After breakfast, we all piled into The Jungle Bus. It is a splendidly painted vehicle. Perfect for its territory! Here, it is parked in the yard outside of Mr. and Mrs. Bo’s house.
Mrs. Bo showed everyone how to make corn tortillas the traditional Mayan way, from drying and husking the corn to rubbing the kernels off the cob. To save time, she had already heated and soaked the corn overnight, so another batch would be ready to put through the hand mill.
It’s tough grinding those kernels down. Most people took a hand at forming the tortillas that Mrs. Bo then cooked over the comal, a traditional metal plate that goes over the fire. Think of it as a griddle.
As the last were cooking, Mrs. Bo’s daughter peeled some hard-boiled eggs and put them on the table with a wonderful tomato mixture that we had with the warm tortillas. Yummm!
We then headed just down the road to the cooperative mill, and while others were photographing the ladies grinding their corn by a simple belt-powered machine, I found some tools over on a workbench by the window. The way the light caught the metal attracted my eye.
Armando, the master gardener at the Lodge invited us to his house for lunch. We photographed his family, then did a portrait of him with his machete. Most people shot him straight on, but for me, it was more interesting to use the line of trees and the patterns of the coconuts to lead you into the photograph.
Before we headed back to the Lodge, Armando asked if we’d like to visit his sister-in-law who is a weaver. Of course, no one said, “No,” so we went down to his mother’s house where some of the rest of his family lived.
The light coming in through the doorway and bouncing back into the young weaver was lovely. It was too dark to use flash, as it would have overpowered her.
We bounced and jounced back to the Lodge, drowned rats from the rain, but happy with the day we had enjoyed thus far. After showers and changes of clothes, everyone was ready to do some imaging. The group has melded well, and there was lots of joking and laughter before, during, and after supper.
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