This is a side trip.
I have to tell you about the fancy shower facilities we had in our home stay. One of the requirements to be a host for a Spanish student from outside of Guatemala is that you have hot water for showers. Let me tell you that both Don and I are grateful for the really hot showers we can take at home in the good old USA!
First, the bathroom has all the usual stuff in it, sink, toilet, and a shower stall. There is nothing in the room to set your DRY clothes on and here is where the story starts. The shower stall is about 6 feet long with about a one foot 'lip' with a drain at the bottom. I guess we should not have been surprised at the amount of water that was always on the floor because the FLOOR had a drain set in it also! It is designed to be just a shower, no chance of a tub bath. The shower head is a large gizmo and out of the top of it are several wires that it is wise NOT to touch that are connected to a fuse box. When you are ready to shower you turn on the water and flip the switch on the fuse box. If the shower is working properly you should get a nice spray of warm to hot water. Our shower did not work properly! By the time we had turned the water down far enough to have warm/hot water we had a trickle of water to shower under.
Second, there is a window at ceiling level that cannot be closed! There is no window on the bottom half and the top was also open to the outdoors. Most of the time there was a nifty breeze coming in -- which is okay if you are dry-- but when wet all over and the temperature outside is 58 to 63 degrees dressing is a really chilly thing to be doing at the end of the day.
The 15 year old and the other English/Spanish student both were extremely talented in getting the floor wet all the way to the door (about 6 feet) and the toilet seat wet. Now I have to be honest and say that there was a lot of splash from the shower but not enough to reach the door!
So showers were done in not quite freezing water and there was no heater in the bathroom! There was no place to put your towel or anything else for that matter. We brushed our teeth with bottled water. We also had to supply our own toilet paper which could not be flushed because the pluming system in ALL of Guatemala cannot handle any paper. There are trash cans provided but not always toilet paper. We quickly learned to carry Kleenex with us always.
We did experience a similar shower head that did work. We got a hot shower in Antigua with the same type of shower head. We felt like we had been cheated for 4 weeks.
