Fail Morning

They can´t all be good days, I suppose. Today we had planned to go zip trekking and check out a local nature reserve. I woke up feeling like someone stuffed my head full of cotton and mucus, then punched me in the stomach, and Teryn appears to be having fever-like symptoms and barely got out of bed this morning. Mmmm, chills, sweats, and full body aches. Good times.

To top it all off, my attempt at being productive has also been a failure, because I can't get this computer to recognize Teryn's camera or my USB key. I also can´t figure out how to get the "@" symbol to work on this crazy Spanish keyboard (that one was copy-pasted). I even googled it and nothing works, so I think the AltGr key on this keyboard is actually broken. Also, the apostrophe is in a different place and every time I go to type a contraction it comes out looking like this: I can{t type!

Other than that... things are okay. We're in Panajachel right now, on the shores of Lake Atitlán (side note: it's definitely an advantage to have Spanish keyboards for typing those accents). The lake itelf is quite lovely (and massive), and we watched the sunset behind the volcanoes over the lake in the evening last night while enjoying a nice meal and some cheap daiquiris. If only everyday was so pleasant.

Today we took a mini-boat tour of a couple little villages around the lake, which we sort of got conned into because the ferry we wanted to take didn't look like it was going anywhere (because here they leave only if there are enough people). I was actually worried they were going to drop us off in a town and not come back for us, but our little boatman stuck around and was there when he said he would be to boat us to the next place. Thank goodness, because we didn't have enough time or money to find another way back!

So the villages were okay - nothing too special, in my opinion. The boatride was nice. In one village Teryn decided she liked a handwoven scarf so much we had to go back after leaving the shop (bad way to bargain, fyi). She asked if they had one like the one on the loom and they cut her off a length. Nice, but kind of bizarre. She probably totally overpaid but it was still only about $7, which means much more to the people here than it does to us. Plus she got a fine-looking scarf out of it. Unfortunately, the "hot springs" we were promised were little more than warm puddles accessible only by reaching an arm out of the boat we drove by (for a few terrifying moments I thought our boat was going to drive straight into the cliff). Totally conned. Or possibly misunderstood... my Spanish is not that great and his English wasn't any better. At any rate, we survived.

We're taking it easy tonight and heading for the country's biggest market tomorrow. Wish us luck on the chicken bus.

Also, Teryn is upset that there are no comments, so do feel free to post.