There is a saying, "The more you know, the less you know". As the years go on I have come to understand that more and more. You can see as you browse this website that I spend a lot of time studying this country and what makes it as beautiful and magical as it is. But I could never encompass or explain it in a way that actual hands on experience can do. Although I have researched all of this, it is next to impossible to remember it all from day to day unless I actually interact in ways that I am exposed to it all to refresh my memory. There is also some things that I would prefer to hold back so I can share in a more intimate way that you fully understand how incredible or important these things are.

With help from some educational sources, I have lesson plans that have been catered for various age groups who happen to pass by and have a sincere interest in applying these topics into their lives. I also have a great network of people who are experts in their fields who will participate in these educational programs as either guides or lecturers to enhance your experience. I hope you have the time and desire to endulge yourselves. I also encourage any of you to conduct workshops of your own that I will be more than happy to help facilitate if you contact me with your plans. There is a minimum number of people needed to conduct these workshops so contact in advance to insure the availability of the shop you would like to attend.

Making Paper From Banana Trunks

Every part of the banana plant is usable although it is most commonly recognized just for eating. The trunk can actually be made into a pulp that can be made into paper or molded into many forms for other uses. This is a fun workshop for all ages. You can also apply the same principle into recycling paper, dryer lint and many other things. In one workshop you will have it down to a science. Click on the book to the left to see a bowl fashioned out of the pulp.

To the indigenous, they saw these people come in great ships with huge wings of cloth, strange pale men clad in iron. They rode astride great beasts they bent to their will, just as they bent the people to their will. Recent genetic studies on the skeletal remains of native peoples found that while many hundreds of thousands were killed by violence, an even higher number died by disease. They brought small pox, chicken pox, and measles with them to South America.

Palm Basketry Workshop

Up in the mountain above the Golfette is a village named "Laurel" whose livelyhood comes from creating beautiful items from a great renewable resource of palm fronds. Tightly woven baskets, hats, tote bags and many household products are ingeniously created from nothing more than the skill and natural materials collected from the rainforest around them.

Not only is it a gift to learn and share this craft, it is also important for us to support people who can meke out an existance in harmony with the earth without destroying it in the process. By participating in this workshop you are not only enriching your life, you are sending a message to other villagers that their skills are valuable and encouraging them and the people of their village to create more and do more in harmony with this endangered ecosystem.

This workshop sets ground for a new lifestyle for locals of the area who are extremely talented and have no road access to their village or means to market their craft other than by your participation. During this workshop you will have the opportunity to hike up to their village and whitness first hand the humble lifestyle they have preserved living with and respecting the earth. By our standards, we might consider them below poverty and extremely poor. By financial standards, that would be true, but they are happy, healthy and proud.

Recycling by Repurposing Workshop

Plastic is one of the major toxic pollutants of our time. Being a non-biodegradable substance, composed of toxic chemicals, plastic pollutes earth, air and water. A plastic milk jug takes 1 million years to decompose. A plastic cup can take 50 - 80 years to decompose. According to an estimate more than 100 million tonnes of plastic is produced every year all over the world. An estimated 14 billion pounds of trash, much of it plastic is dumped in the world's oceans every year. I could go on for hours with frightening statistics. Realizing these facts and the durability of plastic, why not take advantage of it?

This workshop applies creativity with various methods to learn new ways to use plastics in practical and fun ways that often take little more than a pair of scissors or other common household items. From houses to string, and even plastic bag rope. Learn dozens of ways to recycle plastic. Back packs, decorative items, benches, and the list is as long as the ways to make a difference.

Origins of Chocolate

Theobroma cacao or, "Food of the Gods" has long been not only a rich food, but also a food for the rich. The first people known to have made chocolate were the ancient cultures of Mexico and Central America. These people, including the Maya and Aztec, mixed ground cacao seeds with various seasonings to make a spicy, frothy drink. The coco bean was so valued that it was used as currency for trade even more so than gold. The tasty secret of the cacao (kah KOW) tree was discovered 2,000 years ago in the tropical rainforests of the Americas. The pods of this tree contain seeds that can be processed into chocolate. The story of how chocolate grew from a local Mesoamerican beverage into a global sweet encompasses many cultures and continents.

In this workshop you will learn the process of harvesting chocolate and prepare your own chocolate.

Gum it Up

The sapodilla is a slow-growing evergreen native to the forests of Meso-america, including the Mexican states of Veracruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, and Campeche, the Alta Verapaz and Petén regions of Guatemala, northern Belize, and the Atlantic coastal forests of Nicaragua. The sapodilla or chico sapote produces a sap called chicle. Chicle is collected from the tree by cutting into the bark, much like rubber, which causes the tree to excrete it and it runs down the trunk. Older sapodilla trees are recognizable from the zig-zag marks that were made to extract chicle. The scars are permanent to the tree. Chicleros, or the extractors, generally mark trees with their own unique symbol so that they can keep track of when a tree was last tapped. Preferably, the trees were left untouched for five years between cuttings to ensure that they would continue to produce latex.

Chicle supplies became strained as the popularity of chewing gum spread during World War II. The military had been including chewing gum in the rations of soldiers since World War I, consequently spreading the habit around the world. By the 1940s extractors were over-tapping the sapodilla trees to meet the increased demand, and trees were dying off. This was compounded by the fact that the U.S. had greatly increased import taxes for bring in raw chicle latex from Latin America and U.S. companies began looking for lower-cost synthetics. For this reason and that the wood of the sapodilla is an extremely hard wood, it is now a protected and endangered tree.

In conjunction to the one U.S. producer of natural chicle gum "Glee", you will be able to make your own gum and learn the entire history of this common place part of history. An optional tour is available where you can harvest chicle and live with a chiclero in the Peten for a week.

Endangered Species Workshop

For us to live, our planet is made up of ecosystems where various life forms exist to feed on what is called a food chain. If one of those links in the food chain gets weak, it affects the rest of the lives down the line from that point. With the current global weather changes, this is happening at an alarming rate where various species are becoming endangered to become extinct. Guatemala happens to be the last place for many species to exist and they are vanishing faster than we would like to admit. Canaries used to be sent down coal mines to detect poisonous gasses as a warning because it would kill them before it killed humans, if we don't pay attention to the other living things around us that are dying, it just may be us next.

I must also respect those who have little education and believe the the world is going through a natural change. Yes, the earth HAS experienced dinosaurs and many other lifeforms that no longer exist so the earth will survive. It is us as a human race that should be concerned and if you think that mass consumption of natural resources has not caused poisonous gases to create clouds or lands to collapse from removing resources, it may be that denial is a partial cause for no solutions. If we are not part of the solution, we are indeed, part of the problem.

This workshop explores ecosystems, why it is important to save the existing links and what you can personally do to start making a difference. It will also include a tour at a discounted rate to a nature preserve nearby so you can see first hand what we should be protecting and why.