Antigua: Circumspection

After more reading I found myself sitting near a fair German lass studying Spanish. After about three more of my chapters, a rather striking black man approached her and asked for a cigarette. She begrudgingly offered it up only to hear him answer that he doesn't smoke (forward of him, no?). The girl, it turned out, was Leah, a recent resident of New York City where she had just finished working for several years as an au pair. The man, I learned, was Stephan, a Belizian tour guide and pro diver whose first language was English. Rest assured, the conversation was anything if not interesting. The rain had let up so I left for a park I had visited with Lori.

For another hour or two I read rather gloomily until it got dark. When I returned to the hostel, Leah was hunting for me to bring me to a bar to meet a local guy she had met through an online friend she had made before coming to Guatemala. She had with her Stephen as well as a charming German chap she had met named Rene. The three of us followed her to a bar where she introduced us to Emilio and everyone hung out and got to know each other a little better.

After that is was off to a Salsa club where a former member of Buena Vista Social Club was playing with his band and some really incredible salsa dancers were doing their thing. The place was generally packed, but the way it was set up, it never got too ridiculously crowded. I hadn't had a chance to talk to Emilio at the other place, and it turned out he was pretty cool guy. He had grown up in Antigua and had worked as a tour guide, his degree being in studies related to tourism and its industry. Presently he was working as an entrepreneur and bartender while freelancing on the web.  He had me thinking positively, for the first time since arriving in Guatemala, about topics related to business, especially vis-a-vis tourism and even Antigua in particular.

Having exhausted quite a bit of my steam in coming to the capital that day, and genuinely buzzed about the fun evening I had had thus far, I decided to head back while it was all still aglow. About that time, Rene pooped out and with him Leah, so I took the chance to duck out with them and head back to the hostel. Back there, the courtyard was full of loudly-singing hippie travelers complete with guitar. Crawling into my bunk I wondered how I was going to fall asleep with them carrying on just below me. Luckily, rain began to fall loudly on the metal roof, eventually drowning them out and lulling me off into dreamland.

Antigua: Resurrection

Antigua can be decidedly glum when you're there the second time and its without your lover. Especially when it's pouring down rain. I cought a bus from San Lucas to Antigua and after skittering through its soggy streets, ducked into the nearest cafe to let the rain die off. It just so happened that this cafe belonged to the place where I was planning to spend the night. Coincidence? After getting a bed and locking up my things I retired to the covered courtyard to read.

Glancing at my watch I was dumbfounded to find it was only about 2:00 in the afternoon. If I so wished, I had an entire ten hours of reading to look forward to. I nearly finished my book and enlivening talk broke it up nicely. My first visit was with a couple of Israeli girls with whom I was sharing the table. They were kind and sweet, even giving me what was left of their challah (about half a loaf!), a kind of bread that told me is eaten at the Shabbat and which seems to melt in one's mouth. They were off to Atitlán, so I bid them "shalom" and continued to read.

After about an hour I found myself chatting with a couple of Seattle-ites, clearly best friends, one of whom was an Oceanography grad at CW. Both of them had done their undergrad at UC and were now out to see more of the hemisphere. I described to them my misadventure outside Patzicía and they were duly impressed. It turned out they were waylaid by the same event.