We arrived in Antigua, Guatemala, at night, in the rain, to a dark, empty house; mortar bombs and what we thought was machine gun fire kept neil from sleeping, but Hayley managed to nod off! It was the night before the local elections, and Guatemala is known to be politically unstable (notably one genocidal dictator in the 80´s) so we were feeling quite sketchy the next morning. However, we discovered that mortars and fire crackers where what we heard, and are actually used by the Guatemalans to celebrate, any time, any place, for any reason! Anyway, we met our family, Chochi (mum), Alvaro (dad), a son Paul (14 - who would play his one techno record, "dance with the devil," at volumes which made bits of our ceiling flake off onto the bed) and three beautiful
... read more