Surprise encounter! Sometimes a surprise is good! We had pulled into a place to sleep and met some other travelers parking up. As we all tended to do, we talked and exchanged information about good places to go where other friendly people would gather. Given some vague directions on how to find some other ‘alternative’…
Category: L& D Life
An Interrupted Lunch
Donna said, “I know what is for lunch!” We had been making big pots of vegetable soup, but in light of the fact we had come to the end of this pot, our dilemma was, what to have? Donna had, of course, come up with the answer, “Bratwurst and sauerkraut!” This suggestion sounded good to…
(20) Traveling Sales
We left Arkansas, returning to Tennessee for a brief visit before hitting the road again. If this were a movie instead of the written word, this would be the perfect time for a montage of us driving and selling to little shops. There would be faded transitions of hours of driving, looking at maps, slowly…
(19) A Crystalline World
The road to Arkansas is a long way from Maryland but Americans are used to driving long distances to get where we are going. Hours of driving mean nothing to us. Some people drive hours just to get to work in the morning. We just listen to music or talk radio and enjoy the ride,…
(18) Dancing With The Dead
Arrival Driving hours on end, we finally arrived in Maryland and found our way to the shows. Unfortunately, arriving too late to participate in ‘Shakedown Street” sales. We did, however, make it in time for the show and found Shannon, Davey, Flea, and Queen Jane just in time to go into the concert with them….
(17) A Really Long Drive
Across Mexico to the US border While writing this, I looked on the internet to see how long the drive took from Guatemala to the US border, and it said 24+ hours. All I knew back then was I had lost track of time. It seemed to take forever. We drove, and slept, and drove,…
(16) The Mid 80’s Dodge Ram
“Bottle up and go!” – Tommy McClennan The Mothership The lawyer we hired to pay any bribes and help in addition to the sales of the van told us everything was ready. We could leave anytime. The van was a white, mid 80’s Dodge Ram with the addition of gold trim around the wheel wells…
(15) We Bought a Van
Shopping in Panajachel Shopping wasn’t so exciting as it all blurred together after a while. Shop after shop, bargaining for the good price and then finding where the place was again that gave you the best price. All the places looked pretty much the same. Eventually, we bought 400 hackysacks, hundreds of ‘friendship bracelets’, 50…
(14) The Compound in Panajachel
The Move to Panajachel We decided that if we were going to get serious about shopping, we needed to move back over to Panajachel from our guesthouse in San Pedro. Panajachel is well known as “a place where ‘Hitmen’ take ‘vacation’”. One old hitman that we met was writing his memoirs and promised to write…
(13) Money, Money, Money!
We were nearly out of money so Donna had Shannon move some insurance policy money from savings onto the credit card. We had to visit the Guatemala City bank to withdraw the money so we could continue shopping. It was, as always, an interesting bus ride as we careened around the mountain roads hoping the…