After we landed in Guatemala City and got to our guest house, I wanted to take a shower.  Hmm, the first thing I noticed were the electrical wires to the shower head.  This can’t be too good I thought.

Well, I then assumed this shower had been used before me (and there wasn’t a plot to electrocute me) so I jumped in and gave it a shot – and got lots of hot water.

I’ve since learned most houses here don’t have hot water as we know it.  There’s no hot water for the kitchen sink or anywhere else in the house.  Only the shower with one of these electric heaters.  I’ve also learned most Americans and other foreigners commonly refer to them as “suicide showers”…

When we rented our apartment a couple of weeks ago, the very nice landlady toured the apartment with us, showed us the bathroom, turned on the shower but only very tepid water came out.  Yet that seemed to be the accepted standard so we just went with it.  But…!  No way was I ever going to use that shower – especially with that big scorch over the wires!

So – no hot water when we moved in.  But, we’d bought an electric tea kettle at Wal-Mart and a new red bucket to shower with – so life was good!

Meanwhile we’d seen this thing mounted on the wall of our small patio with a copper tube cut off and what would appear to be water pipes.  Could this be an old gas water heater?

Networking is key to lots of things in Latin America.  With the help of my Spanish teacher and her father, I was put in touch with David who came over to our apartment on Saturday and spent almost 3 hours working on the heater.  It worked!  Then a hop in his truck to a plumbing store where I picked out a new shower head.

This is our new shower PLUS we have hot water to the kitchen sink and the bathroom sink!  Life is good – and life is very good when you’ve got hot water!

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Everyone’s on propane tanks, so this is what our new setup looks like.  One line to the cooktop and the other to the water heater.

And because everyone’s on small propane tanks, you never just leave pilot lights, etc, on.  You shut everything off when you don’t need it.  So anytime you want hot water, just light the pilot light, wait about 15 seconds and you’re good to go!