We are off again to sights unseen. This time we are going to one of Guatemala’s Pacific beaches. The guidebook doesn’t have much good to say about it, but we have some time to kill before starting our Spanish lessons, so off we go to the beach.
We had the folks at our last hotel make a reservation for us because we knew New Year’s Eve would be busy. They called all of their contacts with no luck, so they tried our guidebook. When they told us we were in luck, we were happy not to have to sleep on the beach for New Year’s.... my how things change.
We arrived at our “hotel” Jonny’s and after finally finding someone to talk to us, we asked if we could see our room. It wasn’t exactly what we had expected. There was 1 double bed and one single bed, no windows a dark low ceiling, bugs everywhere, an old wooden door that barely closed and a couple of flimsy mosquito nets. When I told them again that we had 3 kids, they said to put all the kids in the double bed...Happy New Year! Our driver didn’t speak any English and my Spanish sucks, but we somehow communicated that we wanted to look at another hotel.
Long story short, we got another hotel room with 2 double beds and a fantastic view of the ocean. (I will not mention the cockroaches or giant poo we found on the windowsill (definitely not gecko poop), nor the zillion mosquitoes that sat on our nets the whole night. I know because I was awake the whole night worried Reed was going to get Malaria .... oh right I wasn’t mentioning any of this). Jason and Lena went out and bought a whole bag full of fireworks and the 2 girls and Jason went to light some of them off. As it was still only 9 and we had 3 hours to go until midnight, the girls had a nap. At midnight when Jason tried to wake them up they said “No Way!” So New Year’s Eve 2007 Jason and I watched the fireworks from our double bed under the mosquito net on either side of Reed trying our hardest not to touch the $%#$ mosquito net.
And so we begin 2008!
