottom of the jug. When I returned, soap and shampoo in hand, I saw two tiny frogs (still with their tadpole tails) that had been passed from the pila to the Gatorade jug, swimming in the water I was about to pour over my head. This has been happening frequently of late. I scooped out the tailed frogs and threw them over the side of the shower. And then I began to laugh. Why? Because part of my daily bathing ritual involves scooping out inch-long tailed frogs from a Gatorade jug and throwing them over the black plastic walls of my shower so I don´t accidently pour one of myself while I soap up.

And so goes life in El Tablon, a place so starved for action that a guy playing soccer in his underwear is an Event.

Abundant Lava and RC Cola

I´ve recently returned from a two-week vacation in Guatemala. My brother flew into San Salvador on a Saturday; the next morning, at 5:30 am, we boarded a TICA Bus bound for Guatemala City. After switching to a chicken bus we were in Antigua, where we spent two days, by 1:00. Antigua is your prototypical Latin American colonial city - the cobblestone streets, the old churches and nunneries, many of which lay in ruins (earthquakes), the leafy central park with the big fountain and the fat moustachioed men offering to take your Polaroid picture, etc. Our first night found us at Trivia Night at a bar named Reilly´s playing on a team with a Dutch woman that knew the scientific term for a castrated rooster and the animal that boasts the largest penis. Impressive lady, she was. The next day we climbed Volcan Pacaya, a rocky, barren Mordor-like wasteland that, unlike other volcanoes i´ve been up in these parts, isn´t dormant. I was told to expect lava, but I didn´t expect to see so much, and I definitely did not expect to be allowed to wander as close to it as I wanted.

The next stop was Lago de Atitlan. As any guidebook will tell you as frequently as possible, Aldous Huxley once remarked that Atitlan was ¨the most beautiful lake in the world.¨ Why the opinion of Aldous Huxley should provide sufficient impetus to visit I was never able to figure out, though it was, to be fair, unlike any other lake i´ve seen. Three 10,000-plus foot volcanoes flank its southern shore, while the rest of the lake is surrounded by craggy green mountains. Our days there were spent hiking through little Mayan villages and past the secluded homes of Guatemala´s rich and famous and searching in vain for a cliff jumping spot we had heard about.

From Lago de Atitlan we moved 6 chicken bus hours north to Nebaj, a town set in the heart of the Cuchumatanes Mountains (reported to be the highest in Central America). The next three days would be the most difficult and rewarding of the trip, as we set out on a trek across the Cuchumatanes to Todos Santos. Our guide was an indefatigable old Mayan man named Nicholas who loved to laugh at his own jokes, which were indistinguishable as jokes except by his laughter. The best kind. I had been playing soccer two to three times a week and believed myself to be physically fit, but Nicholas put me and the rest of the trekkers to shame. We were dripping with sweat, taking every opportunity to put as much water into our systems as possible, while Nicholas meandered steadily behind us in rubber galoshes and three layers of long sleeves, drinking RC Cola and orange soda to repower.

The first day we took a bus to a small village an hour outside of Nebaj. Then it was a two hour ascent and another four hours up and down through highland Mayan farm country. That night, we stayed in a guesthouse in a village called Palop, everyone surprised by how cold it became once the sun went down. Fortunately, the family that ran the guesthouse had a sauna, so we hopped in there for some respite. The next morning we began by climbing the ¨25 Vueltas¨, a set of 25 switchbacks etched into the side of a mountain outside Palop. The reward was an enormous boulder strewn valley that defies explanation. Once across the valley we hiked another few hours to a road where we hitched a ride on a truck carrying firewood to a village an hour from where we would eventually rest for the night. The third and final morning we awoke bug bitten and short on sleep to find Nicholas drinking Gallo, Guatemala´s national beer. It was 6:30 in the morning. We arrived in Todos Santos in the afternoon, took in the scenery for an hour, and then got on a bus to Huehuetenango in search of a hotel with hot water. It wasn´t until I took a good look at myself in the mirror in the hotel bathroom that I realized how ridiculous I must have looked walking into what was by local standards a very nice hotel and asking for a room. I hadn´t bathed in three days, my hair was sticking straight up out of my bandana, I was sunburned and covered in bug bites, and there was a pair of wet undies hanging off my backpack drying.

The ruins of Tikal were our final destination. Tikal was impressive, just how impressive I still can´t decide. The temples were definitely big, the views from their tops awesome, but I expected there to be more. I suppose there is, buried underneath all that jungle.

Pictures can be found at: http://picasaweb.google.com/brad.engelsma/Guatemala# .