Well, I am safely in Guatemala. The Hip Hop Supermix is safely in Mac's hands. Yesterday I helped Mac plant potatoes for an old Mayan woman. I haven't showered for 5 days because it hasn't been sunny enough to heat up the solar shower at Mac's house, and then yesterday, some Guatamalans stole all the water from the storage tank at Mac's house. All is well.

I checked out of my hotel friday morning and spent friday at a place called hervie el agua which are these sulfur pools way up on this mountain where you can go swimming. It is very nice, like the beach with a better view and without the sand in your bathing suit. Then I left for Guatemala that night.

It was a 13 hr bus ride from Oaxaca to Tapachula at the border. Along the way the bus got a flat and we had to wait around for another bus to change. While I was waiting along the side of the road I took some pictures and looked for the Zapatistas but didn't find any. In Tapachula, I met an old guy who had been a peace corps volunteer 25 some years ago right near where Mac is stationed. He was going the same direction as me almost all the way to Mac's, so I tagged along with him, and he helped me through customs and getting on buses and stuff.

The border crossing was simple. They charged me an illegal 20 Quetzal entry fee and they tried to keep my Mexican travel Visa so I'd have to buy another one on my way back but I wasn't having any of that. The man, Bob, and I took a cab to the nearest city and there we caught a bus. The buses here are recycled american school buses and it is generally 3 to a bench seat and one in the aisle no exceptions for gringoes.

The drive up was very nice. It starts out hot and then you get up into the mountains and it is cold because you are driving through clouds. The bus chugs along the twisting rising mountain road at about 15 miles an hour. Bob told me he had a friend in the peace corps who would ride his bike from Xela, which was our destination, and glide most of the way down these roads to the coast, go swimming, then throw his bike on a bus and ride home.

Bob left me is Xela, and I got a bus there to 4 Caminos, and from there for 75 cents I rode in the back of a pick up truck with a bunch of Mayans and a chicken 1 hr up a dirt rode to Mac's house. All I had to go on was that I was looking for the house with a big pile of rocks in front of it. I also figured if I asked them where the gringo con pelo rojo lived, they would be able to point me in the right direction.

I actually found Mac's house without much of a problem. He has a dog named Indiana and his roommate has a dog named Shayka, who was purchased for about 60 cents. Mac had paid 3.50 for his dog, and now he feels he was ripped off.

I sleep on a floor in my sleeping bag, and sometimes a cat comes in through a hole in the roof at night to steal food. The house is at the top of a hill overlooking the entire village of Santa Maria Chiquimula, so Mac can stand on his front porch, brushing his teeth in the mornign with his shirt off, and survey his domain.

The village is sort of rundown, and the streets are full of bolos, or drunks, who drool on themselves and pass out in the gutters. Mac has a bolo foto collection he plans to publish in calendar form when he returns to the states. In back they have about an acre of land, and also a pela, with is a concrete basin filled with water where the laundry and dishes are done. This is where the people stole the water from yesterday.

We walked about 6 miles yesterday to where we planted the potatoes. We used pick axes and hoes to turn over a patch of land about 20 meters by 10. Then the old woman fed us lunch, a vegetable soup with a piece of beef, some rice, a hard boiled egg, and some tortillas. Earlier we had to choke down a hot corn mush drink, basically a liquid tortilla. But you have to eat everything you are offered, just like Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom.

The food I eat at mac's is pretty basic, and we also drink gatorade laced with creatine and then we lift weights made out of concrete so we can get ripped.

I also met Mac's girlfriend, who is very pretty and very nice.

This weekend we are going to go to Lake Atitlan to make fun of hippies, where sleeveles t shirts, and kayak.

Yesterday we were playing frisbee with Mac's roommate and his girlfriend and some Mayan kids and thinking that neither of us could have imagined 10 years ago when we were standng at football practice getting yelled at by Van Gollan that 10 years in the future we would be playing frisbee in the mountains of Guatamala and helping old mayan women plant potatoes. Well, my time is about up, Jim