Guatemalan Postal Service and International Customer Service Win!!!!

Just before Thanksgiving we experienced our first, and hopefully last, equipment failure. Our SteriPEN, which is a device used to purify tap water with UV light, began giving us an error message meaning that the light bulb had failed. This bulb is supposed to be good for thousands of liters of water and we had only purified about 150. After some troubleshooting and email correspondence with the manufacturer, we determined that either the lamp had broken due to external shock, or some sort of microscopic manufacturing defect. The folks at SteriPEN arranged to mail us a new one, however given the somewhat inconsistent delivery schedules of the postal services in this part of the world, we decided to wait until we had enrolled in our Spanish school since we would have a permanent address for a few weeks. According to the tracking number that we received, it was sent from the US on December 13th. It entered the country of Guatemala about a week later on the 19th. We got it today, the 30th, perfect timing since we are leaving tomorrow! That said, now we can purify our own tap water and not have to pollute the world with tons of plastic water bottles.

In other news, we are planning to take an early morning hike tomorrow, Cerra Quemada. This area is known for occasionally being the place of armed robberies, so we wont be carrying anything of value. After our hike, we are hoping to catch a bus up to Lago Atitlan, an off-itinerary adventure, for a big New Year's party. As usual, we have no idea what we will do for accommodations, or how long we will stay, but hopefully we can find a bar showing the 49ers game on New Year's Day.