Nebaj!

We had hoped to find volunteer work during our travels to engage us all for some portion of this trip. However, until we started looking more seriously, we didn't realize that everyone would be taking long holidays around the end of the year and could not find any information from any of the groups we had in mind. So, we were faced with deciding our next move without any of the information we thought we wanted in hand. Linda suggested a newe to us interesting place in the same mountains as Todos Santo and a focal area for volunteer work (due to being so hard hit in the war during the 80's.)

The next afternoon we walked into Popi's, sort of a hostel for travellers, complete with a restaraunt that was set up to train locals in some business skills so they could eventually branch off on their own. We ate there (great food,) and in conversation with our newly met American friend Donald who started this and turns out several other ventures over his past 20 years here, had all kinds of things for us to do. For now, we are essentially working on a place he recently acquired the use of for his school for disabled kids, a demonstration garden for growing various vegetables, herbs and other useful plants for the area integrated with raising small livestock (rabbits, chickens, ducks, etc,) and volunteer housing. So, we are volunteering to help fix up volunteer housing! The top picture shows Tias repairing a hole in the fence, the next shows Willa picking up trash from the garden area. Other jobs not shown are erection of a stretch of new fence, creation of new duck and chicken habitat and many misc repairs, plumbing, electrical, windows, etc. Some other more technical projects currently underway include the implementation of a more fuel efficient wood burning cooking stove (to help slow the fast pace of deforestation,) a small steam engine to utilize waste heat from cooking stoves to generate electricity and making a food dehydrator.

Yesterday morning we took a walk to a neighboring village, Acul, that was on the other side of the mountain (quite literally!) A gruelling walk up, where the last picture shows a hidden mountain top meadow we found to be quite pastoral. Then, one would think a fun easy, walk down into Acul... But it was so steep that the descent was surprisingly strenuous.

We are finding Nebaj having similar good qualities as Todos Santos, and plan to be here at least this week, staying in the newly inaguarated volunteer quarters.

This last picture shows another neighboring small town to which we hiked, Cocop. From Cocop we followed the crystal clear, spring feed Rio Azul (Blue River) down hill. The kids summed up that walk by saying they could not think of adjectives great enough to capture the beauty of the stream, water falls, springs, rivulets, surrounding pastures and mountain sides, etc.