God drinks beer and smokes cigs

With all my vital organs back to hunky dorey after 10 days of Cipro, thank you Bayer Corporation, Heather and I are ready again to contemplate our wiley adventures. We slipped out of Xela on Tuesday morning by hitching a ride with a our new friends, John and Harriet from Houston, Texas, in their camper van. They were gracious enough to lend a hand to Heather and her invalid husband, saddled as we were under the weight of backpacks and such, and me without much strength. I´m learning to like Texans again, and the fat splendor of a mobile home. We four along with their sweet dog Brindle inched out of the city and up to a tiny hidden hamlet - San Andreas, backing the wide load into a corner that stared out into the Xela and at this magnificent whimsical church painted yellow decorated with somersalting fairy persons. John then tracked down Saint Simon and we had a personal visit with the great mayan god. He was dressed in Texas style with a hat, bandana, an open can of cerveza, and a lit cigarette fuming from his mouth. He listened to our prayers, but didn´t indicate if a milagro was possible or not. But from where things stand today, I believe in the dear god. After we embarked to Lake Atitlan with the possibility of riding with Harriet and John on their wagon train to El Salvador.

Anyway, we drove for the first night to a camping spot, they were checking out for the second issue of their book on RVing in Central America, a decent area that sat right on the waters edge of Lago de Atitlan. A huge natural lake, that is situated in one of the deepest volcanic craters in the world, surrouded by three sentinal dormant volcanoes that tower over the place. A nice vista to say the least. And best of all, as far as Heather and I felt, about three thousand feet lower than Xela and consequently much warmer.

We had a nice night with John and Harriet, and as I was still feeling a bit dodgey, we decided to part ways with them and hunker down here for a while and rest. We have rented a crazy yet beautiful room carved out of a cliff in the tiny village of San Marcos. We have are own bathroom and shared access to a cocina, kitchen, a necessity of course with a my delicate innards. You can only get to his place by a half hour boat ride, as the village is tucked into the side of a mountain, with the Mayan section of town higher up, and the quasi-hippy come lately section taking the low road, where we are of course.

Our amazing accomodations, complete with gigantic views of the lake and volcanoes, was crafted by a German fella, I´m learning to like Germans again too, utilizing adobe and recycled trash contruction (plastic bottles filled with trash) and composting toilets. He is also a genius with stained glass mosaics, they are everywhere in this place, covering windows, tables and doorways. Each is its own work of art, really. And to top it off there are no roads in this place, only foot paths between bannana plants, rotting oranges, massage huts, hustling juveniles, and many, many dogs. Today, we rented the room for a week and decided to use this peaceful spot to get back on track with our studies, sneak in a massage and head off to the orphange in about 10 days. And did we tell you, today, we actually got to eat a stone fired pizza with tempeh and pineapple. Thank you Saint Simon.