Guatemala post #1

No creative title, just the facts, folks. Guatemala rocked. Seriously. It was the perfect vacation. With temperatures hovering near 70-80, nary a bug in sight (that is until we got to the jungle, but that's another post altogether) and a very favorable exchange rate, it was positively heavenly.

This is the inner courtyard of the house in Antigua where we stayed:

Mmmmmm. It was so very lovely. All the windows had shutters on the inside, so it was pitch black when we would sleep. We'd wake up to open the windows to the bright warm sunshine, which nearly made me pass out from the joy of it. -I think perhaps that might be over stating things, but now I'm writing this back in the freezing cold Utah winter and I feel like I would pass out from the joy of blinding, warm sunshine.-

One of my favorite things was all the Guatemaltecas dressed in traditional dress:

I usually try to ask people permission to take their picture, after getting lots of refusals I found out that there is a belief among some Mayans that if you take their picture you can use the picture of them to do them some sort of harm. This lady said I could take her picture if I bought something from her. I was all too happy to comply. You can't really see the cloth she's weaving, but it is really pretty. In addition to wandering the streets taking pictures of people we don't know, we spent Christmas Eve in the city. Unfortunately, our friends Kurt and Erika hadn't joined us yet, so the only picture we have of us was one of those -hold out your arm and point the camera back at us- type deals. Jeff got to do the honors because his arms are longer.

Christmas Eve was very non-Christmas Eve-ish. No tree, no presents (we exchanged ours before we came) and fireworks a-plenty. It was very different and very memorable.