Hi all! Been a bit of time since I've had enough internet access to write out a letter, but I have kept track of some moments to share. Enjoy. :)
Lessons and Moments from Livingston, Antigua, Pacaya volcano, Coban, Semuc Champey, and On the Road:
-- When life puts a Mayan woman with chile spiced mango in your path, buy it, and get it Guatemalan style, with lime and salt and chile powder and that other seasoning that's so good. Eat it, and try not to moan too loudly in public. Go back for "uno mas" (one more).
-- Sometimes when you buy a ticket for a tour, you get a seat on the bus. Sometimes you only get half a seat.
-- Seeing numerous Guatemalan men in drag dancing together in the street is both highly unexpected and entertaining.
-- I have now been about three feet away from molten rock on an active volcano. Just how thick is that cooled crust on the lava flow, again?
-- Boys no more than 10 years old are perfectly capable of riding horses, renting them to tourists, and guiding them up and down a volcano.
-- If arriving in Antigua in a downpour, wear sandals or waders, or your hiking boots are likely to take several days for the street juice to dry out. (Street? What street? I see a river!)
-- Do not stay at a hostel named "Jungle Party."
-- Sometimes having a whole fish in your soup is a good thing.
-- Not having water in your hostel for 12 hours straight is a bad thing.
-- Hot showers should be thoroughly and utterly appreciated whenever they're available.
-- Natural pools you can swim in on top of a natural limestone bridge are both stunningly beautiful and the perfect temperature. Climbing down a rope ladder to crawl behind a waterfall and along a raging river that is boiling back up after plunging underground several hundred feet is a little less serene than the swimming, but an unforgettable experience.
-- Fireflies!
-- "Free internet" means you can never get on it because the line's always too long.
-- I have now ridden on one bus with fried chicken, three buses with live chickens, and one true "chicken bus" (that we actually managed to find and it took us to the right place, and a fellow passenger made sure we got off!). The chicken buses are all old American school buses. The "luxury" buses are all old Greyhounds. All of the drivers are crazy.
-- On every bus ride, something happens that makes me realize I have no idea what's going on.
-- Sleeping in a treehouse is FUN.
-- If you are actually from Louisville, Kentucky, you pronounce it LOO-ih-vul, with a nearly non-existent "ih" sound, and swallowing the "vul."
-- When you order lemonade here, it's always fresh.
-- A small rip in your jeans can very quickly become large when you take a big step (this is mainly a problem when the rip is horizontal along the back and would make for a very short pair of shorts).
-- Bats are cool. Bat guano combined with cave muck all over the one remaining pair of pants is not so cool.
-- La grande cuchara es para frijoles, y la pequeña cuchara es para la crema (the big spoon is for the beans, and the little spoon is for the cream).
-- Construction, even that tossing very large rocks down a hillside towards the road, stops for nothing and no one. The bus simply waits for a period when only small rocks are tumbling down, and then floors it.
-- A 15 person van (minibus) holds at least 25 people.
I can't believe I'm coming home in less than a week!
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