Buses, baby and babylon.

Whether it is an unwarranted sense that I´m tired of writing or just don´t want to be bothered, I can see that our blogs have become fewer and smaller in length. Forgive us, I´d say, because we want to tell you our sappy and happy stories but often just don´t feel like wandering into an internet cafe. It just isn´t or does not jibe or seem appropriate with our general vibe at the time. Expats. Humph.

It is official, we have the plane tickets, and we will be coming home on September 7. We´ll spend two weeks trying to arrange health coverage for heather and the baby in Asheville, that is if the great satin George didn´t axe that program while we were gone. We will hang out and see and mooch off of friends and then, hopefully, do a world wind tour of Maine, Indiana and California and possibly if the pocketbook sees favorably come through North Dakota and Seattle. Ah, money, burn it if you still have it. I will join my comrades in labor at the beginning of November.

After we left those impossibly verdant slopes in Chajaneb, Heather and I reluctantly returned to Guatemala City to do what all good citizens of civilization do, battle with the bureacracy. It seems that visa laws changed on June 1, for what I could only make out was little more than a money making scheme. The hassle, or so we thought, would be waiting three days for them to process the paperwork. But in the end, we found a decent little hotel and spent time seeing the ornate National Palace, fountains and cathedrals. All in a all, it went pretty fast except for the times when Heather´s nausea was overwhelming. She is tough, though, and besides the moments when I´ve already become shamefully jealous of the strength, care and time my new offshoot requires, my beautiful wife fared pretty well.

From Guatemala City, we traveled over five hours by four different buses to Copan, Honduras, a tiny colonial town with cobbled streets, whitewashed walls and tile roofs and if I may say so, a bit like an Epcot Center exhibit. Almost too perfect for Central America. Anyway, all of it in a green valley nestled by miles of corn fields, shadowed by the Rio Copan, and home to Copan Ruins, a 1500 year old Mayan homestead and our reason for traveling, of course, there.

Lodging was fine, 10 dollars for a clean room with two beds and a fan, with a shared bathroom. The food in this town was generally horrible, as it seems the case with all the towns where there will be lots of gringos. Try as they might, you just can´t make three thousand years of corn tortilla technology into a Philly steak and cheese. And you know it will be bad, but you are sick of tortillas and want KFC, and so you sucker in and curse the gods for this bad food after.

The next morning, we walked the two klicks to Copan Ruins, an ambling path past fields pregnant with tall grass and horses. The ruins were not cheap, 10 bucks a person and that didn´t include the price of going into the archeology tunnels or the museum, which we did not do. They were not needed.

We have been to four major Mayan ruins this year, and while yes they are separated by hundreds of miles, thinking about it last year I couldn´t but imagine they would mostly be the same. Stone, carvings, pyramids, same time different burg. How wrong it seems I was. They do look a lot alike, but they all have different pervialing feeling. Hard to explain, really. Chichen Itza, in Mexico, was dominated by a single gigantic and wide pyramid, much like they look in Cairo, and it seemed to affect you in a fatherly, motherly way. Protecting and snuggling you. Tikal seems to rise out of the Guatemalan jungle, like a warrior general and most of the temples, at times, feel like they are pressing down on you. I can´t say I was scared, but I felt uncomfortable. Tulum felt like the Mayan Club Med on the shores of the Carribean. And Copan, was less about structures and location, but the fantastic carvings. Hundreds of faces and hyrogliphics, beneath mountain like Ceiba trees. It was soothing, like a neighborhood. All these ruins had, at times, thousands of people living there but this was the only place it was still obvious after two milleniums.