We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming...

To talk about the fact that it SNOWED in Tucson last night.

Snow!

In the valley!

Enough snow, that at 10AM we still had snow everywhere.

You can't imagine my excitement! Those of you up north will mock these pictures, but consider the fact that it never snows here, and then cut me the requisite slack. ok?? :)

If the plant wasn't dead to begin with, I think this is the final blow...

Random kids building a snow man. All the schools were closed this morning until noon. The first snow day in decades.

The funny thing about this picture, to me, is that my parents have a similar picture from around 1970. That was the year it snowed in Chico, CA for the first time in decades and they built a snow man and it looked exactly like this one, sort of lopsided and grassy with large bare patches around it where the snow was pressed into service. I used to laugh at that picture, now I laugh at this one!

Snow cap on a tiny bud

And on cactus.

We finally got Christmas, one month late :)

My cute niece

Cuz I can't help myself


With her mommy

With her banana

Look mom! pockets!

Reclining with Dora la Exploradora

Tikal

A few pics

The temple with REALLY narrow stairs, and one of the few you can climb on the stairs


Mayan carvings

The Temple of the Jaguar. You can't climb this temple because some unwitting (and uncoordinated) tourist fell off it a couple of years ago and "ruined it for everyone," per Nate.

6 of the 7 ladders up the side of Temple IV. I couldn't get my camera low enough to get all the ladders and avoid the sun. Nate's on the left of the bottom ladder and he's over 6 feet tall, so you can do the math. HIGH. Very, VERY high. And steep...

Sunset over the jungle on the last day of 2006...

All the suspects...

So here we are... Bet playing kissy face with her daughter :)


Sparkler fun - Chris, Nate and Lorien

Mom and Dad

Lorien and me...
Dad, Pippa and Chris in front of Pippa's Bar...

Street vendors

These are some of my favorite memories...

tacos with hot chili sauce, red or green

Pupusas with cheese

Blue corn tortillas on the grill

Hot grilled meat with guacamole in a fresh tortilla...

yum!

Guatemalan Markets

Now it's picture time! Which will be much more interesting...


This is outside the market in Guatemala city. The market actually goes underground to the left forefront of the picture and down the corridor at the left in the back and up the corridor on the right hand side. It's like a huge rabbit hole. Alice would have never found her way out.

I was enchanted with these little pyramids of fruit. I wish I had gotten a better shot but the man running the stand was less than happy with me for taking pictures...

During Christmas and especially Semana Santa (Easter week) all Guatemalans use this colored sawdust for carpets. During Christmas they create pictures around the Nativity scene in their houses and for Easter they cover the streets with huge elaborate carpets and then process over them carrying statutes of saints on Easter morning. The market had many stalls with huge baskets of sawdust in these jewel tones. Really gorgeous.

Fresh raw meat, any cut you'd like... I wish my picture of the chicken stall was worth posting. Hundreds of raw chickens piled in huge heaps with a little woman sitting in the center next to a scale...

Vegetables of any kind in rows as far as you can see.

More tomorrow...

Abroad with the Barrett-Johnsons and a cockroach

(Strictly fiction. Any resemblance to cockroaches living or dead is unintentional)

Ok, so I know that some of you think I take artistic license with my blogging and other of you, knowing only one or two of us, wonder "what could a Barrett family vacation be like?" So to all of you, here's a small snapshot of one part of evening to give you an idea. As your gracious narrator, I shall set the scene.

Scene: Dinner in a beautiful courtyard eating mediocre and expensive food - the very worst possible combination - with the entire family present.

Pippa started dinner tired and grumpy and past her bedtime, so by this point Bet is shoveling food into her mouth knowing she has about a minute and a half before the meltdown begins. She and Chris and lil' P leave soon after she finishes followed quickly by mom and dad, leaving Nate, Lorien and I arguing about something or other. I weary of the argument, tell them I'll meet them back at the hotel and leave. As I walk through the Parque Central I decide to stay a few minutes and write in my journal. The last words I write are "I should get back in before someone starts to worry." Well, too late for that...

As I near the hotel I see mom walking up the sidewalk to meet me. Hmm, that can't be good. Then I see Nate, Dad and Lorien all clustered in the doorway of the hotel. Even worse. Mom starts crying, Lorien's mad at me, Dad says "for the record, I thought you were fine" and Nate says " I already said, 'she has a black belt in Kung Fu. How bad could it get?'" Finally everyone calms down and returns to the courtyard of the hotel, doing their various and sundry things.

We're hanging out laughing and talking but trying to be quiet so the baby can sleep when suddenly the bedroom door opens and Pippa wanders out in her pajamas with her binky and Bet right behind her. Bet says "I give up, she won't go down." Pippa seems tired but determined to be out where the fun is, and who can blame her, so she wanders over to mom who gives her a toy. Bet goes back in the room and comes out with the last bottle of wine. She sets it on the table and says "I'm hitting the bottle..." and pours herself a glass. What a grand idea!

We all have a glass of wine and discuss playing cards. Lorien wants another glass of wine but we're all out so I suggest she go out and get another. She pouts briefly until she considers that it will get her out of the hotel, so she agrees. But now she needs an escort because she doesn't want to go out alone. Nate refuses, saying he's done being the "male companion." She starts on dad, who agrees but then gets distracted by the dinner bill we're trying to split up, so she looks at me and I beg off saying that I'm not suitable escort material, not being male, so that leaves Nate. He sighs, and goes with her.

As they walk out, mom start shuffling cards and then remarks that if we are all playing cards, we probably need another deck. She runs after Nate and Lorien to ask them to also buy cards, and when she comes back she has another deck of cards from the front desk. This makes 2 decks. While she shuffles, Chris cleans out his backpack and finds another deck, bringing the total to 3. Bet finally gets Pippa to sleep and comes out and says "what are we doing?" She wants to start immediately because she doesn't know how long the baby will sleep, but we don't want to get involved in a game knowing that Nate and Lorien will be coming back soon. or will they?

The minutes pass and we're beginning to wonder just how far afield they've gone for this wine. About 20 minutes later they show up, Lorien in front with a paper bag, nate trailing behind looking annoyed. Lorien says "I had to get it! It was my only choice!" Nate rolls his eyes, says "that's my last good deed for the night" and plunks 2 more decks of cards on the table (bringing the total to 5). Turns out that everything closes at 9PM, they had to go around the block to find a place that sold alcohol, the wine was too expensive so they bought beer. A liter of beer. A Liter of Gallo beer (the worst possible kind) and no limes, which is the only thing that makes it palatable. So as we survey this grim situation, dad asks Lorien about the limes and she streaks out the door, headed for where?, while we try to move the gathering upstairs away from the baby's room.

The next 20 minutes go something like this:

I go upstairs, find Nate on the patio assembling candles on the tables. I ask him where everyone else is and he shrugs.

I go downstairs, I meet Bet on the stairs. She asks me where everyone is, I shrug and say I'm looking for them. She decides to go back downstairs and check on the baby.

I go upstairs and tell Nate that Bet is checking on the baby.

I go downstairs and meet mom on the way upstairs. She asks if I've seen dad. I say no but Bet is downstairs and Nate is upstairs.

She goes back downstairs with me to look for dad, we find Chris in the baby's room and Bet coming out, on her way upstairs.

She and I go upstairs, mom goes to find dad.

Nate, Bet and I are upstairs, mom is downstairs, dad is MIA and Lorien is on the hunt for limes.

minutes pass.

I go to the top of the stairs and see dad, he wants to know where mom is. No one's seen Lorien. And now, suddenly Nate is also gone.

Oh good Lord, are you kidding?

Finally Lorien shows up with a damp napkin filled with lime slices (where did she get them? Who knows. She's a magician like that), everyone assembles upstairs, we have a table and candles and beverages and Bet is starting to deal the cards when mom gets a look on her face and touches the tip of her finger to the table. "It's not very clean, is it?" she says.

Everyone picks up their beverage, and their half dealt hand of cards and Nate vanishes. He reappears with a towel and starts to clean the table. Thinking of the one towel ration, mom asks him where he got it and he replys that it's actually half of his personal towel (the other half having been sacrificed to bind up Corazon's leaking radiator or gas cap or oil pan or some such thing). Meanwhile I'm thinking "you had an extra half towel and didn't tell anyone and now it's being used on a table? what a waste..."

So the table is clean, the cards are dealt, the beer is poured and limes have been squeezed but now Lorien and I can't remember how to play the game. We get a brief refresher and half way through Lorien says "ok, ok, I get it, let's just play." Then she proceeds to forget to draw her first card and plays in the wrong order. In fact, she forgets to draw so many times that dad threatens to make her draw double the next time. And then she forgets two times after that AND denies it AND refuses to draw her penalty card! Meanwhile Nate is looking over her shoulder at her cards while she plays and saying things like "Lorien, I can't believe you played that card! What's wrong with you?" and looking at the rest of us and saying "I can't play next to this!"

Finally towards the end of the game Bet gets up to check on the baby, knocks over her glass, bends over to pick it up off the ground, then suddenly shrieks and runs for the patio wall. We're all like, what in God's name?? From the safety of the patio wall she yells "Cockroach!!!" and suddenly Lorien is in mid air and then over by Bet scattering cards all over the ground in her wake. She perches next to Bet and says "OK, that's it. I'm going to bed. I can't play anything with cockroaches around!" Then she and Bet start telling simultaneous long stories about traumatic incidents involving cockroaches on the floor or on their legs, Nate and I are looking at each other in disbelief, mom is clutching her cards and slowly drawing her feet off the ground into her chair and dad is laughing.

Finally dad, whose knees are killing him, hobbles over to kill the cockroach (may he rest in peace), Bet and Lorien refuse to come back to the table so we mock them mercilessly and declare the game forfeit and we all go to bed.

And this, my friends, is a night with the Barrett/Johnsons. Don't you wish you had been there?

As a small coda, many of us had dreams involving cockroaches that night and the only person willing to visit the "Cockroach Patio" after that evening, was Lorien. I guess the desire for a good tan supercedes any crazy insect phobia...

On the ocean, ya'll

So we leave Flores on New Year’s day and head down to Rio Dulce (Sweet River), which runs into the Caribbean sea and has a boat launch to Livingston. I tried to sleep and Nate drove. Three hot hours later we arrive in Rio Dulce, a port town in every way, and ask about tickets to Livingston. Well, it turns out that we're the only people that want to go, so we can charter a private boat for 800Q per person ($1 = 7.50Q) or we can wait around and see if other people show up and if we can get 8 people, it will cost us 100Q per person. Ok then.

We settle into the Café Benedicion de Dios, Nate has shrimp ceviche (bold man) and I have a melon smoothie and we wait. An hour later a little old guy stomps across the wooden planks of the deck, gestures to the dock and says ‘boat’ – which we ascertain means that there are more people who want to go to Livingston and now a boat with them and us is leaving. So we get on it and take off.

The boat ride was magnificent. Our first stop was a 17th century castle called San Felipe, built by the Spanish Conquistadores to keep the pirates at bay. Beautiful old stone, tall walls, lots of lookouts, the whole deal. All we needed was Johnny Depp crashing through the jungle on the run from angry natives…

All along the river the jungle crawls all the way down to the shores except for small areas that are cleared for thatched roof houses and wooden boat docks. Some of the houses were obviously nice resorty summer houses for rich people with beautiful tropical landscaping and private little lagoons behind them and others were smaller houses with women washing clothes in the river, kids lounging in hammocks waving at the boats going by and men fishing in dugout canoes. It is not the first time that Guatemala really resembled all those National Geographic photos you see.

As the river goes on, the banks get steeper and turn into sheer limestone cliffs covered with jungle vegetation, like tall green walls on either side of the river: Lily pads line the banks, pelicans and storks swoop low over the water fishing and the Isla de Pajaros in the middle of the river had an uncountable number of ducks roosting in the trees. The whole trip took about an hour and a half, including a brief stop over at natural hot springs by the side of the river, and then suddenly you are at the Caribbean sea and the banks of Livingston.

Livingston is composed mostly of the Garifuna people, ancestors of Guatemalans and escaped African slaves. So it’s more African in feel than Guatemalan. It’s also a port town with one long central road, hotels, restaurants, souvenir stands and very little else. The best beach is a boat ride away and the weather is HOT and muggy and sticky and tropical. It rained off and on the whole first day we were here.

We initially stayed at the Hotel California (I know, I know, but Don Henley lied, you actually can leave) where the rooms were small concrete boxes with overhead fans, cold water showers and about one million roosters on every side greeting the dawn, along with half the village outside in the streets banging on sheet metal at 7 in the morning on the second of January. Why? Who knows… Here they appear to tolerate tourists but have no interest in a personal relationship. Plus the Spanish is Fast and heavily accented with the local African dialect. Plus I was wiped out from the flu (which also got Bet and my mom, so maybe it wasn’t food poisoning… all of my apologies to Pollolandia) so I haven’t been ultra friendly or outgoing. It’s been a great place to hang out and read books.

Which reminds me, the only thing that reminds you that it is the 21st century in most of Guate is the Internet café on every corner. I’ve had a better chance at internet connection here than in all of New Mexico last summer, go figure. The other great new thing is that every hotel and café has turned into a lending library. Travelers come through, drop off their old books, pick up something they haven’t read (and the language options have been broad but are mostly German, Dutch, English and Spanish) and repeat the experience all over Guatemala for free. And if you stay in town, you just borrow from one hotel, drop it off in another and continue the cycle. I kind of wish people put their names, dates and locations in these books so we can see where they’ve been. This has been a lifesaver for me as I ran out of my own reading material several days ago. Of course the books options are freqeuntly limited but you know what they say about beggars…

So Nate and I checked into the top end hotel, the Hotel Villa Caribe, today – I just didn’t think I could handle the roosters for one more morning... Every room has an ocean view over the palm trees and a private balcony, there’s a restaurant with a huge ocean side wooden deck, live Garifuna music and I‘ve got nowhere to be. Therefore I plan to retire to my balcony, watch the waves and think about where to go for dinner.

This will probably be my last post from Guate, we’re leaving tomorrow for Guatemala City and I will be leaving for Tucson on Friay morning. However, I do have one more post that I’ll probably make stateside. Sort of a little snapshot of what it’s like to travel with my family, for all those of you who wonder how we do it J

Meanwhile, the waves beckon…

Tikal and the best laid plans...

So here I am at the Happy Fish, this time struggling with an off and on Internet connection, possibly caused by the morning of tropical storms. So who knows if this will ever see the light of day.

But first things first. Nate and I spent a pleasant day in Flores on the 31st, bumming around most of the day and heading out to Tikal in the late afternoon. We stopped so I could get lunch at Pollolandia, a division of Pollo Campero, the Guatemalan KFC. The drive was about an hour through the jungle to the park site and then another 15 minutes to the ticket booth and then a 20 minute hike through the jungle to the temples. Apparently they want to make sure you really want to see them…

The first sight of the Temple of the Jaguar looming up through the jungle is really impressive. The jungle isn´t cleared around the temples so you sort of stumble out of the trees and see this huge limestone construction. We climbed a couple of the temples and the steps are narrow (you can´t put your whole foot down on them) and high (each step is one and a half steps worth). It´s some work, especially when you consider that we are taller than your average Mayan so it was even more work for them.

We started with the Central Acropolis, two temples across from each other with the royal living quarters (they presume) on one side and some ceremonial site on the other. As with most ancient sites, we aren´t entirely sure what this was all for. All we really know is that there are over 40,000 structures (most still buried) that served as a gathering/living place for more than 90,000 people over 1,800 years. How´s that for a round up of relevant statistics? And it was discovered and rebuilt by numerous people over the last couple hundred years. I find this disappointing – in that you know that you aren´t looking at the real thing but rather a reconstruction – but humidity, moss and climbing vines are hell on limestone. I doubt they would be anything other than moss covered lumps of stone by now without some help.

The one big temple we climbed was Temple 5 – or 4? I think it was five. They have barricaded the steps to protect them and set up a series of ladders up the side of the temple. There were 7 ladders, each about 15-20 feet high, by Nate´s estimation (I´m horrible about gauging distance). All I know is it was HIGH and I had to keep breathing deeply and not looking down or thinking about things like getting foot caught in a rung and plummeting to my steep quick death. However, the view at the temple comb over the tops of the jungle trees was worth it. We stayed up there and watched the sun set over the jungle on the last day of the year, watched the monkeys come out to play and then walked back in the half dark accompanied by close warm wet humidity and the sounds of birds, parrots and cicadas. All we needed was red dirt and I´d be right back in Lomalinda.

And that was the last nice thing to happen to me for some time.

Two words. Food poisoning.

Stupid pollolandia…

I remember very little about the rest of that evening or most of the next day. I dragged myself out to the balcony for the fireworks at midnight on the 31st and went to bed half way through. We ditched our plans for a sunrise at Tikal as I could neither keep water down nor envision myself climbing an 8-10 story temple without something bad happening. It´s a traveler-in-the-third-world rite of passage and I´ve dodged this bullet for a long time, so it was just amusing that it happened to be on new year´s eve. 2006 wasn´t done with me yet, I guess. So instead of Tikal, we drove to Rio Dulce and got on a boat.

More about that in my next post.

Feliz Año Nuevo a todos!