the lake

Lake Atitlan

Me :) yay for boat rides!

For one and half days last week end we all headed to Lake Atitlan. The picture kinda tells the story...amazing!

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We had an amazing time seeing all the sites but decided to take some time out of our day to go see the site of a village that was ruined by the mud slides in November.

I'll tell try to sum up the whole strory quickly. For 5 days the area was hit with intense rains. The rain wasn't the problem, since it rains all the time. The problem was that the cratter or the near by volcano was slowly filling with water. On the fifth day in the middle of the night, the cratter broke open, letting all the water out. The water ran through this town. These pictures show the result. The death tool was around 1200. So much of the village was taken out and unable to dig out. Instead of trying to dig it all out, most of the town was just deamed a mass grave site. Some famlies have tried to rebuild, but with little relief effort brought in, most have given up.

Within all this distruction, we were still able to find hope. This little boy and his brother and sister who live meters from the slide have some how found a way to laugh again.