Monday, March 17, 2014
Jaibalito, Western Highlands, Guatemala
We all had the opportunity to sleep in this morning as we didn't have to be ready until 9am this morning, however chances are most people were at one point woken early this morning by the roosters like I was.
We took a boat this morning to have breakfast at Casa Del Mundo, such a lovely view from there overlooking the lake.
After breakfast we spent the next two hours swimming in what Andres called 'The Pool', basically it was the lake, it was nice and warm compared to the New Zealand water, yet some people still found it cold. The lake itself is a creator from an old volcano.
As we were swimming it I noticed that part of the stuff under the water looked like a balcony, Andrea said that it was actually part of the hotel and the water has risen quite high.
After our swim we then took another boat ride to San Pedro La Laguna at another part of the lake to get lunch. Some of us decided to take a swim in the pool, funny thing was the lake was warmer than the pool.
Stephen and I placed a bet with Andres to see who could hold the breath longer, the two losers had to buy lunch for the winner, well, Stephan and I lost against a Costa Rican (Andres)... Not surprising. But that's ok, it only works out at about $3.50 each.
Andres has organised a 5 on 5 indoor soccer match at the request of Thomas (The Irishman). It should be good, although I'm not sure how my knee will hold out, the guys said they will chuck me in goal if I wanted, not sure if I want that responsibility, but we will see.
Off to the home stay in the Mayan town of San Jaun, where we were spilt up and stay with some local families.
The host father speaks about as much English as I speak Spanish so that makes things a little hard with communication. I haven't had to speak much Spanish since I've been in Guatemala, I guess I should have done a quick cram session before I did the home stay.
We then did a bit of a tour of the town, learnt a bit about how The Planeterra project.
Planeterra's initiative here is to help more families get involved in the Posadas Mayas program and current families to have more space by remodeling and constructing new rooms. The project also includes investing in solutions that reduce environmental impacts associated with tourism (i.e. waste and water management) and developing other small businesses to be linked to the Posadas Mayas.
After that we went and had dinner, this gave us a better chance to find out what the his father did. We worked out that he teaches and also works with gardens, horticulture maybe, I think he had to work as a child and wasn't able to go to school himself, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
In total we had 3 kids in the family we stayed at, the 2 parents and I believe the grandmother as well.
The dinner was rather tasty, although a little cold, but hey, that's fine, still eatable, it consisted of Chicken, rice, some sauce & potatoes and ten off to play some basketball (the original planed game of soccer got changed to basketball).
Andres wasn't able to make it today to play with us, he rolled us ankle and it's swollen up Pretty bad, so he stayed in bed to rest his foot. The game picked up a bit of a crowd and considering no one on our team had really played basketball we did pretty well. Most of the guys on our team played the entire game, with me only coming on for the last 5 or 10 minutes. We didn't win, but only lost by 4 points, not bad for a team of non players.