Ginna’s Travel Tips
- Always take more snacks than you think you’ll possibly need, in case you visit a place that underfeeds you overpriced food of questionable purity.
- Don’t look up at monkeys.
- Even if you’re so exhausted you can’t stand, shower while the water is hot.
- Don’t take a canopy tour if you have any need for your dominant arm within the next several days.
- Don’t try to take a close-up of a spider before determining whether or not it’s a jumping spider.
- Take a raincoat to the rainforest.
Last night I went to bed at 9:30, which I don’t think I’ve done since I was three. Throughout the night my tin roof was pelted with guava-sized seeds blowing from trees overhead. I later learned that the woman in the casita next to mine thought the thudding was someone courteously knocking to wake her for the sunrise tour of the ruins, so she yelled out to the projectiles, “Gracias!”
As dawn approached the avian and primate rainforest noises started, reaching a truly deafening crescendo – led by howler monkeys – as the sun rose. Howler monkeys don’t howl. They roar.
Not long after, heavy rain began so I stayed happily asleep under my mosquito net until 10:00, grateful I hadn’t decided to sign up for the tour.
After watching a pair of spider monkeys from my porch, I looked around my room for something to read. Here’s what I found.
At 1:00 pm, feeling distinctly underfed, I ventured through the rain to the hotel for lunch: black bean soup with a conspicuous absence of black beans.
A few minutes before 2:00 the van arrived to take us back to Flores and thence home. Once again the cranky turistas got crankier. At 1:59 a man announced, “It’s 2:00. Why are we sitting here? The bus is supposed to leave at 2:00. Don’t people understand the meaning of time in this place?”
Here’s our plane.
Frankly, I’d rather they didn’t put prayers on the side of planes. I’d prefer a good pilot, which is what we needed as we fishtailed down to the runway in Guatemala City. Pilot, Cristo, suerte, whatever… we landed safely. A nice man in a van awaited me with this sign.
After an exchange of a few words he came to the mistaken conclusion that I spoke Spanish, so while steering through heavy traffic with his left hand he swept clean the front seat with his right, and motioned me to move up there with him so we could talk better. Poor, misguided man. At one point a kid on a motorbike did something particularly dangerous, and I got to hear a colorful streak of language that included the words burro and estupido.
Back in Antigua, I picked up some stuff for dinner at La Bodogona, took a full-moon picture at el parque central and headed home.
Ginna Allisson’s grandfather, a very dignified old gentleman, took a train trip to Vancouver many years back. While there, he visited the Vancouver Zoo and was captivated by the Howler monkey display. He loitered by their cages for quite some time, howling (and roaring) at each passerby. He may have even thrown fruit.