Carole King comes to Antigua

I'm not sure that the news made it over to the states, but since we've been here, we've experienced two tremors -- that is the earth slithering slightly and falling quite short of a full-blown earthquake. The first one was in Xela a few weeks ago, during dinner, and we thought our host family was playing a joke on the gringos around their table, telling us that the water in the jugs were moving because the earth was. Tony and I went to school in New York and were used to the passing subways and traffic shuddering buildings and therefore thought our family's supposed "tremor" was a truck going by outside. They persisted, however, and I was let down because I hadn't properly felt the plate-tectonic-tremble and wanted another I could stand up and surf or something. But my family said that it wasn't common and probably wouldn't happen again before I left. Silly family.

Yesterday, after an afternoon of slipping in and out of travel agencies' doorways, Tony and I settled into a tiny cafe run by an American dealing in wine and cigars. First, I was amused, if not bewildered by the owner. This woman was 20-something and living the dream (of many) in Antigua, Guate., surrounding herself in Spanish, chocolate, Cuban cigars and South American wines, yet while we were there, she was lighting up a factory-produced cigarrette, eating McDonald's and talking with a customer about Coors Light and Budweiser through an accent I would guess came from one of the Carolinas. Ma'am...focus.

Anyway, Tony and I had just ordered our second glass of wine. We had been pleasantly imprisoned within the high-ceilings, exposed wooden rafters and colonial stone interior of the establishment by a sudden downpour -- ho-hum, I know. We had just watched the woman from our hotel's front desk hustle past the door when Tony said, "do you feel that?"

That time, amigos caros, I did. It was just like every account of a tremor I've ever read or heard of. This time, however, I understood. The earth just kind of...swerved and shimmied sideways, like a cartoon Latin lover sidling across a dancefloor to his unsuspecting female prey. It was awesome. Then we saw our hotel front desk lady run past the doorway again, in the opposite direction, and it was over. I threw my hand up in the air in what I believe may have been the "rock on" symbol in which only two glasses of mid-afternoon wine could have resulted.

Besides that exciting, pseudo-sedentary adventure, yesterday was fairly slow-paced. We visited a small but stunning art gallery adorned with the sculptures and paintings of a few exceptional Cuban and Guatemalan artists and roamed a local market (in reverse order). The market was not for tourists, and we were therefore spared the masks, woven bags and painted pottery that otherwise saturate vendors' stalls and blankets here. In this market, we found gargantuan produce and well-seperated dried goods displayed in fashions more similar to West African markets I had seen before -- that is in baskets on the floor, large sacks on risers, etc. Food sold included some of the largest carrots I've ever seen, beets, bananas, pastas, dog food (??), papayas, mangos, tomatoes, beans, dried and fresh corn and more. The outdoors were the territory of produce and a handful of flower sellers, while the corazon of the market was left to stalls hung with clothing for men, women and children. While it took some doing to navigate around the bustling marketplace, it was a great experience as sometimes your nose would tell you before your eyes what was to come next -- synthetics or strawberries, pots and pans or pineapples, cooked food or cuttlery.

Tony and I met Kathleen for dinner at a place called the Sky Cafe. The food was a bit pricey, shying from any real pressure to provide typical Guatemalan food -- something we have found ridiculously hard to come by here -- and was rounded with the ambiance provided by a couple who "necked" next to us for over three-and-a-half hours. The mysteries of the night included a) why they bothered ordering the huge plate of nachos, and b) where their margaritas disappeared to, as we never saw them come up for air. We decided that the romantic advances of the man were designed to prevent the woman from running up their food bill. Genius and effective, if not nauseating.

Today, we've just finished breakfast (mainly eggs, beans, plantains and tortillas in one variation or another and black coffee), and plan to wander through some church ruins, finalize travel arrangements for Honduras, where we hope to go tomorrow, and have some more coffee before returning to the Southern comfort wine and cigar shop for some more tremor-watchin'.

This said, I'll write when I next can and be back in the states on Sunday!