Garifuna Day, Part 2

Before you read this post, scroll down and read Part 1 of the Garifuna adventure. Its a much less entertaining viewpoint of our Thanksgiving weekend excursion but its also a better one to start with.

Okay, now that you have read Part 1, remember that hike we went on? The one that started with an hour and a half walk on the beach and ended in a beautifully tranquil forest filled with lakes? Well after that "too-good-to-be-true" adventure, we started to walk back in the same direction we had started. Something I neglected to mention earlier was that we had spent the entire day walking with a 15-year-old boy named Herman (I resisted the urge to call him "Hermie," Danielle) who lived in the house next to our hotel with his family who maintained the place. He was a nice, shy boy who helped us out a lot of didn't complain about hanging out with a bunch of chicas all day.

Herman had one quality, however, that I was not the biggest fan of. He was so sweet and innocent that I believed everything he said in his mid-puberty, Spanish-speaking voice. That's why, when he told us that this random water coming from a pipe on the side of the trail was "well water" and was "safe to drink," I totally believed him. Big mistake. HUGE mistake. Promise me right now that if you ever find yourself in a Central American country, walking through the forest, and a 15-year-old boy named Herman tells you its "safe" to drink water that is not already in a sealed plastic water bottle, you will say no. Promise me! I don't care how dehydrated you are from walking for 4 hours or how clean and delicious the water looks... Don't. Do. It.

It only took about 5 more hours for that "safe, clean, well water" to go through my system and rock my world. We were walking around the Garifuna festival and I suddenly felt the urge to vomit. I used my gringa charm (or maybe it was my nauseous looking face and the gripping of my stomach) to use a bathroom at a restaurant. I puked up my dinner, was unable to flush the toilet, and then sneakily left the place without being seen. A few minutes later, I still wasn't feeling any better so Aubrey bought me a Guatemalan antacid. After drinking the nasty stuff, there was still no sign of recovery. So we walked to a soccer field nearby and sprawled out on the ground while we waited for our water taxi (wth?) to come pick us up. I'm not sure how long we waited there but all the sudden I felt the immediate need to use the bathroom again, this time for another kind of relief. That's when I realized I had eaten something, or drank something, that was slowly eating away my insides. I don't remember a whole lot of what happened next, just me aimlessly following Claudia and Aubrey as they begged shop owners to let me use their bathroom. I fainted at some point and the next thing I knew I was in a really disgusting bathroom in a creepily dark hotel lobby. I won't provide too many more details from that spot but basically I spent the next 12 hours at my hotel room unwillingly letting my body do whatever it needed to to get that water out of me. As I sat on the bathroom floor, watching little bugs crawl around and staring at that toilet with total hatred, all I could think about was where I was last Thanksgiving and how great it would be if, at that moment, I could be transported back to that place.

The experience probably would not have been so traumatizing if it weren't for the fact that we were oh so far away from being home. Aubrey started to get sick in the morning as well so we had to wait until we could both go at least 30 minutes without having to use the bathroom, as that was the time it took to get through the shortest leg of our trip. We left at about 11:00am, didn't catch a boat until 12:15 and purchased our bus ticket at 12:43 when the bus left at 12:45. We were about to drop our bags in the storage under the bus when I took a glance at the our vehicle; no bathroom. I tried to tell Aubrey the news lightly but her face completely dropped with hopelessness. Our bodies stepped it up a notch, however, as we both somehow managed to ride the entire 7 hour trip only having to make one bathroom stop. After that we were still another cab ride away from being home and looking back on our state of consciousness we probably could have made a better decision than getting into an unmarked, white taxi (we have been recommended by everyone in Guate to never take white taxis) but at that very moment we couldn't have cared less. We got home, dropped off our things, and headed to the hospital, which is fortunately just across the street from our house.

After a few hours of attempting to provide a stool sample, watching people in actual emergencies being wheeled into the ER, trying to decipher the real-life soap opera drama that was happening in the room next door to us, accidentally offending the "doctor" who was wearing street clothes, looked like he had just been punched in the face, and didn't introduce himself, and getting the results of our blood test, Aubrey and I were overjoyed to find out that we did not have a parasite. By 11:00pm and Q.600 later we went home and made up for all the sleep we had lost the night before. We ended up filling our prescription of an antibiotic, just to be safe, and are well on our way to a full recovery. Frankly, I feel fantastic compared to how I did a few nights ago.

And, that was Livingston for you. I know its not a place plagued with dirty water and bad decisions, but I'm having a little trouble looking past all that discomfort. Hopefully someday I'll make a pilgrimage back to that land, this time bringing an endless supply of Agua Pura Salvavidas, and enjoying myself much more. If anything, it was definitely a learning experience and one that made me much stronger emotionally and physically, HA!

I'm happy to report that I am a mere 4 days away from returning to the U.S. for the first time in almost 5 months. The anticipation is almost making me a little crazy though so it's in this week's best interest to go as fast as it possibly can. Friday is Aubrey's 24th birthday so that will be a great way to end a crazy week and to bid farewell to all our friends before our month long winter break-- man, I love being a teacher :)

See some of you very, very soon!