Back in Guatemala

So I went (came?) to Vancouver (home?) for a while to work. Some people call that the "real world". I know better... But I'm back in Guatemala again. Just can't get enough.

Since I've been gone (5 months), everything has changed and yet remained the same. I travel light as many of you know, usually just my ukulele, toothbrush and camera. This time however, I had FOUR bags!!! No I didn't go on a shoe-buying expedition. I brought 3 laptops (for friends in Guatemala who have exorbitant import taxes here), 6 textbooks on metal casting, sand casting, oil furnaces, and masonry engineering, 3 circuit boards and various electronics (for AIDG), 3 bottle brushes and 2 bags of corks (for Xelavesa, a microbrewery I'm helping get off the ground), my ukulele, camera and toothbrush. So I took a cab around to look for a hostel (the first one was full).

My first breath brought back so wonderful rich memories, triggered by that smell which I think is probably burning plastic. Ahh Guatemala...

Buses and traffic were as lively as ever, but there have been some CRAZY changes. Motorbikes in Guatemala City are only allowed one single person on them and you must wear a reflective vest with your license number and a helmet with your license number now. Apparently there were too many drive-by gunnings on motorbike so they're enforcing these crazy rules now. I'm happily riding my motorbike around with just a regular helmet (you'll be happy to know dad), and guests aplenty since those rules don't come into effect until June 7. I might try to sell it by then t0 avoid the hassle of getting reflective numbers on a jacket and helmet. I don't actually have a license here, so there may be other problems as well with getting those numbers.

A lawyer defending a previous assasination victim was assasinated and he left a video indicating it was the President of Guatemala who was at least partially responsible as well as Banrural (the biggest bank in Guatemala). He apparently has significant evidence for this that he left with various friends who are appealing to the courts to seek justice. People are quite agitated and there have been protests pro and against the President. Rumours are flying like crazy, but fortunately no bullets... yet.

There have been at least six earthquakes today in Xela. Mostly small ones, one of them spilled my tea, or it could have been my shakey hands from last night at Ojala. Earthquakes make me nervous so I'm leaving Xela for a bit.

Well actually... I'm meeting Gogi in Guatemala City and then we're heading to Tikal, the most epic of all the Mayan ruins discovered so far.

Hasta pronto!

Dan.

PS: There have just been 2 more tremours since writing this. I think I'll be safer at a bar with open mic...

ROXANNE! You don't have to put on the red light

Don't worry people, we didn't kill any birds in this post, although we have been threatening Roxanne, Katherine and James (our three laying hens) with certain punishments if they don't start laying eggs PRONTO.

Anyways, I'm not sure whether it was the slaying of the other three birds to make the Turducken or whether it was the fire we built outside their coop...

This will keep you warm little birdies...

Or whether it was just that they wanted to spite Dave...

Doesn't he look so smug leaving Xela.

But FOUR days after Dave left Xela, Eva (one of Mama Cony's daughters) found FOUR EGGS in the chicken coop!!!  WOOHOOO!!!  Roxanne was especially ecstatic because it meant we weren't going to turn her into chicken soup.

Good job laying eggs, Roxanne!  I rewarded her with more table scraps than usual.

The other two hens haven't started laying, and there are various theories afloat.

1. "Obviously" they need a cock to get them laying.  This is the prevalent Guatemalan theory.
2. They need more food.  This is at least partially correct, since I started feeding the chickens more food after Dave left.
3. They need a better shelter.  This is also at least partially correct, since Dave built them a couple of new shelters that they really enjoy before he left.

See these?  These are what keep you from becoming chicken soup, you scared little hens.

So anyway, you're all probably curious about the most important thing:  How did they taste?  Well, take a good look at how rich those eggs look.  It's almost like they were laid with salt and pepper on them...

Que rico!  Look at that rich yellow colour.

For breakfast today Vergil and I had Cajun/Tanzanian/Basil Chicken Soup (the recipe is a secret, or else I was drunk when I made it and can't remember what I  put in), and homebaked bread (in the brick oven Dave and I built), and most importantly tasty Roxanne eggs.

Desayuno de championes.

Only Dave will appreciate the pelton turbine cup we left on the table for the photo.

Dan.

Turducken!

It's been a while since I've posted. I returned to Canada to work for a while and Dave took a few liberties with the blog, namely calling me a drunk, to which I have no recourse.  But now I'm back and ready to entertain you again and call a Dave a ... murderer!!!  GASP!  (enter cheesy horror music)

Los Matadores de Pajaros (the murders of birds). From left to right: Vergil, Alvin, Dan, and Dave. Only Vergil smiles on, the rest of us too hardened.

Turducken: Noun.  An abhorration of nature created by stuffing a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey.  The dressings between the birds frequently include sausages, shrimps, and oysters, further descrating mother nature and/or good sense.  The origin of such a "bird" is somewhere in the southern states (probably Louisiana), although both the British and the French have documented multi-bird roasts at various points, usually attributed to the spirit of EXCESS.  The French apparently did one with 17 birds, most species now considered endangered or extinct, the last so small it could be stuffed with a single olive.

As some of you know, Meg (or Megazilla or Megatron), and Alvin and the chipmunks (Karin and Yasmine) came down to Guatemala to visit Dave and I.  Meg and Yasmine left early, but Karin and Alvin stayed to make a Turducken.  This is Karin, Dave and my third Turducken together.  And in the spirit of excess, this time we decided to go a little more hardcore...

We went to the market to find "un chompipe [Guatemalan word for turkey, normally un pavo], un pato y un gallina, por favor" (a turkey, a duck, and a chicken, please).  After searching three markets, we found a lady selling such birds.  She was amused that us gringos would want to buy these live birds ("can we get a discount for buying three birds?"), and possibly even more amused when our next questions were "how do we kill them?" and "how do we feather them?".  The three birds were stuffed into a costale (large bag) and we brought them back by motorbike.

Chompipe (Turkey)

Pato (Duck)

Gallina (Chicken)

Mama Cony (a Guatemalan woman who has taken a particular liking to me) was also supportive of our decision to kill the birds ourselves: "Va estar una experiencia, Danielito" ("it will be an experience, little Daniel").  Boy was she right...

Karin, sharpening the knives like only an Arikushi knows how.

We split up the killings so we would all have a turn.  Neither Vergil nor Karin were particularly keen on the killing, so Alvin did the chicken, I did the duck and Dave did the turkey.  To be more humane, we tried rinsing the board and floor between killings.  We also kept the other birds out of sight of the one being killed.  I'm sure any local Guatemalans would have laughed at us.

Alvin decapitating the chicken, while Dave holds on.

Dan decapitates the duck, while Vergil holds on.

Dave prepares to chop the turkey.  Karin holds the wings while I hold the legs.  I look pretty stoked.

The chompipe pesadilla (turkey nightmare) began with that first stroke of Dave's cleaver.  Karin was supposed to be holding the wings, but she got startled.  I've used all my computer and internet prowess to figure out how to add music to a movie and then upload it, so you better watch it!  Kudos to Vergil for the soundtrack, it was meant to be.  Keep paying attention at least until 1:21 in the movie.  That bird has been decapitated and dead for over a minute...

The Turkey Pesadilla.

Each bird was hung to let more blood drip out.  We figured this would make the gutting and deboning much easier.

First bird successfully hung.

Then came the more time-consuming part: de-feathering the birds.  The duck was particularly bothersome because of all the really fine feathers it had which prevented the hot water from reaching the skin.  The hot water really makes de-feathering much easier.

Feathering time.  We have a pot of hot water to help nurse the feathers out.

Karin finished de-feathering her bird first.

The next step was gutting, which was like a hands-on anatomy lesson with much conjecturing as to which parts were worth eating and which were not.  We tried to be as careful as we could to not pierce any of the intestines or bile sacks to avoid contaminating the meat.  Alvin and Dave looked up some videos on youtube first to learn how to do it.  Apparently the two minute video they watched was sufficient, as shown below (it took closer to half an hour to gut the first bird):

Alvin and Dave with the first successful gutting.

Dave and I gut the turkey and duck, while Karin washes some dishes.

We deboned the birds to make serving them much easier, and Karin and I made the dressings:

1. Camarone (shrimp) dressing for inside the chicken.
2. Longaniza (beef sausage) dressing for between the chicken and duck.
3. Chorizo (spicey pork sausage) dressing for between the duck and turkey.

These dressings were roughly based on Paul Prudhomme's recipe, which we had made before, but modified heavily for local ingredients.  Karin had the great idea of making empanadas (fried bread with stuffing inside), which were awesome.  The Taiwanese empanada place in Xela is famous worldwide for its tasty treats.  We served them with soy sauce and balsamic vinegar.

To complement our turducken feast, various other people brought food.  Vergil had slaved away making loaf after loaf of tasty bread in our oven (you've seen photos in previous posts).  Some of the flavours included: tasty white bread, olive bread, rosemary bread, and sweet dried pepper bread.  We splurged and bought butter.  Vergil also made an awesome chutney that sparked a rash of conversations in East Indian accents.  Laura made a delicious salad.  Ryan brought some homebrew and cranberry sauce.  Mama Cony brought rice and strawberry and papaya/carrot helados (icecream-like tasty deserts).  Quite possibly there was more, wine and other alcohols at the very least.

It's feast time!

After dinner we sat around our fire pit and sung kombaya (or maybe weezer).

Dave had been working on some coffee roasters as a side project for AIDG after some community gave him 15lbs of raw coffee.  He decided to test his prototype later that night.

Dave's first or second prototype coffee roaster, roasting some fresh coffee over the embers.

Dan.

Gormet Cuisine

I was just looking through some old pictures and found this epic shot:

One mother@#$%ing giant pile of processed
cheese! Stick of butter at right shown for scale.
Also note massive pile of wrappers in background.

This giant pile of processed cheese is surely one of the greatest things that has ever graced our humble kitchen. Some friends that Dan and I met at a drunken arm wrestling contest (another story), offered to come over and cook us dinner one night. They had been living with a host family for a while and had thus been subsisting off a mainly tortilla diet for way too long. They were so excited at the prospect of "western" food, that they told us they would cook us a giant Tex-Mex feast if they could use our kitchen. Obviously, we agreed.

When they showed up, they had brought with them enough oil in the form of "cheese product" to heat a Canadian house for a winter. The above pictured pile of artery clogging goodness eventually became a truly magnificent nacho cheese sauce. Don't ever let anyone tell you that processed cheese doesn't have its place in haut cuisine. It was really an amazing sauce.

Here's one more shot of "cheese mountain":

Its not easy peeling this much cheese. The head chef
and her sous-chef are hard at work here.

Home Improvement

Why is Dan hugging this filthy mattress on top of a burning pile of bricks? Read on to find out!

Could he be crazy? drunk? hungover? All are definite possibilities, but there is another more important reason for this seemingly inexplicable behavior. We had just finished the construction of our very own brick oven!

We started this project shortly after arriving in Xela and finding out that our house didn't have an oven. In a state of giddy enthusiasm, this seemed like a cheap and (get this...) easy way of providing bread baking capabilities to the intern house. Well, the project ended up taking the better part of 3 months to finish and involved feats such as carrying backpacks full of bricks across town, but in the end it was all worth it. This (in conjuction with probable drunkeness) is why Dan is looking so blissful resting his head on a dirty burning matress.

Below are some pictures of our handywork.


Dave

Here you can see the oven in operation.
We did weigh the pros and cons of building
a wood fired oven in our garage and in the
end staying dry while cooking won out
over turning the garage into a smokehouse.
Actually, we see this as a pro as well. Once
we get some meat hooks, well... welcome to
Jerkyville!

The first time we fired 'er up, we decided that
spraying some propane into the middle of the
fire would be a great way to speed up the
pre-heating process. Unfortunately, there's no
picture of the molten pile of Aluminum that
resulted. Don't worry Mum, no trips to the burn
ward this time.

I guess I still haven't explained exactly why there
is a old straw mattress on top of the oven. Besides
drastically increasing the chances of a house fire, its
main function is to add some extra insulation to the
oven.

Some leftovers from Bakefest I. Lamb roast, jerk
pork roast, spider-shaped bread. All delicacies
from the oven.

"Classical" Musicians For Hire

Its been a busy couple months for the Vigilantes of Funk. In between our weekly shows at Ojala, we've been having marathon practices 2 or 3 nights a week to make sure our funk is all in order. We were all feeling a bit burnt out after our Halloween show (see pictures on facebook: Los Vigilantes Del Funk) and decided to take a week off. However plans around here seem to be pretty fickle and Virgil and I ended up playing a show on Thursday night anyways.

Basically, what happened was: A freind of Kike's (the owner of Ojala) called him, to see if he knew any musicians who could play an instrumental set at university event. Kike called another friend, who called Steve, who told me and Virgil about this. Being as though we were kind of bored at work, we decided to meet this guy and see what he was looking for. What he had in mind was some classical music while people made their way into some sort of conference and then something a little more upbeat for the reception afterwards. Also, he wanted us to audition on the spot. Hmmmm...

Well Virgil and I don't actually know any classical music, but the guy said he was willing to pay us 200Q for the gig and we did have an acoustic guitar (me) and a mandolin (Virgil) - very classical instruments. Thinking quickly, I suggested to Virgil we play some "classical" Metallica and Guns 'n Roses. I figured as long as we played the songs slowly and with lots of picking no one would know the difference. It worked out great. We played "Sweet Child of Mine" and "Nothing Else Matters" and he said we'd be perfect!

This was all happening Thursday afternoon by the way, about 2 hours before we were to start playing. So we quickly went home to run over a few more "classical tunes" and put on white dress shirts (something I've seen classical musicians do a lot). When we rocked up to the university a bit later, the scene was frankly a bit intimidating. Everyone was impecabbly dressed in suits and ties and the conference was in a small, church-like room that looked like it could have hosted a presidential address. We met our buddy and he ushered us right up to a small stage at the front of the room and told us to start playing. We were both pretty dazed by the whole thing and were pretty sure our sham was going to get called. But in times of trouble you've got to go with what you know, so we launched into some "classical" Grateful Dead. We played for about 45 minutes while the suits filed in, and I've got to say they were diggin it! We left as the conference started to a solid round of applause and went to go grab a bite to eat before the reception set.

The second set went smoothly and we got fed lots of tasty food and a bottle of wine. After we wrapped up, Juanta, the guy we had been talking to, paid us and then invited us back to his bar for more free drinks and food. We ended up getting pretty drunk with him and his friends and had a damned fine night. It turns out that he also wants the Vigilantes to play a weekly show at his bar, which sounds sweet to me. I'll keep you all posted on what happens.

Dave

Concrete Slides...

Dan and I had to change the oil in our motorcycles the other day, so to warm up the engines a bit first, we decided to take a quick cruise up Baul, a nearby hilltop park. I had been up Baul a few times but had never partaken in one of the main attractions - the infamous concrete slides. This is pretty much the first thing people mention when Baul comes up (after the spectacular view). So seeing as though we were up there anyways, and for a change there we no annoying kids hogging the slides, we decided to give em a rip. Up until this point, everything sounds cool. However, here's a few extra details: (1) The slides are steep. And long. (2) It had been raining and the slides were wet. (3) I was wearing sandals. (4) We decided to slide down on flattened oil containers for extra speed. (4) The slides are made of @#*!ing CONCRETE!

To be honest, I was a little uncertain about the whole thing, but hell, I had seen small infants sliding down, so I was not about to back down. So I hopped on my oil container and let 'er rip. I started picking up speed at a pretty alarming pace and because I was in sandals, didn't want to use my feet to brake. I caught a bit of air going over a hump in the slide, but managed to stay on course. It actually all pretty fun...until the end.

The slides end in a small concrete 'holding pen' about a foot off the ground, so basically, your only hope of surviving is to land on your feet. Well, lets just say that if that happened, I wouldn't be writing this post. I hit the concrete and slid across the holding pen with one foot underneath me (which turned out not to be too good for my foot) until I hit the wall at the far end. The picture below pretty much sums up the results of my concrete slide experience. Needless to say I'm not big proponent. Guatemala is full of hazards though, and considering I was riding a motorcycle around in sandals as well, I probably shouldn't be too upset.




Until next time,
Wear closed toed shoes.

Dave