I ditched the Crown Vic! First thing on my agenda this morning was to track down a smaller car from Avis. Quite challenging. The phone number for the Avis desk at SEA-TAC doesn’t connect to the desk there. It transfers to a variety of national 800 numbers. Hit zero, you…
That’s all it took to make me realize how much I will miss San Francisco and my small circle of friends there. The Crown Victoria was the only car available from Avis. It’s the kind of car used by taxi drivers and the police. It is a boat. It is…
I took everything down from the walls today in preparation for the packers arriving Thursday. All my pictures and wood masks and posters. I replaced the relatively expensive polished chrome electrical faceplates with cheap white plastic ones that cost just $0.50 a piece. I have even taken down most of…
A vacation for me, a true vacation, is more than just getting away from work, playing with my camera, and seeing a new part of the world. A true vacation for me is also a vacation from thinking about the Middle East and any other news of the day. It’s…
I took a perfect picture today in the last 30 minutes of my visit to Thursday’s market in Chichicastenango (gallery), the last real 30 minutes of my vacation. It was of a young woman–maybe 15, though she could have been a few years younger and maybe even 10 years older–wearing…
No, not incredible: well-nigh infallible. I once spent four hours wandering aimlessly in White Sands National Monument, going a dozen different directions among acres of indistinguishable white sand dunes, and came out just 30 feet from where I went in. Yes, mind you, I thought I was 30 feet above…
I was out on the nature path by 7:15 a.m. this morning. I was actually weirded out: this was a very different jungle, and it was obvious no one had been on the path in days, if not longer. I was utterly alone. Within five minutes, I heard a huge…
It occured to me a map of Tikal might make it easier to figure out my wanderings in the park. To enlarge, just click.
After being on my feet for six hours this morning, my knees were killing me, and I was just generally exhausted. But with hours to kill and a strong desire not to pay another 50 quetzales for a morning hike tomorrow, I went back in (I had noticed one nature…
Ten minutes ago, I began to hear rumbles of thunder. The weather has been so constant since arriving–suny with some clouds, hot, humid–I forgot it was the rainy season. Now, there is a torrential downpour. It’s simply incredible. From nothing, to a massive storm in minutes. My bungalow has a…
