So we did it. Guatemala hosted us well and remains intact, despite our tear across its kidneys. All in all, I’d say we had a near-perfect two weeks there, particularly considering our respective ages, the ever-present noise of cars, birds, firecrackers, and drunken revellers, and the kids’ certainty that they would never, ever eat a corn tortilla. Oh yea, and considering that Girl got car sick for the first time in her life during a four-hour shuttle ride (and, yes, her berserker Viking brother did try to Anne Boleyn her during the regurgitation).
More shall follow in upcoming posts, but for tonight, as it’s late and I’m revving up another semester starting tomorrow, I’ll just smack y’all with this unabashed photo-log–a visual greatest hits, as it were. Here and there, the photos are in chronological order; the randomness and lack of strict order are my homage to the Guatemalan custom and character.
I bought everything you see here. Plus a lemonade.
This volcano photo, taken from a moving shuttle, is blurry due to the speed of the van. And the vodka in the lemonade.
We bought this table runner for our in-laws. I’m pretty sure my husband is their favorite son now.
Check out this shop featuring wooden masks and, um, big rat pelts.
We visited my sister’s “American Style” school one day. Here, you see Groom asking some students if they’d like to supersize their education.
Look! Cloth! And it’s hanging!
These busy workers are drying, turning, and stepping directly upon the coffee that will be featured at your local Starbucks in two weeks.
I so much like this devil dude, who holds court in the Mayan Cultural Center outside of Antigua.
Here’s a typical street in Antigua. Check out them cobblestones. Now picture all the women in the city wearing three-inch mules around town while simultaneously carrying their groceries on their heads. I am possessed of a luggishness that makes me unable to imagine such feats of coordination.
This is the hallway outside our hotel room in Antigua. It did not suck.
Pwitty, pwitty fabric.
Yea, cotamundis (Wee Niblet calls them “locamotis”) freak me out, too. After admiring it in the nature reserve outside of Pana, I sold the pelt of this one to a wooden mask store.
Trash + coffee beans = a $4.50 latte.
Spider monkey, spider monkey. What I wouldn’t give to have had evolution let us keep those crazy tails.Look at this business. It’s water. Falling.
Here’s our hotel in Santiago Atitlan. It was idyllic. Then, a hundred yards down the road, there was a huge field of trash coffee plants.
I’ve got to practice standing up in our canoe this summer. A few good capsizes will only help the kids master the breaststroke. And they can look for the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald while they’re down there.
I was uncommonly taken with this field of cabbages. Cabbage is too-oft neglected. The leaves would make great Dr. Scholl’s footpads, for instance.
The Kiddles would follow my sister anywhere, even down a dusty rural path, next to a cabbage patch (she had just explained to them how the stork is a big myth and showed them where they really came from).
Upon our return home, we found that our neighbors, who had kindly not ransacked our house or made off with the silver in our absence, had assured themselves lifelong good karma by leaving a rosemary chicken dish in the fridge, a loaf of bread on the counter, and a bottle of wine chilling. I will be more than happy to shell out thousands of dollars on plane tickets from this moment forward, now that I know it means someone will have scampered into my house and left Chardonnay, thereby saving me the long drive down the road to the bottle shop.
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