The Value Village of Panajachel

Back home in Canada, we have a wonderful, smelly, fluorescent-lit heaven called Value Village. It's a second-hand paradise, stuffed full with clothes, toys, shoes, and more knick-knacks that you can shake a knick-knack-a-paddy-whack stick at. :)
Not to long after we arrived in Panajachel, we discovered that the town is in love with second-hand stores, called pacas, and the king of the pacas is this one!

Sorry, the yellow arrow doesn't exist in real life. :)

The front entrance of the store seems a bit dim and unimpressive, but when you venture inside, it opens up into a huge room of other people's junk, a.k.a. treasures.

The view from the back corner of the store.

Most of the second-hand stores in Pana focus on clothes, with just a few other items. This store is the opposite, and makes good use of its floor space to showcase larger items. There is a center section that seems to be their feature area. They'll get bulk shipments of certain items and display them there on the floor, such as bikes, chairs, couches, and this week, big ol' TVs.
In the back corner where the above picture was taken are all the second hand toys. If I knew anything about toy values, I think I might make a fortune buying stuff and reselling it to collectors. I'm always entertained by the interesting things I find in the piles of plastic, fur, and moldy boxes.

What the heck is that?

 I remember loving Richard Scarry's books as a child.

So if you're in Panajachel and looking for some china cups, Christmas ornaments, or baseball caps with strange company names on them, look no further than Variedades Salem! I'll see you in there. :D

Hardworking Men!

NJP's new apartment building is in the neighbourhood of Jucanya (who-can-YA), which is what they call the part of Panajachel that is across the river. Access to his building is a bit rustic, to say the least. The local landowners got together to find a solution to the small dirt path, and to appease the landowner whose property was getting the worst of the traffic. They asked the municipality to help, but they basically said it was up to the residents to do something.
So today, everyone got together and started making a new street. It was quite organized, with a sign-up sheet so that every landowner would work an appropriate number of man-hours relative to the amount of frontage they would have to the new access.
I was very proud to see Bert right in the muck with the rest of them. He had gone voluntarily to help just because his friend asked him to, and then NJP rewarded him with a surprise Q100 at the end of the day. Great guys, both of them!

A picture from the original road, looking down the stream. The new street will go straight through this mess.

There were guys in the stream using pickaxes to dig up the mud. Then NJP would shovel, and Bert would take it away.

The plan is to dig out the stream bed so that it's deep enough to build a sluiceway of concrete and put the cobbled street on top of it. Pretty clever! I just hope that the stream cooperates. Who knows what sort of runoff is going to happen when we get a big storm.

Looking further down the stream. Lots of digging!

There were a few ladies hauling mud in wheelbarrows but mostly they were responsible for providing water and encouragement. :)

My awesome gringo boys! So proud of them for working so hard.

The mud was super heavy cuz it was so wet.

I forgot to bring Pachi's water bowl so we improvised with a coconut shell. 

It was a really neat area that we were working in. It was basically in the spaces between houses, so there chicken coops, and tons of dogs running around, plus two curious rabbits in a cage... and PIGS! I hadn't seen any pigs in Guatemala yet, but I figured it must be because they need to be kept out of the sun or they will get sunburnt.

After a break, Bert and NJP switched tasks. Bert said shoveling was harder!

NJP dumping mud in the designated area. Not sure what's going to happen to all that muck. Maybe they will use it to build up the road?

Work stopped at 1pm. This was the meeting to talk about progress. answer questions, and to sign off on the sheet.

The organizer of the crew estimated that it will take four or five more Sundays of work to get the street done. Everyone is doing this on their day off. Quite a cooperative spirit in this neighborhood!

Bert resting after his hard labour.

The ever-generous NJP invited us back to his place for a delicious pasta lunch. As soon as that food hit their bellies, the boys lost all energy! It was nothing but relaxing for the rest of the day.
¡Buen trabajo! (Good work!)

August Already? Wow!

I haven't blogged in a while -- sorry! I've been super busy with working lots and making up for all the money I spent during the whirlwind double-backed adventures in June/July of our visa run to Mexico and my sisters visiting from Canada.

Both Bert and I have been working lots: me typing up a storm, and him painting and fixing up our friend NJP's new apartment building.

I went into town the other day and picked up another parcel from Banggood in China. Super excited to see that it was my ocarina!

What's that? An ocarina!
Click the picture to go to Banggood and buy one. 

An ocarina is an ancient wind instrument. It sounds like a cross between a recorder and a pan flute. I was interested in learning to play it as I used to enjoy playing flute back in high school. They are small, inexpensive (at least the beginner's ones), and portable. This one came with a padded carrying bag and also a necklace that goes through a hole on the ocarina so you can hang it around your neck. It's super easy to play, although the tone isn't quite perfect. I imagine it's because it's a cheap one.

Have I talked about Banggood yet? It's an online discount retailer with warehouses in China and the U.S. I've shopped from there before in Canada, and was surprised to see that they would ship to Guatemala. And the shipping costs were dirt cheap!
So back in April I ordered a few items to test it out. It took two months, but they did arrive! I had to provide a street address in Panajachel, so I asked my friend, Cassidy, owner of Gringos Locos bar, if I could use his street address. When the packages came in to the post office in Pana, they sent a letter to Gringos Locos, which Cas gave to me. To pick them up, I simply brought the notice and my passport to the post office. It's a neat way to buy things, as long as you don't mind waiting two months or more to get your items.

Anyway, after picking up my ocarina, I ran into NJP on his bike at the hardware store. He was picking up supplies and then grabbing tacos for lunch. I got to ride on the back of his bike! Of course, I had to hop off and walk the last bit as NJP's apartment building is down a super narrow trail. I'm surprised he gets his bike down there.

NJP riding his bike to his building.

We all had a nice lunch of tacos and NJP showed me all the work he and Bert had done, plus all the work they need to do! It is shaping up nicely. We had a good chuckle at the paint choices in Pana. NJP had gone online to choose a nice shade of yellow-orange that he liked. But when he got to the hardware store to ask for it, he found there were only three yellows to choose from. Three. No fancy paint mixers here. You get the same yellow as everybody else!  :)

Back at our own apartment, we got some irritating news the other day. We are no longer allowed to go down to the nice park and beach near our house. Our landlady had previously made an agreement with the owners of the park so that we all could go down there. But something must have happened because the guardian, Carlos, came up to tell us no one is allowed down there anymore except the owners. Sad!

We do have another way to get to the water but it's a bit treacherous! There is a steep concrete path that leads down to the lake, but the end of the path has been worn away by tree roots and waves so that it's a mess of rubble and sticks. Doesn't stop the dogs... or me!

The doggies playing on Gimpy's beach!

Gimpy very graciously allowed all the doggies onto his land to play on his beach, while he stood next to me for pets. It's a rather nice little beach, and I don't think our neighbours, Gimpy's owners, use it very much. I stayed off to the side and cooled off my feet in the water.

The view looking back towards where the "old" beach is. 

Our other neighbour's waterfront.

To the right side of our little path is this very cool looking lake access owned by our other neighbours across the road. You can tell the lake level is rising, eh? It's all mossy and awesome! I really really REALLY want to go in there but it's blocked by a wire fence. I'm debating swimming around just to hang out on those underwater stairs! Maybe another day. :)

While we were down at the lake, a snorkeler went by. Gimpy barked like crazy when he dove underwater! Totally funny. And he was down there for a while too. Our friend, Victor, says he used to dive for crabs. Maybe that's what this guy was doing.

After we got back up the STEEP hill to home, the doggies all hung out doing their doggie things.

Greta sat in the sun to dry off. That's her favourite toy rooster behind her... or what's left of it!

Jack, being the elderly gentleman that he is, delicately licked the water off his paws.

And Pachi? She tried to jump on me for pets!! Whadda goof.

I'll close this post with this notice I saw painted on a big wooden gate in Pana. Made me smile.

Caution! Brave dogs.
(Not really... I found out bravo means fierce.)

Nos vemos, mis amigos! (See you, my friends!)