A little boy who wants to shine my feet. . .

Well, I'm feeling more like myself today. I'm still taking an easy on the old stomach and not giving it too much to do. It appears to not like that too much as I've been hungry a lot of the day. "What? You can't exist on some soda crackers and a half bowl of soup?"

We'll go find some nice vegetarian food for dinner and see how it copes with that.

On to telling about our vacation adventure from our vacation.

We decided to take a week-end trip to Panajachel which is where Lake Atitlan is. The school got us 2 nights at a nice, but not too nice, hotel and transfers on a shuttle both ways with a stop on Sunday at the market at Chichicastenango. All for $110/each. Pretty good deal.

The adventure starts with the trip to Pana. A full van picks us up at school. There are 9 people already in the back, so Eddie and I get to sit up front with the driver. Oh, great! We're crammed in like sardines, but at least we can get to the seat belts and they actually work. This is a Good Thing as the drivers in Guatemala are crazy! Passing into oncoming traffic, who, fortunately either slow down or get over in the breakdown lane, when there is a breakdown lane. Passing on hills and around curves. Tailgating. OMG! More than once or twice, I buried my head in my hands convinced we were all going to die.

Understand, too, Guatemala is very, very hilly. And I'm not talking hilly like around Central Kentucky which are really more rolling. I'm talking hilly like Eastern KY and W. VA. These are serious hills we are going up and down. Sometimes there are guardrails and sometimes there are not. What there are, are steep drop-offs into nothingness. Which is where I was convinced we were going to end up.

But it was fine........we arrive in Pana and while we were suppose to get taken directly to our hotel, our driver had other plans. He pulls up at a hotel just inside the town of Pana and tells everyone to get out. This is where he is leaving us. Even tho' we keep saying the name of our hotel. We manage to get a tuk-tuk (more on those later) and he takes us right over to the hotel. So, no problemo, except we spend more money on transportation that was already supposed to be paid for.

The other problem at the moment was the fact that it was COLD! I hadn't thought to bring my jacket. Hey, it's the tropics, right. No one told me that the rainy season also means the chilly season. I figured, sure, it'll rain, but it'll be a warm rain. WRONG! I'm freezing! Not only that, I hadn't brought any of the right clothes. No long sleeves, only 1 pair of long pants.

The next order of business then becomes looking for a jacket or a long sleeve shirt. That becomes an interesting exercise as clothes in Guate are not made for people of my size. I finally find a fairly heavy natural dyed wool jacket for a very reasonable $50. It wouldn't have been my 1st choice, but I was cold and not really into comparison shopping.

We get that taken care of, we go see the lake. (Ok, actually we go see the lake then I decide I can't stand walking around without something warmer to wear.) And we stroll the main street looking at our choices for dinner, which are wide and varied. Everything from food off of carts, (I don't even like doing that at home) to a very expensive, obviously best place in town. We chose something in between. My main criteria was reasonably priced food and a bar. I needed a drink after the day's adventures. We have already gotten spoiled by the prices in Antigua and have figured out that Pana is charging resort prices. Granted, resort prices in Guate are not what they are in the States but it was obviously several quetzals more than in Antigua. We also figured out that the closer you got to the lake, the higher the prices. We mostly ate at the other end of the street.

We eat. We look some more. We go back to the hotel, which is very nice. (I'll be posting more pics soon, I promise) Very tropical looking with natural wood everywhere and a lanai all the rooms open onto. It rained some more that night (surprise) but the sound of the rain hitting the roof was very cozy and made for good sleeping. The room was spartan but clean and Eddie said the shower had a good supply of hot water.

The next morning I'm still in a bit of a grumpy mood. (No, you Mel! I don't believe it.) I don't have the right clothes with me. It's raining, STILL. It's cold, STILL. And the internet cafe right at the entrance to the hotel is having connectivity problems. SIGH! We go find a place further down the street, but they won't let us use our own machines, so we go farther down the street and find one that does. We both get online for about an hour. I go out to the Well and bitch to some of my online friends about what a sucky time I'm having so far.

Since it's still raining when we get done, we decide to get a massage at a place that advertises $25/hour massage, which is less than half what we pay in the States. While we're doing that, the rain stops. YEAAAAA! I feel pretty good afterward *and* it's not raining. Things are looking up.

We find a Uraguayan restaurant for lunch, which was more interesting sounding than in actuality, but OK ,and while we eat lunch (and fend off the roving entrepreneurs), THE SUN COMES OUT!!

Ok, I'm feeling waaaaay better now. We go down and check out the lake in the sun and I finally understand why Pana is so popular with both Guates and other tourists. The lake is incredibly beautiful. It's surrounded by mountains on every side and they are incredibly green. I only wish it had been a less windy day. I had really wanted to take a boat ride, but the water was really rough. Someone had told us that it got like that in the afternoon and we wanted to take a ride in the morning, but, of course, it had BEEN RAINING.

We decide to do a little shopping because I want to pick up somethings for folks back home and I also still wanted to get some more appropriate clothes for me. When the sun came out, it immediately got warmer, so I changed my shirt, but I only had shorts or dresses with me and both seemed too chilly to wear.

The problem with shopping in places like Pana and also in Chichi is that you can't casually browse. As soon as you show the slightest interest in anything, the vendor starts to put the hard sell on you. I get real tired of that, real quick. Aside from the jacket, I only bought a tye-dyed shirt, mostly because it was long sleeve and it fit. If it shrinks any, I'll be finding a friend who might want it. Not only do you have the vendors who have fixed locations giving you a hard sell at any casual interest shown, you have roving capitalists who have a variety of things hanging off them they want to sell you. Textiles, jewelry, little woven dolls. These roving vendors are often young children and when you say no, they come back with "¿por que?", "why not?" or "It is for my school". Yeah, right! You can't sit at an open air restaurant without 3 or 4 or 10 of these vendors approaching you while you eat. More about that in a moment.

One of the things I really hated about Pana was the number of stray, ill-fed, ill-kept dogs running around. It was really heart-breaking. We've seen a few in Antigua but nothing like the number we saw in Pana. And these didn't seem to be pets that were just allowed to run loose, these were poor perros that were obviously not cared for in any way nor fed. Many were showing their ribs. I saw one dog scavaging the remains of someone's chicken dinner, crunching on chicken bones that could very likely kill him later. All the female dogs showed they had given birth, probably multiple times. It was very depressing. Surprisingly, we saw very few cats, but they probably only come out at night.

We heard what were obviously animals running along the roof at the hotel and when I asked what they were, the clerk said probably cats, so I'm sure they are probably in the same condition as the dogs, but more feral, as cats tend to do when not cared for.

On Sunday, we were shuttled to Chichicastenango, which frankly I could have skipped. After the near constant approach of sellers in Pana I was distinctly not in the mood for more shopping. The reason that tourists are taken there is because Chichi has the largest market on Sunday of any town in the region.

oh, boy.

Again, it was confusing when we arrived, as our driver drops us, with our luggage, in front of some huge hotel and tells us to walk back a half block to wait for a blue van at this gas station that will take us back to Antigua. It will be there in 5 minutes. 30 minutes later, this blue van drives by and disappears around the end of a row of buildings. One of our traveling companions goes to check and waves us to come. Sure enough, this is our ride back to Antigua. I'm glad these people were there and figured it out, as I'm not sure whether I would have realized where we had to go. They take our luggage and tell us to be back at 1:45. Great! It is 9:30 now. We've got 4.5 hours to kill and I could care less about shopping at this point.

We walk into the market and it's huge, crowded and noisy. We are immediately assaulted by roving vendors. I realize that these people are just trying to get by and by their standards, we are rich Americans, but after the 1st 10 or 20 or 50 people, I start wanting to yell at them to go away and leave me alone, so I can buy or not. The worst and also, most heartbreaking, are the young shoeshine boys. Apparently, shoeshining is a growth industry and everybody starts at the bottom at 5 years old. No, I don't want my shoes shined, for the 100th time. I don't care if you think they need it. I also don't like the very conflicted emotions all this brings on me. Sadness I can't do more mixed with hostility at the people for annoying the fire out of me with their constant assault on me.

We walked straight into the market until we found a place to get coffee and a snack. Stayed there until we just couldn't stand sitting at the table any longer and then ventured out to walk around for about another hour. For my Deadhead friends, think the largest Shakedown street you've ever seen and then multiply it by 500 and add live animals, fresh meat, hardware and other mundane items and you have an idea of what the market at Chichi was like. For all you others who don't have a clue what I just said, think the largest flea market you've ever gone to and multiply by 100 and add artisan textiles, fresh meat and live animals and you've got the idea.

I couldn't take it any more after an hour, between the assaults by vendors and just the crowds. Despite my going to many Dead shows, I actually hate being in large crowds. I start to get very claustrophobic and have to get OUT. We find a 2nd floor internet cafe and I dash up the stairs and dive into it. It's more expensive than Antigua, Q8/hour verses Q6 here, but I go for it. It's still only about $1/hour. I kill about 1/2 hour there, while Eddie goes back out to wander around. When he comes back, we walk to the other end of this floor and have coffee and beer at this restaurant. Being on the 2nd floor only slightly slows the wandering capitalists down, but anything is a relief. We kill maybe another hour and half, where I have a cheese sandwhich, which is a possible suspect in my recent unpleasantness, and finally leave when boredom and small chairs start to get the better of us.

We go find ice cream and wander back to the vans where we hope to catch an early one leaving. No such luck. We are the last van to leave for Antigua and have another E-ticket ride back home. Although, to his credit, this driver wasn't as bad as the one on Friday. La casa never looked so good. I was so glad to get "home".

For all of you who don't recognize my reference in my title to this piece, that's a line from a Grateful Dead song, Mexicali Blues, by John Perry Barlow. It seemed appropriate.