This week in San Cristobal, we finally begun our water filtration projects!
We started with visiting a remote lagoon and gathering water into 10 liter buckets and carrying it all the way back to our Villa. This was to emphasize what some of the locals in this and other rural communities may have to go through every day! It was an eye opening experience that helped give me perspective in not only the manual labor that goes into getting safe water, but also the time consumption.
After we retrieved the unfiltered waters, we began our experiments. One set of experiments consisted of coagulation-flocculation and using cactus to try and clean the water. Another set of experiments used SODIS (solar disinfection) and lime juice to disinfect the water. These samples were put in half a liter water bottles with various amounts of lime juice and left them out in the sun for 24 hours.
Water w/ nopales after straining
After leaving the set of coagulation-flocculation experiments to settle, we had to strain the water from the blended cactus, which caused some unintended side effects. Our original proposal was to dry and blend the cactus before adding it to the water, but because of lack of proper equipment, we could not dry the cactus. We instead decided to blend the cactus into a mush and add that into the water. This caused the water to have a higher turbidity, and higher coliforms before straining. It also caused a nasty look for the water. In the pictue above, you can see how the water looked after straining.
Top of Sumidero Canyon
Bottom of Sumidero Canyon
On Saturday, the group went to Sumidero Canyon, a 2 hour drive from San Cristobal. Here, we first went to the top of the canyon to see the beautiful view of the river. Afterwards, we went down on a boat and went through the entire canyon, which at one point was over 1000 meters tall! This was a surreal experience that I’ll never forget
On Sunday, I went to arcotete, a park near San Cristobal with an enormous rock arch formation over water. This rock formation is also known to be a place for rock climbing, which I was able to do with a climbing guide! I arrived at 10 AM and put on a harness to climb all the way to the top. We were able to climb 3 separate walls in this formation, all of which were really fun challenges!
By the end of the week, the constant filtration, experimentation, and testing might have been fun and interactive, but it was also tiring and gave alot of perspective for all the precautions and factors that go into clean water. We only tested for the most essential and accessible problems that could arise with drinking problems, but there were still dozens if not hundreds of potential tests we could have conducted to ensure safety in drinking water. This week reminded me that clean water is something we often take for granted—and that behind every safe sip, there’s a complex and often exhausting process that millions of people around the world still have to manage daily.