My friends, Jina and Lucas, are traveling through Central America for their honeymoon. Since we will be in Central America in a few months, I asked them to keep an eye out for trash leads. In the middle of exploring jungles, reviving Spanish skills, making soup, and battling vomit conditions on harrowing bus rides, Jina wrote me the following email: Meredith- some quick notes on CA trash. We´re traveling right now with a woman named Liza who did a Spanish school in Xela (Quetzaltenango). She says many of the families there (particularly the Pacaja neighborhood) burn their trash to cook their food. Sounds like an inventive, if horribly unhealthy way of dealing with trash and lack of cooking fuel. Also-- at lake atitilan, there is a town called San Marcos you take a boat to (the hippie place we wrote about in the blog). The main wall coming into town is build from plastic bottles filled with trash, then chicken wire and plaster. Another hostel/restaurant makes cool stained glass windows out of glass bottles. Not sure if this is useful, but you should at least know I´ve got my eyes and ears open for trash spectacules, We just got in to El Salvador last night...
Jina served in Peace Corps Madagascar a few years before me and, among other things, is a rockstar wildlife biologist in Portland, OR (where we connected). Her husband, Lucas, is a rockstar of the pirate variety, and does things with computers. If you want to read a blog that has lovely descriptions, pretty pictures, and is written from the heart (instead of, say, the gutter), check out their "honeyluna" site out here.
I am curious to see the chicken-wire-plastic-bottle-plaster wall. And the stained glass windows. The cooking-over-trash... not so much... but kind of. So yes, it is useful to hear about the things you are seeing. Thanks, Jina!
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