Comings and Goings

Goings
It’s been a hectic couple of weeks for comings and goings around El Remate. Marilyn and Joe, enthusiastic volunteers at Ixcanaan created a huge great bang of a party to leave with and the poor old doggie piñata was beaten severely, though “no kids were hurt in the making of this event!” Well, except a couple of wee ones who got trampled on, but that’s the nature of piñata, I think. It was pretty sad for them to leave, but certainly Marilyn left with strong hopes to come back next year. It kind of gets you that way.

Anne’s friend Andrea from Canada arrived with her fabulous 13yearold son Kalen and joined the whirlwind of landbuying. What a story. Having decided to go for it on the Wednesday night and with a flight booked for 11 am Friday morning, she went to the property on Thursday morning to have it measured. It´s big. It took a while. Thursday afternoon to face the usual extensive and slow-moving bank queues only to find a limit on per day cash advances that meant 3 days worth of queuing would be necessary. What to DO???

WELLLLL, fortunately the vendor was there and wanted a car. Off to a dealership to buy a pickup for Andrea to buy on her visa and hence deal with some of the money that way. Car bought without test drive, papers, nada. BUT…. Dealership doesn’t take Visa. What to DO???? Wellll dealer has a cousin who knows a guy who owns a service station which does take visa. Off to service station to pay them for pickup truck by visa so they can pay car dealer by cash. BUT…. More queues and 4 phone calls required to requisition the necessary amount of money. SO… there is still an outstanding balance. What to DO???? After a celebratory dinner at Gringo Perdido (they can cook), all to bed late with the plan, hope and everything crossed, of managing to get the necessary cash from the bank first thing in the morning before the 11 am flight. Now to any UK residents among you, this may not sound a tall order. HOWEVER….. But it happened! Denilo is a happy bunny with less land, a new car and a bunch of notes. There is no denomination bigger than 100 Quetzal note. Dealing in tens of thousands of Quetzals is absolutely a question of stuffing it all in a carrier bag and aiming to wander around looking like all you’re carrying is string. Andrea and Kalen have joined the posse of landowners.

Bill went to Tikal on Wednesday and is due back at the weekend.

Comings
Mimi our fabulous landlady arrived back from Guatemala City with Lucky her outstandingly wonderful daughter. What a family! It’s great to see both, although since Paco, Lucky’s husband, is also back from Copan where he has been working for the last 3 weeks at the beginning of his one year archaeology contract there, we a re not expecting to see much of either Lucky or Paco for a few days. It’ll be great to catch up with Lucky after Paco returns to work. What an amazing balance for an archaeologist: the intricate stelae and hieroglyphs of Copan, interspersed with the monumental BIGness of Tikal.

Bill’s certainly looking forward to Copan also.

US say it quietly and say it with not a little sadness.
We are going on 3 December, for a week’s holiday snorkelling and so forth on Caye Caulker, Belize, before returning for the Unificacion Maya ceremonies and goings on in the village.

But we shall certainly be back. After all, we’re landowners now! (probably….)