My ER rotation in Peru: Getting to Trujillo

Well the adventure has begun. It started with the flight. I was on the plane with all of the missionaries going to Peru. I also met one of Adam Barker´s friends from Orange County that was going to Colombia for NuSkin. He has to travel to Italy every month for his job and this was his first time to Latin America. I than sat by a Christian lady who was going to a conference in Atlanta for Christian colleges who told me all about her kids and their congenital and heridatary aortic stenosis. On the way to Peru I sat next to a peruvian woman who was telling me how to stay safe in latin america and how she has acromegaly and diabetes as does her father and how her step mother doesn´t allow him to eat for 7 days at a time. Lets just say that when people ask me what I am doing in Peru the flood gates open about their health and their personal lives.I got to Lima at 1 am and took a taxi that ripped me off to a hostel in an area where the peruvian lady said was safe. I woke up the next morning with 12 hours of doing whatever I wanted so I went and took a taxi to the main plaza where the Peruvian version of the white house was. They had a formal changing of the guards with a marching band and the president came out to see. The band was playing classical music and then played that song that Simon and Garfunkel revised. The cathedral next to the presidential palace had the remains of Francisco Pizarro. I thought it was interesting that such a notorious conquistador would be buried in a cathedral. (He murdered the chief of the Incas when he was giving him a peace offering) I then wandered the streets and was offered tatoos and piercings by 6 different people along with other things that would take away my temple recommend. I was walking around and a 40 year old Inca man started talking to me and asked me where I was from and when he found out about Utah he asked me about the church. He then wanted to show me around the ruins and wanted to practice his English even though we spoke entirely in Spanish. He then started touching my arm a lot and asked me about how the church felt about gay people. Anyways I felt really uncomfortable and he helped me get a taxi and then proceded to ask me for $3. I gave it to him and was happy to get into my taxi.The funny thing is that one of the best parts of the day was my taxi ride to the airport. The taxi driver was 34 and had 3 kids by two different women. He wasn´t educated but he and I talked about world politics, the injustice of poverty, and health care reform. He was fascinated about different cultures in Africa and Asia and asked me tons of questions about my experiences there. The cab ride was roughly 45 minutes and he told me that he was going to charge me the friend rate of $10 because of our conversation (this was much more less than the $30 the night before and so I gave him a tip. He gave me his number and told me that next time I am in Lima he wants me to come and eat at his house with his wife and kids. I told him that if he ever wanted to come to the U.S. that he could stay with mom and dad (I am just joking I told him he could stay at my house)I slept the whole trip to Trujillo on the plane (I wish I would had taken the bus as I would have gotten here sooner and cheaper) I went to a hostal and it was on a pedestrian street so the driver couldn´t take me there and when I got to the Hostal Americano it was closed. I walked around and found another hostel that was a little sketchy. I went and called the doc that I am working with at a local grocery store where there were 5 guys watching soccer. He came and picked me up and while I was waiting one of the guys who was younger than me talked to me about the mining industry, U.S. basketball, and politics. He asked me who the financial secretary to president obama was and I had no clue. When I mentioned names like Greenspan he corrected me. When Dr. Fernandez picked me up, we went to the hospital and I helped with sugery cleaning the wound of a guy who had his arm ripped off in a motor vehicle accident. We were getting it ready for the plastic surgeons to cover the wound with skin. Dr. Fernandez is a great guy and is really happy. However, his wife who is also a doctor calls to check up on him which he gets angry about. I can see why she does it as he took me and another doc out to dinner he was checking out all of the waitresses and making comments about them. I don´t think he is unfaithful but definitely has wandering eyes. Today I worked with one of the technicians taking out stitches, cleaning wounds, and follow up. Dr. Fernandez took me to lunch along with another med student from Peru. We went to the beach and went looking for housing for me. We had ceviche or raw seafood doused with lemon juice. It was really good and so far I am not sick. I am now staying in an old mansion build in the 1600´s in the center of the city with a balcony overlooking the yellow and blue colonial streets and an old church is across the street. I start working in the ER tomorrow and will probably spend the rest of my time there.I am healthy and happy and loving my white pantsScott

Tikalifornia

We went on an awesome bus ride yesterday first the tourist agency drove us to Guatemala city and dropped us off in a sketchy neighborhood and told us to go inside and not to leave and that the bus would come for us. I already had a good feeling about guatemala city and then we found a dead body. Not really. It was fine. I sat and finished my book about the guy from Brundi that mom gave me and that Dave and Michelle tried to give me for my birthday. It is a great book. We then hopped on the bus and the seats didn´t recline and the air conditioning was blasting. We sat on the bus for an hour before it finally left the station. Lets just say it wasn´t the best night sleep that we had had. This is also day 3 of wearing the same clothes and not showering because of our awesome travel schedule. The bus ride was 8 hours and we arrived in Flores Guatemala at 5 am. We took a taxi and told him that we wanted to go to Tikal today. He said what time and we said right now. So we dropped our bags off at a travel agency and went to Tikal with little sleep, smelling like roses, and no food for 24 hours. Never the less it was awesome because the clouds started to move out as we sat on top of a huge temple that over looked the forest and were able to see the tops of 5 temples poking through the canopy of the trees. For all of you nerds out there Tikal is featured in Star Wars where the Ewoks live. We met a father and son from Guatemala living in Utah during the day. The son just recieved his mission call to Spain and was spending one last trip with his dad. It is a small world. We also finally came back from Tikal and got a room overlooking the lake with a breeze. Finally showered and went to get food at a restaurant that took 1 hour for the food to come out. I also got myself an Guatemalan energy drink and now am living the dream. We are headed to Belize and off to Cancun tomorrow.

Lake Atitlan, Antigua, and Volcanoes

Hey peeps,

Right after I finished emailing you last, I took off my watch and left it at the internet place. It was not there when I realized it 15 minutes later. So I have been going crazy. We went and watched the sunset on the lake with three towering volcanoes over the lake.

The next day we went to the travel agency to wait for our tour. There was a guy around my age and a woman in her 50´s talking with the agent that spoke Spanish pretty well. We took bets that he was a RM and that she was someone he had met online and that she had a lot of cats because she had a purse in the shape of 5 cats. Turns out we were right except for meeting on line. He was working with an energy NGO in D.C. and she was an energy consultant from Texas and they had come to Guatemala on business. She was really an interesting lady that was a french moved to texas because of her husband, went to grad school there, got divorced, decided that she liked cats better than people and adopted 22 of them that make messes all over her house. She bought dog food and fed all of the stray dogs on our tour.

They came with us on our boat tour of Lago Atitlan and we had a great time. We went to village to village. Met some hippie guy and bought mom some more jewelry. And we also went with one of the locals to see their god Maximon who is a combination of a Mayan god, Judus, and a conquistador. We went in and he was a shor idol with a wooden face which legend had it that if you saw his real face you would die in 3 days. He was dressed in clothes from around the world and according to our guide spoke all 23 dialects in Mayan, English, French and Japanese. He said that he could translate for us what Maximon said if we wanted. Maximon´s home was decorated in plastic flags and melons. He also had a cigar in his wooden mouth and cigarrette offerings. I was really trying to hard to be respectful but just about lost it when our guide wanted us to talk to Maximon because of his appearance. He had a bed that he slept in at night on the roof and had a wife that lived in another home. The guide said that all of Guatemala´s presidents had come to ask permission of Maximon to be president and that people came to ask for a spouse or work from all over the country. When he asked us to speak I just said good bye because I didn´t feel comfortable talking to a small man idol with a wooden mask smoking a cigar.
from the boat ride were there also. We got to Antigua which is a pretty colonial town close to Guatemala City. We had some burritos. I stuck my foot in my mouth when I asked the woman(who came from a small town) if the burrito bowl had a tortilla in it. She said no and I said ¨I guess than it would have been a burrito
We decided after our boat tour to go to Antigua breaking our vow to not go on a bus for one whole day. Luckily our friends then if it did¨ She didnt understand my joke and I spent the next 5 minutes awkwardly trying to explain myself as Whitney and the woman in the restaurant laughed at us.

That night we went back to our hostal as some guys played the guitar and sang for a couple of hours while we were in our beds. One guy was good and the other guy was really terrible. I just dreaded him singing and realized it was an american guy. our room was pretty warm and I didn´t sleep great, but we got up at 530 to take our trip to the volcano Picaya. We went with a group of loud Uruaguayans and some germans and austrailians. It was pretty cool to hear the volcano exploding in the back ground. I put on a blind fold and tried to feel my way around the volcano rock field where lava had flowed 20 yrs before. It was wonderful. We got back and tried to sleep in the park and were told to get out by the police. We went to another park and laid down. We are just waiting for our awesome bus ride tonight of eight hours to Tikal.

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER. And remember that cats are people too.

Going to Guatemala..an awesome mistake

This was kind of whirlwind of a trip and it has only been a couple of days. When we arrived in Cancun, we got a bus from the airport with two older couples from Minnesota that have been coming down to Cancun for the last 30 years on vacation. They come at the same time every year and have made friends with other geris that do the same thing. They were pretty funny because they were loud and obnoxious and tried to give us advise on how to get around cancun. We sort of took their advice and got the heck out of there. We went straight to the bus station and took an overnight bus to San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas ( this was supposed to be a 16 hour bus ride but turned into a 20 hour trip because of traffic and accidents. Needless to say, we were pretty burned out by the time we got to San Cristobal. San Cristobal is colonial Spanish city with cobblestone streets and old colorful buidings. It is also one of the cities where the Zapatistas marched. They were still very popular with the people and there were t shirts and other zapatista propoganda through out the town.

We ended up staying at a hostel where we were the only people there. The couple that owned the place was a guy named Ernesto and his wife. They were very proud of their house turned hostel. It was interesting because as soon as we got settled Ernesto said he had to go to the capital city Tuxla to pick up his son that escaped. It turns out that he is mentally ill and lives with them. They have no idea how he got to the capital city.

We went out and got tacos that night and went and explored the town. Ironically it was really cold and we were really lucky that we brought our jackets. We got back to the hostel and Ernesto answered the door in his tighty whities. He put some clothes on and then and told us that his son didn{t want to come home and wanted to stay in the shelter where he was at.

The next morning we got up at 5 am to go on a tour of Palenque, Agua azul, and Misol Ha. We went with a group of old german women that complained about being picked up last for the rest of the day and mexican 20 year olds. We first went to Agua azul which is a series of bright blue waterfalls similar to havasupai but smaller and that extended for miles. We then went to Misol Ha which was a larger waterfall where I had been back in 2002 and was highly dispointed because the do not urinate here sign was taken down. But they had opened up a path so you could go behind the falls. We then went to Palenque which is spectacular. We got a guide who made it known that the mormons would tell you that the temple of the cross was because of Christ but that it was really about the sacred tree. Also that the royals would intermarry so that albinism and having six fingers was devine. We had a great time laughing at the american tourists with their white socks up their knees while wearing flip flops, blue flame t shirts with their sleeves cut off and their loud laughter. It made me proud to be an american in my skull belt buckle and tie dye shirt.

We got back on the bus and it was a total of 8 hours. We were pretty beat up after the day before and were thinking about what we were going to do. We decided to take another 8 hour bus ride and go to Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. The tour group was supposed to pick us up from the hostal but forgot about us until we called. We were waiting on the curb when Ernesto told us to come in and gave us bread and was making us oatmeal out of hospitality. Before the oatmeal was done our bus came and Ernesto told them they should wait while we ate. We explained that it was nice but we had to go and that there were many people waiting for us. So he brought out the oatmeal in a yogurt container and gave us a metal spoon and sent us on our way. He was really kind. We couldn{t finish the oatmeal as it made us naseated with the curves so we just held on to it.

We had an awesome ride and this journey was definitely worth it. Our bus ride through the guatemalan highlands was incredible with volcanoes and patchwork hills covered in different vegetation and clouds that would get stuck on the tops of the mountains. It was an incredible sight. When we got to Atitlan it was awesome. It is a crater lake surrounded by steep mountains and three volcanoes. We are going on a boat tour tomorrow and then off to antigua and back to cancun.

Never the less the horrible journey it has definitely been worth it. It just sucks that I only have a week.