Here’s a story about the iPad 2 we thought was interesting and worth mentioning. Tech writer Robert Evans over at I4U News and  TechEYE recently made a trip to Guatemala, and decided to bring the just-bought iPad 2 along with him, inside his backpack. As he landed in Guatemala and took a bus to the city of Antigua, the iPad became an irreplaceable companion: kids Evans met at local bars and shops were fascinated by the device, especially by the Photo Booth and GarageBand apps. He says some kids (who never saw a touchscreen before, or an Apple device for that matter) spent an entire hour making music with GarageBand, which turned out to be intuitive and enjoyable.

Every morning, I’d flit into a nearby cafe to eat my breakfast and take care of my morning work. The place was always filled with ex-pats and missionaries working in the outlying villages. Within a few short mornings, my iPad 2 was the “go to” email machine for all of my new friends.

But it wasn’t until I travelled to the sleepy town of San Lorenzo that my new iPad was really put through its paces. Five minutes of tooling around on GarageBand was enough to convince me that the iPad 2 was the perfect device to keep a gaggle of little kids entertained. A local youth mission was only too eager to help me test that theory out.

Then the iPad 2 was put inside a backpack as Evans found his way onto the Pacaya volcano. Evans says he only had to charge the device twice during his trip, and the iPad even resisted being sat on (inside the backpack) and exposed to the moisture of Pacaya. Evans even used Photo Booth next to a geo-thermal cave to shoot some pictures, while they were roasting marshmallows using the “boiling geothermal heat” radiating out of the volcano.

Perhaps the iPad 2 wasn’t meant for rural bars and volcanoes in Guatemala, but it sounds like it might work just fine over there. Read more of Evans’ story (and check out the photos) here.