Mayan Ceremony, Chocolate Making & Hot Springs

We are getting to bed early around 9 and getting up early before 6 as our body clocks have not adjusted to the time difference I suppose. Monday we observed and participated in a Mayan ceremony at the school. Cole almost fell in the fire three times. On Tuesday, we visited the house where Landon lives to observe his "madre" whose occupation is making traditional chocolate from cocoa. After explaining how it is done, the kids got to pound the chocolate into molds to form the bricks they are sold in. Landon, Hunter and Cole and all the rest of the kids loved the process. Several bought bricks of chocolate to bring home and make liquid hot chocolate from. Wednesday morning we had free. Hunter, Landon and I and Susanne and her daughter Gabby took a bus from el parque central directly to Las Fuentes Georginias, steamy hot springs with pools for swimming up near the top of a gorgeous, green mountain. Again, the roads twisted and turned. Often we came to a complete stop as we navigated past a truck headed down the mountain in the opposite direction as the road just fits two trucks with an inch to spare and a deathly drop on the other side down the side of the mountain. Along the way, chickens, goats, houses, small farms, tiny tiendas. Once there, we changed into our bathing suits and melted into the wonderful, warm water steam rising from its surface. Cliffs surround the pools and streams of hot spring water trickle down into the pools. About an hour after our arrival, Landon and his housemates arrived, having opted for catching two local "chicken buses" to Zunil and then hitching a ride in a pick up truck with a "stand up" bar attached so that eight or ten people can stand and hold on to this bar running from the top of the cab to the rear of the truck. Loads of fun up that windy mountain road apparently. The morning at the springs were sunny and beautiful but just as we left a giant fog cloud moved in and we descended that narrow mountain road in a thick blanket of fog.