Well, it’s raining. So rather than ride, I’ll take a moment to update my intrepid blog follower, Ryan. I left you on the edge of your seat, ascending from tentative homelessness into an unknown of bandits, pyroclasts, and ice cold Coca-Cola Classic. We set off at 5 am to stock up on coffee and breakfast before we left Antigua and started hiking. There have been a few problems with bandits in the past, so we bring security along on these trips. In that past we’ve used an established tourism security firm, but I guess they were a pain in the you-know-what to work with. As the story goes, the last straw was when they dispatched a morbidly obese man with a shotgun to escort ten reasonably fit young people on an eight hour hike. It quickly became clear that this guard was a complete liability, and the trip was canceled at a loss. Since then we’ve used Lionel, a nice and personable 20-somethings guy with his dad’s .22, and Xela, the usually affable Rodesian Ridgeback who is losing friends at an alarming rate by menstruating all over everyone’s stuff. Here’s a picture of Xela:

We made it to the top and camped, overlooking Volcan Fuego:

Which sometimes erupts:

We woke up the next morning before dawn and watched the sun rise over Volcan Agua:

What this picture doesn’t show is that everyone is hungover from wine and altitude. A truly miserable group, at 5 am. However, we ate breakfast and descended, and spirits improved.

I’ve been marking my time in Antigua with a series of small accomplishments. First, it was not getting murdered at the airport. After that it was polite conversation in Spanish with Maribel, the housekeeper at my hostel and temporary housing. I worked my way up to tackling the grocery store, endeavored to venture into the open air market, and most recently, rented an apartment. I’m living alone (sort of) in an apartment rented by a man named Manuel, and his wife Irma, and their entourage of small loquacious dogs. I say “sort of”, because the American tradition of 24 hours’ notice before a landlord enters the premises is apparently unheard of here, and Manuel and Irma come and go as they please. This is by no means unwelcome, and after the acquisition of a Spanish language textbook and daily small talk with my new neighbors, I may emerge from the monolingual crutch that was bestowed to me by the American public school system relatively unscathed. Here is the view from my kitchen:

There are two volcanoes up there in the clouds, which are usually visible in the mornings. I’ll do my best to furnish a photograph in due time.

In the future, keep your eyes peeled for a post devoted to the nuances of the gastro-intestinal acclimation to the Central American lifestyle.