Feliz CumpleañosTrudi

OK, a quick catch up appears to be in order. The last few days have been pretty quiet, Wed, Thu and Fri mornings have been taken up with our Spanish lessons and the afternoons have been spent recovering from our Spanish lessons. In the evenings we have been eating in the restaurant at the hotel, partially because of the excellent food and partially because of the fact that it means we don't have to walk around the dark paths at night.

Friday was, of course, a special day; Trudi had her twenty-eleventh birthday (again) and we celebrated by moving into a new room with an even more spectacular view.

View of the 'infinity bed'	View of the outside shower

The bathroom (which has a bath!) is outside and is amazing to relax in the tub, reading a book and looking at the astounding view.

On the down side, Trudi took a while to get used to the concept of the 'infinity bed' and spent the first night worried that she was about to fall out. Having a bathroom (and toilet) outside also takes some getting used to.

T had loads of birthday wishes via email (thanks all) and had a lovely card and present from her Mum. She hasn't yet seen anything expensive enough that she wants as a her present from me ... watch this space.

On Saturday we decided to go and visit San Pedro (across the lake from us) and we took the lancha (boat) over there. San Pedro was dirty and T was most pleased that we were not staying there!

Saturday night was a quiet night in, watching 'Peep Show' series 3 episodes. Nice and relaxing.

Our next task is to work out how to get to the boat for Friday lunch-time. Oh, the pressure.

Trudi Quotes (an occasional series) (i)

I'll really appreciate being able to cook when I get home (in reference to having access to a kitchen. I suppose we should be glad that the delusions of becoming a Cordon Bleu cook have diminshed)

It (the Church droning in San Marcos) Just proves that I couldn't be a hippy - I'd have killed him by now.

Spanish day one

Awoke to a magnificent view from our bed

After last night, the floor was covered with dead ants. Even worse, there was no water! We had to go to our Spanish lesson dirty (sucio)!

Four hours of Spanish later, with the amusing Maydeni, we know a bit more. But the important thing is that we were forced to speak Spanish for (most of) the four hours. Four more days to go, then, I'm sure, we'll be having in-depth metaphysical discussions in Spanish.

After a light lunch, T went off to her therapy session, which was great by all accounts and then we wandered down to 'the beach'. Which resembled a small, sandy garbage dump. P came back to type this blog up and, just now, a hummingbird came to look at the plants about 5 feet away - awesome.

We dined in the most popular restaurant in Guatemala by our observation, anyway. It was OK, but nothing to write home about. Luckily, when we returned to the room, there were only three or four ants - easily dealt with. Trudi has decided that the mosquito net feels like a four poster - so we have it up now.

Ant-gate

We got the boat back from Pana to San Marcos, the driver seemed to not care that it was overcrowded and most of his passengers were getting wet, especially me.

On the way back to the hotel, we booked Spanish lessons - start 8am tomorrow and Trudi booked an EFT therapy

We went back to the room, settled down to observe sunset and then left for dinner.

Lovely vegetarian dinner, accompanied by more church noise and barking dogs. The businesses (about 80% of San Marcos' business) don't like the church, it's illegal but the mayor does nothing about it. I forsee some kind of hippy-led confrontation in the none too distant future.

Returned to room to find it crawling with large ants. Worked out that the 'knock-down' spray for mosquitoes is just as effective at knocking down ants that are crawling around quite happily outside on the roof and then come tumling through the gaps in the ceiling. After a while of trying to work out what to do, decided to erect the mossie net over the bed. T was very good and didn't freak out at all. Had an ant-free, but poor, night's sleep. Won't make that mistake again!

The Cash run

We were up early, packed and on the boat to Panajachel. (Trudi got a little wet). Lago de Atitlan is quite spectacular!

Task one was to try to get cash out (you won't believe how hard this can be!) . There are all sorts of rumours about why cash is hard to come by in Guatemala. The most common one seems to be that they ordered new cash but burned the old money before realising that the new money was rubbish (bad ink, easily forged,...). Bottom line is that there is only about a 50% chance that an ATM will actually have cash.

We had to get some books, as we passed a shop that had over 4,000! I bought a new hat, Trudi haggled.

We decided to have lunch in Pana (yep, that's what us locals call it, none of your Panajachel rubbish that marks out those tourists), we had a very nice lunch with a view.

San Marcos on Sunday

We had a lovely breakfast at Aaculaax, lovely. The rooms look amazing and have fantastic views - we move on Monday.

All day, there was continuous noise, mainly from the band in the square, practising for their fiesta. It wasn't all that pleasing to the ear and there was no escaping it.

Another lousy night as all night long the local dogs were getting their revenge on the village band by barking, all night. Really, all bloody night.

Antigua to San Marcos

Just to set the reord straight, I forgot to mention the pretty real fire that was burning in our room as we returned from dinner. It was very pretty and was actually neededto keep us warm, it's nice to be not baking hot all the time.

After getting cash in Antigua, we caught our pre-booked minibus from Antigua to Panajachel, there were only four passengers (which must seem an incredible waste of space to a Guatemalan (mini)bus driver, who seem to take it as some kind of personal pride in driving around with horrendously full vehicles. Panajachel was busy, but it was Saturday afternoon.

We were dropped off at the Tourist info in Panajachel, which booked a room for us at the Posada Bosque Encantado.

We marched the length of Panajachel to get to our boat (lancha) to San Marcos and then a march to the hotel with three local lads carrying our baggage. Bargaining with them for their services was an interesting experience, I got the feeling that they were better at it than we were:-)

We went out for food and had a beer at the Blind Lemon, where there was live music, then back to our room for a (not very good) sleep.

Pretty

Last night, we had the 'tasting menu' at the hotel restaurant which was lovely. The piece de resistance was the dessert, where the chef came out with the plates and poured the sauce into a small pot that, he told us, contained dry ice. Very pretty.

It's a pretty place, Antigua.

Off to the lake now.

Things I forgot to mention at the time (i)

During all the excitement of the trip etc... there are a few reasonably interesting things that happened that I forgot to mention. Here is my chance to catch up.

• On our 45 minute march through the blackness of the jungle of Tikal to the temple for sunrise, we saw a huge spider. It was the size of a small dog. (O.K. about 8 inches across including legs). One of the girls in our group screamed very loudly. The spider ran away, very fightened.
  
• As we wandered over the border from Belize into Guatemala, there were a large number (about 30) of low-loader trucks lining the streets with US style (i.e. Jeeps and not Land-Rovers) army vehicles on board. None of them seemed to be tanks or cannons or anything - just people movers. The also had no military identification on them at all except the word 'Belize' written in white paint on the front of each. There were no army people in sight - it was all a bit strange really.
  
• Rather than bore you all with the current state of our insect bites, suffice it to say that the little bastards are pretty much everywhere - it is quite comforting to take Malaria pills each morning. A little less comforting is reading about the other things you can catch from such bites in the Death Book as we have come to call it. Trudi is forbidden from reading unvetted pages, lest she starts worrying too much.
  
• It appears that Trudi's best friend (I am only her best, straight, male friend - apparently) David; has been moonlighting in San Ignacio - taking all that confidential Sainsbury's knowledge and putting it to use in his own Superstore.