Dream angel goes to hospital, leaves ghost cash

About a month ago I heard from my friend Carlos, an employee of Defensores, that he'd broken his leg in a motorcycle accident. It's incredible to me that he didn't break his head because it was a pretty bad accident, but amazingly enough he was actually wearing a helmet, which I'd never seen him do before. But his leg was pretty bad and he had to go to Guatemala City to have it operated on. But then things took a turn for the worse, because he came down with hepatitis and was reported to not be doing so well. Of all the people at Defensores he's definitely been the nicest to me, and was a big help to me especially when I first arrived, so I wanted to visit him.

A big group of people from Defensores were planning on going down there together to visit him, but I got so tired if it being postponed from day to day that I decided to go by my own schedule and just get on a bus by myself. So with that, I made the 8 hour bus trip down on a Sunday and then on Monday went to visit him at the hospital. But it turns out that the visiting hour is just that, one hour, and it's from 11am to noon. My colleagues had said it started at noon, so when I got there I'd already missed it. I felt like a dip-shit for not having managed to double check the hour, despite some attempts. So on Tuesday, I did the whole thing again, but I got there at the right time and I was allowed in to see him. The lady giving out visiting passes almost didn't want to give me one because she said that his family from Petén were coming down. I think they were expecting the other people from Defensores, who must have said they were his family to get access to visiting him, since she said the passes are pretty much just for family. I was like, "I just came down from Petén as well!" The only difference between them and me is that it's not believable if I say I'm family. In the end the Defensores people didn't show up that day, nor did his mom who is staying in the area to be with him, so I deprived no one of an attempted visit. He was glad to see me, though pretty lethargic and not looking so well. He hadn't been allowed to eat or drink for 5 days, so he was looking forward to having a big Coca-Cola. I had a hard time understanding him because he was speaking quietly and not very clearly, so unfortunately I didn't get a lot of what he told me. But the surprising thing I did learn was that he doesn't think he got his hepatitis in the hospital, which was what I'd been told. He said he thinks he got it from cleaning up some rotten food rations that'd been left at one of the guard posts Defensores keeps in the park, one of the places that I stay as well. I never asked him what kind of hepatitis it is. If it came from the guard post hopefully I won't have the same problem because I'm vaccinated against A and B, though I will also steer clear of rotting vegetables. I'd brought him a bunch of money to help pay his hospital bills, but his mom wasn't there for me to hand it off to her so I didn't leave it out of fear that someone would steal it. I figured I'd find a way once I was back up here, I've deposited money in people's accounts before and thought I'd do that for Carlos' mom.

That same night I took the night bus home, and got back to Flores at 7am on Wednesday. It was nice to be back. Perla had stayed with the neighbors and I guess she'd been playing with their two dogs non-stop because when I brought her back home she crashed out and only woke up to wander to a new spot and collapse. She was somewhat revived by walk time, though. Today I had to go to the Defensores office to sign some papers, and I brought her with me because the women who live across the street are the ones who gave her to me and they always ask about her. I'd been somewhat fearful that they'd see her and want her back, but the lady who was there just said that she looked great and was happy to see her. I got more news about the other puppy that'd died. She said it'd eaten a fish bone and died from that, but I took Perla to the vet after this visit to be deparasitized (we went because it's to be done every month, not because I took her to the household where her short life almost ended early) and told the vet what the woman had said and she was doubtful that a fishbone would kill a dog. She said that since the other puppy hadn't been vaccinated against a common virus which kills the dog with bloody diarrhea (got to make sure I work dog diarrhea in here somewhere), that's probably what did the dog in and the fishbone was a coincidence.

Anyway, after the visit with the neighbors, but before the visit to the vet, I took Perla to the Defensores office where she was universally admired (so cute, so pretty, so well maintained! :) ), but then something interesting happened. It turns out that two Defensores people did visit Carlos the day after I did, although only one of them was allowed to see him, this guy named Julio. Carlos' mom was there too, and she said that Carlos had told her that he'd had a dream that this foreign angel had visited him, coming out of the sky and giving him a lot of money. Apparently she'd been like, "Well, where's the money?" and he didn't know. Although I'd realized during my visit that Carlos wasn't 100% with it, I hadn't realized he'd been so out of it that the whole thing would seem like a dream afterward.

Sixteen hours total on a bus, two nights in a hotel, and plenty of time and money on taxis seems like a lot of fuss to visit someone for half an hour, but it was good to see for myself what his situation is and how he's doing, especially since I turn out to be one of few from Defensores who has managed to see him. Not as many people went as I thought were going to go, but that's probably for the best since hospital rules wouldn't have allowed too many people to actually see him.

Perla does Finca Ixobel

After a couple weekends of chilling at home and eating pancakes, we decided there could be other places to eat pancakes and packed up our little grupito to go to a famous hippie refuge, the Finca Ixobel. This place has the advantage of being only a 2 hour (extremely sweaty) microbus ride away, and they allow dogs. It's this big old farm with beautiful grounds, and accommodations ranging from an area for camping, to treehouses (little houses on high stilts), to the ultra-delux (though still quite affordable) option that we chose, a private bungalow with it's own hammocks on the patio. Very nice. The air was much cooler there, Perla was universally adored and could run around the big grounds unsupervised, and the food was delicious. We didn't take enough pictures, but these pretty much sum it up.

Giant Dog, So Big

Okay, I know this should no longer be mind blowing because of course puppies grow bigger, and since it's now clear that Perlita's no longer the sickly little thing on the verge of dying of malnutrition, nor is she a chihuahua, of course she's going to now be larger. But still! Look at that teeny little thing taking her first tentative bites of tuna exactly two months ago, in comparison to this giant hulk (okay, still quite dainty at around 15 pounds or so at the 4 month mark). It still blows my mind. It's funny because Esteban and I will look at her in the house and be like, "She's huge!" then we'll see her outside and be like, "So small!" Well, it is a big world out there and she is a friend to all dogs until taught otherwise. She's known around the neighborhood as being "juguetona," which means playful, but it also means she gets her ass beat by a few not so playful dogs around here. We're learning which ones, though, and staying close to intercede (hear that Negra? You better watch yourself!). Anyway, I just wanted to take one last opportunity to exclaim over her progress, and that's that.

Addendum: Yesterday I went to the Defensores office and talked to the woman who gave me Perla those two months ago. I hadn't seen her since only a few days afterwards. I'd been told she'd all of the sudden up and moved away, but it turns out that she'd just gone to Guatemala to take care of something. Anyway, she asked me about how the puppy was doing, blah blah blah, then after a bit I asked her about the other puppy she'd had, one that'd I'd seen walking around back on the day I got Perla, about her age but much stronger looking and with more meat on his bones. Turns out he died! They have another dog that is already a year old, so chances are that one will survive for a while longer. Of course this woman has also lost 3 out of her 9 children, sometimes there are not enough resources to give every person adequate care, let alone the dogs.

Delta Sucks Ass / Trip to Belize City

Esteban wanted to extend his ticket to stay here with me another month. Very nice. And it seems like it should be a simple enough affair to reschedule a flight back, though of course you're going to have to pay some fees. But it turned into a rescheduling epic, which culminated in us going to Belize City (5 hours away) so he could go to a Delta ticket desk and have an actual ticket printed up. He himself has said that he is glad he didn't know at the beginning that that it would turn out to be such an ordeal, because if he had he probably would have just decided to go home as scheduled this Thursday. Now that it's over and done with, however, it was worth the effort. So anyway, let's just say that having to go to a ticket office when the closest is 5 hours away to have a physical ticket printed up to replace an e-ticket and pay the fees does not seem right given how such air travel arrangements are usually conducted. And it probably would have worked out to have been about the same price (given what we paid to travel to Belize and get a hotel for the night, on top of the fees he had to pay to extend his ticket, plus all the money he spent on phone calls to Delta) if he had just bought a new one-way ticket back to California. But we couldn't know that when we left Flores to go to Belize City because the price they told him on the phone, the price that he chose amongst other higher priced options, was about $120 less than what they said they had to charge him when we got to the ticket office in Belize. So boo on Delta. And it turns out that this is not the first blog entry with "Delta Sucks Ass" in the title, there is a big community of people out there united only in their hatred of Delta, so heed that warning when arranging your next trip. If they offer you the lowest fare, you may end up paying for it in missed flights, trashed luggage, no vouchers or invalid vouchers (according to other blogged-about experiences), and/or spur of the moment trips to Belize City. That said, of course we had a pleasant trip to Belize City. Though pretty much the only thing we did was have a late lunch at a down-home Belizean restaurant that I went to with my friends Kim and Greg something like 5 years ago, then hang out on the waterfront. Belize City is not such a great place, but since I was there before on a great trip with Kim and Greg and we had a good meal, I still had some nostalgia for it that was nice to revisit, plus Esteban and I of course have fun together pretty much wherever we go. The only thing I was disappointed about was I was planning on a typical Belizean breakfast including johnny cakes, but because it was Sunday morning all the restaurants were closed. We ended up having ham and egg sandwiches in a Chinese restaurant/souvenir shop, though that place did serve us the best coffee we'd had in a long time. Another good outcome of the trip was that every 90 days I have to leave the country to renew my visa. I was just about approaching time to renew it anyway, so now it's done. Here are some pictures. I hope you enjoy them because Esteban says we're just staying home and eating pancakes on the weekends from here on out until he goes home. And in case you are worried, Perla stayed with my gringo friend Seth, and had a good time, though she now has diarrhea and barfed her dinner last night. Stupid lake water!

Perlarella

And when you're done out here you can get inside and clean the bathroom!

Summer blockbusters available here

Don't feel sad for me, stuck out here in Guatemala and missing out on all the summer blockbuster movies. Okay, maybe feel a little sad for me, because the other day we watched a bootleg of Hancock, and the sound was so bad that we were pretty much relying on the subtitles in Spanish to understand what they were saying. But at one point I was like, "Wha'? What'd they just say?" so we went back a bit and when the character says (not to give too much away) "My first wife died giving birth to Aaron," the subtitle in Spanish translates into "My first wife ran away with a yoga instructor." Huh? Did the translator not understand what the character had said, or did he just think that line was too much of a downer and wanted to zest up the comedy a bit? Anyway, these were the absolute cheapest bootlegs available, sold by dudes walking around with big backpacks of DVDs, so maybe now we'll buy them in the market where you can preview them a bit and check for the quality.

The Hustler of Livingston

This past weekend Esteban, Perla and I took a mini-break and went to the Caribbean coast, to a town called Livingston. There are no roads all the way there, so we took a bus to Rio Dulce and then an hour lancha trip to Livingston. Livingston is distinctive from the rest of Guatemala in that a large portion of its population is descended from ship-wrecked slaves that (to make a long story short) spread out up the Caribbean coast from Honduras to Belize. And the food's different too, more coconut and seafood than you find elsewhere. We ate a lot of seafood. We actually got denied in our first hotel choice in Livingston because of our canine companion (didn't think to try to pretend she was our guide dog, like the joke... "they gave me a chihuahua?!"), so we ended up in a Hotel Ecologico, as it was called, outside of Livingston out where people go to the beach and we were actually very happy to be out there, even if we did have to take a taxi to go to Livingston. We could swim right outside of our hotel, and water was bathwater warm and the beach had an extremely gentle slope. Lovely lovely. Anyway, there were a bunch of dogs around and one was this good looking young fella and he and Perla had the best time playing, but when we left the two of them alone he took the opportunity to go into our bungalow and steal Perla's bag of dog kibble! We didn't realize it until Esteban went to go look for Perla, and apparently she was watching the other dog as he was chowing down on her bag of food, occasionally trying to get a mouthful herself but getting swatted away at each attempt. Rude! When the dog saw Esteban coming, he grabbed the bag of food and went to an area enclosed by barbed wire that Esteban couldn't get through. Well played, doggie hustler, well played. He actually kept playing with her after he'd eaten all her food, though, so it doesn't seem like he'd solely been working her just to get at her food. At any rate, great trip. Photos here...