Lake Atitlan, Antigua, and Volcanoes

Hey peeps,

Right after I finished emailing you last, I took off my watch and left it at the internet place. It was not there when I realized it 15 minutes later. So I have been going crazy. We went and watched the sunset on the lake with three towering volcanoes over the lake.

The next day we went to the travel agency to wait for our tour. There was a guy around my age and a woman in her 50´s talking with the agent that spoke Spanish pretty well. We took bets that he was a RM and that she was someone he had met online and that she had a lot of cats because she had a purse in the shape of 5 cats. Turns out we were right except for meeting on line. He was working with an energy NGO in D.C. and she was an energy consultant from Texas and they had come to Guatemala on business. She was really an interesting lady that was a french moved to texas because of her husband, went to grad school there, got divorced, decided that she liked cats better than people and adopted 22 of them that make messes all over her house. She bought dog food and fed all of the stray dogs on our tour.

They came with us on our boat tour of Lago Atitlan and we had a great time. We went to village to village. Met some hippie guy and bought mom some more jewelry. And we also went with one of the locals to see their god Maximon who is a combination of a Mayan god, Judus, and a conquistador. We went in and he was a shor idol with a wooden face which legend had it that if you saw his real face you would die in 3 days. He was dressed in clothes from around the world and according to our guide spoke all 23 dialects in Mayan, English, French and Japanese. He said that he could translate for us what Maximon said if we wanted. Maximon´s home was decorated in plastic flags and melons. He also had a cigar in his wooden mouth and cigarrette offerings. I was really trying to hard to be respectful but just about lost it when our guide wanted us to talk to Maximon because of his appearance. He had a bed that he slept in at night on the roof and had a wife that lived in another home. The guide said that all of Guatemala´s presidents had come to ask permission of Maximon to be president and that people came to ask for a spouse or work from all over the country. When he asked us to speak I just said good bye because I didn´t feel comfortable talking to a small man idol with a wooden mask smoking a cigar.
from the boat ride were there also. We got to Antigua which is a pretty colonial town close to Guatemala City. We had some burritos. I stuck my foot in my mouth when I asked the woman(who came from a small town) if the burrito bowl had a tortilla in it. She said no and I said ¨I guess than it would have been a burrito
We decided after our boat tour to go to Antigua breaking our vow to not go on a bus for one whole day. Luckily our friends then if it did¨ She didnt understand my joke and I spent the next 5 minutes awkwardly trying to explain myself as Whitney and the woman in the restaurant laughed at us.

That night we went back to our hostal as some guys played the guitar and sang for a couple of hours while we were in our beds. One guy was good and the other guy was really terrible. I just dreaded him singing and realized it was an american guy. our room was pretty warm and I didn´t sleep great, but we got up at 530 to take our trip to the volcano Picaya. We went with a group of loud Uruaguayans and some germans and austrailians. It was pretty cool to hear the volcano exploding in the back ground. I put on a blind fold and tried to feel my way around the volcano rock field where lava had flowed 20 yrs before. It was wonderful. We got back and tried to sleep in the park and were told to get out by the police. We went to another park and laid down. We are just waiting for our awesome bus ride tonight of eight hours to Tikal.

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER. And remember that cats are people too.