Guatemala

We have recently been trying to make plans for this weekend. One of the things we want to do while we’re down here is swim the limestone pools in the river at Semuc Champey and swim through the Grutas de Lanquín. We really enjoyed swimming through the ATM cave in Belize and it sounds like the caves in Lanquín have a similar adventurous quality. Both of those adventures require relatively dry conditions, but the forecast for this weekend up there is for lots and lots of rain. We’re still in the dry season here, but the jungle can get rain anytime. So we can’t do that this weekend. ...

We can’t just play and eat all the time. We have to do something to pay the bills. Luckily, that something can be done remotely when there’s a good enough internet connection. The house we rented in Antigua has such a connection. It’s definitely not fast by our standards at home, but we’re able to do multiple simultaneous Zoom meetings without any trouble, and that’s our definition of “good enough” down here. ...

Last night we decided to meet at 7:45 each morning for scripture study before breakfast. I’m not sure how well that will work for me, because I’m used to sleeping until I wake without ever using an alarm. That usually translates to me waking up around 8, but there’s no guarantee. I’m definitely not a morning person, so we’ll see how it goes. I didn’t get to sleep last night until about midnight. Then I woke a few times due to noises and other things. By 7:00 I definitely didn’t feel like I slept enough, but it was time to start the day. Our two chefs were here and preparing breakfast. They cut up fresh fruit into big bowls. We had pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe, blackberry, and papaya. I sucked down a lot of fruit. I’m so in love with papaya. The main part of breakfast was “typical” Guatemalan. We had eggs, black beans, and platanos fritos con crema. I loved the fresh fruit. The eggs had a nice salsa. The black beans had a really complex flavor. ...

Brett and Nate like to punish themselves. They proved it by getting up early and going for a run our very first morning in town. It wasn’t a long run, but it was on the cobblestone streets of Antigua, which can’t be fun. A few minutes after they came back, Brett got a message from someone he knew when he was on his mission here years ago, who just happened to be in Antigua with his girlfriend for a cake piping class. ...

I didn’t pack the right attire for attending church here. I packed my usual Duluth Trading Company cargo pants and a dark polo shirt. I can get away with that most of places we go, but not here. They dress in their best clothes for church in Guatemala. I didn’t plan for that, so I found myself feeling underdressed. But we still went. The church is on the other side of town from where we are staying, so we started walking around 8:30 and got to church around 8:50. We wondered if they would be doing church via Zoom here or not. On one hand, it’s a little harder for people to get around, so, being able to do remote church seems like a great thing. But, on the other hand, we wondered how many people would have access to a computer and internet in order to watch church remotely. As it turned out, they have both. Church is conducted live, in person, and they stream it over Zoom. ...

Today was our first whole day here in Antigua. It was a Saturday and we didn’t have anything on the schedule. We walked around town, bought some ice cream, enjoyed the fountain in the center of town, and then met up with one of Brett’s neighbor’s for lunch. Adam just happened to be coming to Guatemala this week and knew Brett had served his mission here. He sent Brett an email asking what sites he should see while in town. Of course, when he heard we were going to be here at the same time, he wanted to meet up and say hi. So we did. ...

Antigua has continued to grow since the last time we were here. There are a lot of great places to eat. After a long trip to get here, we needed to eat (and drink). Before we could go off wandering around town, we needed to get settled at the house we rented to be our home base for the next few weeks. We toured the property, met the gardener and the maid, and decided who would stay in which room. Let me just say, this place is fantastic. We knew it would be nice, but it’s even nicer than the VRBO listing made it look. This is going to be a great trip. ...

Our layover in Los Angeles was just over five hours. That’s a long time to sit in uncomfortable chairs in a small terminal where almost everything was closed for the evening. At some point Brett and I talked about what time we thought we would be in Antigua in the morning. We were scheduled to land in Guatemala City around 6:00 in the morning. We thought that would probably be early enough that traffic wouldn’t be bad yet. We knew it would take some time to clear customs, especially with needing to verify every passenger held a recent negative test for covid, etc. We thought we would probably be leaving the airport by 7:00 and be in Antigua (20 miles away) by 7:45 or 8:00 – just in time for breakfast. We thought that was a fairly conservative estimate. We thought we had it all figured out. ...