Antigua and back home

(The comma is back, and so are we!)

Antigua is a much friendlier place for American tourists than Guatemala City. When we got there, Jacobo drove us around the town (didn't take too long; it's only about 100 square blocks) and to our hotel, the Posada Lazos Fuertes. If you recall our previous post about organizations to which we contribute, you'll recall Safe Passage, the organization that helps kids who otherwise would be foraging through the Guatemala City dump. They own the hotel we stayed at. Most of the other occupants were Safe Passage volunteers, including a church youth group from Maine we met. Makes for a noisy hotel, but quite pretty. The town is quite attractive, too. We spent the next two and a half days roaming around the streets, looking at jade in shops, and playing with Gus in the Parque Central. Good food and a lot of fun. The worst part of the weekend was trying to get Gus to bed for naps.

Monday at noon Jacobo came back to pick us up for the drive back to Guatemala City. At this point we were still planning to fly home the next day. Oscar was going to pick up Gus's visa at the embassy for us and deliver it to our hotel at 4. He did so, but soon after he left Rebekah's sharp eyes noticed that the visa had Gus's name spelled wrong (Guastavo instead of Gustavo). We called Oscar immediately, and he met me at the embassy again a few minutes later. By now the place was closed for the night but Oscar managed to talk our way back in. Inside they informed us that there was no way we could get a revised visa on Gus's passport before our 6:30 flight the next morning. Still don't understand why not; clearly all they had to do was change a field on a record in some database and reprint the form, but that's bureaucracy for you. Chagrined, I walked back to the hotel and informed Reb that we had to change our flights and stay an extra day. We did so, and prepared for another 24 hours of confinement (remember, we couldn't leave the hotel with Gus in Guatemala City).

Tuesday turned out to be not so bad. We ate at the hotel restaurant; we played around with Gus; we packed, and we had internet access again, so we called people via Skype. The embassy had our corrected visa ready by 9:00 am. Nothing else to report there. One thing I will say about our hotels: you don't drink tap water in Guatemala or risk gastrointestinal unpleasantness, so you have to rely on the agua pura, or bottled water. The Lazos Fuertes in Antigua recognized this and had unlimited free water available in those water coolers you see in offices. At the San Carlos, you had to pay for it: Q10 per pint. Not expensive, I know, but it's definitely a point against them in my book.

Wednesday we flew home. We had a long layover in Houston, so after we spent an hour in the Homeland Security back office dealing with immigration, we got to introduce Gus to my family. That was a high point, but just about the only high point. The second leg of our flight was delayed two hours, the first hour due to weather in Boston, and the second due to electrical issues with our plane. It was really rough sitting there, Gus crying and hungry in his car seat and us unable to do anything about it because we needed to save his bottle for takeoff so that he wouldn't have ear troubles. Once we did take off, though, he slept through the entire 4 hours.

And so we're home. Hotel life definitely isn't the best way to start a parent-child relationship, but I think we made the best of it. We can get him on a proper schedule now, and we can start to wean him off the sugar-laden Guatemalan formula and cereal he's been eating (seriously, the stuff smells like hot chocolate mix). It's good to be back.