Word: carmelita
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Expect a two-day slog through dense rainforest, bare-bones style camping and blisters. From Guatemala City, it's a short flight to Flores, where you can organize guides, mules and equipment through a local outfitter (try www.nitun.com). The trail proper starts at the village of Carmelita and the wise will arrive in dry season (November to May), when the rainforest is scorching but mosquito- and mud-free. The journey is utterly exhausting, of course, but your inner Indiana Jones will exult at your first glimpse of El Mirador - thought to be home to around 80,000 at one time...
...accept the mundane, daily struggles of restarting their life. Natrena can still laugh about how often she gets lost trying to find her way around her new hometown, and Nathaniel likes to gripe about how no one in Houston seems to play dominoes or go fishing. It helps that Carmelita, Nathaniel and Jennifer have moved into a fully furnished and--thanks to a city housing voucher--temporarily rent-free apartment and have qualified for emergency food stamps; Natrena and her two boys have done the same. Nathaniel, a food loader for Southwest Airlines, has continued to be paid...
...that doesn't mean they all don't have what Nathaniel calls "dark days," when he admits he has drunk too much Courvoisier "as a crutch" or not talked to his wife at all. Carmelita, a big-hearted, churchgoing woman with an ordinarily sunny disposition, admits ruefully, "I still feel like a stranger in a strange place." Most of the Williamses have a bit of a weight problem, and the anxiety of being in unfamiliar surroundings has only worsened their appetites for sweets and fried food...
...Carmelita, who used to be president of her PTA and coached softball and cheerleading squads, the hard part is the lack of a structured, busy life. To rebuild one, she spends a lot of time helping out at the PTA president's office at Jennifer's new elementary school, where the ambitious young girl has already been named the fourth-grade student of the month. "She feels more challenged here," Carmelita says...
...that she has received her last paycheck from her former job as an administrative assistant at New Orleans' Dillard University, Carmelita is looking for new work. So far, openings for a hot-dog vendor or truck driver have not been too appealing. Carmelita and Nathaniel like to imagine that in three to five years, they may be able to return to New Orleans. Their neighborhood of Pontchartrain Park, the first African-American subdivision in the city, was so wrecked that whatever is left is slated to be reduced to rubble. Carmelita is sad that it will be lost to history...