Has been INCREDIBLE so far. If it weren't for the whole nursing fiasco throwing shade, I would call my life absolutely perfect right now.
The journey here went as well as approximately 36 hours of traveling with a toddler and an infant could possibly go. I'm a little afraid to write that we suffered no missed planes, severe delays, lost baggage or other snafus as I'm worried that the lords of travel will smite us on the way home.
The house is gorgeous. there is a fair amount of usable outside space that isn't so close to the lake that i'm constantly having a heart attack about Althea dashing off into the water. a hammock. a GIANT outdoor bathtub, basically toddler swimming pool sized. everything you need in the kitchen, including a juicer and a blender for making delicious, delicious licuados every day with the fresh-from-the-market, ridiculously cheap pinas, papayas, mangos, bananas, etc. plenty of space for everyone.
both girls (and tio max) have been battling some kind of travelers' diarrhea/vomiting bug, so that has been kind of unfortunate, especially in terms of the amount of laundry that has to be done, but they are both great little troopers so we have managed to still have a fabulous time. so far we have: swum in the lake several times, gone on some treks up the mountain side, walked into town most every day and explored the market, various restaurants, etc, rode over to the neighboring town of San Juan where we stumbled upon some bizarro Catholic festival involving amazingly intricate designs on colored sawdust, flowers, pine boughs, etc placed literally all around the town as a carpet for them to walk on in a giant parade of the 'santisimo' (i don't know what that means, but i have internally translated it as 'ubersaint') and recently found a park in san pedro that althea quite enjoyed.
isis arrived yesterday (hooray!) and walker and max took off for a 3 day trek with their friend from CA who works down here in a town called Xela. so it's just us girls here for now.
i'm so glad we decided to make this trek. it's really been an amazing experience so far. Althea especially is really becoming an extrovert, blurting out randomly to strangers now that she is more or less sure that they all speak spanish. 'i hurt my hand grabbing a plant yesterday' she explained to a total stranger we passed on the street. everyone is very enamored of the two little white babies, as its rare to see tourists with children. funnily, they frequently get mistaken for twins when we are carrying them both in the Ergos. we make kind of a spectacle. but once again children prove an invaluable icebreaker socially, and we have struck up more conversations with local people that we otherwise would have.
a few of my favorite pics: never mind. the internets here are too slow for that.
