Malacatan

Well although we are home in our winter wonderland...we thought we'd recap the last week so that we'd have a point of reference.
There apparently are lots of details I omitted from our mountain time...one being we got to experience Que-chi culture dress...8 metres of material later VL and I are all dressed up with traditional head dress, skirt, top etc. Although not my choice of fashion, there are certainly beautiful in the handiwork. We had a riot and Elizabeth from Bolivia joined us in the fun. How these beautiful women walk with all that material while balancing baskets of fruit, vegetables etc on their heads and children strapped to their back is beyond me...
Our week on the mountain ended with a tradtional shower of aromatic flower petals floating on us. What a wonderful good bye tradition!
Our trip down the mountain started with 40 minutes late departure and the realization that not all of us were going to fit in the rented van that was supposedly able to accommodate all of us with luggage. After conversing with our hired driver, a kind neighbour offered to take 3 stragglers down in his car so off went Andrew, Stacy and Benigno on a hair rising trip down the mountain while I held the middle front seat of our 15 passenger van between the driver and our tall visiting american! I managed to keep my cookies down, and we had an interesting trip heading into "sweatsville" with VL snapping pics like a madwoman in the back! haha
Malacatan is a happening place with over 800 000 people. It's close to the Mexican border and seems to have a variety of people.
It's lush with palm trees, humidity, banana trees, rubber trees, cocoa trees, water falls near by and of course the garbage finding it's way from the streets to the river. Right down the street from where we stayed is a huge market that more than doubles in size on the weekends. Anything you want, you can find in there from fresh tortillas, clothes, veggies, meat, live animals...it's a maze through dark, dirty gutters to open air.
We made the daily trek with Ken and were his pack horses...it was lots of fun just watching and experiencing doing biz in the markets...so much entertainment!

Although Malacatan is extremly hot, we experienced heavy rains every day. The roof top had an amazing view of Santa Maria Volcano (one of the largest in CA), but it was a few days before it was clear enough to see. When it did clear, it wasn't long before it was clouded over, so had to be quick with the camera! The clouds didn't offer much relief from the heat though and the rains were a welcome change!
Our diet is made up of mostly beans and veggies...and let me tell you, entering the Harrison quarters was seriously taking your life in hand between father and son, but anyway we survived!