Nuevo Rio Frio ( New Cold River)

Pam and I have been on another adventure to a little villages here in Guatemala. We are still volunteering to go to some of these villages and install used solar panels, batteries and LED lights. Last time we were on mules. This time we could drive. It’s been dry here. It’s hard to describe the road. Believe me you wouldn’t want to go in the rainy season. Think about building a road and using rock or 6 and 8 inch gravel. Pouring it on the road that has never been scarped smooth and then run the road straight up and down steep hills. We crossed rivers. Some with bridges. Some we just crossed the river. We crossed the Nuevo Rio Frio “cold river” across a rocky river bed. Water maybe a foot deep but it’s really wide there, No bridge. We went through a virgin jungle and down what could be called just a trail. We went to the village of Rio Frio. The Health Worker here wanted to install this one in a church. I was not real keen on that. We are not here for any religious reasons. I told him so and he said that the school teacher lived in a house and not at the school. That the kids went there at 7am and left at 12 noon. They didn’t need lights. What they need is a light in the church where every one went to have meetings or they can go there if they have a problem. Always Remember this is an indigenous village and any culture is hard to understand some times. I trust the Health Worker here. He knows the people. When we finely arrived, the church was basic. Just mahogany boards maybe 20 inches wide nailed up right on the walls. Not very straight. A metal roof and a dirt floor. There was a little cross over the door. I would never have known this was a church if I had not been told. When we came in the kids knew we were coming and on the trail they call a road there were a lot of kids. Some waved. Some just looked. I ask if we were disliked or how they felt about us being there. Real strangers in their village. The Heath Worker said “Its just that, you are real strangers in their little village. They don’t know what to think about you being here.”

As we pulled in to the yard a man started to hit a peace of pipe hanging on a rope. Ringing it like a bell. I don’t know how many people live there but a lot of people were there in just a few minutes. Come to see the light, I guess. We put 3 lights in the building and one outside. The Health Worker said “Its for the horses. If they have to come here at night they can see their horses. We walked around with the Heath Worker and looked at the village. They have a swing bridge across the river there.

Bridge across on part of the Nuevo Rio Frio

On the other side they had the little school as always painted green. They had a grass ball field. Three pigs were enjoying eating the grass.

Pigs on the ball field

What they said was the most important women in the village had lunch for us before we left. I don’t know if every one felt the same but what she feed us was baby turkey or you may can say very young turkeys about the same size as a young frying chicken. I felt honored. I’m sure it was the best they had. When I got there she was bothered with a solar panel she had bought second hand and it didn’t work. I checked it and it was fine. She didn’t believe me. I sent the little helper that works for me to get. some tape. Red and black. To mark the polarity and a LED light. I looked at her and touched the wires together to see her face The light and her face light up too. Any one reading this remember with out a regulator or having the solar panel hooked to a battery the voltage can hit 20 volts. “Don’t blow up something doing this.” She had a little store there maybe 5 feet wide and 6 foot deep. She sells just basic stuff there soap, rice, beans and raw corn. She has a one cylinder diesel they sell here built in china. It’s the most basic diesel you can get I think. Exposed push rods you have to oil. Hand cranked and she has a corn grinder attached to it.

Grinder

Remember these people are called the people of corn and they eat more tortilla than you can believe. They plant their corn and beans in places you can’t believe. It grows up the side of steep hills. Life in these villages is simple. The people seem very happy. I’m glad I have been ask to do this. I am not a do-gooder. I do it for the adventure and what an adventure it has been. Maybe too the people there can be helped. At first when you get here in Guatemala you see even very poor people with cell phones and you wonder, “Why?” It’s there way of being in the modern world. Being able to charge their cell phone batteries is a big thing. In this villages now they can. It’s the first thing I wire up and before the first light came on, there was a phone being charged. I was ask to design the way every thing is wired so I wire every thing in red and black wire. Even paint the breaker box red and black. I hope this helps them understand how to wire their own

“Next week we will post a video on You Tube”

Only in Guatemala

Sorry, we are late with our blog. We have been in-creditably busy. Always and excuse right but we thought you might enjoy this. I have a good friend I made here. He can speak English. He is a welder mechanic and all around handy man. Maybe the reason I like him so is he is so resourceful. We went to town the other day and he was taking a motor off his truck. They lifted it up with a chain-fall. Pulled the truck out from under the motor and backed in a boat on a trailer. Set the motor in the boat and left to go back to his shop. Take a look at this. They hung the chain-fall off the bridge going over the river. The chain-fall was around the bridge railing.               “Guatemala you got to love it.”

Going to shop

“No Name”

“No name. It’s just a mule.” is what the man said to Pam in Spanish as she got on for a trip we have been dreaming of most of our lives. We have been working with a women here that stared a foundation to take used solar panels and batteries out to places where there is no power lines for miles. Miles is not the best way to tell distant here. Here its how long it will take you to get there and can you get there at all this time of year. I have already explained how I designed the units in our last blog. Everything was planned and a man here that is a health care worker helped find the best place to install a unit. Its was a school up in the mountains with no road to get there. It is the village of Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz is over there somewhere

I would like to give him a lot of credit for where we went. I truly believe this man cares for these people and I’m sure he made it possible for me to get a bigger mule. The first little mule I road would have been alright for the local men there but I’m a 200 lb gringo. The little mule was breathing like I was when I was still walking up the mountain. I was complaining that I wanted off and just walk. I was feeling for this little mule but we went on for a few more min and then we stopped at what I guess could be called the mayor house. He explained that he was in control of the village security and records the best I could under stand with my bad Spanish. Looking around. It looked like what you only see in magazines.

Mule trail

You could see the trail as it wandered over the hills and disappear in the jungle. The trail wanders across streams and small rivers. At one place we walked across a swing bridge. That’s when I was still walking. They didn’t have enough mules for us all when we stared out. There has never been a mule born that will cross a swing bridge and there I got my first experience with crossing a jungle swinging bridge myself. The mules just walked across the river. They are slick with it raining almost every day. Some days all day. They are covered with moss and green stuff that makes them well, “Slick” On the other side, I couldn’t stop my self I was shouting. “It’s a real swing bridge in a real jungle and I’m here to see it. I cant believe this.”

A Real Swing Bridge

I’m getting ahead of my self here. The morning we left to do this. We left in a nice pick-up truck. Went on to a house where we met a more rugged 4 wheel drive truck and on to where the road stopped at a small river and the terrine got more mountain like. From there we put the batteries on a pack mule.

Our pack mule

Remember the indigenous people here are small. Men 5 feet tall “small” but don’t count them out. There incredibly strong and just as determined when they decide to do something. They met us with 4 little mules and there was 7 of us 5 men including my little helper. The health care worker. The older man that brought us to the 4 wheel truck and the 4 wheel truck driver. The older man is older than me and of course yours truly. Pam and Julia would get a mules along with the older man. The pack mule would take the batteries up. We would walk. Being noble and doing the right thing is hard on the feet sometimes. As we set out, I tried to not show my age. The health care worker is 40. My helper 26 and can run up these mountains. The driver of the truck 16. I will soon be 69. I new I was in trouble after we made it out of the jungle and the trail became a ditch and really stared up. I don’t know how many years this trail has been used but in places its 4 foot deep with rocks and mud. Its just a ditch. I thought we would be riding big mule across pastor land. Now I was just hopping I would not embarrass my self any more than I already had trying to keep up. To say I was glad to see them coming back for us. I would have gladly kissed them mules but mine was small. At first I was worried about getting on such a little mule. By the time we made the top. My mule was breathing as hard as I was when I got on. At the time I was not going to make it much father up the mountain with out a rest. I was really breathing hard when they came back. I was some what rested when we got to the top but riding a little mule struggling to climb the trail with me took some hanging on. You can not make a picture of what it really looks like up there. A few houses there and some pasture land with clouds hanging on the mountains and green land as far as you can see. At the school. School was in and I’m sure we were interrupting their day. When the teacher let them out. The boys stayed. The girls went home. As I worked men were showing up but not any women. A cultural thing I suppose. The school was small maybe 14 by 25 feet with a porch 5 feet wide across the front. I’m guessing this is to keep the rain out with the doors open when it raining. On the side was a little inclosed ling-to where the teacher sleeps at night. Nothing munch in there but she did have a bed nicely made up. Going back down on the week end to her family. I was watching her and when I ask her where she wanted a light she went to her room first. I installed that one first and watched her eyes when I turned it on. Two more went in the class room. One in there toilet. Just a hold in the ground with a cement box with a hole in it in the floor. And one light in the kitchen. A separate little building with a table covered with cement and a couple off cement blocks to build a wood fire. Then the people with the mules had more mules. A bigger one for me and wanted to take us down before it stared to rain. We went back to the mayors house to eat with the men saying we had to beat the rain. I wish I could have done something for the women that fixed the meal. I was told not to leave any money. So I didn’t. To get along here well you need to know more than just how to speak a little Spanish. You need to know their ways. The meal was chicken, rice and potatoes. The drink was a juice mix. The drinks were cool. This means they had to have gotten the water from a spring or some where it was cool and made it just before we were to drink it. The chicken was very tough. Most people in the states don’t realize that what we eat there is market chicken. They know from the day a chicken is hatched what day it will go to market. This guarantees it’s tender. The bird we were eating may have been walking around in the yard when the women there saw our heads coming up over the horizon. On the way back down a handler walked and lead my mule The mule was bigger and didn’t seem to mind my weight. The only problem was my mule would leave the ditch and walk on the edge with it almost straight down. All I could do was say something and embarrass myself or just trust the mule. I tried not to look down but to look at where I was. Knowing I may never get a chance to do this again. I’m not sure what the people there really think about us coming to there village to do this. I would like to think that I am a good man but I don’t think they could understand coming from where they were and live every day what and adventure it was for me. Maybe, Just maybe, the teacher up there can now get on line with the plug end to power a computer I wired up and read this translated in to Spanish by the light in her room now. I would like to think. Maybe she will.

 

The school we put the lights is in the back ground and it is a 30 minute mule ride to it.

Pam on her little no name Mule

Late Blog, Busy

When I was young and I would go with my aunt and uncle down to lake Greenwood on the week end in South Carolina. You would possibly see maybe one or two boats through out the day. Today with personal water craft, sail boats, ski boats, fishing boats pontoon boats the world has changed. Its changing for the same reason down here. We have been coming in and out of the river here in Guatemala, the Rio Dulce in the Western Caribbean for 2 years now. You can see it changing. Every time we come back you can see the change. A few more cruising boat but a lot more local boats. The local boats here are called lancha. They use them to move every thing but what they want to do with them is take tourist some where. “Some of them are designed so wrong their dangerous.” They build the bow way too high to make them look the way they look down here but they can’t see over the bow. Sometimes they will have a kid up front telling the driver which way to go.

Lancha full of tourist. When they power up the bow comes up and they can’t see a thing in front of them.

If you have ever seen some bad accidents in a 3^rd world country on TV you know how they load anything. If you have the money, “There is always room for one more.” We have had 2 close calls and one near miss. The Lancha maybe 4 feet away when they came by. Running full boar. Me cursing the driver and all his passengers knew how close we came. There is very little law here so until something really bad happens, there will be no change. All over the world The population is changing the world. When Pam and I would dream before we went cruising about going to remote places. I never dreamed of these places being dangerous but most of these places down here are. No one goes to them in fear of being robbed. By accident we have been ask to go to some of these remote villages here and install used boat equipment to put lights in needed places in these village. These village are away from the water. Modern times has past these places by. The population is diverse here and the indigenous people are the most diverse. Living with out the help of technology. No power and maybe it will be a long time before they pull a line in to these villages. They are rich in customs but poor in cash. I been told they’re not happy with outsiders coming in but the medical person responsible with vaccination and helping with there over all health has ask that we put a solar panel in a school. I have a title now. “ I’m a technician.” Don’t get what I’m doing wrong. I don’t get up in the morning trying to save. “The world.” but I did put a solar panel in our little helper’s house that has been helping us paint and varnish our boat. There is where it started. Now there’s a women here that started a foundation to take used panels no longer need off of cruising boats to these places. This is giving us and in to see these places. I just design the way they are put in. A fuse at the solar panel to a monitor to a fuse at the battery, from that fuse to a little box I made out of fiber glass with a breaker. The box is painted Red on one side and black on the other. Like red + plus and black– minus used in cars. Truck are the closest thing they will come near with DC power. The box has a plug end for anything that has a cigarette lighter type plug-in. Mostly to charge a cell phone. The little box is mounted on a wall and has two bolts with wing nuts one out each side to hook up any thing they want to wire up . Like LED lights. Every thing from the box goes through a 20 amp breaker in the box. It’s the simplest way I could see for them to under stand how to keep it working.

Box for solar panel institulion

As I have said I’m not trying to save the world but it would make me happy to learned some day that these people could live with there customs but have a simple light when they needed it. With just a simple battery a LED light and some way to charge the battery. Remember trucks come in to these village some times. All you would need is and isolator to charge a battery from a truck. With and LED blub and a good battery you can have light. With using it for a few hr a night taking the battery to town in the back of the trucks they go to town standing up in and having it charged. It would last for months. I have already been told that we need to mine our on business. That we don’t need to change there culture but remember they go to town to go shopping in trucks. The don’t use stone tools or cook with out a metal pot. No one down here rubs two stick together to stare their morning fire They use matches. What do I get out of this? The adventure of going to these places. This time we are going by car to where the road leaves the main road. From there we may have to go on standing up in the back of a village truck and then the big thing, Riding a horse on to the village.

Check in next week and maybe the blog will be named. “ Pam on a horse”

Side street in Fronteas goes to San Felipe