Hitting the three month mark

This was going to be a nice blog full of pictures, sadly, Blogger is not playing ball, so you will get my ramblings instead.

We've just got back from spending a weekend at Lake Atitlán. On the surface of things it was lovely to get away from the 'city' for a weekend, meet some new people and take a walk in the hills.
I can never quite switch off though... Like so many tourist places on different continents it is a place of stark contrasts. Hotels sprawl along the waterfront charging hundreds of dollars a night to tourists who want to get 'back to nature' whilst enjoying a five course gourmet dinner and silk sheets in their ensuite bedroom.
A hundred metres or so up the hill there will often be a village, a settlement developed after years of observing the variation in water levels year in and year out, rather than the inate desire to have a private dock directly from the French doors of your apartment.
And somewhere above the village there is a rubbish dump. A big ass ticking time bomb rubbish dump. A mass of the detiretus of two communities consuming with little thought of the consequences. Each community feeds the other, in a manner of speaking, their lives are so different, yet the result is the same.
I'm starting to sound a bit like a nutter aren't I? Don't get me wrong, I can hardly talk. My credentials are probably not that green, and I'm sure I played my small part in damaging the environment as much as the next person. And there are people who are trying to solve these problems, people like the Friends of Lake Atitlan
The lake is a stunningly beautiful destination, unlike anything I have ever seen, somehow I just hate to think that my experiencing it will go some small way to it's demise. Here-in lies the crux of the issue of being a perenial traveller I guess, we get to experience so many wonderful sights and sounds, but how far does the ripple effect go?

Both Sides of the Story

Today police raided several locations in the north of the country. They were looking for suspects in a case relating to the massacre and beheading of 27 people last week.

What did I do? Well I went to work, chatted with friends and colleagues over coffee, and went to an aerobics class. Not exactly what you would call living life in a danger zone is it?

Obviously it's not all sunshine and roses here in Antigua, (about 10 hours drive south of the Peten region where the violence is occuring) but it does seem like a world away from drug cartels and mass murder. We don't tend to go out alone at night, or carry anything of value on our persons, but I don't often feel like I am living in a dangerous place.

                                  The Catalan Shepheard takes a break

Another thing that I'm learning about living here is how to deal with the constant ebb and flow of people. I live and work with my colleagues, in a gated condominum. The fact that my spanish is still pretty atrocious, it's not safe to go out alone at night, and I'm not exactly rolling in dinero means that you form very close friendships very quickly.

Things change though, and as I find myself settling into the routine of living here, it seems that a lot of my colleagues are debating their next move. Life here at number 9 is significantly quieter without our resident Catalan songstress Eli, but she is moving on to bigger things and endless African sunsets.

I couldn't resist, an actual African Sunset, Chobe National Park, Botswana. (Not quite Ghana though)