This past winter, I spent a month in Guatemala studying Spanish, checking out appropriate technology projects, and zipping around the geologically manic country around the Western Highlands. Here’s a reportback from a visit to the offices of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG). I got to check out some prototype wind and solar designs and take a peek at their new kit-built CNC machine and custom circuit board designs. Later, I got to poke around the office and come along on a site visit to a biodigestor installation they did outside of the city. It lets the farmers nearby turn animal waste into organic fertilizer and cooking gas while reducing greenhouse emissions. I got to hear about the combination of technical and user friendliness challenges they encountered and saw how the system is working now that it’s been tweaked a few times. Pretty cool stuff.