Antigua, Guatemala & Honduras from the road

Antigua

Room in Antigua

Volcanoes in Guatemala

New Beige of old

New Beige in Antigua

Honduras from the Road

Copan

                     

Monday, March 26, 2012

Today was a pretty low key day in Antigua, Guatemala.  It seems like we haven’t had very many days on this trip where this little has happened. 

Out on my early morning coffee walk around the city I found out that the gas station right around the corner from where we are staying has the diagnostic equipment for the “maintenance required” light on my dashboard.  I thought that this indicator light might have something to do with the periodic truck troubles that we have be having since Baja so I got an appointment to get it done at 3 that same afternoon. 

Marcie and I walked down to the main local market.  I’m amazed every time in every city when we go to these things.  There is so much fruit, vegetables, dried spices, exotic flowers, live chickens, and so on that you can easily get lost walking around in all of the little rows and aisles.  We purchased for 1Q ($0.12 US) some vegetable that we’ve been seeing around a lot at markets but didn’t know what it was.  It’s dark green and shaped kind of like a puckered up pear.  But it’s not dried.  It’s very dense, hard and heavy.  When you peel its cucumber-like skin off it’s kind of slimy like the inside of a cactus.  When I ask people what it’s called they say something that sounds like “Whiskel” but I think it starts with an “H”.  So now we owned one but we didn’t know how to cook or eat it.  Do you eat the skin?  Do you eat the seeds? Do you mash it, fry it boil it, or what?

With our purchases we found our way out of the maze of the mercado and sat down on the upstairs patio of a small inexpensive restaurant.  We both ordered the vegetarian plate for 20 Q ($2.50 US) each.  When the food arrived there was something on the plate that looked like a boiled and peeled potato except that it had a greenish tint.  It was our mystery vegetable!  So we asked this young guy working there how to cook and eat it and we got all the info we needed. 

The daily afternoon rainstorm here coincided with the time that I brought our truck to the service station.  This delayed things for a little while but soon the rain stopped and Gunther the German took care of business.  Fortunately/Unfortunately the light was on for no reason.  I didn’t get charged for the service but I did get to talk with this giant dude Gunther in English about the problem that we’re having with the truck.  He thinks and I agree with him that it‘s probably a loose/broken ground for the electric system that’s getting rattled and disconnected when we drive over bumps.  He says there are “like 8” different grounds and it will take time that he doesn’t have today to check them all.  So no repair but I feel like I have a good grasp on the issue. 

Mystery vegetable was great. 

Tomorrow off to Honduras!

Tuesday…

…Was a long day but a good one.  Marcie drove us all over Southern Guatemala past infinite sugar cane fields and eventually we got to the Honduras border at El Florido with no mob interference or automotive troubles along the way.  There we had to wait in a line that was not moving for a while before some official said something about tourists and waived us over to a newly opened service window.  I felt bad about all of the locals that we were cutting but we were just doing as we were told.  But it turned out that we were not cutting in line at all but only going to the new window to get another form filled out and then returning to the back of the other line that was not moving.  Eventually though we did collect all of our official stamps, pay all of the official fees and we were on our way in Honduras. 

We got a large clean hotel room with hot water, internet and kitchen for 300 Lempiras (Honduras’ currency, 19:1 exchange rate with US) $15 US in the town of Copan Ruins.