Hello all, we have survived the New Years festivities here but it wasn´t easy. We went to the city center of San Pedro del Lago on new years eve to check out the entertainment and it was quite a sight. A band from out of town had set up and we were treated to some great ranchero music with a horn section, two marimbas and enough bass to crack my sternum. There were three guys doing vocals and they all had the La Bamba look going is they danced and sang. There was enough hair gel to deep fry a turkey.
Of course the crowd was 99% Mayan so they didn´t exactly do the freak or anything like that. Mostly there was lots of standing and staring and drinking. The locals like to send fireworks in all directions, not just up, so by the end of the night we were pretty gun shy of anything more than a burning cigarette. They also don´t really care about pretty colors in their fireworks, here, it is all about the concussion. The result is that the city sounds like it has been under siege for the last 24 hours. There are massive explosions 6 or 7 times an hour. We hear a hollow "thwoop!" as a projectile leaves its cardboard canon and then about 5 seconds later an explosion identical in strength to the bombs used to check avalanche safety at the Alyeska Resort. Crazy. Another one just went off as I write and it´s the 2nd of January, maybe it never ends.
After the New Year officially arrived we headed back to our hotel and met a missionary up late and looking for people to talk to. He was from southeast Texas and we talked with him for about 2 hours about everything from the Devil to the breeding lineage of his pet Chihuahua Gonzalez who ran around our feet in intense fear the whole time. It was very strange.
Today we boat across Lake Atitlan to Jaibalito, a small cliffside village where an Alaskan has established a hotel (lacasadelmundo.com)with kayaks for rent and a wood fired hot tub. It should be good. Daytime temperatures are well into the 80´s now and at night lightening storms light the hillsides of the surrounding volcanoes. It is quite amazing.
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