Good morning Aggies! (SLC => Utah State)

I can't get over the jaw-dropping natural beauty of Utah.

I've lived in mountains before, but all the Instagram filters in the world can't capture the awe-inspiring palette of colors that make this place so incomparable.

Farr West, Utah - Dawn out the passenger window

At first, getting up before dawn to make the 2 hour drive up to Utah State University seemed like cruel and unusual punishment to a hardcore night owl, but was all forgiven once I glanced to my right out the passenger window and saw the world begin to explode with soft colors as the sun peaked out over the Rockies.

Got my first glimpse of the Great Salt Lake!

Rumble strips kept the car on the road for most of the 80 mile drive given I was helpless to pull my gaze off the mountains towering to my right that were constantly changing colors as the full orb of the sun revealed itself.

At Brigham City I veered into the mountains to begin the ascent up to Logan.

Dry Lake, Utah - That must be what frozen dryness looks like

Still with stellar dawn lighting, each successive curve into the mountains revealed another valley more snow covered than the last until the road reach a small silent valley with a frost tinged lake in the middle.

Stick shift or not, I had to find a way to get the camera pressed against the windshield.

As I approached Logan, home to Utah State University, the sun kept playing hide-and-seek behind mountains and clouds extending this dreamlike dawn lighting for almost an entire hour.

Wellsville, Utah - I didn't want to leave the mountains, but it was time to get to work!

After an amazing morning drive, I finally made it to campus a little light headed - whether it was from the altitude or an hour on continuous amazement I'll never know.

Cotopaxi has arrived to Utah State!

It really wasn't fair; the students never stood a chance.

Normally at 9am, I'd still be a sleepy-eyed getting my bearings, but today I was amped up on nature and ready to spread the good word.

Cotopaxi is now at Utah State!

Blanca Cisneros - Apoyo Integral - El Salvador

Integral Office in Lourdes, El Salvador

Back when I was in Guatemala I was suddenly given a great opportunity to meet with a network of microfinance institutions in Honduras. I hoped this didn't mean I would have to skip El Salvador all together, but I couldn't turn this down.

Both Spartan Global and I have lots of loans in El Salvador, especially in food production, which I had been beginning to build a theory to be one of the more successful lines of business for microcredit loans, so I decided it was worth backtracking a couple hundred miles and adding a 2 more border crossings to my trip.

I turned out not to be disappointed. Meeting with Apoyo Integral was a great experience, especially saying they are the first For-Profit MFI {Micro Finance Institution} I've met with. Apoyo Integral is essentially owned by "investors", but the largest owner, significantly greater than 50%, is another Non-Profit based in Honduras. What this means is the people that run Apoyo think about costs, efficiency, long term investment for future returns, very much like any other well run business. The difference is, any profits they make get handed up to the parent Non-Profit which provides a lot of social services, often directly back to Apoyo Integral's clients.

I first met with management team at Integral to get a better understanding of really how they operate, what their priorities are, and what they are trying to achieve as an organization. The best part though was getting to make some field visits, but this time I was accompanying a Kiva Fellow, one of the people who's dedicated volunteer labor helps make Kiva wide network of field partners work. Dennis Espinoza had worked with a field partner in Cameroon for 3 months and was nearing the end of his placement here in El Salvador, so he had role down pretty well. It was a pleasure to learn from somebody who'd seen the Kiva/MFI partnership at work from a key junction in between the two organizations.

Blanca Cisneros forming perfectly round Tortillas

To See Blanca's Kiva Loan Click Here

One of the first entrepreneurs we stopped to visit was Blanca Cisneros who has a thriving little tortilla business she runs out of small tortilla kitchen she has built next to her house. I say small because with Blanca, her two employees, three tortilla grills, some areas for cleaning and preparing the dough, another for stacking finished tortillas, along with Dennis and myself, it was hot and crowded.

With the sun beating down on a low tin roof in 95 degree heat it can get hot. Add the heat from three grills going inside, and you've got me with sweat dripping in my eyes in a matter of seconds.

Blanca didn't seem to even notice.

She flew seamlessly from working the maza into formed ball, measuring by memory the exact right size, pressing the maza between her hands into a perfect round disk and then laying it on the grill to cook, flipping another tortilla or two that needed flipping, and back to the maza bowl - all at a speed that let you know she'd been at this 25 years.

Here's Blanca's explanation of the tortilla process (Sorry no translation yet)

Like I said before Blanca has been at this 25 years. She didn't originally plan on having a business as big as she's grown it to. Really she just wanted a way to make some money when she had young kids, but didn't want to leave the house and her children. So what started as a small micro-business, has grown enough that her husband works for her, as well as 2 full time employees and sometimes other part time help. She churns through 250lbs of corn maza every day. In fact one of her bigger non-material costs, is the $8 a day she has to pay the mill to grind the corn for her.

In the future she'd like to get her own small mill so she could cut out the middleman and keep more of the profit for her own business. She see's herself in the future having a business big enough to hand over to her children, she has two of them and also 2 grandkids. Even with fluctuations in the overall economy, people have to eat, and tortillas are a basic staple. While other business have been hurt, with her good prices, good product, and good employees, Blanca has seen pretty remarkable growth even in the last 4 months of 25%.

Siembra & Cosecha Group - FAPE - Guatemala

Lucia Cuzal and Trinidad Aguila displaying some of their weavings

While I was visiting Kiva entrepreneurs with FAPE, the last visit I made a couple hours along the Pan-American highway from Guatemala city was to a group of women who took out a loan together for $1,100 split between their three businesses.

To see their loan profile on Kiva.org check here.

To find their small village, I had to drive along the highway about 90km where I was supposed to find one of the local loan officers who would be waiting for me on his blue motorcycle, and then follow him to their home. His name is Saturnino.

I followed Saturnino a few more kilometers through some construction and then turned off on an unmarked dirt road which we followed a short distance through recently planted fields and past a few outcroppings of two or three houses before stopping along side the road and taking my highway gear off.

As we walked down the small footpath from the road to the few small cement houses facing each other where Trinidad and Lucia live, there were several children running around excitedly shouting to each other and flashing quick smiles at me wondering why somebody obviously from so far away dressed in strange clothes had come to visit them.

After Saturnino introduced me to the Lucia and Trinidad and I got a chance to explain to explain who I was and why I had travelled so far on a motorcycle to visit with them, we started off talking about Lucia's business. This sounds much easier that it was as each question I had about her experience as an entrepreneur selling her weavings had to be translated by Saturnino and rephrased in Kaqchikel, one of Guatemala's 23 indigenous languages, before she could respond, which in turn had to be translated from Kaqchikel back into Spanish for me.

Lucia and some of the table clothes that show off the quality of work that comes with 40 years of practice

In general she said things were going well. Weaving has been apart of her life for 40 plus years and it is always a challenge to overcome when prices seem to stagnate, or the middlemen that transport the product to market seem to be demanding too high of a cut of the final price, but with the injection of a few hundred dollars in loan capital, they've been able to buy supplies in higher quantities, saving on bottom line cost, and avoiding having to wait for sales to buy more raw materials and continue working.

Sometimes her oldest daughter helps with the weavings of the table clothes and napkins which frees up some of her time so she can work on huipiles, the elaborately woven and often embroidered traditional blouse worn by indigenous women. Huipiles are something she is very proud to make and sell, but because they take several months of labor for a single one, the selling price required means that they don't sell very quickly. Many Guatemalan women only buy one new blouse a year as the price is equivalent to several months of income.

A small piece of a huipil in progress

When I began speaking with Trinidad, she reiterated much of Lucia's story as their history in business if very similar saying they live next to each other and share much of the same work. Trinidad was however adamant at the end of our interview that she wanted to record a short message of thanks to spend those responsible for funding her loan. That message can be seen here.

After we had said our goodbyes, Saturnino and I hopped back on the bikes and drove another kilometer on a pretty punishing dirt road to where Christina Marroquin, the last of the three group memebers, has her small corner store.

I'd spent so much time chatting with the other two women that we didn't have much time before Saturnino had to get to another appointment, and I'd need his help getting back to the highway so unfortunately I had to be pretty brief chatting with Christina.

Christina and her husband behind the counter with some of the inventory bought with their loan

I was pretty surprised to see the amount of items she had for sale. Normally this far out, or in small villages the stores really only have the essentials. So to see everything from toilet paper, to hair gel, and canned beans, I felt like she knew what she was doing.

According to Christina though, it wasn't always like this.

She'd started out years ago with only $50 or $100 worth of money which she invested and had coninually reinvested the profits in order to carry more inventory, and more variety.

Speaking of all the variety, it turned out she even had one of my favorite chile flavored suckers!

Carmen Beatriz Choy - FAPE - Guatemala

Carmen Choy and Three Year Old Lacey Welcoming Guests to Their Tienda

This Wednesday I had the pleasure of meeting Carmen Beatriz Choy, an entrepreneur who was funded through the Spartan Global Development Network on my birthday back in February. http://www.kiva.org/lend/173362

I started the day in Quetzaltenango, where I'd been staying for almost 6 weeks doing volunteer work. Around noon I hopped on the long winding highway through the mountains and volcanos that stretch across the southern half of Guatemala on my way to the capital to meet with Manuel Garcia, the director of FAPE, a local microfinance organization that is dedicated to promoting development of micro-entrepreneurs.

Manuel had arranged my first meeting with one of our entrepreneurs so I couldn't have been more excited!

In an effort to stay connected to the actual needs and concerns of their clients, Manuel likes to get out into the field as often as possible, so he even offered to accompany me. After about an hour of fighting through a little bit of Guatemala City traffic and climbing the snaking roads that lead out of the surrounding valley we finally arrived to San Juan Sacatepéquez, about 20km outside the outskirts of Guatemala City.

This is where I first got to see one of our loans at work!

Carmen's store is located on the corner of a dirt road a little ways outside the hustle and bustle of San Juan, but with the bus traffic and local demand, it seemed to be in a good location. Her store, Tienda Jerusalem, mainly sells common household stapes such as bean, rice, sugar, flour, and some other snacks and beverages.

After we were introduced and I had a chance to explain my story about how I'm traveling from the United States through Latin America trying to personally connect the ends of the long chain that started in East Lansing, Michigan, passed through kiva.org, touched FAPE, and finally ends with Carmen.

Carmen jokingly mentioned, "Good things are coming my way if you guys are bringing another gringo all the way out here to my little store!"

She was referring to the first kiva volunteer that had come out to visit her as part of putting her loan up on the kiva website and how she had been able to grow her business after this injection of investment into her business.

We slipped around the back of the main counter in the store where we could talk for a bit while her sister attended to any customers that came by.

Carmen started off telling me how she began several years ago selling traditional clothing such as huipiles, the elaborate woven and embroidered blouses worn by the indigenous community. Eventually the volatility in sales of a product that takes several months of labor to make, and costs so much that most can only afford to buy one per year, left her thinking of moving to a market where sales would be more stable. In Guatemala, you can't get more basic and stable than the consumption of beans and rice.

One day when Carmen was going to buy some more huipiles with all the proceeds she had in the business from selling the last batch, she was held up and robbed. Everything the had worked for was gone. She had depleted her inventory, and all the cash proceeds were taken. She still tears up at the memory of the difficulty of this time period and the uncertainty that came with it.

Later, with the help of a loan from FAPE, Carmen was able to open a new store, this time selling beans, rice, sugar, juices, and all the necessities that sell everyday. She's been able to slowly build up her ability to stock more and more items to meet customer demand as well as purchase in bulk to keep her variable costs as low as possible.

Before it was time to go, I'd been traveling on dusty roads for quite a while and really needed something to drink. I asked Carmen if she sold water which of course I knew she did. She definitely knows how to drive a hard bargain. I wanted to help support a business I'd invested in, and she was intent on giving it to me as a gift. I ended up winning as she reluctantly relented to letting me pay...

Now that I think of it though, she only charged me 1Q($0.12) for the bag of water. She may have got the best of me.

Playing the Rain Game in Xela

Rain on a Bike - by: Michael Thelen

Today is the 5th straight day of rain in what is supposed to be the summer season and my sinus infection has still yet to peak even though I finally got some antibiotics so I'm feeling, "a little under the weather."

I had planned on dedicating this week, my first week without volunteer work, to getting meetings scheduled with local microfinance institutions (MFI's) so that I could begin that phase of my trip. However, with email response frequency not being what I had expected, internet being shaky with the inclement weather, and even my travel between home and food/internet spots being impeded, I haven't actually "accomplished" much. I've got an appointment with FAPE in Guatemala City all worked out for  Monday, so I haven't rested on my laurels completely, but I've felt a little like I did when I was up top of the volcano here and it suddenly switched from freezing rain (in freezing weather) to hail - just plain stuck waiting for my external environment to give me permission to do anything else. 

Hail Storm on Volcan Santa Maria

I may not have done anything that is tangible, or easily demonstrated this week, but just the free time to think a bit about how I'm going to get started on the road again has been helpful. I've had students at the Spanish school ask me, surprised that I'm still around, how come I'm not still volunteering. It's not that I came home every night hunched over from backbreaking labor, but I was busy enough focusing on the now, that it just seemed difficult to truly focus on a distant future that was so filled with uncertainty.

I'm bad at planning as it is - so basically I needed all mental hands on deck to get stuff figured out.

My time volunteering, although draining, really helped me remember what I'm doing. I've repeated this to myself so many times, it sounds redundant, but Mexico was my vacation country, and from here on out it's time to enter my "Real World." Spending a month thinking about other people's needs and well being all day until I came home too tired to read or watch a movie before bed allowed me to move beyond the phase of self centered thoughts on my own desires and experiences and begin once again trying to think how I can do something that impacts the lives of others.

When I was working with the firefighters, it isn't that I was constantly flying around in the back of an ambulance or hanging onto the fire truck before crashing into burning buildings. In fact, my whole month on duty there weren't any fires. A lot of my time was spent in the fish bowl feeling "cabin", which is sort of the lookout post in the fire station that looks over the street below and where the calls come in. I got a lot of newspapers read in there, a lot of postcards written, even some journal entries split between there and the drivers seat of the fire truck. What I did make an impact though, was a 180 degree turn from boredom, sleepiness, idle chatter, or whatever other time passing activity was going on to 100% attention boring into the space in front of you with adrenaline fired nerves squeezing tight to the hand rails in the back of the ambulance as you bounced and jumped over potholes and cobble stoned streets on the way to a service.

Every nerve and neuron in your brain and body working on a way to help this person.

Sometimes all I knew how to do was reach a hand down to wobbling knees or legs on the stretcher from bouncing so much or sliding off to the side as the ambulance, an re-outfitted toyota van), rattled, jumped, and bounced across a city with bad roads and worse traffic.

Working with the children at the nursery was definitely a different experience. There was always a code red emergency - or at least the little one crying wanted you to think it was that kind of emergency.

Always consoling over a scraped knee, a missing crayon, or a dirty diaper, I hardly ever sat down. The hardest thing I had to deal with was my own inability to give them everything they need.

A lot of the kids could use a good father.

A lot of the kids could use healthier food - in bigger quantities - at home.

A lot of the kids could use a little bit of extra money so their parents could afford to send them to school.

It was one thing to be in the ambulance and see somebody stop breathing and not know what to do about it. I mean at least somebody in the ambulance did.

With the kids, I couldn't provide what they needed, and I knew nobody else could either. The problem was simply bigger than me - the only thing I could do was accept it - and do what I could.

When I left the nursery, I'd spent a month of my time there, left some toys, school supplies, and vitamins, but all I can really hope for is the slightest change in one of their lives.

Day at the Zoo with All the Kids

Maybe somebody will remember a male figure that didn't use violence to communicate.

Maybe somebody will remember it's better to share toys with friends.

Maybe I'll get a chance to come back.

Guatemalan Acceptance

The View Descending into Quetzaltenango from the East

Guatemala is a country full of – acceptance.


Don’t get me wrong, a gay bar here in Xela was burned down less than a year ago amidst mysterious circumstances, but government officials embezzling more money than most Guatemalans would make in a hundred lifetimes (minimum wage is officially $7/day)  – nobody bats an eyelash.


On an ambulance run we found a man drunk, passed out out on the sidewalk, lying in a puddle of liquor infused vomit that stretched from his head to his feet. When the man didn’t want to give his name for identification purposes, it was presumed he didn’t want to go to the hospital. We followed his implied wishes, and left him there in his own vomit in the late afternoon sun.

Drunks are drunks – that’s what they do. They fall down, vomit all over themselves, and sleep strewn across the sidewalk.

In the nursery, I still can’t get over how the children use punches as slaps as non-verbal communication more regularly than shaking their head ‘yes’ or ‘no’. When someone catches another in possession of their pencil, ball, or personal space, there is generally a cry or shout, sometimes using recognizable words, and then a punch.


As much as this contributes to painting a picture of violence in the household, it pales in comparison to how the mothers talk to their children in the ‘Shelter for Victims of Domestic Violence’. You’ll hear mothers, who are their to escape the harsh beatings of their husbands, threatening their children with harsh beatings if they don’t conform to a particular desired behavior whether it be putting their shoes on or simply being quiet. Even more surprise than this, is how the workers in the shelter don’t even react! It’s never occurred to them that this isn’t an appropriate way to raise a child, or that perhaps there is at least an alternate way to parent.

Violence is a part of life. Men hit women. Parents hit children. Everybody kicks dogs.

Today an old feeble man almost died. He has diabetes, hypertension, dementia, Parkinson’s, and god knows what other ailments eating away at his fragile frame.


On good days, you can find him slowly shuffling through the house behind his walker on his way down the stairs to the garden to bathe in the powerful rays of the sun in the cool mountain air. If his warm smile and greetings draw you over, you’ll be blessed with stories of history, politics, geography, science, metaphysics, medicine, alternative medicine, or even the birth of the cosmos. In bad times you’ll hear the nearly daily professions of desires to die and end his pain. A proud man who used to have family, friends, money, government position, health, even hair, now finds himself living in another family’s home, bald, unable to walk, broke, half estranged from his children – and dying.

When Tio’s blood pressure spiked, he faded in and out of consciousness and began vomiting with little relief. There was the send that this could be the beginning of the end. A doctor’s help was obviously needed. Comfort was given in ample amounts with love, but there was no hesitation or obvious dilemma in whether to take this man, who scolded the doctors the last time they saved his life, to the hospital for potentially simple, but life saving treatments.


This man will die – some day.


There was scurrying about the house and some heightened anxieties, but there was acceptance that death is imminent one way or another and if doctors are not appreciated, they won’t be called.

We all die. There is nothing you can do to stop that inevitability. Let each arrive in their own way.

Every single day in the newspaper there is news of high government officials stealing public money.


Everyday there is news of innocent children being taken from life so early – killed by stray bullets in drug shootouts.


Everyday people live with the knowledge that a catastrophic earthquake may end life on a tragic scale in this little country whose trees and towers shake with tectonic activity on a weekly basis.


Everyday – life goes on, just as the day before.


Unacceptable is a relative term, something every person defines for themselves if they take the time to think about it.






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Below is an excerpt from Yesterday's Paper
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Click the photo to see a larger readable version of a section of Yesterday's newspaper

Below is an English translation

The Rise in Violence Worries the United Nations

• Homicides rose from 6,244 in 2008 to 6,498 in 2009
• Lynchings rose from 56 in 2008 to 119 in 2009
• There is one Police Officer for every 619 citizens
• The National Police had 5,000 vacancies nearly all 2009
• There are 174 armed private security companies
• There are an estimated 106,700 private armed security agents; 5 for every Police Officer
• The judicial system received 30,873 cases of violence against women, but only handed down 70 sentences
• Of 166 complaints of femicide, 10 sentences were issued
• There were 346 attacks on human rights defenders
• The special division of criminal investigation has 105 detectives and 400 vacancies
• Of 412 complaints of discrimination in 7 years, 4 have received sentences
• Guatemala is ranked 122nd of 182 on the Human Development Index

Adios Mexico - Hasta la Vista

San Cristobal - View from the Cathedral at sunset

I didn't really know what to expect going into Mexico, but I'd count that as a blessing.

If I'd brought my expectations with me based on my experiences in Monterrey, I think I would have been really misguided and unable to absorb the variety experiences that exist in a country as diverse in climate and culture as Mexico. I'm still patching together all the pieces of a county whose culture is a patchwork of micro-cultures all being pushed towards a similar identity that often lacks a resemblance to the actual people.

When I started heading East from Puerto Escondido to Zipolite, I was pushing further into a world warped by foreign hedonistic desires matched with local permissibility of anything that can fetch a price. Puerto Escondido has itself picked up a reputation as a hotspot for European tourists looking for hallucinogenic mushrooms and the bars that line the beach are known to stay open until sunrise as long as there are thirsty patrons. From the locals perspective, foreigners tend to be invading herds of loud, pink, sunburned, belligerents looking to do all the things that they couldn't get away with in their own countries.

You can even sense the resentment that pours down on you burning as strongly as the sun from those that aren't either directly involved in serving the tourists or completely ignoring their presence. One doesn't need to spend much time considering why. Most locals have never travelled further than a few towns away. All they know is the small patch of ground they call home. The other thing they know, is there seems to be an endless supply of white people who have loads of disposable money, most of which they only spend at businesses owned by foreigners when they aren't spending their time partaking in activities that generally offend the sensibilities of the local conservative catholic culture.

Saying the locals are pushed out of the standard tourist business such as lodging and food because they lack the trans-cultural experience necessary to understand the expectations and desires of the visitors, the other profitable sector that is protected against foreign operators is the drug trade. When foreigners come for hedonism and feel like there is no law stopping them, they often turn into steady market for all kinds of illicit substances. With the drugs, comes the drug dealers and their way of life that knows no moral limitations. With the drug dealers comes the crime and violence.

Now might be a good time to explain how I got my lip busted by a local lifeguard.

A recent acquaintance of mine, also named Mike, who is traveling over the next undetermined amount of time with a beard south, perhaps to Argentina, suggested we check out this one bar he saw. We walked down the street from our hostel about 50 yards and climbed the stairs up to the second story bar that was overlooking the indoor pool. We each ordered whatever domestic beer they had cold and I decided I'd buy a smoke to go with it. I asked the bartender if he had either Camel or Marlboro and he replied "Yeah, I've got Camels. 60 Pesos."

This is absurd. A pack of smokes costs about 30 Pesos in the last town I was in and maybe 35 Pesos here because of it's remoteness. "That's ridiculous, I'm not paying that. I'm going to one of the shops down the block" is how I replied to let him know I realized this was a game.

He seemed unshaken and replied with a grin, "All the other stores are closed, and I have cigarettes. Seems perfectly logical to me."

I wasn't going to let this shiester feel like he knew what he was doing so I let him know, "Your logic is crap. Now you have no business. I am going to borrow a cigarette from my friend. Nice negotiating."

Beyond the unpleasant barman, the crowd in the bar had "bad vibes" according to several other beachies who had walked in through out the night and thought there was a weird local crowd that seemed to be awfully hush in the corners. After our beers we headed out the door which is when we saw two blonde Danish girls in some sort of dispute with two local guys. Minding our own business we began to walk by. One of the girls began storming off in the same direction, but the other was still being pulled on by the locals. I decided I had to go back and ask, "Todo esta bien?"

The girl I could now see was clearly frightened and quite drunks asked me if I spoke English and then promptly asked me if me and my friend would help walk them somewhere away from these guys who were trying to forcibly if necessary drag them back to their apartment.

Instinctually I offered my elbow for her to hang on to and we walked the two of them back to "A Nice Place on the Beach", the bar attached to our hostel where there is always a safe number of friendly people and a lot of long term expats hang out ranging in age from 40 to 60 years old.

We sat the two of them down at the bar so they could essentially be in the center of the whole crowd and feel the sense of security of being surrounded by 25 people who spoke a familiar language. I sat down last and began to order a beer when I got a tap on the back of my right shoulder.

When I spun around I found who I later discovered was Oso, the local lifeguard. Except I only knew him as this point in time as a Mexican who had a look of rage on his face like his mother was just run down in the street by a mad bus, and also as one of the locals how had been so intently pulling on the young intoxicated blonde girls trying to get them somewhere private.

Oso - The rapist drug dealing lifeguard

I knew to seek a reconciliatory tone so I began hold open palms in front of me as I started, "Hey man, the girls are just really drunk and got scared for some reason. No hard feelings man."

Busted swollen lip

Before I got half those words out of my mouth, they were replaced with a clenched fist flashing before my eyes and then pain and blood burst from my face. I staggered back trying to back into an area where I'd be more surrounded by the travelers I'd come to know, but by the time my vision cleared and I scanned the crowd to see where my attacker was, he was gone.

He came in so quickly, so quietly, and never said a word, that nobody even noticed I got punched. Suddenly everyone was looking at me holding my face with blood running down my beard and hands asking what had happened. Only one girl working behind the bar was actually facing out to the beach instead of in towards the bar and saw me get hit in the face without provocation, a mere inches behind the backs of everybody I'd made quick friends with other the last day or so.

I spent the next half an hour trying to discover the depth of the wound and cleaning it out with some cheap local liquor the bar gave me and some antibiotic cream. When I made my way back to everybody, that's when I found out history of Oso and other guys of his cut.

Oso is rumored to have tried to swim across the US border smuggling unknown quantities of cocaine and likes to take advantage of young girls who fall for their fantasy of an exotic hard bodied, dark skinned boy, with rippling muscles, a beach way of life, and local prestige. Exotic fantasy often turns to alarm when they make the mistake of having too much to drink with people they shouldn't trust. I've been told he might have 7 or 8 kids in 7 or 8 different countries.

I got jacked in the face - because I got in the way of #9

When I woke up in the morning, still with a pounding headache, the first news I heard at the bar (which serves breakfast/lunch/dinner), was that the barman from the night before, the one with the horribly corrupt and unscrupulous business practices, he was assassinated about an hour and a half after I left the bar - shot in the back of the head over a bad drug deal. The bar was closed the rest of the time I was in Zipolite with flowers and candles laid at the entrance.

This is what foreign hedonism, backed up by greenbacks and euros does to a local populace that has little money and some among then that have no morals.

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Thankfully not everywhere is full of people looking for sin and sun....

Some people come looking for culture and cuisine - and it makes all the difference 

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From Zipolite to San Cristobal and the border still in progress....