Good help is hard to find

San Marco, Lake Atitlan
We arrived yesterday afternoon having taken in a shuttle from Antigua. We were supposed to take the 7 am chicken bus but it had rained hard all night and was still raining in the morning. The thought of slogging through the rain with our packs on to the bus station and then waiting in the rain for the bus and then sitting for 3 hours on an overcrowded bus was not enough to make us get out of bed. The bus would have cost us about $2 each. The shuttle cost us $10 each. Being lazy is expensive.
Nicholas, our host has spent the last three years building the place that we are staying in. It’s a flowing mix of rooms, kitchens, and self composting toilets. The walls of the buildings are made of garbage filling and then plastered over with stucco. The filling could be plastic, bottles, glass, rubber, and rocks, whatever. It’s a good way to clean up the area and use cheap materials. It’s a really hippy dippy place. Many of the rooms don’t have glass or shutters in the windows. They just have a roll up shade. If there is a window, it is a true piece of art made from stained glass designs, created on the premises. Sometimes it’s a little disconcerting because he will have used pieces of mirror in the center and clear glass around the edges. The mind has a hard time focusing on both your reflection and the outside world at the same time.
The owner is a 30 something German guy. His English is excellent and it is amazing to hear him effortlessly switch from German to English to Spanish and sometimes in the same sentence. One of his workers is a perpetually stoned guy from some Caribbean island. My favorite quote today was from Nicholas after hearing the stoned Johnson pounding away downstairs. “Johnson……..”, he bellowed in his big booming German accent, loud enough to be heard throughout the compound, “I can’t believe that you are still working on that f****g sink!” "Johnson...... Arent you through fixing that wall yet?!!!" "Johnson...... why are you just sitting around?!!!" Lines like that were heard all day. I think Johnson must be quite deaf under all those dreads becasue I have not noticed much of a response from him. This guy is not exactly what I would call skilled labor.
The town itself is ruled by hippies. They live in the lower half of the town and the Guatemalans live in the barrio above. They seemed to have worked out a nice compromise and stay out of each others way. All I can say is that it’s great to have a different option other than Guatemalan food.