We came for dental surgery so here’s what has happened so far. Jim has had the implant, is healing nicely and is waiting for a crown. I know, I know – he is a kingly man and surely deserves a crown – but I’m talking about one for his tooth!

His dentist is Dr. Samuel Obilla, a youngish fellow whose office is here in Antigua. He speaks both Spanish and English and has been very careful to examine all the options for Jim’s implant. He also identified some lingering infection under a neighbouring root canal done several years ago – something Jim was aware of. Dr Marcos Ortiz, the head of dental surgery at Guatemala’s largest teaching hospital – came from the city to remove the old tooth, do the implant and repair the infected root canal. Now, 4 days later, Jim has a post screwed into the upper bone in his mouth, 3 stitches in the gum, no infection and an immaculately clean mouth! He has been back for a checkup, goes on Friday to have the stitches removed and possibly the impression made for the crown. That goes on in another couple of weeks.

In the meantime, we’ve been investigating coffee. Our first tour was with As Green as it Gets, (www.asgreenasitgets.org) an NGO started in 2005 that supports sustainable economic development and direct trade in Guatemala. They started out by enabling small coffee farmers to process their own coffee and to market it directly, meaning that they earned much more from their efforts. They now have 30 farmers in the cooperative, are expanding to include local artisans and assisting in community projects that help the families of the farmers.

Virgelia, one of the farmers, and Joe, an interpreter, took 3 of us on a tour. We met in front of the church in San Miguel Escobel, a pueblo (village) not far from Antigua, and as Virgelia was telling us a little of the history of the area, a disembodied voice came from the loudspeaker at the top of the church to announce recent deaths in the community. It was intriguing to hear this approach to sharing community news as we listened to a farmer talk about new opportunities in an old town. We walked 20 to 30 minutes – up the hill through fields of last season’s corn stalks with this season’s beans growing up and around them (ingenious I thought) to the forests with coffee plants growing in the shade, with squash among the young plants, and avocado, jocote, and nispero trees mingling with grevillea trees overhead. Once a seed is planted, the farmer keeps it at home for a year. It is then transported to the field up on the side of the volcano, planted there, and in 4 years it starts to produce. While coffee plants can grow for 70 or 80 years, the production drastically diminishes, so these farmers cut them back after 20 years and allow them to regrow and produce again, and they continually start new ones too. After walking back down to Virgelia’s house, we watched as she and her daughter demonstrated how they use a bicycle powered gadget to remove the pulp from the red coffee berries. The beans inside are fermented to remove the sticky coffee honey, washed 4 times, rubbed to remove the parchment and silverskin, dried in the sun, sorted for size and imperfections, and finally roasted. We took turns stirring the beans around a big clay platter over an open fire as they turned dark brown and became increasingly fragrant, and then we tried our hands (arms really) at grinding them on a traditional flat stone with a rolling stone (like a rolling pin). The ground beans were poured into a pot of hot water and then strained into coffee cups so we could enjoy the results of all that labour. Have a look at the AGAIG website to see the way the coop has grown and how the farmers are benefitting. It is pretty impressive.

We took another coffee tour a few days later – just to compare two different approaches. This one was with Finca Filadelfia – a big outfit that employs several hundred local Guatemalans during harvest season and exports thousands of pounds of beans – many to Japan, and also to Canada where we see it labeled R. Dalton coffee. (www.filadelfia.com.gt) Jim and I weren’t sure we would like this tour as much but it is very different and we really did enjoy it. Unfortunately, we went on a Saturday afternoon when the machines weren’t running, and the harvest is just beginning. It would be better to go Mon to Fri and a couple of weeks later. However, our guide, Erick was very knowledgeable, spoke excellent English (he lived in Montreal for 6 years as a child) and showed us through the soaking, drying, sorting areas and gave us lots of information about coffee farming. One rather cool bit of trivia is that on this plantation, they graft Arabica plants onto Robusta roots to avoid the nematodes that love to eat Arabica roots – and it is only women who do the grafting because the Ph in their bodies is sweeter – allowing a better success rate with the grafted plants. Erick swore this is true!

It hasn’t been just coffee we’ve been enjoying. We joined Lori, Vincente and Muriel for some dining and wining at Meson Panza Verde – and enjoyed some fine music too. It is a pricy place but the ambiance and food were superb, and the singer – a regular visitor from New Jersey - had a wonderfully smooth voice on the old jazz standards. Jim and I both had pasta – his with lobster and mine with scallops and calamari, and we shared a decadent chocolate mousse to satisfy our sweet teeth. We ended the evening at a lively bar (the name of which I’ll have to search out) for a totally different sound. A group of young men from Guatemala City blew everyone away with their jazz guitar skills.

While Jim was lounging in the dentist’s chair, I took a tour with a guide from Common Hope (Familias de Esperanza) – a long time NGO that is involved primarily in educational efforts in 26 pueblos around Antigua. Students here are supposed to go to school till grade 6. Some of them don’t, because they need to go to work. Through donations and sponsorships, Common Hope helps them go through basica to high school and they have had over 1200 graduates since they started in 1986. Common Hope is now partnering with local schools to improve curriculum and support teachers, as well as supporting families with better housing and medical and dental services. We visited a family in San Miguel Escobar, and toured the huge compound on the road to San Juan del Obispo where their offices, library, clinics, construction site and classrooms are. Check out www.commonhope.org for more information. There are so many opportunities to help out in this country.

And finally – the charming ceviche man on the corner. I’ve been walking back and forth to town for yoga class, seeing the same faces each morning and exchanging greetings with many folks. One fellow always waved especially warmly, and when I went by with Jim later on Saturday, he came out from behind his cart to shake his hand, ask if he was my espouso (husband) and say how happy he was to meet us both. His name is Juan and he stands about 5 ft tall, this ceviche stand is his business, he is here every day, and wanted us to know, “you have a friend here.” Today, as we approached, he called out, “Elizabeth! Jaime! (and that sounds like Eleesabeth! Himey!) Buenos Dias! How are you?” and over he ran for the usual Guatemalan greeting of a kiss on the cheek and a hug. It is a lovely feeling to be recognized, greeted and wished a wonderful life as we pass through that little square each day.

And so – thanks for reading – I think I’ve given you 10 bits of news about our travels, and it is long past time for me to say Buenas Noches! We are off in the morning to visit Monterrico on the Pacific coast for a couple of days. Lori is throwing an American Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday night so we’ll wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving right now and say how grateful we are to our readers and to the folks we meet on this journey for your company and your friendship.