Tucson monsoons.

The last week or so we have gotten heaps of rain in Tucson - some days with over one inch in a single downpour - and the river one block from my house gets pretty large and in charge when that happens. Here you can see the giant wave that was just at the end of my street in the wash.

The other thing that happens when it rains this much is all the garbage of the last few months that has ended up in the washes from roads, drainage, and other foul unspeakable places, is flushed down the river - or sometimes as we see here accumulated together as a wondeful reminder what a dirty wasteful society we are (brought you to by Burger King and Furr's Family Dining). Mmmm....

And here is a mediocre 22 second video of what it looked like last evening after a pretty intense downpour. Remember, for those of you not from Tucson, there is usually only a trickle to no water at all in this wash. It is probably at least 12 feet deep in this video. The quality is only so-so as it was taken with just a regular camera, but you get the idea. (This is my first Youtube video ever. I know it is not that great, but do you think that my brother will become famous now? Man he owes me big time...)

Unruly chickens on the homefront.

It turns out, that leaving five chickens in the care of one's brother, is a little like sending children to stay with the Grandparents. While we were traveling in Guatemala, my brother Chris managed to teach all five of the chickens - Cracker included - to fly right over their admittedly short fence and browse through the gardening section of my backyard like it was the free library of edible books and appetizer periodicals. Everything from the black eyed peas to the purple wandering jew have been razed by a shotgun blast of hen beaks. And every morning the posse-of-five-non-egg- laying-hens ventures farther towards the front of the yard, where luckily there is little to entice them to continue on foraging. If they keep this up though, I fear they will meet a fate far worse than their dear beloved Chewbacca, what with all the stray dogs in the neighborhood...

During our time away, this five hen posse has also taken to roosting on the table, the chimenea, the fence between my house and my neighbor's, and even the top of my neighbor's camper. Since returning it has become an evening ritual to pickup the slumbering chickens from their roost of choice (usually the fence nowadays) and carefully plop them back onto the roof of the chicken house, where if it is late enough they will remain until the following morning.

I suppose this is mainly for my own state of mind rather than for their safety or pleasure, though I don't for a second really believe that they have the best sense for either of those two aims. Having been slow to fully recover from the intestinal fun house I brought back from Guatemala (indeed, it is the trip that keeps on giving), I have also been a bit slow to pursue any remedy for my wandering chickens/plant life demolition crew. Having made the (I like to think of it as a moral) decision to not clip their wings as it would leave them much less able to avoid predators (which technically could include me), I am left with finding some way to either protect my plants from imminent chicken invasion or a way to keep them from leaving their more than ample allotted chicken space at the back of my yard. I am open to suggestions, so please post them in the comments section below.

All in all I am quite happy to be back in the desert in time for the spectacular display of monsoon rains, thunder and lightening. After the traveling Guatemalan fiasco, it turns out that life at home and work is much less stressful than making health related decisions on the fly in some random Guatemalan town with a whole range of ailments between the four of us.

Hayduke, the defiant chicken queen.
(Pictures courtesy my anarchy-for-chickens brother.)

Goodbye Guate - for now.

Both Mari and Tshilo arrived back from Guatemala last night after staying on for about five days longer than Brook and me. It seems that whatever bad juju we picked up before we left stayed with them as their flight out of Guatemala City was delayed five hours for lack of a working air bag for the co-pilot. So they flew a new one down from Houston before they could take off. This added to the fact that they had taken a taxi to the airport at 3am for their flight. Of course they missed their connecting flight and took the next flight out, making their trip from door to door 17.5 hours...and to top it off Mari had also come down with amoebic dysentery. So now that we are all back I am putting up a whole barrage of photos from the trip. This will be my last bit about Guatemala for awhile, as it is high time I get back to updating you about my uppity chickens that my brother so kindly took care of while we were away.

Rooftops of Guatemala City.

Brook & Tshilo - we always knew where Tshilo was when he wore this shirt.

Whichever volcano it is that is near Antigua...I want to say it is Volcan Agua, but it could just be because it was about to rain...

Brook on a boat.

Tshilo on a different boat.

The boats of Monterico - minus Brook or Tshilo.

Mari in Nebaj.

My mother would tell me to stop making faces...I never did listen all that well.

Ixil weavings.

Brook, Mari, and an unexpected wave.

Both Mari and I thought this looked like we were a bit strung out, but then someone told us it was a good picture...mostly I think it is weird and that is why it is here.

Sunset at Monterico.

San Lucas Toliman.

One of the most enjoyable and relaxing parts of the entire trip (for me) was going to the quaint little town of San Lucas Toliman on Lago Atitlan. We stayed at my friend, Caren's house which is mostly just some rooms on the top of the roof of another house with some fabulous views of the surrounding volcanoes and even the lake. It was the four of us, as well as Caren and her partner Fili. We made wonderful meals, went dancing, did way too much shopping for the beauteous textiles that are so prolific around Atitlan, and generally relaxed a little bit. These are some of my favorite pictures...

This is Caren's roof house.

A rose that was just opening as the sun was rising.

Volcan San Pedro.

Volcan Toliman.

Another brilliant flower.

Some kind of dried up seed head.

Our Guatemalan Index.

Here are some numbers from our few weeks in Guatemala:

Size of our group: 4
Number of us who got parasites: 3
Out of whack digestive systems before the amoebas took hold: 2
Ear drums ruptured due to (massive) ear infection: 1
Painfully swollen left cheeks after diving: 1
Mushrooms in the gastrointestinal tract: 2
Toothaches: 1
Percentage of people who got colds: 50
Percentage of us who were stressed out at some point(s): 100
Minimum number of different visits to doctors, clinics, hospitals, and laboratories: 15

Ahh, foreigners traveling abroad! If only we had been able to find the relief that this public bathroom so brilliantly advertised...

Honduran chickens.

This is what chickens look like in Honduras...I know you don't care though - but you should.

(Mari took this picture for me while she was on the island of Utilla diving for eight days.)

Monterico morning interlude.

One morning in Monterico, we got up at 5am and took a slow boat ride through the mangroves near the shore. The water was perfectly smooth, the garsa birds were gliding overhead, and we even saw some chickens at dawn...

Guatemalan Odessey - a continuación.

...It was shortly after dropping off the laundry that we discovered that there was trouble in the ear department. Specifically that what none of us thought was a possibility had come true - Tshilo had a serious ear infection and his ear drum had ruptured in the wake of a torturous fever and screaming pain. Nothing like news of a loved one in pain and way-laid in a far away city to put a damper on the possibility of dancing. Instead our plans revolved around scheduling an early departure for Xela the next morning bringing gifts of clothes and more money to pay for increasing ear doctor costs.

That next day we found both Brook and Tshilo doing better than earlier email and phone message reports had previously indicated which was a relief, though did nothing to assuage the incredibly terrible pain and suffering that Tshilo (and Brook by proxy) had been through in the last couple days. A reality that is certainly lost in the electrons of the blogosphere and even to some degree on me as my own troubles centered around the necessity and lack of patience in traveling and nothing more.

The ironic part of this story is that at the very point that Tshilo (and Mari for that matter) were experiencing some long needed relief from their ailments, my gastroninstestinal tract decided to throw up its arms in wild protest to the introduction of foreign invaders, namely amoebic dysentery. It had been coming for days and I remembered the warning signs a bit like I remembered speaking the indigenous language of Ilom, Ixil, or like recollecting the name of a former classmate - I knew I should recognize why everything felt familiar, but I wanted to second guess myself at every turn. Well, there was no second guessing that repeated free flow from my bowels that Saturday afternoon. Everything was quite clear - over and over. So the next morning when Tshilo and Brook made their way to the Orintoringo, Mari and I made our way to the lab with a special yogurt container wrapped in a plastic bag and bound for the discerning eye of a microscope. In return I would receive a very formal and obvious slip of typed paper back, informing me that I indeed was experiencing an invasion much like Baghdad, though I would never suggest that the US military are parasites...Luckily my remedy was simpler than Iraq's (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it I suppose).

Armed with the proper (I hoped) dosage of Secnidizol (1000 milligrams four times every 12 hours in case you are wondering) and the satisfaction that I was killing just about every form of intestinal flora my body possessed, I passed much of the rest of the day watching whatever non-dubbed television I could find.

The next few days were blessed with the most relaxation and calm that we would experience in the two and a half weeks together traveling in Guatemala. We left the mountains of Xela for the bland sand beaches of Monterico. Tshilo's ear continued to heal with only comparatively mild concern for its status, little by little my amoebas faded into the distance, and for the time being no one else took ill. Here are a few pictures...

Tshilo in the back of the pickup on the way to Monterico.

We had to cross water to get to the beach, through mangroves, reeds, and garsa birds...

It was so hot I couldn't always take pictures in color. One might say it was hotter than the inside of a live chicken...but it wasn't - it just felt that way.

Poolside at Hotel Delphin on our last day.

Guatemalan odessey.

There are few things more familiar in Guatemala for me than amoebic dysentery. So it wouldn´t be a complete trip this beautiful country if I didn´t have a frequent relationship with the various bathrooms of the country. It is a little like what I imagine going to one´s highschool reunion might be like - all too familiar and you wish is wasn´t. But I am getting ahead of myself, because so much more has happened than you can possibly imagine in the last week and a half that I need to start from the beginning.

First of all here are the necessary players:

Me - your wandering chicken man who like it or not ogles all the various chickens that we see along the way bearing the brunt of most of the jokes from all my fellow travelers; Mari - my permanently silly partner who inevitably keeps me honest even though she may not be;

Tshilo - Mari´s brother who will stop at nothing to give me (and everyone else) a hard time but will go to bat for you like no one else I know; and Brook - Tshilo´s partner, who gracefully puts up with all of us and when you least suspect it will pull one of her own jokes out and leave you jaw-dropped in shock. It is fabulous company.

Brook and I arrived in Guatemala City on a Saturday just in time to find out that some of my friends had clashed with the police over the celebration of military day. We proceeded to hang out in the city until Monday when Mari and Tshilo arrived in the evening and promptly informed us that they needed to see a doctor as the left side of Mari´s face had swollen up do to pressure from diving in Honduras the previous week and Tshilo´s left ear was giving him a lot of pain. Looking back on that moment now, I can see all of the plans we had set up calmly scurry through the open window never to be seen again no matter how we tried to chase them. Over the next few days we visited the Red Cross, two hospitals, two clinics, and numerous pharmacies, in at least three different cities and towns looking for increasingly better and more informed diagnosis. We were evidently short on luck in this department and all roads eventually led back to Tshilo really needing to see an ear specialist (in Spanish this is Orintoringo - try and say THAT five times fast). Naturally we were not in one of two places in the entire country where this was possible, but instead in Nebaj, a mountain pueblo close to where I had lived for a year in 2001-2002. The decision was made that Brook and Tshilo would head to Xela in search of an Orintoringo and Mari and I would go on to Ilom where I had lived for a one night visit. Thus began a series of events that would nearly reach epic proportions...

(Nebaj from our hotel room balcony - this sounds fancier that it was.)

Brook and Tshilo left in the afternoon from Nebaj, leaving Mari and me to relax and enjoy the quaint beauty of Nebaj. Distracted by a market filled with beautiful weavings and other assorted items we passed that day quite quickly. That evening while sitting at dinner our table began to shake ever so slightly until our chairs were also shaking. Looking around our neighbors at next table responded with ¨yup, it´s an tremor.¨ Very strange feeling for sure. We later heard it was a 6.0 earthquake with an epicenter somewhere near Chiapas, Mexico.

The next day we bounced off in a pickup at 9am bound for Ilom. Our plan was to stay for only one night, both knowing it would never be long enough and not wanting to be a burden as we would be staying at people´s houses. It was a Friday and our plan was to leave the next morning from Ilom to rendezvous with our other two fellow travelers in Guatemala City. A simple enough plan. A three hour trip lasted until close to 2pm due to slow going on a road often plagued with landslides, especially during the rainy season such as in full blast now. The most interesting item we found out during our pickup trip arrival was that the rides from Ilom to Nebaj now leave at 3am every morning meaning we would have somewhere around 12-13 hours total time to spend in the town I had lived in form nearly a year. It would be a test of creativity for our abilities to not only pass by all the necessary homes of people I wished to see, but a test of our ability to endure cup after cup of atol, coffee, juice, or whatever other drink would surely be generously but forcefully offered to us with each visit. All in a very short time. I was not sure it was humanly possible.

Going back to a place that was once so familiar - I had lived in Ilom for nearly a year as an international human rights accompanier - is a long disjointed bought of dejá vu. We dismounted from the back of the pickup and not more than 100 meters along the road we were greeted and offered a well needed lunch of black beans, tortillas and chile. There are few things I am sure of in this life, but one that I have no doubt in my mind about is this: the tortillas of Ilom are the best in there ever were. They are nearly the size of my hand, thick and flavorful, made of nothing but generations old corn grown on the slopes around the community. We couldn´t stay long after lunch. They were preparing for some political rally as the elections were ever nearer, and we hadn´t even arrived at where we hoped to stay the night.

The afternoon blew by and though I would have loved to see everyone I had shared meals with and worked alongside, it was somewhat fortunate due to our very limited time that not everyone was home when we passed by. In the end, no time is enough to elapse the gulf between my ability to come and go as I please and the impossibility for the opposite to happen. As the day wore on and we tried our best to pace ourselves and enjoy the quality of our company it was ever present in my mind that we were going to be getting up around 3am in order to get on a pickup back to Nebaj and then another seven hours to Guatemala City to meet Brook and Tshilo. At some point during that day I assured Mari that the family we were staying with would go to bed shortly after 8pm, as that is how I had remembered it from my time there. It was as we were finishing dinner that we were informed that their son was using the house we were staying in to show movies at night - every night in fact - and that an 8pm bedtime we were looking forward to in anticipation of our crazy early start would be interrupted by about 30 young boys watching a kid ninja movie dubbed into Spanish. Awesome. So there we were, after eating the best handmade tortillas ever to have graced the universe all by firelight, desert for us and the Ixil youngsters was dubbed karate for Q1 each with generator fumes wafting in from just outside the door. The world is certainly a strange place.

Sleep finally came, and quickly, just as I set the alarm for 2:47am and trying not to think too much about it. In fact, we had been told that if anyone heard one of the several pickups that leaves at various times, they would be sure to wake us up. And suddenly it was 2am and we were woken. Somehow, the first thing to arrive in my slow working mind was ¨this is NOT 3am¨ and therefore not fair. All the while, Mari and I were tying our shoes and stuffing the sleeping bag into the backpacks. A quick look to see if we missed anything in the deserted movie theatre/sleeping quarters and out the door we scooted, down the rock steps and into another pickup not more than 12 hours after having arrived. It struck me that somehow leaving in the middle of the night suited better with such a short trip as I didn´t have time to think about feeling bad for leaving already. Selfish, but a tad realistic perhaps.

Feeling sorry for all the souls that were getting woken up as the pickup repeatedly blared its horn, we bounced up the dirt road through Ilom. Next to me was a young guy I had played soccer with in the afternoons and on Sundays. Even in the darkness we quickly recognized each other and began making small talk about soccer and anything else that came to mind, including finding work in the states and if I was coming back for good or just to visit. The cool air chilled our ears and our hands as well as we gripped the metal railing that is attached to almost all of the pickups in the countryside of Guatemala. Our driver clearly knew what he was doing and we were making quite good time. I began to estimate when we would arrive in Nebaj - just in time for fresh coffee at El Descanso accompanied by banana bread - and then eventually Guatemala - time to take our clothes to the laundromat, relax, shower, and later go out dancing. I even began to feel happy about our 2am departure that had left me grumbling a bit inside at first, and mentioned it to Mari. She later told me that she thought me saying something like that was a bad idea, but at the time didn´t mention it.

Within an hour we had covered a bunch of ground and had arrived at the first small village we would go through. In my mind, simply a marker of where we were and how much farther we had to go. We stopped behind another pickup and our driver hopped out and entered the only lit building. A minute later he emerged and said off handedly, ¨we can´t get through, time to sleep.¨ Now, I have heard lots of random excuses and reasons for not arriving on time or sitting around waiting in Guatemala, but this was said in such a simple, plain way that for some reason it didn´t register. When I asked if he was serious, he told me yes and that there had been a big landslide and no one was getting through until the backhoes began working again (there had been a significant amount of work done on the road due to a giant hydroelectric project being undertaken between where we currently were and Ilom.) It was 3am. Clearly no backhoe operator was going to be working until at least 7am, which was when I was supposed to be drinking coffee and eating banana bread. In my head, I rejected the idea and at the same time reached for my backpack to pull out the sleeping bag. It was the reverse of an hour earlier only this time in the back of a pickup with seven other people, and setting an alarm would not mean it was time to go. At no point in our trip was it more evident to me that I had forgotten the necessary patience for travel in Guatemala during my three years in the states.

Somehow we slept. Mostly I slept to not think about the fact that we were stuck. And if I had seen the actual landslide at that time, I would have realized that there was really nothing we could do. Sometime shortly before we began moving but after the sun was lighting the low cloud cover overhead, we found out that there had been another landslide somewhere behind us and cars were not getting through there either. Now we weren´t even going back, at least not for a while. I told Mari I had wanted her to have the full Guatemalan experience and that it had taken a lot for me to arrange all of this, so I hoped she was grateful. She grumbled and looked barely amused.

(This is Mari looking at me skeptically, though at a different time. It happens often.)

We moved on, and about 20 minutes ahead we arrived at the sight where we discovered a slide 75 meters across and three times that from top to bottom. The angle of the slope was more than 45 degrees in the middle. We weren´t even going to be able to walk across and get into one of the many pickups on the far side that were also lined up looking longingly as we were. The most convenient piece of the entire situation was that by luck, fortune, or fate the slide had taken place with a backhoe on either side. As we arrived at the site, the drivers were both tossing aside their cigarettes and firing up the monstrous machines that I have never been more grateful to see.

Miraculously, and with little fanfare, less than two hours later there was a passable road. By this time, the lines on each side had grown (meaning the other slide behind us had also been cleared). For better or worse, we were one of the first cars across and we passed without incident. It felt like a lifetime ago that we had roused ourselves from the wooden bed in Ilom. Very quickly we would find ourselves in the town of Nebaj, sleepy and a bit disoriented. Foregoing coffee in lieu of a quick getaway towards the capital city, we got some banana bread to go, used a well needed restroom and jumped in the first micro-bus towards the city of Quiché, halfway to Guatemala City thinking to myself that we were practically home free...an hour later the bus overheated, gurgling water as it spewed out of the engine and onto the now hot pavement. This time there was no waiting to be done. The bus was not going anywhere for some time, but we surely were. Backpacks in hand, we quickly paid the driver for the distance we had traveled and luckily flagged down another before the other passengers of our steaming bus and away we went. It was the last of our traveling worries that day. At 4:30pm that same day we arrived at my friend Caren´s house in Guatemala City where we were to meet the other half our party of four. Fourteen and a half hours after we had left, and one pickup, two micro-buses, one chicken bus, and a taxi later, we were grumpily unpacking our bags to try and make that early morning dream I had of washing clothes a reality. What would not become a reality would be the dancing and the meeting up with Brook and Tshilo...

Back after three years...

Well I don´t know what to say. Three years is nearly too long to comment. The monsoons have arrived in Guatemala and the days are interrupted by a dousing of moisture that hangs in the air somewhere between refreshment and stickiness. The city bustles like it always has and the shopkeepers are the same and different all at once. With the presidential elections only a few months away there is a tangible electricity in the air over who might win and what real effects that will have. There is never a good choice for president in Guatemala, and meanwhile celebrations of the very military that is responsible for a holocaust against her own people go on in what looks like a police state and is clearly a descent into the horrific past all the while forgetting the terror that gripped the country not so long ago. We have been in the city for two nights now and we are itching for a departure to the mountains and the winding roads of the countryside. I don´t know how easy it will be to download photos while here but I will certainly try. For now, follow the link on the word ¨celebrations¨ and you will get a great idea of what takes place in this slice of the world. (We happen to be staying at James´s the photographer´s house so I can´t but help shamelessly plug his blog, never mind that he has incredible pictures.)