Partying with mis padres

For the past week I was tooling around Guatemala with my parents, so no time for extensive internet use. We had a great time, and I´m not just saying that because my mother is the most dedicated reader of my blog. I've included some of the photos my dad took here, but you can see all of them posted at
http://picasaweb.google.com/ljsuter/Gautelama?authkey=2Z9Rah3dQZY . I met them at the airport last Saturday in the wee hours of the morning, and from there we spent 3 nights at a beautiful hotel in Antigua, a former monastery called Casa Santo Domingo. Their first full day in Guatemala, we took a day trip to Tikal, the ruins of the Mayan city in the Petén. A shuttle picked us up at 4am and took us to the Guatemala City airport, then a few hours later we were walking amongst the ruins in various stages of repair with our tour guide Antonio. Not missing a chance to make a dig at the Mexicans, according to Antonio the Mayan ruins in Mexico that look so impressive like Chichen Itza or Palenque look that good because the Mexicans will use all new stone blocks and just rebuild the whole dang thing, while the Guatemalans use the original stones when available and fill in the rest with smaller stones, so it's obvious what is original and what's not. Tikal definitely seemed less reconstructed than Palenque did when I went there with Marion in 2001, but that could be in part because Tikal is so huge. I'd say it's at least as big as the Aztec city Teotihuacan near Mexico City (el D.F., yo), if that gives you an idea. After that blow-out day trip, we spent the next day chillin' in Antigua, then went to lake Atitlan for 3 nights. We stayed at the lauded Casa del Mundo, which all my peeps with experience in Guatemala said should not be missed. And they're right, it is a really special place, off by itself on the lake edge, with its own private dock, then the rooms are in various different small buildings built along a steep hill and connected with stone steps. At night, a delicious 3 course dinner is served family style, where we chatted with fellow guests. During the days we hung out in some of the other lakeside towns, San Pedro, San Marcos, and Panajachal. The area is reputed to have some serious cosmic energy radiating from it, so the towns are a mix of indigenous Maya communities and different varieties of hippies, from party-harty youngersters to mellow meditators. In San Marcos we saw a gringo hotfooting it up one of the paths with a big bowl of recently sprouted wheat berries, to give you an idea. I think banana bread in Guatemala is the equivalent of banana pancakes in Vietnam: it makes an appearance in the areas extensively catering to their foreign guests. And the towns of Atitlan are a banana bread bonanza. Friday night, the night before my parents left for home again, we met my friend Hannah's sister Janet Volkman in Guatemala City. She's been living in Guatemala since 1985 running missionary projects, which for the past several years has been a soup kitchen, providing 500 meals/night Monday-Friday. We did a shift there, helping to serve a very typical Guatemalan supper (or breakfast, for that matter...) of scrambled eggs, black beans, bread, and coffee. We didn't eat there, but I finally satisfied my resultant craving for those things this morning, when I had breakfast in Antigua. Anyway, bright and early on Saturday morning, my parents took off for the airport, leaving me solita, a little lonely gal. A quick trip, but we all really enjoyed it. I have to hang around the area for the next couple of days to have a meeting and finish up my tooth, so I decided to come to Antigua, which is safe like the upscale zonas of GC but you can find much cheaper accomodation than is available in the swanky zonas. I'm here till Wednesday, when I'll take a marathon bus ride up to Petén. What adventures await?