“How do the people in these little Mayan villages survive?”
“Each village has its own way of making money,” Allen Davies told me. “This one we’re coming to grows vegetables.”
“Where do they sell them out here in the jungle?”
“Each village usually trades or sells their specialty to the nearby villages.”
While I was visiting Allen in Guatemala he had decided to give me a river tour of the Rio Dulce. His last words to me as we got in the boat were, “The river is full of huge, mean crocodiles so don’t fall into the water.”
“Let’s stop at the next town and try to find something cold to drink,” I said.
As we drew near the village I noticed the water was filled with people who had waded out into it with their fishing nets and poles.
Allen stopped the boat next to the first fisherman we came to.
“Is there a place in the village where we can get a beer?” he asked.
“No, señor,” the old man said. “All we have in this place is fish. We make our living fishing the river. Fishing is our specialty.”
“What about the crocodiles?” I asked. “Don’t they ever bother you?”
“Si, señor. They attack us all the time.”
We thought about this for a few moments and then Allen asked, “Where do you sell your fish?”
“We trade all of our fish to the next village,” the old fisherman told us. “They need fish and they have what we need.”
“What is the specialty in the next village?” I asked him.
“They make wooden legs.”
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