Linnea came to visit me! She left this morning, after a two week dash around the highlands of Guatemala, chasing after the advances in ecologically and economically sustainable technologies that are being developed around here.
Don’t ask us if it was fun.
We did see some pretty amazing stuff, and she left me with almost 400 photographs from her excellent eye through her excellent new camera. We started out in Xela, where it’s cold.
This biodigestor fuels the little cooker behind it with gas... refined out of POOP!
These rocket box stoves cook a meal with twigs instead of branches!
Next we visited a farming cooperative called Nueva Alianza, down the western side of the mountains in coffee cultivating country. They have an array of great projects : biodiesel production on a scale 10 times larger than what we’d seen in Xela, a hydroelectric generator scaled to the mountain they live on, organic macadamia and coffee production, a small community garden, and vermiculture (worm composting) filling an entire cow barn. Intensely interesting partly because their first priority is saving money, not concern over the environment.
To Lake Atitlán; solar panels! greywater systems! solar water heating! Our final base of operations was Antigua, the refrain of these past six months, and I brought Linnea to visit Mayapedal to wrap up this whole zany scheme. You know that story.
Carlos is inventing as magnificently as ever.
In Xela (Quetzaltenango) we visited AIDG and XelaTeco. On Lake Atitlán, Isla Verde Hotel. Check out the projects and technologies on all these links I’ve laboriously inserted for you, and feel free to ask if you want any more information from me about any of them. This research was Linnea’s project, and these are Linnea’s photos. Except the one of her.
Travel Maven, Large Jet 