La Casa del Mundo and San Pedro de la Laguna

We had four wonderful days in La Casa del Mundo in Jaibailito, although I apologize for the long delay between our messages. (Note to Kerri, Cathy, Dolores, and Jenny - I´ve included you in this message, and can add you to our list which many of our friends read. Let me know if you would prefer not having these missives. You can decide after reading this one I guess, lol.)

You already know that we arrived in La Casa safely, and that we even met some wonderful people there, but it was more than that. We had a great time, with good people with whom we seemed to share some real camaraderie, and not just folk met on the road. I guess it was cemented on January 20th when I met Kerri and Jenny down at the water for our first 7:30 am swim. It was Kerri´s birthday and it was a promise we´d made and of course must keep. She was in first (not her first time) but Jenny and I took a little longer to commit to the water - that first bracing brisk plunge made us odd converts to the pleasures of the waters of Lago de Atitlán. Kerri says it´s therapeutic - maybe, but it was certainly shockingly cold for the first moments in. Remember that this water is about 600 feet deep just a few meters out from the shore. And a 1000 feet deep further out. Little surprise that the temperature was a little shocking. But in moments that water had become an inviting silky pleasure. I even went back at 11:00 am for another swim. And joined our merry band at 7:30 am for the next two days we were there too, although it wasn´t till after the first I learned that part of the ritual was to stop off at the restaurant for a coffee on the way down. That was just nice. (Jenny christened us the Lago de Atitlán Sociedad Aquatico (LASO), and we will be that forever now.

As well as the wonderful opportunity we had to bond in the lake our meals were as pleasureable. Our second evening we had a great time together along with several others at the resort, helping the continued celebration of Kerri´s birthday. We ate well at all our meals too - they were always four courses, and each night was very different from the one before. Delicious food. We ate Thai one night, Guatemalan another, but since the old memory is going, at the moment, the other two meals are just a blend of good food, good wine, good conversation and sympatico!

Of course we did go off and do things on our own. I casually suggested on our second day that we could walk to Santa Cruz, the next village to the left of our place. Our other intrepid band members had done it the day before and even said the hill was a killer, but I didn´t get the significance of that until we did it ourselves. Yeah, the walk along the hillside, with sometimes a very narrow strip of path to stand on (a foot wide?) was daunting, but hey, it wasn´t that bad. Until we decided we should walk up into the village instead of just hang out at the pier. Oh, my, god! The hilltop villages in Spain and Italy must be jealous of that hill. And as we went up this paved, bare, unshaded slope, we kept being passed by tuk-tuks - (hey you guys back there at La Casa - ya coulda told us, lol.)

But we did it. And were glad we did. There were no child labour events happening the day we walked up, but the church at the top has some fascinating statuary - including a Santiago, to remind us of our camino plans for Spain. Certainly if we stayed here at La Casa for the whole time we are away we would be ready for the hills and the long walks of the Camino. Going up and down the steps four or five times a day, to our room, to the restaurant, to the swimming deck, and our little walks to Jaibalito and Santa Cruz we would be guaranteed to both get ourselves fit and to lose that excess weight we have acquired this past year.

We felt great sadness when we left the Casa to continue on our way. With our departure on the same day as Jenny and Cathy, we left Kerri to fend for herself. But she is such a wonderful person that we know she can make friends in an instant. Hugs Kerri.

We left yesterday for San Pedro de la Laguna. We thought we needed to see more of the lakeside, so we reluctantly headed off. The boat trip over was fun; I had a good conversation with the 15 year old boatboy who was coolness personified, but also smart. I hope he makes his way in the world with great success. We arrived at a sensible hour and found a cheap but comfortable hotel very quickly, then set off to have something to eat for lunch. We walked along the rough path that passes for a road on the little maps we´ve seen - there are real roads here, but these are just dirt tracks, but they did take us along to a really lovely restaurant with a Spanish chef from Barcelona who fed us tortilla de Espaná and Jamon Serrano - now that was a surprise and of course another lovely memory of Spain for us to indulge in.

Following lunch we walked some more, through cornfields with corn actually growing in them (not all the corn fields are in growth) and in a couple of places big swathes of fennel which gave off that wonderful scent of licorice when we brushed them. Mmm. I haven´t seen any sign of fennel on the menus - I wonder what they do with it.

We ate well last night, tuna with a lovely herbed sauce for me, with tiny new potatoes stirfried with mint. Then we went back past the coffeed processing plant which is just across the road from us which at that later hour was in full swing. I have to tell you that whatever is going on, the smell off that plant is not pleasant. I can´t figure out if the smell is from the coffee skins which are being husked off, or whether they are using some chemical to process it. But it´s not pleasant. At least in our room the wind seems to be going the right way.

Today wasn´t my best day though. I woke up this morning, after feeling under the weather last night and knew I had some bug or other. My throat and my chest both hurt when I cough and I had a really bad headache. We are hoping this doesn´t interfere with our plans. I took aspirins twice today but they never touched my headache, so at four o´clock I broke down and took some of my emergency supply of tylenol3, which seems to have helped a lot. I don´t feel quite as feverish, although maybe staying in bed from 11:00 am till 4:00 pm helped that too.

We have booked tickets on a shuttle tomorrow morning that leaves at 9 am for Antigua. We have decided to skip going to Pana - because when we drove through it on our way to the lake we were not at all impressed at how much it had grown and over gringoed - and it was bad enough the last time I was here 18 years ago. We have booked the same hotel for tomorrow night in Antigua that we have already enjoyed twice and it´s likely that I´ll vote for another day to see if this flu-ey feeling goes away. I don´t relish the thought of going to Antigua tomorrow and then leaving the next morning at 4 am for the shuttle to Copan in Honduras which is really our next planned stop. We will be finished with Guatemala then and be planning our trip though El Salvador to Nicaragua for the next six weeks or so.