{"id":1555,"date":"2014-05-04T13:47:43","date_gmt":"2014-05-04T19:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/panam.whensparksfly.org\/?p=1555"},"modified":"2014-08-06T06:06:52","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T12:06:52","slug":"the-frankenstein-shower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/panam.whensparksfly.org\/?p=1555","title":{"rendered":"The Frankenstein Shower"},"content":{"rendered":"

After 10 months of camping we\u2019ve come to appreciate the quality and variety of campground bathrooms and showers.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve experienced everything from bushcamps where the toilet is a spot that you choose behind some trees a little ways away from the van to $30 RV parks, where, disappointingly, the quality can still vary. Bathroom quality is definitely a factor in deciding whether to stay somewhere longer or head on down the road.<\/p>\n

When you show up at a campground, the bathroom is one of the first things you check out. Is it clean? How many hooks are there near the shower for hanging my clothes and towel? Do I need to worry about that spider in the corner? How many mosquito bites am I likely to get while I’m naked or partially dressed? Is there a place to sit down? Can I get my clean pants on without dragging them through the dirty water on the floor?<\/p>\n

These questions and more go through your mind when assessing a shower in a new place. Next comes the water itself. Unless you\u2019re in a hot climate where a cool or even cold shower feels good, hot water is very nice. The guy in reception said with a smile, \u201cS\u00ed, hay agua caliente!\u201d (yes, there’s hot water). But what does that really mean?<\/p>\n

Is there enough water pressure? How long will the hot water last? Until entering Guatemala, most of our hot water has been heated either by solar or gas or a combination of the two. These usually yield pretty good results.<\/p>\n

Here in Guatemala, we\u2019ve entered the land of what I like to call the Frankenstein hot water heater. This is a shower head that has a heating element in it and two electrical wires running to it from a dodgy outlet high on the wall. Connections are secured with liberal amounts of electrical tape, which makes everything very safe when you\u2019re naked and wet underneath this contraption.<\/p>\n

\"Confidence<\/a>

Confidence inspiring!<\/p><\/div>\n

Once you decide to brave the 110V hanging above your head and go in, actually getting hot water from these things is an art. They\u2019re either on or off, controlled by an automatic switch. Too little water running through it and it shuts itself off to prevent overheating. Too much, and the heating element can\u2019t heat the water fast enough.<\/p>\n

It really helps if there\u2019s an incandescent light bulb in the room. Then you will know by the bulb dimming or becoming brighter, when the heating element turns on and off. Turn on the water slowly, just until the bulb dims. The heater is working. Wait for the hot (or warm) water. Get in the shower. Uh oh, the light got brighter! That means the heater turned off and the water is going to quickly turn cold. Turn up the water pressure a bit to get it to come on again. But not too much!<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve just rented an apartment near Lake Atitl\u00e1n with a nice, high pressure, hot shower. It’s immaculately clean and there are no bugs. Ah, the luxury!<\/p>\n

\"Our<\/a>

Our bathroom in Panajachel<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After 10 months of camping we\u2019ve come to appreciate the quality and variety of campground bathrooms and showers. We\u2019ve experienced everything from bushcamps where the toilet is a spot that you choose behind some trees a little ways away from the van to $30 RV parks, where, disappointingly, the quality can still vary. Bathroom quality […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guatemala"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/panam.whensparksfly.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/panam.whensparksfly.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/panam.whensparksfly.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panam.whensparksfly.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panam.whensparksfly.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1555"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/panam.whensparksfly.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1564,"href":"https:\/\/panam.whensparksfly.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions\/1564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/panam.whensparksfly.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panam.whensparksfly.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panam.whensparksfly.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}