Volcanoes!

First, a word of thanks to President Bush: due to his arrival in Guatemala, the country´s principal highway has been completely shut down, stranding us for an extra day by a stunning crater lake surrounded by three spectacular volcanoes.

Which isn´t to say that Bush is necessarily receiving a warm welcome by the people here. A guest at our hotel told us he attended a big demonstration in the capital where protestors were spraypainting slogans on nearly everything that wasn´t moving (including buses caught in traffic). The worker at another hotel today swatted the television with a newspaper when Bush appeared live. Mayan priests are planning to re-purify some ruins after the president´s visit. And the press has had a field day, especially after the recent detention of illegal Guatemalan workers in Massachusetts, during which no one at INS seemed to remember that the children might need to be looked after during their parents´detention. Oops.

A political cartoonist for the Prensa Libre captured it all with a panel showing unhappy demonstrators greeting Bush with various slogans like "Go away" while a young girl holds another sign saying, "I want my Mommy."

On our last day of Spanish class in Antigua (a fairly successful venture), two American fighter jets zoomed overhead as part of the Bush preparations, emptying the classrooms as teachers and students laughed nervously about what is an exceedingly rare sight - and sound - in the city. Our host mother, Dilia, told us later she thought it was a nearby volcano erupting.

Here's a view of another one, called Volcan de Agua, which we saw every morning on our way to school.

Besides the impromptu air show, we were treated to some wonderful home cooking and awesome views of the volcanoes and ruins. The most interesting tour, though, was when we visited the museum where our host mother's youngest daughter works: El Museo Vigua de Arte Precolumbino y Vidrio Moderno (but the Web site doesn't really do it justice).

Like the huge Casa Santo Domingo hotel around it, the museum incorporates the ruins of a colonial church and convent. Our sister for the week is not only the curator but also an artistic director and restorer of many of the old ceramic and stone pieces, some of which date back more than 2,000 years. Amazingly, many of them have been found by workers on the museum owner's fincas, or plantations. Even better, our sis had great stories about ghostly presences at the site, including the time she was restoring an unusual Mayan burial jar with skulls on its lid and it kept moving around on her. Another time, her boss was examining a jade hatchet and wondering about its function when a ghostly voice said, "para matar," or "to kill." And finally, she swears that a photo of her with another restored jar depicts a mysterious light, and in the foreground, the image of a friar bowed in prayer. Spooky.

On to Lago Atitlan, where we're watching live coverage of Bush's visit and waiting out the first downpour of the trip at a hippy enclave called San Pedro La Laguna. We arrived Saturday and stayed two nights at a ridiculously amazing hotel called La Casa del Mundo that's perched on the hillside above the deep crater lake. From our room, we had unbelievable views of two more volcanoes across the lake. Like this one:

And this one:

In a fitting end to our first night at the hotel, we soaked with other guests from around the world in a wood stove-heated hot tub overlooking the lake, told ghost stories and marvelled at the brilliant stars overhead.