Update

We just came back to Guatemala City last night at midnight. The majority of the Guatemalans returned on Saturday but a few of us went with the group here up to Tikal, which was very cool to see. Its quite spread out in a humid joungle, with big stone pyramids all over the place. Very cool to walk through. It started absolutely pouring rain when we got back to the hotel to shower and load up to leave, and so loading the pickup with equipment under the tarps was quite interesting, hah.

The trip to the villages near Puerto Barrios was great. We visited two different villages, the first one was about 1.5 - 2 hours by pickup into the jungle, and the second was a half hour closer. it was interesting to see the difference, the first village we went to was a relatively new clinic location, they have only been going there for a year or so and the people were much more reserved. The other village has been site for about 10 years and the people there were much more eager and seemed happier to see us. It was incredibly humid as well as quite hot, basically as soon as the pickups stopped moving and I got out of the back I would start sweating and not stop until we left, often drenching through my scrubs entirely. Virtually everyone had parasites or amoebiasis. The group that came from the US was a bunch of high schoolers that had just graduated, maybe 17 of them or so, so when I first met them all I was a bit worried about how things would go but they turned out to be great and worked quite hard without any complaining.

Now I am hoping to arrange to go up to Semuc Champey this week, maybe Wednesday or Thursday, nd stay for a few days. Trying to get that all figured out now but it looks like it should be really fun. I think the other interns here are hoping to join me, which should be good.