Farm and Lake

So I don´t think I ever got around to writing about it, but a couple weekends ago I went to a coffee and macademia nut farm that is a cooperative run by the workers (very rare in Guatemala). For anyone interested, here´s the website: http://www.comunidadnuevaalianza.org/history.htm
Of course, it leaves out all the interesting parts like the workers showing up in the middle of the night to kidnap the corrupt brother of the previous owner who was trying to take back the land, only to find he had been tipped off and had escaped, or the part where he threatened to send thugs to kill them and they stood their ground saying they were willing to go to war over their land. Or what it actually meant to have to live off the land for so many years, and how even though the previous owner declared bankruptcy they´re being forced to pay his debt, etc.

This past weekend I went back to Lake Atitlan. I spent the first night in Panajachel, where I´d already been. Then Saturday we took a boat to San Pedro for about an hour. I´d heard it was known for drugs, but wow! There´s seriously nothing there economically speaking. The entire town only exists for the drug trade. It´s entirely made up of the Arastafarian crowd (forgive my spelling), and it´s like stepping into a different universe that has lost all contact with reality. Then we went to San Marcos and stayed there for the night. San Marcos was great because coming in from the lake there aren´t any streets, just little footpaths through the jungle, and then one road that passed through the ¨center¨which consisted of 2 tiendas and a church. Leaving was pretty scary. The lake was in really rough shape. The people getting off from San Pedro (only 1/3 the distance from San Marcos to Pana where we needed to go) just kinda shook their heads as they walked by and wished us luck. They looked pretty rough and all their stuff was soaked. They could hardly get off the boat onto the dock which was collapsing. A couple told us not to get on the boat, even if we had to stay another night, that it just wasn´t worth the risk, and that it took them over twice as long as it should to get there. So we ended up hiring a pickup truck which wasn´t really all that much safer. The tires were completely bald and on the uphill sections the engine got so hot we had to move, and it smelled like it was about to die at any moment. On the downhill sections the brakes were squeaking, and all the girls were pretty scared while Jeff was going on about what a rush it was. But we made it back to Pana, and then to Xela without further complications, other than having to change buses about 3 times.