The lake in Guatemala

is described as Italy´s Lake Como, but with volcanos. There are women selling chocolate cake and will come by as you are sipping your tea on floor cushions under a bamboo roof. There are hammocks everywhere, ex-pats and plantains. There is more than one tourist who bought a wooden flute and this, somehow, is very, very funny. Bright bags, little kids with firecrackers and hot vents in select parts of the lake steam out.

There are also old men talking about their favorite mushrooms. I´m waiting for the girls to catch on up, it was a long journey getting here, riding in the back of a Guatemalan truck with a bunch of men who thought we were hilarious, blue green secret pools, a cloud covered ride through the mountains, and of course, a bout of bedbugs for one of us in the hostel in Antigue (not me! I spent that night hanging out until way past twilight).

We still have a few days left here, and it´s more beautiful than I ever thought it could be, and then we´re off to Nicaragua where we´ll part with all the kids we keep bumping into and even one of our traveling companions and trek out to beaches and this time I swear I will learn a little bit at least, how to surf. I know I´m supposed to be learning a lesson, gleaning some sort of true self, furiously scribbling in my journal and becoming some sort of young woman. But I´m too busy counting the robots painted in my room and passing bottles over guitar circles and my inescapable ability to devolve into laughter about jokes that no one at all understands. (Are we the only animals that hold it (aside from domesticated pets)? I wonder aloud as a horse lets forth a river of urine on the volcano.) Right. No actual world revelations yet I suppose...

Until then, I am thinking about what we´ve seen and done, mossy Mayan ruins, a lava river of red, an inordinate amount of time spent with the Irish football team I keep running into and all the days I have left...