Holaaaa todos !!! We’re finally in San Cristobal, Chiapas now and we’ve had another great week. We arrived Sunday after a pretty chaotic flight and then had an hour and a half long drive up the mountains to San Cris. The city is beautiful and a welcome change of pace from CDMX.
This is the street we’re living on.
Throughout the week we’ve been having more traditional lectures in the villa with some site visits sprinkled in. For CEVE 314 we’ll be working on a project where we’ll be bringing in water from a nearby water source and purifying it so of course we had to go and visit our water source, la Laguna de Chapultepec. After class we all followed Dr Jorge through town to this lagoon, and of course it just had to start pouring. Even with our umbrellas we were absolutely soaked but regardless there was a lot of shared laughter (and shivering).
Unintentionally this further proved Dr Loyo’s point, by showing us how difficult it is to procure water when you don’t have running tap water.
A skate park on the way to the lagoon.
Our shoes drying in the sun the next day.
We also went to visit Cántaro Azul, an NGO that brings UV water purification systems to indigenous communities in Chiapas. We learned about their manufacturing and assembly process and then were lucky enough to speak with the NGO’s cofounder, Fermin. It was a very eye-opening experience and this along with our time with Isla Urbana has been teaching me how important it is to consider your client/user when designing a product or system, especially with something as precarious as clean water. As engineers we often think of having an efficient product without taking into account whether that’s the best for the user. Fermin gave us an example of this with one of the older designs of his mesita azul, a blue table where you pour in water into the tank where it is then purified by a UV lamp and finally the clean water pours out into a garrafón. His most efficient design of the mesita azul, which minimized the possibility of recontamination, included a pump where you would have to use it for the clean water to pour out into the garrafón, but quickly him and his team realized that this wasn’t effective. They noticed that the pump broke quickly, meaning it had to be replaced often, and people had to spend time pumping the water out, which often times led to people just not using the mesita azul and resorting to using unclean water instead. Instead a less efficient design was more effective, and this is something you would only notice if you, as an engineer, follow up with your client/user, so another lesson was the importance of checking in on users to gain feedback on a product.
During our time here we’ve also explored the city a lot! It’s really walkable and since I’m walking everywhere I get treated to sights like this one!
There are over 150 steps and they lead to a church.
We’ve gotten to see the plaza and the night market, and we’ve been able to try a lot of food too!! I’m excited to learn more about San Cris during these next two weeks. Here are some pictures!!
A chanchito Emmanuella bought at the night market.
The old government building, on weekends vendors sell bracelets, cheese, etc right here.
A terrace bar that Isabella and I stumbled upon. It had such a pretty view!
See y’all next week!! Adios!!