Far Far Way

I spent three days this past week in a place called “Todos Santos” or All Saints. It’s in a departmento called Huehuetanango which is up near the border with Mexico in the Northwest of the country. I was visiting a volunteer who has been doing the Municipal Development program for the past two years. He’s had a very successful run and will be leaving soon. The town is famous because the men wear a traditional clothing which consists of red bellbottoms with white strips and a white jean jacket with blue and yellow strips and an embroidered collar (I´m not making this up). It wasn’t just a few of the older men wearing this, it was almost all of the men over the age of 6. It didn’t matter if it was the mayor or guys working on the “road construction” project. To get up there I took something approximating a Greyhound for almost 6 hours and then another camioneta (think school bus) for another 2 ½ hours, the last hour of which was on a dirt road. Funny enough, I think I could be very happy in a place like this.