We woke up this morning early, bright eyed and bushy tailed, all ready for a hard day of work. And then we heard it....
The song that has been spoiled for most of us in training started playing in the distance and as it came closer, PJ´s grinning face popped into the dining room. To the playing of the Survivor theme song he lifted up three envelopes into the sunlight. We got a challenge.
Exitedly we came together and read through our tasks, gathered our things and left. After looking for Pablo, running after tuk-tuks and gringos, taking photos of them like slightly demented people, we did something that the world would judge as much more crazy, we stepped out in faith. We started hiking up a mountain -that looked slightly like Kilimanjaro- to Solola, a town thats about 6km up the mountain from Panajachel. We did not even walk 100m and then a very nice guy in a tourist bus picked us up and took us all the way for free. Unfortionately his name was not Pablo.
We walked around in the local market there, stood like statues by the market stalls (part of the challenge), had some local cofee and sampled a one of a kind, Guatemalan fruit that looks and tastes like red fluffy litchis. We also tried finding people that can teach us an indigiouness Mayan song (unfortionately the language barrier kept us from doing that). On the way down we hitched another ride, this time a bit more daring as it was with a couple of young people that almost dont look old enough to drive...Unfortunately none of them were Pablo either.
Back in Pana we stopped for ice-cream, asked around for Pablo, stopped at crossroads to take a picture, harrassed more gringos for photos and hitched yet another ride, this time to Santa Catarina. After getting the photo evidence needed, we met a nice guy on the road, but his name is not Pablo. We took a truck back and almost left a team mate behind. Stil no Pablo.
We got slightly lost on our way to Mikes place (and
sort of lost our challenge paper) but luckely crossed roads with some team mates and eventually found his house :) There we had boerewors and malva pudding -proudly South African. We got another ride back to town (not with a Pablo) and went straight to the soccer field. We kicked a ball around with the local niños (kids) and now we are sitting in the internet cafe, writing this blog about our day, still not sure about whats left to be done but this day realy was lots of fun.
Do you see the people over there swimming in the lake? Thats us. :)