It has been a few days since I have posted . . . things have been busy here.

Tron, Curt & Jonathan were here visting from Columbus . . . I enjoyed their company immensely . . . especially all the adventures we went on together.

Monday was spent largely with coffee business . . . including seeing a coffee plantation way up in the mountains.

Tuesday we toured some of the churches in the area . . . including Benito Juarez & El Diamante. We got to spend the afternoon with Dr. Ruiz & his family in La Concordia.

Wednesday we headed up to Villa Flores to pick up Ruth and to visit a "zoo" there. After our time there we headed to Tuxtla to spend the night . . . since Tron, Curt & Jonathan would be leaving early the next morning.

Here is a photo review :

This is Silmer . . . he works with the coffee co-op. He took us up to plantations in El Naranjo. It was quite an experience to see where coffee starts . . . and to learn about how much work it takes to get a finished cup coffee from this plant.

The coffee plantation was sort of in the woods (aka - jungle) . . . Danny and Manuel went off the trail a bit and picked some bananas off of a tree.

This our group with the Ruiz Family . . . we had lunch by the lake in La Concordia. Juan was not with us . . . so I ended up having to do most of the translating for the conversations that took place. It was quite an adventure for me.

After we picked up Ruth . . . we went to a zoo in Villa Flores. The zoo is basically some really wealthy woman's collection of animals. This a photo of Ruth playing with a baby jaguar . . . we were able to unreasonably close to the animals. It was definetly an experience.


We ended our time together in Tuxtla. This is Danny & Juan standing at a "look out" point on the road into Tuxtla. That night we had dinner at Applebee's . . . which tasted just like home. The next morning we took Tron, Curt & Jonathan to the airport. We then spent the day with Maria's family. Juan, Danny, Ruth and I eventually ended up at the movies . . . we saw "Die Hard 4".

I have no idea what we will be doing these next few days . . . but I am sure it will be nothing short of adventurous.

Be Peace.