the longest day....

so it didn't seem interminable in a bad way, but we did more yesterday than i thought we could in a day, particularly in a country where everything runs a bit slower...

suzanne and i woke up in jabalito....at the CASA DEL MUNDO (must be said with a soccer announcer's voice....a la tyler). jabalito is another town along the lake, very small, with this amazing hotel. it's right on the water, built into the cliffs with all these amazing verandas and vistas and fantasticly deep blue green water.

we arrived the night before amidst a bout of crazy rain on the boat covered by a blue tarp because of course we were caught sitting at the front of the boat--just a bit wet were we. the casa del mundo was really beautiful, but to get up to this hotel perched in the rocks involved a lot of stairs and with the fall the day before those stairs were not my friends. i was amazed at just how tired both my legs and how thrashed my my knees felt just walking on friday...and that was before the stairs. of course there were no handrails (this is guatemala, not somewhere with codes) but at times there were rock walls that i could kind of pull myself up on. for a moment i wasn't sure my knees would make it to the top, for any normal person this wouldn't have been a problem at all. alas. i finally made it legs shaking.

dinner was family style and with multiple courses, very good, but we didn't have the best company....we got there 2 minutes before they said it would start, yet we got two of the last three seats and we weren't across from anyone. the people next to me were a nice couple from spain living in miami, but much more into each other than talking to me. the people next to suzanne were nice, from new orleans, but it was almost impossible for me to hear them. our night was ok, but certainly not spectacular.

BUT the next morning.....ah.
we woke up and went kayaking first thing. the water was amazingly smooth and we explored a bit up and down the coastline from jabalito. we then went into breakfast and sat with this guy from London, really fascinating ex-military, lawyer, who buys companies makes them more profitable and sells them. he knew a lot about everything, but can't speak another language for his life. he also told us of his friends living on the lake doing crazy things like waterskiing naked at 5am (the lake seems to give some people that desire) and rumours of a former hitman who was drinking himself to death in a fabulous house on the lake. james wanted things a bit more tranquilo so he had been in the hotel for 9 days. almost too fascinating to believe, but actually quite believeable. dinner would have been much for fun if he had been there. breakfast was fabulous juevos rancheros (with fried eggs rather than scrambled) with black beans, avocados, plantains, and a to die for smoothie - mine was pineapple and watermelon with fresh oj. mmm.


then a bit of time on the lake before we headed into pana (panajachel) to meet our friends marta and eliza (from spain and london respectively, also volunteers at the hospital, they arrived the same day i did...marta taught us all sorts of cool Spanish card games the other night).

in pana we went to the amazing coffee shop where i had possibly the best iced chocolate i've ever had from a guy who used to live in Mill Valley. seriously amazing. Then we went to the nature reserve and though we did see a monkey (mono) and a cojito (? kind of like a raccoon with a long nose) and maybe 5 butterflys….the highlight of the day was riding on zip lines through the reserve and over this jungle canyon that looked out on the lake. it was really fun and really beautiful. i was a tad bit worried about having to stop with my feet, but thankfully my arms are strong enough that i had no problem stopping. after the reserve we headed back to Santiago, watched tyler in a soccer game, and then had a fabulous dinner at La Posada. (the really nice place in town.) i had this fantastic roasted chicken with a kind of smokey barbeque sauce with tamarind and ginger beer to drink. i’m not a fan of sugary drinks, but the flavor of the ginger beer was really good. a nice kick. And then we watched a movie before hitting the pillow and sleeping very very well after the longest day. hay que aprovechar cuando hay tiempo.