Admirals Log:
GUATEMALA 7
It was a truly beautiful reserve, although very manicured. I just loved all the wild orchids.
When David and I saw this kingfisher we both said that David's mum (who sadly died many years ago) was with us. When she died a kingfisher sat outside our home for 3 days afterwards and with any significant event we have in our lives a kingfisher appears (she loved kingfishers). When the sale went through on our home a kingfisher was sitting on our fence, and the day we left to start our travels there was one outside the new home we had left for Liam and Laura to live in. She has appeared often in our travels, we feel she is giving her approval of what we are doing with our lives!
It was brought home to me very powerfully how lucky we are in NZ with our free fantastic health system when I got a call from Liam while we were in Panajachel. A lady had been on a quad bike, stopped at a stop sign when a big truck slammed into the back of her flipping the bike over and it landed on her. She had sustained broken bones and cuts etc that were treated - at great expense to them - but as they didn't have scanning equipment and no funds to take her to the city her head injury symptoms were just ignored! Liam called as the husband was beside himself and had heard I was a nurse.
I could give them advice over the phone but there was not a lot I could do. I gave them medication to stop her vomiting and as she had one side weaker than the other and one pupil more sluggish than the other she had probably had a small ? sub dural bleed but at least she was orientated to time and place and not getting any worse. I felt a huge responsibility but I guess some help and advice was better than the none they were getting, and over the next few weeks her headaches reduced and she slowly improved and returned to normal. I have been called on quite a few times to help out and it is never easy.
When we were back in Rio Dulce one of the boys (he was 21) we had working for us, told us - in Spanish - that his 16 day old daughter was sick. It turned out she has asthma and was in hospital for 2 1/2 days which cost him over 3,000 Quetsalas. We were paying him 150 Q per day and that was 50 Q more than the going rate! (there is 5 Q to the NZ $) We gave him money towards that bill and when I learned (with Laura in NZ on the phone as interpreter) that they could not give her the ongoing medication as they could not afford it, we bought that and the vaporiser needed to deliver it. It is criminal that the drug companies charge so much for the medications in such poor countries. It cost 180Q for 5 days worth of one medication for his daughter!! We are so lucky in NZ! The Mayan people are so lovely and gentle and there was no jealousy or animosity that we had so much more than they did. He was grateful but embarrassed to take the help we gave them, he called me his western mother!!
Enough raving!! Our ferry ride on lake Atatlan was great, you all crowd in on this long smallish boat with the driver standing on a box at the back so that he can see where he is going over the hardtop! The lake is dotted with small villages around the shoreline and we just visited two of them but decided we were happy in Panajachel and would just stay there.
Ferry boats outside San Pedro La Laguna. It had a lovely park with a statue to St Peter the apostle but otherwise not a lot going for it.
The park was lovely though in amongst very poor housing.
I took the chance to relax and enjoy the quiet and cool!
Santiago Atitlan was more interesting with a small weaving museum and some lovely huge murals around the town square.
I don't know what the one below is depicting with the world on fire and the drain pipe pouring out water but it was impressive anyway
The church itself was beautiful as well.
