New Friends, New Places

Well, in addition to having several gorgeous rooms for conventional guests, there are dorms here for budget travelers. Staying in them I have already and will be meeting many, many people from all over the world.

Dinah and I met Susie, a German who is passing through here on her travels. We went for a walk to look for someone selling bananas yesterday. Haha, I learned weeks ago that they are 'los bananos.' I can see now that Alvaro was right when there would be people for me to explore with here. :)

Well, I can at least start to tell you a bit about Haciena Merida. It once produced coffee, and there are train tracks and a few ruins of the building where they proccessed the coffee that remain. I'll have to be exploring those at some point, because I should be able to recognize some of the components now. :)

I can rent a kayak for the length of my stay for $15, and as soon as my stomach settles I'm going to head out in one. :) I will not forget after this that you do not eat things where people touch your food with their hands, as sanitation is not the best here. Hopefully I'll be working on that with the kids here. I got some ideas for children's books this morning, and perhaps we can come up with some good ones to sell as fundraisers or something.

It seems that I'll pretty much have to work with whatever I can grab from the internet, and whatever is already here or can be purchased nearby, as shipping things that have any value can be difficult with customs.

As for the food here, it is AWESOME! I had some porridge for a late breakfast yesterday, and it was whole grain oatmeal with granola, cinnamon, and some other yummy things. There is also a dinner buffet most nights, and I had lots of vegetables (with many of them from the garden here!) and rice and beans, and a little bit of pork that they purchase nearby. This morning I had a gorgeous vegetarian omelette, some home-made brown bread, and some avocado and tomato. They grow green beans, passion fruit, coconuts, eggplants, lettuce, basil, corn, tomatoes, 'lemon oranges,' mint (anyone have any good recipes for mint? They have lots here!), bananas, and soon some fruit and cashews. They take food scraps and compost them for the garden, too. Dinah, Susie, and I learned how to make tortillas yesterday! They're ground cornmeal and water, and then we learned how to make them into their circular flat shape. Haha, I made a fairly circular one, but then took a few tries to learn how to place them on the stove to cook! Yay, inertia... it works much better than trying to drop it with your fingers. Instead you place two flat hands, palms up, under the tortilla then pull your hands apart to drop the tortilla on the stove.

We also met Fiona the donkey, and learned about how they are trying to reduce the amount of garbage on the island and reduce water usage at the hotel.

Hmm, we're talking to Alvaro right now, about how there is an excess of avocadoes and mangoes right now. So I'm going to go look up ideas for perhaps freezing guacamole or avocado, and maybe some mango preserves for yummy souveneirs. If anyone has ideas, please let me know!