212: The MOST UNIQUE & BEAUTIFUL HOT SPRINGS WE HAVE EXPERIENCED!

Welcome to Aguas Calientes to bathe yourselves. Welcome to the Pintas Paradise. So today we're going to bring some school supplies to them and join them in the collection of all the trash. Here we are packed in the van. What do they call this type of van? Colectivo. Colectivo with all of our new friends. The van stays wherever it's at until every last seat gets filled and space for chickens and goats or whatever. And so finally we fill the last seat and off we go. You got to stand in a room only, babe. Aren't you glad we got a seat? If only there was some extra oxygen for us to breathe. I'm going to miss this van. Oh, wow. They are proud. So the children have been out in the river collecting trash all morning. And they are dying to come in here because when they come in they're going to be rewarded with school supplies. Very exciting. That gets them into school. You know what's really cool is the way that they package all their trash. So the kids are bringing in all their stuff and then you come over here and you see the books, the school supplies that we brought. And each kid gets one set so we try to make them as even as possible. And the big winners are the ones who come in first and they get to choose first. So that's added incentive. And then we've got some balls over here just for fun. This is the young lady who picked up the most trash. She gets the top prize which is a backpack full of school supplies. Wow, look at all that stuff. That's a lot of trash crammed in there. Look, so they've all got a bunch of trash. They get first choice. The top producers get a ball. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time this village has done this. Trying to instill in them the value of taking care of the environment here. My thought is from now on the kids are going to start stashing their trash so they'll have it readily available for the next thing. But they don't all think diabolically like me. It's just so cool to see the turnout. Bruce told us this is the first time that they have done this. The teachers did a full presentation on why it's important to clean up the environment. And all of the children were encouraged to participate but not everyone did. As you can see outside the fence, the children that received no gifts were because they didn't pick up any trash. So next month it'll be really interesting to see if everyone participates because maybe they didn't know what they were going to get. And now they see how advantageous it is to pick up trash. We're going to do a tour of the school. Because of COVID the last few years we've got a big problem because the children in this village don't speak Spanish until they get into first grade or kindergarten. And that's the first time they're ever given Spanish. Because of COVID we now have eight and nine year olds who've never been taught any Spanish. What language are they speaking? Cachi. They're speaking the Cachi language. So right now they're struggling in school because the teachers at that level don't speak Cachi. Kindergarten, first, second and third, they speak Cachi. They're bilingual and they can help. But once you get past third grade, sometimes even second grade, they're not bilingual. So you have these little girls that are frustrated, they don't like school anymore. And to their mother with a bunch of children, they're better off at the house cooking, cleaning and washing clothes, taking care of the other children. So that cycle of poverty, it's another boost. How many hours do they come to school normally? In the morning from 7 until about 11 every day. Monday through Friday. It's free until sixth grade. After that it's called Basico and they have to pay for it. They come to kindergarten without any Spanish. By third grade they have bilingual teachers who have taught them enough Spanish to be able to study. Most of their mothers, most of the women in this village, about 80% don't speak Spanish. Most of the men speak Spanish enough to work, to be able to work. What is the main occupation of the men and women of the village? Some of them work in the banana plantation. Those are the lower educated ones. We have maybe 10 to 15% that work for the mining company. They've had some Basico. Basico would be seventh or eighth grade. A very large majority of them, they're hand to mouth. If you look up on the mountain, that's their corn. And that's what they eat. The problem with that corn is the Mayans traditionally had the three sisters. That was maize, corn, beans, and pumpkins, squash. And that was a good diet. But right now all they grow is the maize. They don't grow the squash and they don't grow the beans. So they've got a bad, bad diet. Because it's labor intensive. They would rather go ahead and have that pump sprayer and use Roundup and grow a bunch of corn and sell a little extra corn. So they don't grow the other three. The problem with that is you can take a 120 IQ and drop it all the way down to 70 if that child doesn't have a good diet within the first five years of life. It's a basic survival ability, but intellectually they're deficient. The clinic and the school and the government is working really hard on prenatal vitamins and a good diet for the mothers who are lactating. So they're trying. What they do is they plant the corn and the squash together, squash, pumpkins, whatever. They plant those together. So the corn starts to grow up and the squash grows out, and that maintains the control of the weeds. Once the corn starts to develop an ear, they go ahead and plant the beans. By the time they take the ear of corn off and cultivate it, they've got a dry stalk that the beans can climb up. But the problem with that is it requires you to go up there every day with a hoe and do some maintenance. But they've learned that they can use that sprayer and just keep everything clean around them. It's laziness. But if they can grow three times as much corn, then they can, in their mind, sell it, sell that extra money. Make more money, and they don't have to do as much work. A large percentage of the people in this village that will bust their butt for three weeks, that's to bring in the new corn crop and to plant the new one. And then they lay in the hammock for three weeks. Where does that come from? They don't have a monopoly on laziness. It's in our culture, too. And is it rampant through all the Quechua people? It's all of Guatemala, all the indigenous. We Europeans ruined the balance of how they were farming. Yep. But, you know, we Europeans have Walmart. We have money. We have food stamps. So we can go get a balanced diet. Here, if you go to any of the tiendas, you're lucky to find a few potatoes, a few tomatoes, and that costs more than they can really pay for. No vegetables. They literally eat tortillas and chilies. Now, if you look around at some of the kids, they should have jet black hair. When you see brown highlights, what do you call highlights? That's a protein deficiency. They have chickens. The problem with the chickens is they don't manage them well. They have really lousy breeds of chickens that only put about 80 eggs a year, and then they let the chickens go ahead and raise their own babies, which means out of ten of them, three or four may survive. It's just not productive. Now, if you look through the village, some of them are raising the broiler chickens, the big, fat chickens that we have from the United States. Some of them are raising them up off the ground. And that's pretty good, but then they have to buy the concentrated food. They don't profit much from that. And cucumbers and tomatoes and papayas. But because they like those pigs, because that full-grown pig may get them 1,000 cube once or twice a year, they'll let that pig destroy everything. That also leads to a worm infestation. In 2012, I was living here with a nurse, and we were running the clinic. And three different times, we wormed all the kids. But within a couple weeks after worming the kids, they were infested with worms again. So we went through and we wormed all the kids, all the pigs, all the dogs, all the chickens one time. Cost us about 12,000 cube to do the whole village. For three months, we didn't have any worms, but then they came right back. Because the kids walk in the pig poop, then they sit up on their bed, they pick their toes, and then they eat. A lot of people before now didn't have running water. So the contamination from their hands is rampant. It's like little changes make a huge difference. Education and little changes, yeah. Now in 2012, there weren't any block houses. Everything was cane and thatcher wire. But right now, you're starting to see some block houses. You're starting to see CGN. You're starting to see the economy and the mentality change. The young boys right now who've got their smartphones, they don't want chicharron. They don't want pig rinds. They want pizza. They want hamburgers. I live in the hut. I haven't had a door. I moved in in November. I don't have a front door. Anyone can walk into my house. I'm the boss of the thing. And you live here? I live here. Oh, cool. After listening to Bruce talk about the village, we wanted to take a walk around before heading to the falls. While the village is one of the poorest in the region, they are located next to the famous hot water falls, which is owned by one of the local families and generates a significant amount of revenue. Both Guatemalans and international tourists flock to this area to experience this amazing geological phenomenon. Hola. Oh, wow. Muy bonitas. Oh, wow. Come on, movie star. So, those are outhouses right on the river. Ooh, that's not a good spot. So not good. Adios. I guess we cross the river down a little bit lower. Can we cross it here? Trying to figure out a good place to cross the river. Whoa. Is it cold? It's cold. ¿Cómo te llama? Julissa. Mucho gusto. Agua is water, and Calientes is hot, and it's hot water. It's the famous place where I think the pool is cold, the waterfall is hot. Yes, exactly. From the volcanoes. Yes, so this is where everyone comes. You can feel the heat and steam coming off, plus the cold water that's coming in. This is the top of the falls, or atop. This is where the cold water is, but Eileen's walking up to where the really hot geothermal waters are. We're going to see how long we can take it. Oh, man, this is perfect. This is the source of this hot water. This is the clay that you can put all over your skin, which is great for your skin. It's hard to believe, but this is hot, hot, scalding water. It just burned my toes walking through it. It's insane. The best thing is, after you've eaten this, to open it up and get the inside. Let's see how this goes. I'm not using my own machete. Someone else's. Yay, what are you doing laughing like that? Oh, yeah, I want to see the expert do it. Bye-bye. Oh, yeah, they're going to figure out a way to get us all in there. What a fantastic, fulfilling day out in nature, and also working with the locals. A trip to Agua Calientes needs to be on the bucket list of every visitor to the Rio. .