¡buenos dias! estamos en la antigua guatemala, pero solo para una noche de este fin de semana. we’ve been in tabacal since last sunday. it is more or less what we imagined the physical conditions of the world race would be; so after six months of living in conditions that exceeded my expectations exponentially, the switch was a little tricky, but never fear, we’ve become quite learned in the art of transition.
it’s probably less hot here than it was when i was in lodwar, but it’s more humid out here; i sweat like my pores are the size of lunar craters. despite spraying on insect repellent multiple times (even the sweat resistant kind), i’ve become a reliable source of food for too many flying insects that are mostly the size of a punctuation mark. while helping pick beans with the family we’ve been serving, i learned the hard way how fire ants earned their name. speaking of which, after hiking up for an hour (crossing two creeks) and weaving through a corn field on a incline to pick beans (the bean plants wind around the stalks), then hiking back to the house to shuck the beans, i will never hate on beans ever again.
i finally get to make good use of my tent, which we set up and tear down inside a church. the tent is the once space where i am free of flying biting insects. i think if i could rewind and do something differently, i’d have bought a wider sleeping pad. and maybe i might sneak a two piece bathing suit so that i can wash my midsection; you see, our showers are with a faucet and an audience of wide-eyed young children who whisper to each other, “está bañando”. it’s harder to get at your belly when you wear the world race appropriate one-piece i learned. thank God for baby wipes.
and i’ve learned that your tent’s footprint serves a second purpose: as the “door” to a latrine. the one where we’re staying has one side uncovered, which i guess is just how they roll. but not me. it’s hard to take care of business thoroughly if it’s not done discreetly, you know what i mean? so if you’re camping out in a church that has a concrete floor (lucky!), one of y’all can offer your footprint as the fourth wall of an open-faced outhouse.
also, i’m not a chaco person (and haven’t converted), but they are better than flip-flops when walking up/down dirt hills after a rain. my teammates had hiking/tennis shoes made of gore-tex which kept their feet dry, even when being drenched by a hose while scrubbing rust off of metal beams. i wish i had those. what i don’t miss is a nalgene bottle. the one month i did use one was in lodwar, kenya and lucky for me, my then teammate neil had a spare one.
i’ll make this a two-part post (i’ll finish my romania dual-post when i have my laptop on hand), so stay tuned.
