La Moto a Canalitos

¡Santo Cielos! FR and I showed up at the city rendezvous point to meet the father of one of the students, who was to accompany us back to his home. We thought this meant another bus out to Canalitos, but he actually came on his motorcycle. His oldest son came on a motorbike, too, and they instructed us to hop on back. No no no no no no no no. I don´t even like skateboards. I don´t even go down stairs without holding the banister. This just won´t do.

But do it did. We really had no choice, FR was set to do the home visit, there were no buses around headed that way and the men had already used time and gas to come pick us up. I frantically considered the appropriateness of squeezing my driver like a koala on a eucalyptus tree. Deeming it inappropriate, I just put a death grip onto either sides of his American cheerleading windbreaker.

If I said that my eyes were open for the first few minutes of the ride I´d be lying. When I did open them, I saw a beautiful landscape of green gorges, surprisingly just outside the city. This scenescape was soon marred, however, by the presence of an unreasonably large number of turkey vultures. They´re huuuuuge. And I can´t just appreciate them as a species of bird--where there are vultures there is carion. What were they there to scavenge? Maybe they were waiting for me to fly off the back of the moto and break a leg so they could harass me then eat me.

We finally arrived at the residence and were greeted by the sound of ravenous, wild dogs. This was like the Guatemalan version of the Princess Bride without the quicksand. The father went in to chain up the 2 dogs. When FR asked if they always barked that way, he said ¨pues, solamente cuando quieren carnita¨ (well, only when they want meat). At least there was a nice looking rooster to foil the ravenous-wild-chained-up dogs (although, call me Danny Tanner, but what is a rooster doing IN the house?)

FR conducted the first part of the socioeconomic assessment interview and I did the latter part. This family, too, lived in virutal squalor. We both did our best to ignore the stench from the dogs. As always, the family was very friendly and generous, offering us cups of Atol (sp?) which is a drink made with water, sugar, and an oatmealish substance. At the conclusion of the interview, they offered us a ride back to the city, but FR asserted that it would be best for us to take the Canalitos bus. The father insisted that that would take an hour more of our time, but we were fine with that. Never again with the motos.