Catching up...a little.

Right. We have to get right to business here. Copan Ruinas was just lovely. We enjoyed sort of just relaxing for a bit, getting used to the warmer weather, walking around...and then we visited the ruins and had a wonderful time. Later we'll post some more photos from the ruins, when we have a better internet connection, and possibly from a computer with a photo editor. This one doesn't...and trying to upload the pictures is painfully slow.

Anyway, after smelling this one grill and walking past a couple of times, Susan just INSISTED that I get a steak there. Wow. I know you can barely see it there, what, covered with grilled peppers and onions that it is. Oh, and the buttered roasted potato. Oh my. It was SO tasty. Just the thing to finish off literally minutes before taking a six hour or so bus ride. Everyone else was hungry by the end of it, but not me, no... MMMmm. It's like seeing an old friend, pulling that picture back up and uploading it.

OK. So we'd seen a sign at a travel agent in Copan Ruinas that advertised a shuttle to Antigua, Guatemala for a very reasonable price. We didn't have a strong agenda, so we decided that morning to just take it. And the most lovely thing of all about that decision was the people that happened to share the ride with us. One couple got off very early on, and the rest continued on to Antigua.

We got off the bus and split off in different directions and then reconnected in spurts over the next couple of days. Brad and Dana stayed at the same little hotel we did, and then later Marianne showed up...and Steve was on the next alleyway over from us...and we saw Luis each evening while walking around...and Julia joined us on the hike up the volcano.

To Steve and Marianne, hello! Here we are on the left enjoying a wonderful breakfast together. It was in the courtyard of a wonderful restaurant-bookstore. The weather was just amazing, with bright blue skies and little cottony clouds drifting around. The city itself is cobblestone streets, colonial architecture and bustling. Bustling with a lot more tourists than we'd have preferred, but well, we were tourists there, too.

Brad and Dana, hello! That's them on the right. They joined us for breakfast, too. Susan had a massive pile of fruit and yogurt that she loved. I had, would you believe, TOMATO quiche. They were roasted tomatoes, just lying there on the botom of the quichey goodness, oozing out all over. Wow. It was hard to really do anything, what with all the sleeping in, going out for breakfast, wandering around in the market and all. While it was nice there, we were also ready to move on to a place a little less touristy.

Finally, all of us except for Luis, had dinner together on our last collective night in Antigua. Our dinner was pricy, but oh so tasty. Incredible. Susan had a veggie dish, which was potato something (I don't know) and in a toasted pumpkin seed and walnut sauce and I had the lamb stew. It was served in a bowl with a banana leaf lining. Wine was had, toasts were made and a good time was had by all. Too much fun!

While we were walking through the market, we found a lady selling loquats. Loquats! When I was little we had a tree in the yard that I remember climbing and eating the fruit off the tree. They bruise so easily and spoil so quickly that you'll never find them in a store, so what a treat to find them on the street corner.

This posting is painfully slow. I've got to find another internet cafe.