Water Quality Sampling on Lake Atitlan

After coming back from a week+ of work and weekend travel, I turned around and went back up the inter-american highway to Lake Atitlan last Tuesday to check on a water quality monitoring program that I manage.  The trip was a blast back to grad school as we headed out on the lake at 6AM for a morning of water quality, zooplankton, and cyanobacteria sampling.  Lake Atitlan is one of the deepest lakes in Central America (about 325M at it's deepest point), and we were sampling down to the bottom for some of the profiles.  We finished up the day by taking some sampling from a small sewage treatment plant.

#11: Vol. Santa Maria

Instead of returning to Guatemala City after my work trip, I meet up with friends at a highway intersection on the InterAmerican highway and continued on to Quetzaltenango (more commonly known as Xela).  We had two goals for the weekend, (1) Climb volcano Santa Maria and (2) find the yellow church on the cover of the Lonely Planet guide book.  We succeeded in both and had an amazingly clear view from the peak of Santa Maria with Volcano Santiaguito (one of Guatemala's most active volcanoes) erupting on one side of us and most of the volcanic chain of Guatemala to the other side.

Volcanoes: Acatenango, Fuego, Atitlan, San Pedro

Volcano Santiaguito before the eruptions start

Sometimes in Guatemala you have to take armed police officers with you to hike. And sometimes your guide can convince those police officers to take interesting pictures.  (they did empty the bullets 1st)

On Sunday we ventured out of Xela in search of San Andres Xecul, best known for it's yellow church which graces the front cover of the current Guatemala Lonely Planet guide book.

Huehue far away

I spent last week in the departments of Huehuetenango (commonly called Huehue) and Quiche checking on environmental compliance for coffee and horticulture projects.  We started the week in Huehue with coffee projects in the municipality of Todos Santos, almost to the border with Mexico, where the men are famous for wearing striped pants.

Unroasted coffee

Drying Coffee

Coffee flower

Coffee fruit

This is a picture of coffee rust, or la roy a, a fungus that is starting to damage the Guatemalan coffee industry and was recently declared a national agricultural emergency by the President.

Coffee going to market

On the road from Huehue to Quiche

We spent the next couple days in Nebaj and Uspantan, Quiche to see horticulture projects, mainly sweet peas and french beans.