Panajachel

Some people have asked me for pictures of Panajachel. Here are some:

Second hand textiles market

View from our hotel

River

Santander street, where most of the tourist stores are.

The hotel's restaurant. We had breakfast there every morning.

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The market

Our favorite restaurante for lunch, Bistro. The food was very good. We always ate the special, steamed vegetables, chicken or tofu over rice with a peanut sauce. Excellent and only 25 quetzals, less than 4 dollars. It has beautiful plants and hummingbirds come all the time

Volcanoes

We don't get tired of looking at the lake and the volcanoes. The views are incredible, very beautiful and peaceful. Every time we look at the volcanoes and mountains they look different and the same with the water, sometimes it is very calm and sometimes it is rough. We have eaten a lot at a restaurant called "Sunset" It has beautiful views of the lake and we like "lomito al ajillo". I have eaten a lot of meat here. I am going to miss it when we go back to the USA.

Santiago Atitlan

We visited Panabaj, the place where a mudslide buried many houses in the center of town in Oct. 2005. Many people died. You can see how high the mud was on this house.

We just came back from Santiago Atitlan, on the other side of the lake. It was a great trip. I loved that town. The women and older men wear traditional dresses and it looks so beautiful. Most of the women wear huipils in some shade of purple with appliques. The older men wear long shorts with a long sleeved shirt, shoes and hat. They look so cool! Unfortunatelly the young men are not keeping the tradition and I am sure it will die soon. The young girls wear huipils and cortes so hopefully they will keep this beautiful tradition.

We went to the market and it was very colorful. It was a small market. We walked around and I bought a shawl. I wish I could buy more things but they are not inexpensive. It takes a lot of time and materials to make the huipils and cortes. We did buy another quilt, this one made with pieces of huipils.

We also visited the shrine of Maximom, a very interesting god/saint that likes alcohol and tobacco. You can see a picture here. http://www.robertleon.com/gallery/photograph-467.htm

More pictures of us

I haven't been able to post pictures here but you can see some on Sharon's blog

http://www.mayanfamilies.org/ click on Blog

Another Sunday

I can't believe it is Sunday again. Today I am not going to Sharon's house. Don wants to go to Santiago Atitlan, on the other side of the lake.

Yesterday I went with Sharon and another family visiting from the USA to Ernesto's house. Ernesto is a paraplegic that lives in a tiny room with his wife and two little girls. They do not own the land and need to vacate this room soon. They used to live there with extended family but they have left already and they are by themselves. He has no access to outside and stays in bed for hours. He had terrible bed sores before but they seem to be healing now. We have been trying to raise funds to buy a flat piece of land for him and yesterday he was surprised by this family with a check for $2,500 US to buy the land!!! We are so happy for him and his family. Now we need to raise $5,000 to build the house. We hope he will be able to find something on the side of the road so they can open a little store on the house and earn an income.