Guatemala Day 1

3 August 2008

We walked out of the newly renovated Guatemala City airport at 5:50a.m. this morning with little sleep and much excitement. Our bags were quickly loaded on the top of our ''cozy'' EC passenger van/bus. We drove over to the Mennonite Seminary & Guest House in the city. The seminary actually raises 65 percent of its budget with the guest house portion of its ministry.

G.C. is organized in zones, with zone 1 in the middle and the others in a circle around it. The airport is in Zone 13 and the seminary is in Zone 11. We had about an hour to hang out in the lounge, drink coffee (for those who have decided that is a good idea:-), and go to the roof to look at the 3 visible volcanoes-2 of which are active.

At 7:30, we had breakfast of eggs, beans, plantains, bread, and watermelon. After breakfast we heard from Jonathon Guzman, who is the head of Heifer International in Guatemala. HI was one of the first NGOs on Guatemala in the 1970s. They have been delivering animals continuously to communities since then, even during the civil war. They are now working with the indiginous peoples to rescue some of their knowledge about herbs, seeds, etc.

We also heard a presentation (that went on for MUCH too long for sleep deprived PMCers!!!!!) from Eduardo Cofina, who is the head of Development in the northern part of Guatemala. He is one of the 2 percent of the families that owns 85 percent of the wealth in the country. He gave us a lecture on ecology and some of his ideas for development. He has actually advised the last 4 presidents, which is amazing because most advisors don't even make through one adminstration. Eduardo's family owns Toyota in Guatemala.

We left later than we were planning because Eduardo went longer than any of us hoped or dreamed. We drove over to Zone 6 to see the large relief map of the country and walked around through Mexico, Belize, and Hondurus on our walk around the map. We saw the mountains that we will be trekking. Rob Cahill insists that the mountains aren't REALLY as high as they look, but not all the information we've received has been completely thorough, so I'll reserve judgement on the high issue until we've actually crossed them:-)

Around 11:00am, we finally left GC and headed to Coban. We drove through beautiful landscape and saw the hanging nests of the Guatemalan Orioles. We crossed what Rob referred to as the ''desert'' but we were skeptical because of the luscious greenery. He proved it by explaining that this IS the rainy season and showing us the beautiful flowering cacti.

We crossed from the volcanic tetonic plate of North America into the limestone plate of the Carribean. Near Coban we stopped at a Mayan place of worship. We hiked up from a starting point of 5440 ft above sea level and I quickly realized that I had been sitting all day...boy, were my calves tight! When we got to the top we were at the top of a large cave-like fissure that was so deep, dark, and smoke-filled that you couldn't see the bottom. We started the descent and it was incredibly stwwp and narrow. It was damp, like a cave, and all the rocks were covered with soot from all the candles that had been burnt for worship or prayer. It was an awe-inspiring place and we all commented how completely inadequate our words or even pictures would be to describe its grandeur.

We had our first rain shower pulling out past the water buffalo (I totally had the Veggie Tales song in my head), The driver was very nice and very careful--which meant to Rob ''slow''--and he played the radio in the van the whole way. My favorite radio moments were when the song from Fivel's American Tale ''Somewhere Out There'' came on and then, a while later, an instrumental version of ''The Little Drummer Boy'' came on.

We were all happy to be in our guest house in Coban, take showers, and turn in early..