Thursday

Usually, we walk the mile or so along to the camp. We pass through the path of the mudslide. Here are Erin and TP ouside one of the houses that was in the way and you can see the level of mud and dirt inside the ruins of the house. This is also near the lake and about a mile from the mountain.

Thursday morning was our last session at Camp Eden. We played world cup with 4 teams (Barcelona, Chelsea, Gallos, Chicharrones) and the excitement level was high, as seen in the video below.


After the session the campers loaded up the bus and headed off to the beach, a not insignificant journey!! Hopefully they will get here without incident! We will meet up with them for a final farewell on Saturday night back in Antigua.


We went up to shelter at lunchtime and Rich and Katharine went looking for the school that was there last year but it is sadly no longer as they have no teachers. The shelter village really is a tough place. Katharine found some friends on the way back.


This was our final visit and to give away a lot of the donated soccer gear and balls. Once the children realized we were doing this it was a bit of a mob scene!! Here you can see Alex Doody's old Puma shirt. Sorry Alex, but it wasn't very popular and we tried to give it to about 10 kids before one was remotely happy with it!! Don't know why...


At the end of our game we belted all the ball up in the air and the kids ran after them. They were delighted with all the gear, even if it was 5 sizes too large.


Walked back to our digs for lunch and have lost 2 (Erin and Jenn) for this afternoon's session at Juan Castro's school in the town. Should have been 3 as Rich was also under the weather. Dodgy stomachs all round so we are hoping for a rapid recovery. Rich actually came along but spent most of his time in the toilet or lying on his back. Not pleasant. So when he gets back all you U13 girls should be very nice to him. We didn't have Rich but we replaced him with the sub shown below who had 3 great advantages over the real thing - better looking, better coach and smiles all day!!


The afternoon at Juan Castro's school was great. We were a bit late and had to take a private "tuk-tuk" to the school. It is shown below. We had 5 huge equipment bags and 4 adults (and one of them was TP!!!) + driver. Unbelievable!


The kids at Juan Castro's school are brilliant. They greeted us today by yelling all our names. Here is my awesome team (Fanta!) of (L-R) Jorge, Domingo, Rebecca, Silvia , Ruth) The kid on the right wasn't actually on my team but just wished she was and snuck in the photo! She must have been on TP's team (Perdedores = Losers)


Afterwards we packed Rich on a Tuk-Tuk and walked back to the rooms, we sat on the side of the hill above the lake to relax. TP, who has been showing a bit of a photographic bent, took some wonderful shots, shown below.



Right now, 5 of 6 of us have been sick at some point with the only TP being immune to all ills, giving proof to the saying that he could eat anything. Mr. cast-iron guts! We were going to have a good dinner and a few drinks tonight, our last night in Santiago Atitlan, but half the team are down and its a bit subdued. We just ate fries and a brownie for dinner as the remaining 3 are very wary of eating meat before we travel to Panajachel tomorrow. By process of elimination we think it was the French onion soup yesterday that may have been the problem yesterday. Ironically, the hostess asked after the sick with an offer to take a bowl of soup for each of them, which we politely declined. Only problem is, TP is hungry again !